As the youth at last cleared his front of a hairy monster that had sprung at his throat, he found himself sufficiently free to look round the trunk of the blasted pine that he might see how it fared with his companions.
At first he could see nothing clearly, for the same strange and weird conditions continued to permeate the earth and air.
For a moment all would be dark and then flash on continuous flash would follow, the wild-fire running about the tree-tops and glinting up through the recesses of the woods as if the heavens themselves were instinct with diabolic light.
As he looked, Sholto saw his father, a gigantic figure standing black and militant against the brightest of it.

His hand grasped a huge wolf by the heels, and he swung the beast about his head as easily as he was wont to handle the forehammer at home.

With his living weapon Malise had swept a space about him clear, and the beasts seemed to have fallen back in terror before such a strange enemy.
But what of the Lord James?
Overleaping the pile of dead and dying wolves which his sword and dagger had made, and from which savage heads still bit and snarled up at him as he went, Sholto ran round to seek the young Lord of Avondale.

At the first flash after leaving the tree trunk he was nowhere to be seen, but a second revealed him lying on the ground, with four shaggy beasts bending over him and tearing fiercely at his gorget and breast-armour.

With a loud shout Sholto was among them.