They were breathing terribly; they lay stiller, stiller.  They did not thrash about so much.  Their eyes were starting out of their sockets; their faces were turning purple—­or was it the firelight?  Men’s faces could not look like that—­not while the men lived.  They gasped now; they did not breathe.

One of Brodie’s hands came away hastily.  He began battering at King’s face, battering like a steam-piston.  The blows sounded loudly; blood broke out under the terrific pounding.  King’s grip did not alter, did not shift.  His eyes were shut but he clung on, grim, looking a dead man, but a man whose will lasted on after death.  Brodie wrenched; they rolled over.  Still King’s hands did not leave their grip.

They were on their feet, staggering up and down, two men moulded together like one man.  Brodie struck blow after blow, and with every thud Gloria winced and felt a pain through her own body.  And still King held his grip, both hands sunk deep into the thick throat.

They were apart, two blind, staggering men.  What parted them they did not know and Gloria could not see.  Thus they stood for a second only.  Brodie lifted his hands—­weak hands rising slowly, slowly—­uncertainly.  King saw him through a gathering mist; Brodie opened his mouth to draw in great sobbing breaths of air.  King, the primal rage upon him, saw the great double teeth bared, and thought that his enemy was laughing at him.  It was King who gathered himself first and struck first.  All of the will he had, all of the endurance left in his battered body, all of the strength God gave him, he put into that blow.  He struck Brodie full in the face, between the little battered blue eyes.  And Brodie fell.  He rose; he got to his knees and sagged up and forward.  King’s shout then was to ring through Gloria’s memory for days to come; he bore down on Swen Brodie, caught him about the great body, lifted him clear of the floor and hurled him downward.  Brodie struck heavily, his head against the rocks.  And where he fell he lay—­stunned or dead.

“Come,” said King to Gloria.  “Come quick.”

He turned toward the cave’s mouth and with one hand began to drag away the stones so that they could go out.  His other hand was pressed to his side.  His work done, he picked up the rifle at his feet and went out.  Gloria, swaying and stumbling, came after him.  Neither spoke a word as they made a slow way through the snow.  King went unsteadily with dragging feet.  They climbed the cliff laboriously.  They were in their cave—­it was like home.  She dropped down on the fir-boughs, stumbling to them in the dark.

Chapter XXXI