He had not stopped to parley.

Those mad fits of passion always deprived him, at the outset, of the few reasoning powers that yet remained to him.

Without question or explanation of any kind he had flung himself upon the man he deemed his enemy, and Anne now beheld him, gripping him by the neck as a terrier grips a rat, and flogging him with the loaded crop he always carried to the hunt.
Nap was writhing to and fro like an eel, striving, she saw, to overthrow his adversary.

But the gigantic strength of madness was too great for his lithe activity.

By sheer weight he was borne down.
With an anguished cry Anne started to intervene.