To perish thus in sight of relief—to be destroyed as it were, on the threshold of home—after all I had endured, endued me, though little more than a lad, with an unnatural strength; thus I struggled wildly and madly, but bravely, with my would-be assassin.
Unlike my bearing in my recent dream, I neither entreated, threatened, nor promised secrecy, or mercy; but summoned every energy to defend and preserve my life! Raising me by the throat, he strove to dash my head upon the earth to stun me; but in attempting this, he over-balanced himself, fell, and in a moment I was above him!
He kicked, wrestled, bit, and howled like a fierce animal, as we rolled together down the back of the cliff out of sight of the coming ship, and there the wild shrubbery among which we floundered pell-mell, separated us; but after breathing for a moment, we arose and approached each other to grapple again, and, as it proved, on the giddy verge of a deep chasm in the rocks—a rent by which, in some stern throe of Nature, this tall cliff had been split from its summit to its base below the waters of the sea.
If the partial strangulation had enfeebled me, the blows and buffets under which I smarted—the love of life, and above all, my anxiety to make some signal to the nearing ship, lest she might alter her course and bear away, endued me with a courage and determination of which my ignoble enemy was altogether destitute. He could steal upon me when asleep, but I could perceive that he now shrank from the expression of honest defiance and resolution that flashed in my eyes and glowed in my face.
We grasped each other!
Not a word was spoken, and no sound was heard, but our suppressed breathing.
We were near the verge of the chasm, and more than ever was the struggle now for life or death! By sudden jerks; by bending backward and thrusting forward, he strove to place me between it and himself, with the intention of tossing me into its black and terrible depth; but I grasped him with a death-clutch, resolving that if it came to such an issue, we should perish together.
The struggle was frightful; but it was too much for me, as his strength overmatched mine.
I felt the failing of my powers, and my heart grew sick, though the imminence of my danger caused me to make efforts against him, which I now consider superhuman.
He rapidly forced me backward; and now he began to shout and laugh, for only three yards of thick and furzelike herbage lay between us and eternity. He was gathering all his vast strength for one decided effort, when a decayed gourd was crushed to pulp under his right foot—he slipped, and fell forward with violence towards the chasm, while I rolled in the other direction; and before I arose, he had uttered a wild shriek, and vanished!