His voice located him, and before we could either of us stop him, Kitwater had sprung forward and clutched him in his arms.  Of what followed next I scarcely like to think, even now.  In cannoning with Hayle he had dropped his knife, and now the two stood while a man could have counted three, locked together in deadly embrace.  Then ensued such a struggle as I hope I shall never see again, while we others stood looking on as if we were bound hand and foot.  The whole affair could not have lasted more than a few moments, and yet it seemed like an eternity.  Kitwater, with the strength of a madman, had seized Hayle round the waist with one arm, while his right hand was clutching at the other’s throat.  I saw that the veins were standing out upon Hayle’s forehead like black cords.  Do what he could, he could not shake off the man he had so cruelly wronged.  They swayed to and fro, and in one of their lurches struck the window, which flew open and threw them into the balcony outside.  Codd and the Sicilian police official gave loud cries, but as for me I could not have uttered a sound had my life depended on it.  Hayle must have realized his terrible position, for there was a look of abject, hopeless terror upon his face.  The blind man, of course, could see nothing of his danger.  His one desire was to be revenged upon his enemy.  Closer and closer they came to the frail railing.  Once they missed it, and staggered a foot away from it.  Then they came back to it again, and lurched against it.  The woodwork snapped, and the two men fell over the edge on to the sloping bank below.  Still locked together they rolled over and over, down the declivity towards the edge of the cliff.  A great cry from Hayle reached our ears.  A moment later they had disappeared into the abyss, while we stood staring straight before us, too terrified to speak or move.

[Illustration:  “THE WOODWORK SNAPPED, AND THE TWO MEN FELL OVER THE EDGE.”]

Leglosse was the first to find his voice.

“My God!” he said, “how terrible! how terrible!”

Then little Codd sank down, and, placing his head upon his hands on the table, sobbed like a little child.

“What is to be done?” I asked, in a horrified whisper.

“Go down to the rocks and search for them,” said the Sicilian officer, “but I doubt if we shall be able to find them; the sea is very deep off this point.”

We went!  Kitwater’s body we discovered, terribly mutilated upon the rocks.  Hayle’s remains were never found.  Whether he fell into the deep water and was washed out to sea, or whether his body was jammed between the rocks under the water, no one would ever be able to say.  It was gone, and with it all that were left of the stones that had occasioned their misery.

Codd did not accompany us in the search, and when we returned to the villa above he was not to be found.  Never since the moment when we left him sobbing at the table have I set eyes on him, and now, I suppose, in all human probability I never shall.