Hammer saw red and struck. The whole insane scheme darted clear to his mind, and he drove his fist home into that mocking face with a furious curse. Krausz flung up his revolver-hand, but Hammer dashed it aside and the weapon fell; he saw Krausz reel back and knew he had crushed the man's nose with his first blow, but he followed with relentless fury in his heart.
Krausz tried to fight him off, and he saw the three askaris closing in on him; then he felt the whip curl about him, sending a terrible red wale over his cheek and biting into his body; but time and again those fists which had won him his name stabbed into the face of the big Saxon—until the askaris ground him to the earth by main weight and tied him.
The American glared up, still raging in his helplessness. Krausz had dropped his whip and was clinging to a long vine that trailed down across the body of Jenson, who had not moved.
The fight had hardly lasted a minute, but Hammer had learned his trade in a hard school. The heavy features of Krausz were crushed into a red mass, for the first blow of Hammer's had splintered his nose; yet, for all the pain he must have been suffering, Krausz said no word.
Groping for his handkerchief, he slowly wiped the blood from his eyes, then stooped and picked up his pith helmet and put it on, carefully letting down the mosquito-gauze about his features.
There was something in the action, something of iron tenacity, that made Hammer hold his breath, waiting for he knew not what. With that crimsoned visage masked from sight, Sigurd Krausz appeared even more formidable. Hammer knew that his outburst had effected nothing.
Yet it had been half panic. The scientist's fiendish plan had sent a shudder of abhorrence through him; the very odour of that pit nauseated him, and he had lashed out in a frenzy of mingled fear and rage. Then the memory of that narrow shelf of rock——
"By Godfrey!" thought the American desperately, "if Solomon doesn't show up in a hurry it's all off! That ledge won't hold more than one person, that's sure."
Panic-stricken, he watched the Saxon. Krausz took a step, and stumbled across Jenson, all but falling. At the same moment the askari who had been sent to camp returned, panting, carrying a length of rope.
Krausz seized it from him and bent the end around under Jenson's arms. From where he stood Hammer could see how the secretary trembled, and a moment later he shrank away from Krausz, scrambling desperately to regain his feet, screaming.