had been no advantage gained either way.  “It’s anybody’s 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.  “Them’s 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, d’ye 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 ain’t 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, I’ll 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 Martin’s 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 other’s extremity and raining blow on blow.  Martin’s 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 ain’t a scrap, fellows.  It’s murder, an’ we ought to stop it.”