ties. "Can't you
see 'e don't know _'ow_ to scrap?" And Denton, lying shamefully in the
dust, realised that he must accept that course of instruction after all.

He made his apology straight and clean. He scrambled up and walked to
Blunt. "I was a fool, and you are right," he said. "If it isn't too
late ..."

That night, after the second spell, Denton went with Blunt to certain
waste and slime-soaked vaults under the Port of London, to learn the
first beginnings of the high art of scrapping as it had been perfected
in the great world of the underways: how to hit or kick a man so as to
hurt him excruciatingly or make him violently sick, how to hit or kick
"vital," how to use glass in one's garments as a club and to spread red
ruin with various domestic implements, how to anticipate and demolish
your adversary's intentions in other directions; all the pleasant
devices, in fact, that had grown up among the disinherited of the great
cities of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, were spread out by a
gifted exponent for Denton's learning. Blunt's bashfulness fell from
him as the instruction proceeded, and he developed a certain expert
dignity, a quality of fatherly consideration. He treated Denton with the
utmost consideration, only "flicking him up a bit" now and then, to keep
the interest hot, and roaring with laughter at a happy fluke of Denton's
that covered his mouth with blood.

"I'm always keerless of my mouth," said Blunt, admitting a weakness.
"Always. It don't seem to matter, like, just getting bashed in the
mouth--not if your chin's all right. Tastin' blood does me good. Always.
But I better not 'it you again."

Denton went home, to fall asleep exhausted and wake in the small hours
with aching limbs and all his bruises tingling. Was it worth while that
he should go on living? He listened to Elizabeth's breathing, and
remembering that he must have awaked her the previous night, he lay very
still. He was sick with infinite disgust at the new conditions of his
life. He hated it all, hated even the genial savage who had protected
him so generously. The monstrous fraud of civilisation glared stark
before his eyes; he saw it as a vast lunatic growth, producing a
deepening torrent of savagery below, and above ever more flimsy
gentility and silly wastefulness. He could see no redeeming reason, no
touch of honour, either in the life he had led or in this life to which
he had fallen. Civilisation presented itself a