hich no efforts were strictly visible,
the limbs and bodies of the combatants assuming so many attitudes and
contortions as to defeat observation. This confused but fierce rally
lasted less than a minute, however; when, Hurry, furious at having
his strength baffled by the agility and nakedness of his foe, made
a desperate effort, which sent the Huron from him, hurling his body
violently against the logs of the hut. The concussion was so great as
momentarily to confuse the latter's faculties. The pain, too, extorted
a deep groan; an unusual concession to agony to escape a red man in
the heat of battle. Still he rushed forward again to meet his enemy,
conscious that his safety rested on it's resolution. Hurry now seized
the other by the waist, raised him bodily from the platform, and fell
with his own great weight on the form beneath. This additional shock
so stunned the sufferer, that his gigantic white opponent now had him
completely at his mercy. Passing his hands around the throat of his
victim, he compressed them with the strength of a vice, fairly doubling
the head of the Huron over the edge of the platform, until the chin was
uppermost, with the infernal strength he expended. An instant sufficed
to show the consequences. The eyes of the sufferer seemed to start
forward, his tongue protruded, and his nostrils dilated nearly to
splitting. At this instant a rope of bark, having an eye, was passed
dexterously within the two arms of Hurry, the end threaded the eye,
forming a noose, and his elbows were drawn together behind his
back, with a power that all his gigantic strength could not resist.
Reluctantly, even under such circumstances, did the exasperated borderer
see his hands drawn from their deadly grasp, for all the evil passions
were then in the ascendant. Almost at the same instant a similar
fastening secured his ankles, and his body was rolled to the centre of
the platform as helplessly, and as cavalierly, as if it were a log of
wood. His rescued antagonist, however, did not rise, for while he began
again to breathe, his head still hung helplessly over the edge of the
logs, and it was thought at first that his neck was dislocated. He
recovered gradually only, and it was hours before he could walk. Some
fancied that neither his body, nor his mind, ever totally recovered from
this near approach to death.

Hurry owed his defeat and capture to the intensity with which he had
concentrated all his powers on his fallen