Before he could recover, McNamara had passed under his extended arm and seized him by the middle, then, thrusting his left leg back of Roy’s, he whirled him from his balance, flinging him clear and with resistless force.  It seemed that a fatal fall must follow, but the youth squirmed catlike in the air, landing with set muscles which rebounded like rubber.  Even so, the receiver was upon him before he could rise, reaching for the young man’s throat with his heavy hands.  Roy recognized the fatal “strangle hold,” and, seizing his enemy’s wrists, endeavored to tear them apart, but his left hand was useless, so with a mighty wrench he freed himself, and, locked in each other’s arms, the men strained and swayed about the office till their neck veins were bursting, their muscles paralyzed.

Men may fight duels calmly, may shoot or parry or thrust with cold deliberation; but when there comes the jar of body to body, the sweaty contact of skin to skin, the play of iron muscles, the painful gasp of exhaustion—­then the mind goes skittering back into its dark recesses while every venomous passion leaps forth from its hiding-place and joins in the horrid war.

They tripped across the floor, crashing into the partition, which split, showering them with glass.  They fell and rolled in it; then, by consent, wrenched themselves apart and rose, eye to eye, their jaws hanging, their lungs wheezing, their faces trickling blood and sweat.  Roy’s left hand pained him excruciatingly, while McNamara’s macerated lips had turned outward in a hideous pout.  They crouched so for an instant, cruel, bestial—­then clinched again.  The office-fittings were wrecked utterly and the room became a litter of ruins.  The men’s garments fell away till their breasts were bare and their arms swelled white and knotted through the rags.  They knew no pain, their bodies were insensate mechanisms.

Gradually the older man’s face was beaten into a shapeless mass by the other’s cunning blows, while Glenister’s every bone was wrenched and twisted under his enemy’s terrible onslaughts.  The miner’s chief effort, it is true, was to keep his feet and to break the man’s embraces.  Never had he encountered one whom he could not beat by sheer strength till he met this great, snarling creature who worried him hither and yon as though he were a child.  Time and again Roy beat upon the man’s face with the blows of a sledge.  No rules governed this solitary combat; the men were deaf to all but the roaring in their ears, blinded to all but hate, insensible to everything but the blood mania.  Their trampling feet caused the building to rumble and shake as though some monster were running amuck.