knife useless and dropped it. He strove for a
back-breaking hold, but found it blocked. McKay, though an indifferent
swordsman, was a formidable wrestler and fist fighter, and the German's
advantage in weight was more than offset by the American's quickness and
wiry strength. Science was thrown to the winds. A heaving, choking,
wrenching man-fight it was, stumbling over bodies, each straining every
muscle, trying every hold to twist and break the other and batter him
down to death.

Smashing fist blows brought blood dripping from their faces.
Bone-wringing grips forced gasps from their lungs and superhuman spasms
of resistance from their outraged nerve centers. They fell across a
corpse, rolled on the ground, throttled, kicked, struck, and tore.
Finally, in a furious outburst of energy, the American fought his enemy
down under him, clamped his body with iron knees, and crashed a terrific
punch squarely between the German's glaring eyes. Schwandorf went limp.

At that instant a backward eddy of the battle surged over the pair. The
maniacal Red Bones, fighting to the last bitter drop of doom, found two
white men under their feet. Screeching, snarling, they fell on them like
wild beasts, tearing with tooth and nail. Their arrows were gone, their
darts exhausted, and no spearman was among them; they fought with
nature's weapons, while above them one lone clubman struggled to swing
down his lethal bludgeon without killing his fellows.

McKay, wrenching his machete loose and gripping it with both hands, got
its point upward and jabbed blindly at the weight of flesh bearing him
down. Faintly to his ears came yells of rage and the impact of
blows--the battle roars of Tim and Knowlton, who with their machetes
were cleaving a way to their captain. But the beastly demons over him
still crushed him down on Schwandorf, smothering him under the burden of
bodies dead and alive. His stabs grew weak. Exhaustion and lack of air
were killing him more surely than the savages.

Pedro, Lourenco, Jose and the inexplicable Rand came slashing and
clubbing a path of their own to the beleaguered Scot--the Brazilians
cutting straight ahead with deadly surety, the painted Peruvian chopping
and thrusting with a fixed grin, Rand swinging the gun butt down on head
after head. From still another direction Yuara and his satellite came
boring in with spears snatched from dead hands. The three rescue parties
reached the squirming heap at almost the sam