The cruel fingers press with deadly force.
The moon swims round in a sea of blood—he gasps, gargles, struggles.
The savage man in whose clutches he suddenly finds himself seems glorying in his power.
Quinton feels himself face to face with death: he is a child in the hands of this dark highwayman.
The thought rises suddenly to his fading senses:
"By night an Atheist half believes in God."
The terror of judgment is upon him—hell threatens. Through the black slits of the mask he faintly discerns the eyes of his tormentor, whose face is in such close proximity to his own that the hot breath of passion brushes his brow. They are the eyes of a devil, burning as coals of fire—glowing, scintillating. The broad white teeth of the man glisten as they press his lower lip; then he loosens his hold on Quinton's throat and gropes for his hand.
The two are fighting now like twin devils under the dark trees, through which the moonlight flits. They roll over in the dust, while Quinton breathes out curses, struggling for mastery. More than once he feels one finger of his left hand caught in the stranger's grasp, then, as with a cry of triumph which rends the air with hideous mirth, super-human strength seems to possess the masked man. He picks up Quinton in his sinewy arms, whirls him once wildly above his head, and drops him over a rock, down a bank—a fall of only a few feet, on to thick undergrowth below. Then leaping back into his saddle, he gallops at full speed towards the jungle, while Quinton lies gasping and shaking, cut and bleeding.
He rises dizzily—strange!—there are no bones broken, only the uncomfortable feeling of those hot fingers at his throat, and the giddy sensation from the violent shaking. He feels for his watch; it is still there. Some money fallen from his pocket lies loose on the wayside. Nothing apparently is stolen.
Then he looks down suddenly at his finger, the one twice captured in their struggle.