The face that Simon turned on me was not in the least like his own.  It was that of a hopeless man who knows that everything he had prized is lost.  He had never cowered before anyone in his life, I think, but he cowered now before Pierre Caribou.

“Hewlett!” he cried in a high-pitched, quavering voice, “help me throw this old fool out of the way.”

I spoke to Pierre.  “Our quarrel is at an end,” I said.  “I am going away.  You must go, too.”

Pierre Caribou did not relax an inch of ground.

Then a roar burst from Leroux’s lips, and he flung himself upon the Indian in the same desperate way as I had experienced, and in an instant the two men were struggling at the edge of the platform.

It was impossible for me to intervene, and I could only stand by and stare in horror.  And, as I stared, I saw the face of Lacroix among the rocks again, peering out, with an evil smile upon his lips.

Whether they fought in silence or whether in sound I do not know, for the noise of the cataract rendered the battle a dumb pantomime.

Pierre had pulled the Frenchman out to the middle of the ledge and was trying to force him over.  But Leroux was clinging with one hand to the cliff and with the other he beat savagely upon his enemy’s face, so that the blood covered both of them.  But Pierre did not seem to feel the blows.

Leroux, one-handed, was at a disadvantage.  He grasped his antagonist again, and the death-grapple began.

It was a marvel that they could engage in so terrific a fight upon the ice-coated ledge and hold their balance there.  But I saw that they were in equipoise, for they were bending all the tension of each muscle to the fight, so that they remained almost motionless, and, thigh to thigh, arm to arm, breast to breast, each sought to break the other’s strength.  And I saw that, when one was broken, he would not yield slowly, but, having spent the last of his strength, would collapse like a crumpled cardboard figure and go down into the boiling lake.

The cataract’s half-sphere of crystal clearness framed them as though they formed some dreadful picture.

They bent and swayed, and now Leroux was forcing Pierre’s head and shoulders backward by the weight of his bull’s body.  But the Indian’s sinews, toughened by years of toil to steel, held fast; and just as Leroux, confident of victory, shifted his feet and inclined forward, Pierre changed his grasp and caught him by the throat.

Leroux’s face blackened and his eyes started out.  His great chest heaved, and he tore impotently at his enemy’s strong fingers that were shutting out air and light and consciousness.  They rocked and swayed; then, with a last convulsive effort, Leroux swung Pierre off his feet, raised him high in the air, and tried to dash his body against the projecting rock at the tunnel’s mouth.

But still the Indian’s fingers held, and as his consciousness began to fade Leroux staggered and slipped; and with a neighing whine that burst from his constricted throat, a shriek that pierced the torrent’s roar, he slid down the cataract, Pierre locked in his arms.