Bill, this is shorter and thus better -- didn't think of using RegularExpression. Girish provided the solution I hoped was out there, and both replies are useful. Thanks.
Girish, this is perfect, exactly what I sought. Thanks.
You can also try--
StringSplit[x][[2]] // ToExpression
Is this simpler?
n = StringReplace[x, RegularExpression["\\D+"] -> " "] // ToExpression
which will handle any non-digit characters before and/or after the digits, but won't handle several groups of digits.
