The Eighth Street Bridge, crossing an arm of San Antonio Estuary, was the length of three city blocks.  In the middle of the bridge, and at each end, were electric lights.  No policeman could pass those end-lights unseen.  It was the safe place for the battle that revived itself under Martin’s eyelids.  He saw the two gangs, aggressive and sullen, rigidly keeping apart from each other and backing their respective champions; and he saw himself and Cheese-Face stripping.  A short distance away lookouts were set, their task being to watch the lighted ends of the bridge.  A member of the Boo Gang held Martin’s coat, and shirt, and cap, ready to race with them into safety in case the police interfered.  Martin watched himself go into the centre, facing Cheese-Face, and he heard himself say, as he held up his hand warningly:-

“They ain’t no hand-shakin’ in this.  Understand?  They ain’t nothin’ but scrap.  No throwin’ up the sponge.  This is a grudge-fight an’ it’s to a finish.  Understand?  Somebody’s goin’ to get licked.”

Cheese-Face wanted to demur,—­Martin could see that,—­but Cheese-Face’s old perilous pride was touched before the two gangs.

“Aw, come on,” he replied.  “Wot’s the good of chewin’ de rag about it?  I’m wit’ cheh to de finish.”

Then they fell upon each other, like young bulls, in all the glory of youth, with naked fists, with hatred, with desire to hurt, to maim, to destroy.  All the painful, thousand years’ gains of man in his upward climb through creation were lost.  Only the electric light remained, a milestone on the path of the great human adventure.  Martin and Cheese-Face were two savages, of the stone age, of the squatting place and the tree refuge.  They sank lower and lower into the muddy abyss, back into the dregs of the raw beginnings of life, striving blindly and chemically, as atoms strive, as the star-dust if the 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