Dupont dropped his paddle with a curse.
“You got not’ing! You said eet was all right!” he growled.
“It is all right. I got nothing. I asked for nothing. I have had enough. I have finished.”
With a roar of rage Dupont sprang on him, and caught him by the throat as the canoe swayed and dipped. He was blind with fury.
Lygon tried with one hand for his knife, and got it, but the pressure on his throat was growing terrible.
For minutes the struggle continued, for Lygon was fighting with the desperation of one who makes his last awful onset against fate and doom.
Dupont also had his knife at work. At last it drank blood, but as he got it home he suddenly reeled blindly, lost his balance, and lurched into the water with a groan.
Lygon, weapon in hand and bleeding freely, waited for him to rise and make for the canoe again.
Ten, twenty, fifty seconds passed. Dupont did not rise. A minute went by, and still there was no stir, no sign. Dupont would never rise again. In his wild rage he had burst a blood-vessel on the brain.
Lygon bound up his reeking wound as best he could. He did it calmly, whispering to himself the while.