Her eyes met his for a second. ‘I shall stay here,’ she said very quietly. She was composed now. ‘Let me have the candle.’ And she took it from him, moving a little to one side.
Morgan shuffled his feet and then suddenly lurched forward.
‘Stay where you are,’ Philip called sharply. ‘What do you want?’
He contrived to pull himself up. Then his great shaggy head came forward and they could see his eyes, fixed in a stare. As if in reply to Philip’s question, he made a gobbling noise in his throat and slowly raised a hand until it pointed at Margaret.
There was something overpowering in the very tongueless bulk of the man, and his approach had shaken Philip at first, sending a flash of fear through all his nerves. Run, run, run, they screamed. But this amazing gesture, this raised and pointed hand, so angered him that his nerves were immediately mastered. He extended an arm and gently pushed Margaret so that she stepped back into the doorway behind him. The light she held fell on Morgan, but left Philip shadowy. He watched those little glassy eyes, now turned from Margaret to him; and leaning forward slightly, balancing himself upon his toes, he waited.
Nor had he long to wait. Something flared up at last in Morgan’s dull brain. Suddenly his arms pawed the air and he hurled himself upon Philip. This blind rush was Philip’s opportunity and he leaped to take it, throwing all his weight behind one straight hard punch. Crack!—it went home, full in that lowered rushing face. Philip recovered himself and instantly stepped back, to be out of reach of those great arms. But for the moment he was in no danger. Only his sheer bulk had saved Morgan from being felled by the blow, which had been well-timed and had found his jaw; and even as it was he was sent reeling back. Philip did not follow up his advantage but remained where he was, at once bewildered and exultant, on the defensive. Perhaps that punch (undoubtedly a whacker) had knocked some sense into the brute, who had finished staggering back and was now gropingly bringing his hands to his head. He felt Margaret’s hand on his sleeve and turned to smile at her. She was standing pressed back into the doorway, and in the light of the candle she was holding she looked very pale and shining-eyed. A noise in front brought him sharply round again. And he was only just in time.
Morgan had charged like a bull and was upon him. He had just time to raise his arms and tighten his body when the man’s whole weight was flung upon him and he found his arms gripped by those huge hands. All was lost. Instinctively, however, he immediately twisted his arms so that his hands clutched at Morgan’s coat sleeves, then he held on tightly, his arms rigid, and instead of trying to withstand the charging weight of his opponent, slackened his whole body. The result was that he did not go down but was rushed backward, past Margaret and down the landing, just as if Morgan were carrying him. It was a dreadful sensation, this of flying helplessly backward, but he contrived to keep his wits. So long as he was not actually borne down, with Morgan’s weight upon him, so long as one of those hands had not found its way to his throat, it might be still possible to master this brute, who seemed as gigantic but as brainless as a prehistoric monster.
He had found his feet again. This was the moment. He relaxed his grip for a second, brought his arms down and then threw them upward and outward with all his strength. Morgan was not quick enough to retain his grip and Philip was free to throw himself backward. He went further than he intended, crashing against the wall, because as he moved a blind swing of Morgan’s clenched hand, as big as a mallet, caught him on the side of the head, nearly turning him sick. But the light was very dim here and Morgan’s own bulk now blotted out most of it. He didn’t seem to know exactly where Philip was, and when he charged again, he moved straight forward. Philip threw out a leg and, as Morgan went flying over it, summoned all the strength left to him and aimed a savage swinging blow at the man’s body, a blow that landed somewhere in the ribs and completed his destruction. There was a great thud and with it the sharper crash of broken glass. Morgan was there, measuring his length on the ground, and in his fall he had smashed the lamp that Philip had put down not so many minutes before. That was the end of the lamp then; and the end too, he hoped, for a time of Morgan, now a dark unstirring shape.
Philip leaned against the wall, triumphant but dizzy and sick. For a moment he did not move, but then tried a few faltering steps towards the light. His head ached and this narrow place couldn’t contain the loud beating of his heart. Once more he leaned against the wall, and now he closed his eyes, desiring nothing but to be a breath in the darkness. But the light, coming nearer, forced his eyes open again. It was Margaret. Her arm was about his neck, her cheek pressed against his, and there came back to him, bringing a multitude of flashing little images from a life long lost, the scent of her hair. ‘It’s me, Phil,’ she was saying. He remembered that, too. It had come back with the rest, across a desert.
Her fingers were moving gently across his face. ‘Are you hurt?’