The looking-glass crashed, and the hair-oil was all over the
place. I rushed out to see what was happening in the hall...."
What "was happening" was that the soldiers had broken the hall door in.
Lawrence saw then a horrible thing. One of the men rushed forward and
stuck Andre, who was standing, paralysed, by the drawing-room door, in
the stomach. The old man cried out "just like a shot rabbit," and stood
there "for what seemed ages," with the blood pouring out of his middle.
That finished Lawrence. He rushed forward, and they would certainly have
"stuck" him too if someone hadn't cried out, "Look out, he's an
Englishman--an _Anglichanin_--I know him."
After that, for a time, he was uncertain of anything. He struggled; he
was held. He heard noises around him--shouts or murmurs or sighs--that
didn't seem to him to be connected with anything human. He could not
have said where he was nor what he was doing. Then, quite suddenly,
everything cleared. He came to himself with a consciousness of that
utter weariness that he had felt before. He was able to visualise the
scene, to take it all in, but as a distant spectator.
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