Page:Walpole--portrait of man with red hair.djvu/304

 realised the words. Then Dunbar broke out: "No, by God, no! Strip for that swine! Harkness come on! You go for that fellow, I'll take this one!" and instantly he had hurled himself on the Japanese nearest the door.

Harkness flung at the one who had spoken. He was conscious of his fingers clutching at the thin cotton stuff of the clothes, and, beneath the clothes, the cold hard steel of the limbs. His arms gripped upwards, caught the cloth of the shirt, tore it, slipped on the smooth hairless chest. Then in his left forearm there was a pain, sharp as though some ravenous animal had bitten him there, then an agony in the middle of his back, then in his left thigh.

Against his will he cried out; the pain was terrible—awful. Every nerve in his body was rebelling so that he had neither strength nor force. He slipped to the floor, writhing involuntarily with the agony of the twisted muscle and, even as he slipped, he saw sliding down over him, impervious, motionless, fixed like a shining mask, the face of the Japanese.

He lay on the floor; panic flooded him. His helplessness, the terror of what was coming next, the fright of the dark—it was all he could do at that moment not to burst into tears and cry like a child.

He was lying on the floor, and the Japanese,