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360 staying-point during the night, the natural reaction had left his temper less under control.

"Then I will have it taken from you by force," he said, and Dick saw with approval the quick tightening-up of the slim body. "I am your superior officer."

"If you do you're not the superior man," said Dick coolly. "Come and get it if you want it, for I assure you you won't have it any other way."

He did not know what reckless demon in him prompted the challenge. But Tempest answered to it before the words were off his lips, and the two men closed; knee locked in knee, arms gripped, and flushed faces near as they swayed.

Dick and Tempest had wrestled many times in the days that were gone, and Tempest's lithe quickness had matched Dick's strength equally until Tempest learnt a throw for which Dick could not find the counter. He had found it since, in Chicago, and had seen a back broken by the application of it. Now he felt Tempest manœuvring for that throw, and a cruel laugh ran into his eyes. Tempest did not know what could come of it now—if Dick chose. He baulked it by a sudden feint, and again they bent and swayed, spurting the gravel out from under their struggling feet, and feeling the lust of fight generate with each hot, hard-breathing moment.

It seemed as though all the pain and bad blood and evil tempers of the last months had culminated at last, and both men gloried in the knowledge, and fought to ease themselves of the load. Inch by inch Tempest was feeling for the throw again, and this time Dick did not stop him. The fighting savage had been too fully roused in him, and he was mad with desire to prove himself the better man. He slacked his body slightly, letting Tempest get home to the side-swing that preceded the fall. Then, at the one instant when the other man's balance was unguarded, Dick crouched, shifted his grip quick as lightning, and flung Tempest over his shoulder.

Tempest fell with a thud on the stones of the beach. Being utterly unprepared he had made no resistance, and Dick staggered up and looked at him, breathing heavily through his nostrils. Tempest lay on his face with one