I was very calm I remember, but it was an unnatural calm. I looked around me, and Eli was still struggling with the serving-man, and to my delight he was slowly mastering him.
"Nick Tresidder," I said, "you and your brood robbed my father, you have robbed me, robbed me of everything I hold dear. I am going to kill you now with these hands."
He laughed scornfully, as though I had spoken vain words; but he knew not that there is a passion which overcomes physical weakness.
"I know it is to be a duel to the death," he laughed, "for I could not afford to allow you to leave here alive."
"God Almighty is tired of you," I said; "He has given me the power to crush the life out of you," and all the time I spoke I felt as though my sinews were like steel bands.
He leapt upon me as quickly as a flash of light, but it did not matter. In a minute I caught him in what the wrestlers call the cross-hitch. I put forth my strength, and his right arm cracked like a rotten stick, but he did not cry out. Then I put my arm around him and slowly crushed the breath out of his body. I think he felt the meaning of my words then.
"Stop, Jasper," he gasped, "she's not dead--she's--"
But he did not speak. I do not think he could. I relaxed my hold, but he lay limp in my arms like a sick child. Never in my life could I hurt an unresisting man, so I let him fall, and he lay like a log of wood. But he was still breathing, and I knew that he would live. But my passion had died away, and so had my strength.
I turned around and I saw that Eli had mastered the serving-man. He had placed his hands around his neck, and had I not pulled the dwarf away the man would have died.
"Eli," I said, picking up the torch, "they will not follow us now. Come."
But Eli did not want to come. He looked at the men we had mastered, and his eyes glared with an unearthly light, and like a lion who has tasted blood he did not seem satisfied.
"An eye for an eye," he said; "tha's what mawther do zay. Iss, an' a tooth for a tooth."
"Lead the way to the sea, Eli," I said, and like a dog he obeyed. Taking the torch from me he crawled down the passage, laughing in a strange guttural way as he went. All the time my mind was resting on Nick Tresidder's words, "She's not dead. She's--" and in spite of myself hope came into my heart again, while a thousand wild thoughts flashed through my mind.