Perhaps this thought gave him almost superhuman strength, for the next minute, with an agile twist, he had writhed clear of the deathly grip and had in his turn laid hold of the bully in a wrestling clutch. It was the ancient "grapevine," and Kennell smiled a cold, deadly smile as he felt and knew the old school-boy grip. Throwing it off as easily as if it had been the clutch of an infant, he crouched, and, rushing in, caught Ned craftily about the middle; but Ned, slipping aside, gripped the sailor with a peculiar twist, and seemingly with no great exertion, shot him over his head. The tars set up a cautious shout. It was an old trick of wrestling, in which Ned was perfectly at home; but, to his amazement, the agile Kennell fell on his feet as lightly as a cat, instead of crashing to the deck as Ned had expected. The bluejacket, brute though he was, was just as evidently a master wrestler and up to all the tricks of the game. Indeed, as Ned watched his confident leer as he recovered from what the boy had expected to be a crushing overthrow, there was an expression on the fellow's crafty face that struck a chill that was almost one of dread into Ned's heart. As for the jackies, they watched in silent fascination. Not a sound was to be heard but the quick "patter-patter" of the wrestlers' feet on the decks as they "sparred" for a fresh opening. Suddenly Kennell crouched low, and, before Ned could check him, was once more upon the boy. But now his tactics were wholly changed. His method of wrestling was unlike any that Ned had ever seen or heard of. Yet how deadly it was the boy quickly began to experience. Kennell's fingers, spread like the talons of a hawk, glided here and there about the lad's body rapidly as the undulating movements of a snake. Wherever they touched, the boy felt a sharp shock of intense pain shoot through his frame. Beads of cold perspiration jetted out on his forehead. A numbing sickness seized hold of him. And still Kennell's deadly fingers pressed here, there, and everywhere, bringing the sickening agony that Ned had already tasted in their wake. The very fact that he could not understand what was happening added to the boy's alarm. He had been in many wrestling matches. In fact, he was a better performer on the mat than with the padded gloves, but in all his experience he had never met an opponent like Kennell. Clumsily built as the man was--he had not an iota of the agility possessed by the lithe and supple Ned--yet he seemed to wind and twist like a sapling under Ned's holds; recovering from each grip, he laid his hands on the boy with the same deadly precision. Ned began to feel that his nervous system was a pincushion for his opponent to puncture at will. The old hiplock, the Nelson, the half-Nelson, the grip at the back of the neck--all these tricks of the wrestler's craft Ned tried in turn, but none of them seemed to have any effect on Kennell.