Until this point the other boys had been jubilant. Even Enoch had found the early stages of the victory stirring in a way. But as this torture went on, the boys' faces went slack. Many of them turned and ran away. The fair-haired boy had flown into a state of something like ecstasy – groping and flailing like a man nearing erotic climax, his body an insufficient vehicle for his passions, a dead weight impeding the flowering of the spirit. Finally an adult man – Clarke's brother? – banged out through a door and stormed across the yard between school and church in the tottering gait of a man unaccustomed to having to move quickly, carrying a cane but not touching the ground with it. He was so angry that he did not utter a word, or try to separate the boys, but simply began to cut air with the cane, like a blind man fending off a bear, as he got close. Soon enough he maneuvered within range of the fair boy and planted his feet and bent to his work, the cane producing memorable whorling noises cut off by pungent whacks. A few brown-nosers now considered it safe to approach. Two of them dragged the fair boy off of his victim, who contracted into a fetal position at the base of the church wall, hands open like the covers of a book to enfold his wrecked face. The schoolmaster adjusted his azimuth as the target moved, like a telescope tracking a comet, but none of his blows seemed to have been actually felt by the fair boy yet – he wore a look of steadfast, righteous triumph, much like Enoch supposed Cromwell must have shown as he beheld the butchering of the Irish at Drogheda.