swollen to the size of a big goitre. His whole
body was a-quiver. There was an animal-like celerity in his movements
that made me shudder. Then I knew that I dared not let him get on the
same side of the wall as me. But he leaped at the gap from a distance
that I would have thought no human could compass, and hung on to the
wall with one arm over. He snarled like an animal. Then I smashed him
over the head with the canteen, gripping the strap with my right hand.
He fell back with the force of the blow, but immediately came at the gap
again, then changed his mind and went to tearing around the chamber with
great leaps. He was a panther newly caged. He sprang on to the head of
the idol and from that to the pedestal, and then to the slab in front of
it. Then he went across and across the floor, sometimes screaming and
yelling, and then again moaning and groaning. One side of his face was
all bloody where I had smashed it with the canteen. Seeing him so, a
thing not human, but with all the furtive quickness of an animal and its
strength, too, I felt sorry no more. I hated him with a wild hate. He
was dangerous to me and I had to conquer him. That's fundamental. So I
stood, gripping the strap of the canteen, watching, waiting. He came at
me again, striding and leaping. That time he got one leg over with both
hands gripping the top stones. The _facon_ he dropped on my side of the
wall, but I had no time to stoop for it just then. There were other
things to do. He was getting over. It took some frantic beating with the
canteen and he seemed to recover from the blows quicker than I could get
the swing to strike again. But I beat him down at last, though I saw
that he had lots more life in him than I, with that devil of madness
filling him. So, when I saw him stumble, then recover and begin that
running again, I picked up the knife and leaped over the wall to settle
the matter once and for all. It was an ugly thing to do, but it had to
be done and done quickly. At the root of things it's life against life."

Rounds ceased and fell to filling his pipe. I waited for him to
recommence, but he made as if to leave, but paused a moment at my desk
to pick up and examine a piece of malachite. I felt it incumbent upon me
to say something to relieve the tension that I felt.

"I understand," said I. "It was a horrible necessity. It is a terrible
thing to have to kill a fellow creature."

"That wasn't a fellow creature," he said. "What I