He still identified him somehow with the Snake, and had a glorious, if passing, sensation of successful revolt and some revenge.

He felt as the lashed galley-slave must have felt when, during a lower-deck mutiny, he broke from his oar and sprang at the throat of the cruel overseer, the embodiment and source of the agony, starvation, toil, brutality, and hopeless woe that had thrust him below the level of the beasts (fortunate beasts) that perish.

“Now you’ve got to fight him, of course,” said Delorme, and fled to spread the glad tidings far and wide.

“I—­I—­don’t feel well now,” mumbled Harberth.  “I’ll fight him when I’m better,” and shambled away, outraged, puzzled, disgusted.  What was the world coming to?  The little brute!  He had a punch like the kick of a horse.  The little cad—­to dare!  Well, he’d show him something if he had the face to stand up to his betters and olders and biggers in the ring....

News of the affair spread like wild-fire, and the incredible conduct of the extraordinary Funky Warren—­said to be no longer Funky—­became the topic of the hour.

At tea, Dam was solemnly asked if it were true that he had cast Harberth from a lofty window and brought him to death’s door, or that of the hospital; whether he had strangled him with the result that he had a permanent squint; if he had so kicked him as to break both his thigh bones; if he had offered to fight him with one hand.

Even certain more or less grave and reverend seniors of the upper school took a well-disguised interest in the matter and pretended that the affair should be allowed to go on, as it would do Harberth a lot of good if de Warrenne could lick him, and do the latter a lot of good to reinstate himself by showing that he was not really a coward in essentials.  Of course they took no interest in the fight as a fight.  Certainly not (but it was observed that Flaherty of the Sixth stopped the fight most angrily and peremptorily when it was over, and that no sign of anger or peremptoriness escaped him until it was over—­and he happened to pass behind the gymnasium, curiously enough, just as it started)....

Good advice was showered upon Dam from all sides.  He was counselled to live on meat, to be a vegetarian, to rise at 4 a.m. and swim, to avoid all brain-fag, to run twenty miles a day, to rest until the fight, to get up in the night and swing heavy dumb-bells, to eat no pudding, to drink no tea, to give up sugar, avoid ices, and deny himself all “tuck” and everything else that makes life worth living.

He did none of these things—­but simply went on as usual, save in one respect.

For the first time since the adder episode, he was really happy.  Why, he did not know, save that he was about to “get some of his own back,” to strike a blow against the cruel coward Incubus (for he persisted in identifying Harberth with the Snake and in regarding him as a materialization of the life-long Enemy), and possibly to enjoy a brief triumph over what had so long triumphed over him.