For a second even Hope knocked at his heart.

He was sinewy and active, and perchance he might yet make Galliard repent that he had discarded his rapier.

The knight's reason for doing so he thought he had in Crispin's contemptuous words: "Good steel were too great an honour for you, Mr.Ashburn." And as he spoke, his lean, nervous fingers tightened about Joseph's throat in a grip that crushed the breath from him, and with it the new-born hope of proving master in his fresh combat.

He had not reckoned with this galley-weaned strength of Crispin's, a strength that was a revelation to Joseph as he felt himself almost lifted from the ground, and swung this way and that, like a babe in the hands of a grown man.
Vain were his struggles.

His strength ebbed fast; the blood, held overlong in his head, was already obscuring his vision, when at last the grip relaxed, and his breathing was freed.