‘Not without you.’ Her arms held me now by the shoulders with a stronger grip than I had thought possible. She would not let me go. Well then, we must face it together. ‘Come along, then,’ said I. ‘I can see nothing in this rat hole.’ Suddenly, from in front of us, a cry rang out; it was some distance off. We started towards it, for it was Kortes’s voice that cried. ‘Be careful, be careful,’ urged Phroso. ‘We’re near the bridge now.’ It was true. As she spoke the walls of rock on either side receded. We had come to the opening. The dark water was below us, and before us the isolated bridge of rock that spanned the pool. We were where the Lord of the island had been wont to hurl his enemies headlong from his side to death. What happened on the bridge, on the narrow bridge of rock which ran in front of us, we could not see; but from it came strange sounds, low oaths and mutterings, the scraping of men’s limbs and the rasping of cloth on the rock, the hard breathings of struggling combatants; now a fierce low cry of triumph, a disappointed curse, a desperate groan, the silence that marked a culminating effort. Now, straining my eyes to the uttermost, and having grown a little more accustomed to the darkness, I discerned, beyond the centre of the bridge, a coiling writhing mass that seemed some one many-limbed animal, but was, in truth, two men, twisted and turned round about one another in an embrace which could have no end save death. Which was Kortes, which Constantine, I could not tell. How they came there I could not tell. I dared not fire. Phroso hung about me in a paroxysm of fear, her hands holding me motionless; I myself was awed and fascinated by the dim spectacle and the confused sounds of that mortal strife.