of his own. His face. He felt something in his left hand. His
throat . . . Ah! the thing like a snake's head that darts up and down
. . . He squeezed hard. He was back in the world. He could see the quick
beating of eyelids over a pair of eyes that were all whites, the grin of
a drawn-up lip, a row of teeth gleaming through the drooping hair of a
moustache . . . Strong white teeth. Knock them down his lying throat
. . . He drew back his right hand, the fist up to the shoulder, knuckles
out. From under his feet rose the screams of sea-birds. Thousands of
them. Something held his legs . . . What the devil . . . He delivered
his blow straight from the shoulder, felt the jar right up his arm,
and realized suddenly that he was striking something passive and
unresisting. His heart sank within him with disappointment, with rage,
with mortification. He pushed with his left arm, opening the hand with
haste, as if he had just perceived that he got hold by accident
of something repulsive--and he watched with stupefied eyes Willems
tottering backwards in groping strides, the white sleeve of his jacket
across his face. He watched his distance from that man increase, while
he remained motionless, without being able to account to himself for the
fact that so much empty space had come in between them. It should have
been the other way. They ought to have been very close, and . . . Ah! He
wouldn't fight, he wouldn't resist, he wouldn't defend himself! A
cur! Evidently a cur! . . . He was amazed and aggrieved--profoundly,
bitterly--with the immense and blank desolation of a small child robbed
of a toy. He shouted--unbelieving:

"Will you be a cheat to the end?"

He waited for some answer. He waited anxiously with an impatience that
seemed to lift him off his feet. He waited for some word, some sign;
for some threatening stir. Nothing! Only two unwinking eyes glittered
intently at him above the white sleeve. He saw the raised arm detach
itself from the face and sink along the body. A white clad arm, with
a big stain on the white sleeve. A red stain. There was a cut on
the cheek. It bled. The nose bled too. The blood ran down, made one
moustache look like a dark rag stuck over the lip, and went on in a wet
streak down the clipped beard on one side of the chin. A drop of blood
hung on the end of some hairs that were glued together; it hung for a
while and took a leap down on the ground. Many more followed, leaping
one after another in clos