The trick was not new.  But it was fearsomely effective.  It was, as Gavin had explained, all a question of leverage.  The giant’s waist was drawn forward, His chin, simultaneously, was shoved backward.  Such a dual cross pressure was due, eventually, to mean one of two things:—­either the snapping of the spine or else the breaking of the neck.  Unless the grip could be broken, there was no earthly help for its victim.

The beach comber, in agony of straining spine and throat, thrashed wildly to free himself.  He strove to batter the tenacious little man to senselessness.  But he could hit nothing but the sloping back, or aim clumsily cramped hooks for the top and sides of Gavin’s protected head.

Meantime, the pressure was increasing, with a coldly scientific precision.  Human nature could not endure it.  In his extremity, the beach comber attempted the same ruse that had been so successful for Brice.  He slumped, in pseudo-helplessness.  The only result was to enable Gavin to tighten his hold, unopposed by the tensing of the enemy’s wall of muscles.

“I’m through!” bellowed the tortured giant, stranglingly, his entire huge body one horror of agony. “’Nuff!  I’m—­”

He got no further.  For, the unspeakable anguish mounted to his brain.  And he swooned.

Gavin Brice let the great body slide inert to the sand.  He stood, flushed and panting a little, looking down at the hulk he had so nearly annihilated.  Then, as the beach comber’s limbs began to twitch and his eyelids to quiver, Brice turned away.

“Come along, puppy,” he bade the wildly excited collie.  “He isn’t dead.  Another couple of seconds and his neck or his back must have gone.  I’m glad he fainted first.  A killing isn’t a nice thing to remember on wakeful nights, the killing of even a cur like that.  Come on, before he wakes up.  I’m going somewhere.  And it’s a stroke of golden luck that I’ve got you to take with me, by way of welcome.”

He had picked up and pocketed his watch.  Now, lifting the knife, he glanced shudderingly at its ugly curved blade.  Then he tossed it far out into the water.  After which, he chirped again to the gladly following collie and made off down the beach, toward a loop of mangrove swamp that swelled out into the water a quarter-mile farther on.

The dog gamboled gayly about him, as they walked, and tried to entice him into a romp.  Prancing invitingly toward Brice, the collie would then flee from him in simulated terror.  Next, crouching in front of him, the dog would snatch up a mouthful of sand, growl, and make pattering gestures with his white forefeet at Gavin’s dusty shoes.

Failing to lure his new master into a frolic, the dog fell sober and paced majestically alongside him, once or twice earning an absent-minded pat on the head by thrusting his muzzle into the cup of the walker’s hand.

As they neared the loop of the swamp, the collie looked back, and growled softly, under his breath.  Gavin followed the direction of the dog’s gaze.  He saw the beach comber sit up, and then, with much pain and difficulty, get swayingly to his feet.