The Napoleon of Notting Hill
"The enemy went—" said the rough voice behind, and then stopped, doubtfully.
"Where?" shouted Buck, stamping like a madman.
"They went," said the gruff voice, "past the Gas Works, and they've used their chance."
"Great God!" thundered Buck, and snatched at his revolver; "do you mean they've turned out—"
But almost before he had spoken the words, he was hurled like a stone from a catapult into the midst of his own men.
"Notting Hill! Notting Hill!" cried frightful voices out of the darkness, and they seemed to come from all sides, for the men of North Kensington, unacquainted with the road, had lost all their bearings in the black world of blindness.
"Notting Hill! Notting Hill!" cried the invisible people, and the invaders were hewn down horribly with black steel, with steel that gave no glint against any light. ······
Buck, though badly maimed with the blow of a halberd, kept an angry but splendid sanity. He groped madly for the wall and found it. Struggling with crawling fingers along it, he found a side opening and retreated into it with the
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