He stood still for a moment to listen, and then he distinctly heard a rush and a scuffle.
He ran back to the spot at which he had left his friend, and at first thought that he perceived a mob of people in the dusk.

But as he got nearer, he saw that there were a man and two women.

Wharton was on the ground, on his back, and the man was apparently kneeling on his neck and head while the women were rifling his pockets.

Lopez, hardly knowing how he was acting, was upon them in a moment, flying in the first place at the man, who had jumped up to meet him as he came.

He received at once a heavy blow on his head from some weapon, which, however, his hat so far stopped as to save him from being felled or stunned, and then he felt another blow from behind on the ear, which he afterwards conceived to have been given him by one of the women.
But before he could well look about him, or well know how the whole thing had happened, the man and the two women had taken to their legs, and Wharton was standing on his feet leaning against the iron railings.
The whole thing had occupied a very short space of time, and yet the effects were very grave.