a
job. He began to weave in, his brown arms describing slow arabesques.
The crowd around became oppressively silent. They breathed hissingly.

Shane feinted, dodged, broke away. Doggedly Ahmet Ali followed. Faster
than time, Shane's right hand shot out and gripped the wrestler's right
wrist. His right foot hooked around the Syrian's right ankle. He pulled
downward with sudden, vicious effort. Ali crashed forward on his face, a
great brown hulk like an overturned bronze statue. Shane stooped down
for either the half-Nelson and hammer-lock, or full Nelson.... An
instant too long of hesitation. Light as a lightweight acrobat Ahmet
Ali had rolled aside, put palm to ground, sprung to his feet. His face
was bloody, his right knee shook. With the back of his hand he wiped the
blood from his eyes. There was a twitter from the Syrians. The wrestler
lumbered forward again.... A little quake of fear came into Campbell's
being. There was an impersonal doggedness about the wrestler from
Aleppo's eyes, a sense of inevitability.... Shane's eyes shifted, right
and left....

Then suddenly, the wrestler had him....

He felt a twirl to his shoulder, and then he was pinioned by two immense
brown arms. They caught him above the elbows around the chest. First
they were like boys' arms, light. They became firm as calipers. They
settled, snugged. Then they tightened slowly, with immense certainty.
There was something about it like the rise of the tide. A gigantic cable
around his chest. At his shoulder-blades the Syrian's pectoral muscles
pressed like shallow knobs of steel. His arms began to hurt. His
breathing began to be hard with every output of breath. The arms
tightened.... All his vitality was flying through his opened mouth....
He hit futilely with his knuckles at the rope-like sinews of the brown
forearms.... His head throbbed like drums.... In an instant he would be
like a bag bound midways ... his ribs giving like saplings in the wind
... Lights danced....

Stupidly he looked down at the clasped hands, and a sudden fury of
fighting came on him.... Something terrible, sinister, cold. His free
hands caught the Syrian's little finger, tugged, pulled, bent, tore....
He wanted to shred it from its hand.... Rip it like silk.... He felt the
great arms about him quiver, grow uncertain.... Tear, tear!...

With a little whine like a dog's, the wrestler let go.... He nursed the
finger for an instant like a hurt child.... Opening and shut