Cleggett strove to engage Loge hand to hand; and Loge, on his part, attempted to fight his way to Cleggett; they shouted insults at each other across the press of battle.

But in affairs of this sort a man must give his attention to the person directly in front of him; otherwise he is lost.

As Cleggett cut and thrust and parried, a sudden seizure overtook him; he moved as if in a dream; he had the eerie feeling that he had done all this before, sometime, perhaps in a previous existence, and would do it again.

The clangor of the meeting swords, the inarticulate shouts and curses, the dance of struggling men across the deck, the whirling confusion of the whole fantastic scene beneath the quiet skies, struck upon his consciousness with that strange phantasmagoric quality which makes the hurrying unreality of dreams so much more vivid and more real than anything in waking life.
In the center of Cleggett's line stood the three detectives shoulder to shoulder.

Their three swords rose and fell as one.