er that blow like a log. Brokaw staggered. Even he realized that this
was science--the skill of the game--and he was grinning as he advanced
again. He could stand a hundred blows like that--a grim and ferocious
Achilles with but one vulnerable point, the end of his jaw. David waited
and watched for his opportunity as he gave ground slowly. Twice they
circled about the blood-spattered arena, Brokaw following him with
leisurely sureness, and yet delaying his attack as if in that steady
retreat of his victim he saw torture too satisfying to put an end to at
once. David measured his carelessness, the slow almost unguarded
movement of his great body, his unpreparedness for a _coup de main_--and
like a flash he launched himself forward with all the weight of his body
behind his effort.

It missed the other's jaw by two inches, that catapeltic blow--striking
him full in the mouth, breaking his yellow teeth and smashing his thick
lips so that the blood sprang out in a spray over his hairy chest, and
as his head rocked backward David followed with a swift left-hander, and
a second time missed the jaw with his right--but drenched his clenched
fist in blood. Out of Brokaw there came a cry that was like the low roar
of a beast; a cry that was the most inhuman sound David had ever heard
from a human throat, and in an instant he found himself battling not for
victory, not for that opportunity he twice had missed, but for his life.
Against that rushing bulk, enraged almost to madness, the ingenuity of
his training alone saved him from immediate extinction. How many times
he struck in the 120 seconds following his blow to Brokaw's mouth he
could never have told. He was red with Brokaw's blood. His face was warm
with it. His hands were as if painted, so often did they reach with
right and left to Brokaw's gory visage. It was like striking at a
monstrous thing without the sense of hurt, a fiend that had no brain
that blows could sicken, a body that was not a body but an enormity that
had strangely taken human form. Brokaw had struck him once--only
once--in those two minutes, but blows were not what he feared now. He
was beating himself to pieces, literally beating himself to pieces as a
ship might have hammered itself against a reef, and fighting with every
breath to keep himself out of the fatal clinch. His efforts were costing
him more than they were costing his antagonist. Twice he had reached his
jaw, twice Brokaw's head had rocked ba