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Page 107
Then, with an ox-like rush, Weymouth was upon him!
Karamaneh, wrought upon past endurance, with a sobbing cry, sank to the deck--
and lay still. I managed to writhe into a half-sitting posture, and Smith
rolled aside as the detective and the Chinaman crashed down together.
Weymouth had one big hand at the Doctor's yellow throat;
with his left he grasped the Chinaman's right.
It held the needle.
Now, I could look along the length of the little craft, and, so far
as it was possible to make out in the fog, only one other was aboard--
the half-clad brown man who navigated her--and who had carried us through
the cellars. The murk had grown denser and now shut us in like a box.
The throb of the motor--the hissing breath of the two who fought--
with so much at issue--these sounds and the wash of the water alone
broke the eerie stillness.
By slow degrees, and with a reptilian agility horrible to watch,
Fu-Manchu was neutralizing the advantage gained by Weymouth.
His clawish fingers were fast in the big man's throat; the right hand
with its deadly needle was forcing down the left of his opponent.
He had been underneath, but now he was gaining the upper place.
His powers of physical endurance must have been truly marvelous.
His breath was whistling through his nostrils significantly,
but Weymouth was palpably tiring.
The latter suddenly changed his tactics. By a supreme effort,
to which he was spurred, I think, by the growing proximity
of the needle, he raised Fu-Manchu--by the throat and arm--
and pitched him sideways.
The Chinaman's grip did not relax, and the two wrestlers dropped,
a writhing mass, upon the port cushions. The launch heeled over,
and my cry of horror was crushed back into my throat by the bandage.
For, as Fu-Manchu sought to extricate himself, he overbalanced--
fell back--and, bearing Weymouth with him--slid into the river!
The mist swallowed them up.
There are moments of which no man can recall his mental impressions,
moments so acutely horrible that, mercifully, our memory retains
nothing of the emotions they occasioned. This was one of them.
A chaos ruled in my mind. I had a vague belief that the Burman,
forward, glanced back. Then the course of the launch was changed.
How long intervened between the tragic end of that Gargantuan struggle
and the time when a black wall leaped suddenly up before us I cannot
pretend to state.
With a sickening jerk we ran aground. A loud explosion ensued,
and I clearly remember seeing the brown man leap out into the fog--
which was the last I saw of him.
Water began to wash aboard.
Fully alive to our imminent peril, I fought with the cords
that bound me; but I lacked poor Weymouth's strength of wrist,
and I began to accept as a horrible and imminent possibility,
a death from drowning, within six feet of the bank.
Beside me, Nayland Smith was straining and twisting. I think
his object was to touch Karamaneh, in the hope of arousing her.
Where he failed in his project, the inflowing water succeeded.
A silent prayer of thankfulness came from my very soul when I
saw her stir--when I saw her raise her hands to her head--
and saw the big, horror-bright eyes gleam through the mist veil.
CHAPTER XXVII
WE quitted the wrecked launch but a few seconds before her
stern settled down into the river. Where the mud-bank upon
which we found ourselves was situated we had no idea.
But at least it was terra firma and we were free from Dr. Fu-Manchu.
Smith stood looking out towards the river.
"My God!" he groaned. "My God!"
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