Mark’s assailant evidently knew that he was armed, for the plebe felt a hand reaching out toward the weapon. With a violent effort he managed to turn to get a view of his assailant. When he succeeded he gave a gasp of horror, just as the unfortunate lieutenant had done. For he found out then who his assailant was.
Quick as a flash Mark aimed his revolver straight in the other’s face. He pulled the trigger, but he was too late.
His assailant’s finger had been slipped in between the trigger and the guard, and the weapon was useless! The next instant the man gave a violent wrench that nearly broke Mark’s wrist and that sent his revolver flying through the air.
Then came the battle. Mark Mallory found himself face to face with a horrible creature; he was struggling in the deadly grip of “the maniac of the den!”
It was a fight to the death. The creature had the strength of a tiger; Mark could see his muscles bulging beneath his naked skin, and he felt a grip of steel tightening about him. He saw, too, a ferocious face glaring into his, warning him to expect no mercy. The man’s hot and eager breath beat against the lad’s brow, and his eyes fairly flashed with fury.
He was an old man, with a great, long beard and hideous, matted hair. He was almost naked and apparently he was dumb. The silence with which he made his grim struggle was the most appalling part of it all.
The two swayed back and forth in the clearing, straining every ounce of muscle that was in them. The maniac was strong, but he had a foeman worthy of him. The grip in which he had the lad served to bind his hands to his side, but when the other came to bear him to the ground it was quite another matter. That meant a wrestling match, and a long and weary one, too.
It seemed an age to Mark in his terrible plight. He could not free himself, writhe and twist as he would; and he knew not what trick his savage opponent might try next. And so, back and forth he staggered, bending and swaying.
The climax came with the swiftness of a lightning flash. The maniac, furious at the delay, tried the same trick he had tried upon Allen. He released his grip, sprang like a wildcat upon his victim, fastened his grasping, clawlike fingers in his throat, and shut them together like a steel trap.
But there was something that the fiendish creature had not calculated on, if indeed he had calculated at all. That thing was the quickness that months of West Point discipline had given to Mark, to say nothing of numberless battles with the yearlings. The lad realized his deadly peril.