steel-like muscles and sinewy strength of the Hungarian now stood him
in good stead. He must either free himself, or perish there in the
hideous carnage of a quarry. He seized with both hands, in a viselike
grip, Ortog's enormous neck, and, at the same time, with a desperate
jerk, shook free his shoulder, leaving strips of his flesh between the
jaws of the animal, whose hot, reeking breath struck him full in the
face. With wild, staring eyes, and summoning up, in an instinct of
despair, all his strength and courage, he buried his fingers in Ortog's
neck, and drove his nails through the skin of the colossus, which struck
and beat with his paws against the young man's breast. The dog's tongue
hung out of his mouth, under the suffocating pressure of the hands of the
human being struggling for his life. As he fought thus against Ortog, the
Hungarian gradually retreated, the two hounds leaping about him, now
driven off by kicks (Duna's jaw was broken), and now, with roars of rage
and fiery eyes, again attacking their human prey.

One of them, Bundas, his teeth buried in Michel's left thigh, shook him,
trying to throw him to the ground. A slip, and all would be over; if he
should fall upon the gravel, the man would be torn to pieces and crunched
like a deer caught by the hounds.

A terrible pain nearly made Michel faint--Bundas had let go his hold,
stripping off a long tongue of flesh; but, in a moment, it had the same
effect upon him as that of the knife of a surgeon opening a vein, and the
weakness passed away. The unfortunate man still clutched, as in a
death-grip, Ortog's shaggy neck, and he perceived that the struggles of
the dog were no longer of the same terrible violence; the eyes of the
ferocious brute were rolled back in his head until they looked like two
large balls of gleaming ivory. Michel threw the heavy mass furiously from
him, and the dog, suffocated, almost dead, fell upon the ground with a
dull, heavy sound.

Menko had now to deal only with the Danish hounds, which were rendered
more furious than ever by the smell of blood. One of them, displaying his
broken teeth in a hideous, snarling grin, hesitated a little to renew the
onslaught, ready, as he was, to spring at his enemy's throat at the first
false step; but the other, Bundas, with open mouth, still sprang at
Michel, who repelled, with his left arm, the attacks of the bloody jaws.
Suddenly a hollow cry burst from his lips like a death-rattle, forced
f