There, in the mocking light of the paling dawn, Tom Slade, his big mouth set like a vice, and with every last reserve he could command, was going to make his last cast of the dice--let go, give up--or, _hold on_.
_Let go!_ Of all the inglorious forms of defeat or surrender! _To let go!_ To be struck down, to be taken prisoner, to be---- But to _let go_! The bulldog, the snapping turtle, seemed like very heroes now.
"He always said I had a good muscle--he liked to feel it," he muttered.
"And besides, _she_ said she guessed I was strong." He was thinking of Margaret Ellison, away back in America, and of Roscoe Bent, as he had known him there.

When he muttered again there was a beseeching pathos in his voice which would have pierced the heart of anyone who could have seen him struggling still against fate, in this all but hopeless predicament.
But no one saw him except the sun who was raising his head above the horizon as a soldier steals a cautious look over the trench parapet.
There would be no report of this affair.
He lowered his chest to the limb, wound his legs around it and for a second lay there while he tightened and set his legs, as one will tighten a belt against some impending strain.

Not another fraction of an inch could he have tightened those encircling legs.
And now the fateful second was come.

It had to come quickly for his strength was ebbing.

There is a pretty dependable rule that if you can just manage to lift a weight with both hands, you can just about _budge_ it with one hand.