Soon my assailants grew faint, and almost ceased to struggle, their
breath had failed them, and they were dying, but still I dared not leave
them, for they died very slowly. I knew that if I relaxed my grip they
would revive. The other ruffians probably thought--for we were all three
lying in the shadow of the ledge--that we were all dead together, at any
rate they did not interfere with our little tragedy.
I turned my head, and as I lay gasping in the throes of that awful
struggle I could see that Leo was off the rock now, for the lamplight
fell full upon him. He was still on his feet, but in the centre of a
surging mass of struggling men, who were striving to pull him down as
wolves pull down a stag. Up above them towered his beautiful pale face
crowned with its bright curls (for Leo is six feet two high), and I saw
that he was fighting with a desperate abandonment and energy that was
at once splendid and hideous to behold. He drove his knife through one
man--they were so close to and mixed up with him that they could not
get at him to kill him with their big spears, and they had no knives or
sticks.
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