Once the enemy succeeded in gripping Mathison's jacket where its fastenings met: and Mathison, wrenching back, left half the front of his smart jacket in the eager hand.
Bloody, an eye half closed, his lips puffed and bleeding—but his teeth showing soundly through the grotesque smile—a gash across his forehead, Mathison continued to play for the throat. Queer thing about such contests: there isn't any pain until it is over.
A dozen times they stumbled over the operatives on the floor. The one with the towel around his head was now alive and tugging powerfully at the wet linen binding his wrists. Finally he managed to get to his feet, only to be hurled against the wall.
The inconvenience of these obstacles, animate and inanimate, reacted against Mathison as often as it did against his enemy; and one time Mathison was borne back against the foot-rail of the bed. But a violent thrust of his knee extricated him.
Suddenly and unexpectedly Mathison was offered his opening. The operative, who was still blinded by the wet towel, rose again and staggered about. He struck against the blond man's shoulder, and as the latter thrust him aside Mathison struck. Not an honorable blow, this cut at the throat; not the sort white men use in fisticuffs. But I repeat, these two were bent on killing each other.
When you touch a hot coal your hand jerks back. It is reflex action purely; the conscious brain has nothing to do with it. So it is with the blow on the Adam's apple. The hands fly to the throat because they must.
Mathison did not pause to note the effect of the stroke. He knew that it had gone home. He had been badly punished, but he was still fighting strong. The years of clean living, of unsapped vitality, were paying dividends to-night. He sent in a smothering hail of blows, with all the power he had left to put behind them.
It was now that the other man began to realize that he was no longer interested in killing Mathison, that he sought only to get away from this force and fury which were superior to his own. He looked about desperately for a corner to turn; but there wasn't any. Back he went, back until his legs struck the edge of the bed. Even as he wavered Mathison leaped, bore his man down, knelt on his ribs and dug his fingers into the bull-like neck. No doubt Mathison would have throttled him. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. But a singular event stayed his hands.
During all this surging to and fro, this battering and scuffling, Malachi's fear and agitation had grown to the point where he was compelled to express his disapproval in the only way he knew—by sounds, hoarse, raucous sounds, human words.