If only her hand were free she might perhaps be able to take advantage of
the struggle between her foes, and to force her way out between their
ranks.

Twice, thrice, four times, she tried to wrench her hand with a sudden
jerk through the fingers that grasped it; but each time in vain.
Suddenly, from the man at her feet there broke a loud, long-drawn cry of
pain which re-echoed from the high walls of the court, and at the same
time she felt the fingers of her antagonist gradually and slowly slip
from her arm like the straps of a sandal carefully lifted by the surgeon
from a broken ankle.

"It is all over with him!" exclaimed the eldest of the Cypriotes. "A man
never calls out like that but once in his life! True enough--the dagger
is sticking here just under the ninth rib! This is mad work! That is
your doing again, Lykos, you savage wolf!"

"He bit deep into my finger in the struggle--"

"And you are for ever tearing each other to pieces for the sake of the
women," interrupted the elder, not listening to the other's excuses.
"Well, I was no better than you in my time, and nothing can alter it!
You had better be off now, for if the Epistrategist learns we have fallen
to stabbing each other again--"

The Cypriote had not ceased speaking, and his countrymen were in the very
act of raising the body of their comrade when a division of the civic
watch rushed into the court in close order and through the passage near
which the fight for the girl had arisen, thus stopping the way against