what you want, and I'm going to thrash you within an inch of your
life."

Again the stick rose in the air, but did not fall, for round about
his body Dunn laid such a grip as he had never felt before and as
would for certain have crushed in the ribs of a weaker man. The
lantern crashed to the ground, they were in darkness.

"Ha! Would you?" the man exclaimed, taken by surprise in his turn,
and, giant as he was, he felt himself plucked up from the ground as
you pluck a weed from a lawn and held for a moment in mid-air and
then dashed down again.

Perhaps not another man alive could have kept his footing under
such treatment, but, somehow, he managed to, though it needed all
his great strength to resist the shock.

He flung away his walking-stick, for he realized very clearly now
that this was not going to be, as he had anticipated, a mere case
of the administration of a deserved punishment, but rather the
starkest, fiercest fight that ever he had known.

He grappled with his enemy, trying to make the most of his superior
height and weight, but the long arms twined about him, seemed to
press the very breath from his body and for all the huge efforts he
put forth with every ounce of his tremendous strength behind them,
he could not break loose from the no less tremendous grip wherein
he was taken.

Breast to breast they fought, straining, swaying a little this way