"Away! away!" he shouted. Then moaned. "Those eyes! those eyes! They scorch my very soul. Away!" And he cowered and shrank, but a minute later seemed to have recovered his old ferocity. "Begone!" he now commanded the spectre of his distorted vision. "Begone!" and with that he rushed forward, forgetting in his madness the table was betwixt him and his fears, and knocking it over in the rush.
And with it the lamp went too. Only fortunately it was at its end, there was no longer any oil in it--otherwise the hut would have been burnt to the ground.
But all was now darkness save for the moonlight on the floor within and on the brushwood without, and, as Alderly recovered himself from his entanglement with the fallen table and trestles, I could see it shining upon his glaring, savage eyes. And he took me--I having been knocked to the door by the crash--for the ghost of the diver, the spirit he feared so much.
"Peace, you fool!" I exclaimed, "there is no spirit here, nought worse than yourself. And stand back, or, by the God above, I will blow your frenzied brains out," and as I spoke, I drew a pistol, cocked it and covered him.
With a howl he came at me, missing my fire in his onward rush, dashing the pistol from my hand with a madman's force, and, seizing me round the waist, endeavoured to throw me to the earth. Yet, though I had no frenzy, I too was strong, and I wrestled with him, so that about the hut we went, knocking over first the tub of liquor with which the place became drenched, and falling at last together on the ground. And all this time, Alderly was cursing and howling, sometimes even biting at me, and tearing my flesh with his teeth, especially about the hands, and gripping my throat with his own strong hands--made doubly strong because of his frenzy. I smelt his hot, stinking, spirit-sodden breath all over me; I could even smell the filth of his body as he hissed out:
"I ever hated you, Winstanley; I hated you when I made your own hands slay you. I hated you in life, I hate you now in death. And as I slew you in life, again will I slay you in death."
Then at this moment he gave a yell of triumph. His hand had encountered the hilt of my sword, and drawing it forth from its broken sheath, he shortened it to plunge it into my breast.
But as he did so I got one of my hands released. I felt for my other pistol, I cocked it with my thumb, when, ere I could fire, the cutlash dropped from Alderly's hand and he sprang to his feet, his hands upon his wound.
"See," he whispered now, "there be two Winstanleys: one here--one coming through the wood. Are there any more--?"
Staggering, he stood glaring forth into the wood through the open door, seeing another spectre, as he thought, there; then slowly he sank to the ground, letting his hands fall away from the gash in his breast, from which the tide now ran swiftly.