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Elisha Cuthbert Photos Books: Martin Eden The Pickwick Papers The Sea Wolf |
heavens strives, colliding,
recoiling, and colliding again and eternally again.
"God! We are animals! Brute-beasts!" Martin muttered aloud, as he
watched the progress of the fight. It was to him, with his splendid
power of vision, like gazing into a kinetoscope. He was both onlooker
and participant. His long months of culture and refinement shuddered at
the sight; then the present was blotted out of his consciousness and the
ghosts of the past possessed him, and he was Martin Eden, just returned
from sea and fighting Cheese-Face on the Eighth Street Bridge. He
suffered and toiled and sweated and bled, and exulted when his naked
knuckles smashed home.
They were twin whirlwinds of hatred, revolving about each other
monstrously. The time passed, and the two hostile gangs became very
quiet. They had never witnessed such intensity of ferocity, and they
were awed by it. The two fighters were greater brutes than they. The
first splendid velvet edge of youth and condition wore off, and they
fought more cautiously and deliberately. There had been no advantage
gained either way. "Its anybodys fight," Martin heard some one saying.
Then he followed up a feint, right and left, was fiercely countered, and
felt his cheek laid open to the bone. No bare knuckle had done that. He
heard mutters of amazement at the ghastly damage wrought, and was
drenched with his own blood. But he gave no sign. He became immensely
wary, for he was wise with knowledge of the low cunning and foul vileness
of his kind. He watched and waited, until he feigned a wild rush, which
he stopped midway, for he had seen the glint of metal.
"Hold up yer hand!" he screamed. "Thems brass knuckles, an you hit me
with em!"
Both gangs surged forward, growling and snarling. In a second there
would be a free-for-all fight, and he would be robbed of his vengeance.
He was beside himself.
"You guys keep out!" he screamed hoarsely. "Understand? Say, dye
understand?"
They shrank away from him. They were brutes, but he was the arch-brute,
a thing of terror that towered over them and dominated them.
"This is my scrap, an they aint goin to be no buttin in. Gimme them
knuckles."
Cheese-Face, sobered and a bit frightened, surrendered the foul weapon.
"You passed em to him, you red-head sneakin in behind the push there,"
Martin went on, as he tossed the knuckles into the water. "I seen you,
an I was wonderin what you was up to. If you try anything like that
again, Ill beat cheh to death. Understand?"
They fought on, through exhaustion and beyond, to exhaustion immeasurable
and inconceivable, until the crowd of brutes, its blood-lust sated,
terrified by what it saw, begged them impartially to cease. And Cheese-
Face, ready to drop and die, or to stay on his legs and die, a grisly
monster out of whose features all likeness to Cheese-Face had been
beaten, wavered and hesitated; but Martin sprang in and smashed him again
and again.
Next, after a seeming century or so, with Cheese-Face weakening fast, in
a mix-up of blows there was a loud snap, and Martins right arm dropped
to his side. It was a broken bone. Everybody heard it and knew; and
Cheese-Face knew, rushing like a tiger in the others extremity and
raining blow on blow. Martins gang surged forward to interfere. Dazed
by the rapid succession of blows, Martin warned them back with vile and
earnest curses sobbed out and groaned in ultimate desolation and despair.
He punched on, with his left hand only, and as he punched, doggedly, only
half-conscious, as from a remote distance he heard murmurs of fear in the
gangs, and one who said with shaking voice: "This aint a scrap, fellows.
Its murder, an we ought to stop it."
But no one stopped it, and he was glad, punching on wearily and endlessly
with his one arm, battering away at a bloody something before him that
was not a face but a horror, an oscillating, hideous, gibbering, nameless
thing that persisted before his wavering vision and would not go away.
And he punched on and on, slower and slower, as the last shreds of
vitality oozed from him, through centuries and aeons and enormous lapses
of time, until, in a dim way, he became aware that the nameless thing was
sinking, slowly sinking down to the Martin Eden page 64 Martin Eden page 66 |