The Jew gave a cry of astonishment and rage, as they clasped each
other, and he found that, instead of an unresisting victim, he was
in a powerful grasp. For a moment there was a desperate struggle.
The Jew would, at ordinary times, have been no match for Charlie,
but the latter was far from having regained his normal strength.
His fury at the treatment he had received at the man's hands,
however, enabled him, for the moment, to exert himself to the
utmost, and, after swaying backwards and forwards in desperate
strife for a minute, they went to the ground with a crash, Ben
Soloman being undermost.
The Jew's grasp instantly relaxed, and Charlie, springing to his
feet and seizing his cudgel, stood over his fallen antagonist. The
latter, however, did not move. His eyes were open in a fixed stare.
Charlie looked at him in surprise for a moment, thinking he was
stunned, then he saw that his right arm was twisted under him in
the fall, and at once understanding what had happened, turned him
half over. He had fallen on the knife, which had penetrated to the
haft, killing him instantly.
"I didn't mean to kill you," Charlie said aloud, "much as you
deserve it, and surely as you would have killed me, if I had
refused to act as a traitor.
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