The officers in the same way seized what weapons they could lay hands on, and met their desperate assailants.

A faint splash below, a few seconds later, told the lads that their desperate assailants had reached the water.

Such a beast as this might well have caused all that destruction of life on the part of his desperate assailants of which More speaks.

"Not Orpheus himself," wrote Crabbe, "had more courage or better luck" than the desperate assailants of the prison.