This sudden recognition caused me to start, so that possibly I may have emitted some betraying noise to call attention to my presence, though what ensued before the actual impact I am still puzzled to say. For in a trice I found myself and Marzona locked together in a deadly but silent embrace, since instinctively it would seem I had posed for action with my cloak as on the previous encounter at the bridge. For a second time I held my antagonist's head enveloped in those ample folds, albeit his limbs were unembarrassed. We were knotted, I say, in a death grip, swaying from side to side, our hatred oozing as it were from our very pores, as we strained and wrestled with furious determination. Naturally, I was the taller and the stronger of the two, but intensity of hate gives an additional stimulus, and that advantage perhaps Marzona could claim. Vainly did I struggle to utilise my dagger; try as I would, it was all I could contrive with my superior strength to keep Marzona's head tightly swathed and his limbs powerless to inflict an injury. How long this embittered duel might have lasted, and with what final result, I cannot tell, had not a false step on my enemy's part brought him perilously near the edge of the central abyss. Another step, and his left foot was treading in vacuity. He reeled; made one despairing but ineffectual effort to drag me with him in his disaster; and then I saw him, with my cloak still encompassing his head, fall headlong into that gaping pit beside us. There followed a dull faint thud of contact with something far below, and then I found myself kneeling hot and exhausted on the brink of that fatal chasm. Very warily did I lean forward to peer down and to listen, but there was nothing but blackness and silence in those impenetrable depths. V