The hunched body had suddenly reached for him like a great ape. Bellair had felt the crippling force of the touch, and an almost equal force from the thought that flashed in his mind--to use the pistol.... The boat had rocked beneath them. The blackness of much blood was in Bellair’s brain. The struggle was brief. Through it all, Bellair heard the cries of the child. Just as he was ready to fail, the monster sat back, his teeth snapping in his beard--the huge hands feeling for him, as one blinded. “Change places with me, Bellair.” This was from Fleury--midforenoon that fourth day. Bellair obeyed because he was afraid of the pistol at hand. “I don’t want to kill him,” he panted. “It will not come to that,” Fleury answered. It was then that the transfer of seats was made. Bellair relied vaguely upon the preacher’s greater strength which was not of limb and shoulder. The monster dropped to his knees to renew the fight. “Be still,” Fleury commanded. “Be still and rest----” Stackhouse himself would not have faltered before that voice of Fleury’s, but there was a force in it that prevailed for a moment upon the obsession. The air was full of strain.... They heard the heart in the poor body. The blue-tipped hands were upraised from the bottom of the boat--the face was toward them. Bellair and the Faraway Woman could see only the back of Fleury’s head. The strain was like a vice in the open boat. Bellair contemplated the mystery: that this force, lower and more destructive than Stackhouse, could be managed and subdued in part by the energy of another’s will-power, when Stackhouse himself would have required brute strength.... He thought he understood what was going on, though he would likely have scouted the same had some one told him. In any event, Fleury was quieting the complicated thing before him.... They heard the heart-beats rise and sink, the hands often lifting from the bottom. The entire passage of the battle was magnified before their eyes. Hours passed. Fleury scarcely turned. So far there is nothing to call in the Eastern metaphysicians, but the day was not done, nor the dying galvanism of the monster. The afternoon was still bright, when the great hairy head cocked itself up differently--the eyes stretching open and suddenly filled with yellow-green light, the colour of squash-pulp close to the rind, but a transparent light, that gathered the rays of the day in its expiring lucency, and held their own eyes--a lidless horror lifted from its belly. The woman must have seen the change at the same instant, for her cry blended with the voice of Bellair. As one, they understood that this was a different force for Fleury to meet--a wiser, more ancient and terrific force, from the bowels of the world of evil possibly, without relation to Stackhouse, but with a very thrilling relation to them.