"And now," said Grayle. "Bannerman's out of ear-shot, and even the fiendish noise you've been making won't bring anyone to save you. Before I've done with you, I think you'll be sorry you interfered quite so much."
He dragged himself and his chair to the edge of the table and leaned upon it with his fists, gripping the ruler. The next moment I had sprung back, as he threw himself forward and aimed a blow at my head with the full reach and swing of his long body and arm behind it. The point of the ruler glanced off the welt of my boot and dented the oil-cloth. Grayle pulled himself back, rested his hands again on the table and waited, eyeing me reflectively. I was coming cautiously back to my place, when he projected himself suddenly to the right; I jumped in the opposite direction, he stopped, and we gradually came back to our old positions. A moment later he dived to the left, but I had hardly to move, for he was throwing his weight on to a leg which would not bear it. The next plunge was to the right, and this time he made a half-circle of the table until each of us was occupying the other's stance. With these tactics I could keep him at bay for as long as I liked; and I have no doubt that he realised it. While he panted and looked round him, I turned my head for an instant to see whether he had left the key in the door. The one table-lamp, however, threw a yellow circle of quavering light over the middle of the room and left the extremities in shadow. Whether Grayle divined my thoughts, whether he even noticed or understood my action, I cannot say, but the next moment I received a violent blow on the thighs and was hard put to it to keep my balance, as the table, furiously impelled by him, careered madly towards the door, pinning my legs and holding me, as though I were buried to the waist, to await his attack.
He gave himself a moment to draw breath and enjoy his triumph. The murderous blow which had just missed me never left his intentions in doubt, but in that moment he gave me time to use the last and only weapon left to me. Snatching the big lamp, which flared afresh at my grasp, I raised it aloft and brought it with a crash and tinkle on to his head. For some time I could not understand what had happened, for the room seemed in darkness and yet brighter than before. By the dancing light of the fire I saw that Grayle had disappeared; and the table yielded when I pushed against it. Then a blaze of yellow sprang up in front of me, and I caught sight of him lying on his back with a flood of burning oil spreading over his clothes, lapping the disorder of books and papers which we had tumbled on to the floor and licking the border of the Japanese mats. How much I had injured him with the lamp I could not see; he was clasping his head with one hand and still gripping the ruler with the other.
"Grayle, pull yourself together, man!" I cried, as though by raising my voice I could penetrate his unconsciousness.
In a moment the flames would be pouring over his neck and face; in five minutes, if the petrol cans were reached, the whole lath-and-plaster shanty would be a roaring and crackling furnace. I had to extricate Beresford and Grayle or rouse them to extricate themselves—and I discovered that my body was trembling from the excitement of the duel and that my head was aching savagely. I had hardly found time to think of my injuries until then; to think of anything, indeed, but the next thrust or parry; I had no idea how long the engagement had lasted—and was astonished to find that less than twelve minutes had passed since Grayle first entered the room.
"Pull yourself together!" I cried again, looking for my overcoat to wrap round him and smother the flames. In the unevenly distributed light I could not see it. The oil was sinking into the closely woven tunic instead of flaring itself out on the surface, and above the pungent smell of hot petroleum rose the more pungent smell of singeing cloth. I caught him by the arm and tried to drag him towards the door, but at my touch the body subconsciously grew rigid. I pulled again, and this time he opened his eyes, frowned uncomprehendingly at me and then stared at his blazing clothes with the stupid wonder of a drunken man trying to remember how he came to his present plight.
"Water!" I roared. "Where shall I find water?"
He looked up at me and the expression of wonder gave place to dawning recollection. In another moment his face was transformed. I was still holding one arm, and he allowed himself to be pulled to a sitting posture. Then leaving the flames to shoot vertically on to his neck and face, he swung the ruler for a last blow on the side of my head. I remember that I saw it coming; one's moods change so quickly that I was aghast to find Grayle still intent on murder when I had forgotten all that nonsense and only wanted to help him. It was so ungrateful.... And it was so incredible! I did not even let go his arm or relax my efforts....
The ruler struck where my head was already soft and bruised from its late banging against Beresford's. I felt my knees slowly bending, my body gently collapsing. Five and thirty years before a party of second-year men had decided that no one's education was complete until he had once at least had experience of intoxication. I was plied with a very great deal of liquor, very scientifically mixed; and I remember watching for the danger-signals of oncoming inebriation. Throughout the evening I could think rationally and speak clearly; I was neither excited nor noisy, neither elated nor depressed. I even played a game of whist, I believe, and won a few shillings from my host. The parting brandy and soda, however, hit me like a battering-ram; I subsided on the ground with every muscle limp and, to my shame, crawled downstairs and across the court on hands and knees. When Grayle's ruler brought me down, the same partial paralysis of brain and body must have taken place. I remember lying on my back with my knees in the air, I remember turning on one side and raising myself on my hands; I remember crawling with vast preoccupation to the door, feeling for the key, turning it and, as I hope to be saved, noticing my skill in going down the short flight of steps on all fours without pitching forward on to my head in the passage.
Outside in the lane I paused to take breath and test my strength. By leaning against the wall I could draw myself upright and follow a stumbling course into the Brompton Road. A girl walking by on a soldier's arm pointed at me and tittered; an elderly woman paused to exclaim "Disgusting!" Otherwise no one took any interest in the absorbing story which I could have told him—the fight, the fire.... I turned round, all but over-balancing, to see whether the wooden work-room was yet burned down; to my amazement there was no sign of a single flame. Was that because you were not allowed to shew lights owing to the war? There was a war; someone had told me, or I had dreamed it—or else I was astonishingly drunk.... Was I really trying to crawl home from Mark Goldsworthy's rooms in King's? If so, I must have been drunk for a very long time, for I had been dreaming all sorts of things—dreaming that I had gone down from Cambridge, that I had done this and that, that I was an elderly man.... It had been so vivid, this life-story which I had dreamed in a few seconds, that I could see again the bluest water in the world, which I knew to be the Caribbean Sea, though no one could possibly have told me; and the approach to Colon (what other name could it have?) ...