With a wild cry such as a cave man might have uttered, I had leapt to my feet.
"Your husband!" I shouted. "Then, by the living God, he or I shall never leave this place alive."
He saw me coming as I bounded down the rocks. In an instant he had sprung to his feet. He gave no cry. He asked no question. He stood erect as a cave man would, waiting for his enemy.
And there upon the sands beside the sea we fought, barehanded and weaponless. We fought as cave men fight.
For a while we circled round one another, growling. We circled four times, each watching for an opportunity. Then I picked up a great handful of sand and threw it flap into his face. He grabbed a coco-nut and hit me with it in the stomach. Then I seized a twisted strand of wet seaweed and landed him with it behind the ear. For a moment he staggered. Before he could recover I jumped forward, seized him by the hair, slapped his face twice and then leaped behind a rock. Looking from the side I could see that Croyden, though half dazed, was feeling round for something to throw. To my horror I saw a great stone lying ready to his hand. Beside me was nothing. I gave myself up for lost, when at that very moment I heard Edith's voice behind me saying, "The shovel, quick, the shovel!" The noble girl had rushed back to our encampment and had fetched me the shovel. "Swat him with that," she cried. I seized the shovel, and with the roar of a wounded bull—or as near as I could make it—I rushed out from the rock, the shovel swung over my head.
But the fight was all out of Croyden.
"Don't strike," he said, "I'm all in. I couldn't stand a crack with that kind of thing."
He sat down upon the sand, limp. Seen thus, he somehow seemed to be quite a small man, not a cave man at all. His goatskin suit shrunk in on him. I could hear his pants as he sat.
"I surrender," he said. "Take both the women. They are yours."
I stood over him leaning upon the shovel. The two women had closed in near to us.