He shook himself free.

“Come outside and fight it out like a man—­if you are one,” he panted.  “And we’ll see if you can beat a man as you can a woman.”

“Allons!” growled Martel.  He was in the humour to rend and tear, and it mattered little what.  For the authorities in Guernsey, after due deliberation, had decided that what was not good enough for Sercq was not good enough for Guernsey, and had shipped him back with scant ceremony.  He had been flung out like a sack of rubbish onto the shingle in Havre Gosselin, half an hour before, had scaled the rough track in the dark, with his mouth full of curses and his heart full of rage, and George Hamon thanked God that it was not Rachel and the boy he had found in the cottage that night.

Hamon slipped on his shoes and tied them carefully, and they passed out and along the narrow way between the tall hedges.  The full moon was just showing red and sleepy-looking, but she would be white and wide awake in a few minutes.  The grass was thick with dew, and there was not a sound save the growl of the surf on the rocks below.

Through a gap in the hedge Hamon led the way towards Longue Pointe.

“Here!” he said, as they came on a level piece, and rolled up the sleeves of his guernsey.  “Put away your knife;” and Martel, with a curse at the implication, drew it from its sheath at his back and flung it among the bracken.

Then, without a word, they tackled one another.  No gripping now, but hard fell blows straight from the shoulder, warded when possible, or taken in grim silence.  They fought, not as men fight in battle,—­for general principles and with but dim understanding of the rights and wrongs of the matter; but with the bitter intensity born of personal wrongs and the desire for personal vengeance.  To Hamon, Martel represented the grievous shadow on Rachel Carre’s life.  To Martel, Hamon represented Sercq and all the contumely that had been heaped upon him there.

Their faces were set like rocks.  Their teeth were clenched.  They breathed hard and quick—­through their noses at first, but presently, and of necessity, in short sharp gasps from the chest.

It was a great fight, with none to see it but the placid moon, and so strong was her light that there seemed to be four men fighting, two above and two below.  And at times they all merged into a writhing confusion of fierce pantings and snortings as of wild beasts, but for the most part they fought in grim silence, broken only by the whistle of the wind through their swollen lips, the light thud of their feet on the trampled ground, and the grisly sound of fist on flesh.  And they fought for love of Rachel Carre, which the one had not been able to win and the other had not been able to keep.

Martel was the bigger man, but Hamon’s legs and arms had springs of hate in them which more than counterbalanced.  He was a temperate man too, and in fine condition.  He played his man with discretion, let him exhaust himself to his heart’s content, took with equanimity such blows as he could not ward or avoid, and kept the temper of his hatred free from extravagance till his time came.