Margrave was locked in my grasp.

"Call out," I hissed in his ear, "and I strangle you before any one can
come to your help."

He did not call out; his eye, fixed on mine as he writhed round, saw,
perhaps, his peril if he did. His countenance betrayed fear, but as I
tightened my grasp that expression gave way to one of wrath and
fierceness; and as, in turn, I felt the grip of his hand, I knew that
the struggle between us would be that of two strong men, each equally
bent on the mastery of the other.

I was, as I have said before, endowed with an unusual degree of physical
power, disciplined in early youth by athletic exercise and contest. In
height and in muscle I had greatly the advantage over my antagonist; but
such was the nervous vigour, the elastic energy of his incomparable frame,
in which sinews seemed springs of steel, that had our encounter been one
in which my strength was less heightened by rage, I believe that I could
no more have coped with him than the bison can cope with the boa; but I
was animated by that passion which trebles for a time all our
forces,--which makes even the weak man a match for the strong. I felt
that if I were worsted, disabled, stricken down, Lilian might be lost in
losing her sole protector; and on the other hand, Margrave had been taken
at the disadvantage of that surprise which will half unnerve the fiercest
of the wild beasts; while as we grappled, reeling and rocking to and fro
in our struggle, I soon observed that his attention was distracted,--that
his eye was turned towards an object which he had dropped involuntarily
when I first seized him. He sought to drag me towards that object, and
when near it stooped to seize. It was a bright, slender, short wand of
steel. I remembered when and where I had seen it, whether in my waking