By this time they had reached Eleventh Avenue and were close upon the saloon when Ravenslee halted suddenly, for, beneath a lamp on the opposite sidewalk, he saw M’Ginnis in talk with two other men.

Drawing the neckerchief from his pocket, Ravenslee crossed over and tapped M’Ginnis on the arm, who, turning about, stared into a pallid face within a foot of his own.

“What th’ hell—­” he began, but Ravenslee cut him short.

“You left this behind you,” said he, thrusting forward the neckerchief, “so I’ve brought it to twist around that foul throat of yours.  Now, M’Ginnis—­fight!”

Thrusting the neckerchief into his pocket, Ravenslee clenched his fists, and, saying no more, they closed and fought—­not as men, but rather as brute beasts eager to maim and rend.

M’Ginnis’s companions, dumbfounded by the sudden ferocity of it all, stood awhile inactive, staring at those two forms that lurched and swayed, that strove and panted, grimly speechless.  Then, closing in, they waited an opportunity to smite down M’Ginnis’s foe from behind.  But the Spider was watching, and, before either of them could kick or strike, his fists thudded home—­twice—­hard blows aimed with scientific precision; after which, having dragged the fallen away from those fierce-trampling feet, he stood, quivering and tense, to watch that desperate encounter.

Once Ravenslee staggered back from a vicious flush-hit, and once M’Ginnis spun around to fall upon hands and knees; then they clenched, and coming to the ground together, fought there, rolling to and fro and hideously twisted together.  But slowly Ravenslee’s clean living began to tell, and M’Ginnis, wriggling beneath a merciless grip, uttered inarticulate cries and groaned aloud.  And now the deadly neckerchief was about his gasping throat and in his ears his conqueror’s fierce laugh—­lost all at once in a roar of voices, a rush of trampling feet.

Wrenched at by fierce hands, smitten by unseen fists, Ravenslee was beaten down—­was dimly aware of the Spider’s long legs bestriding him, and staggering up through a tempest of blows, hurled himself among his crowding assailants, felled one with his right, stopped another with his left, and, as the press broke to the mad fury of his onslaught, felt his hand wrenched from a man’s windpipe and heard a frantic voice that panted: 

“Leg it, bo, leg it.  Hully Chee! ain’t ye had enough?” So, mechanically, he set off at a run, with his arm still gripped by the Spider.  “Leg it, bo—­leg it good, or here’s where we snuff it sure!  This way—­round th’ corner; only keep goin’, bo, keep goin’.”

Very fleetly they ran with their pursuers close on their heels, across open lots, over fences, along tortuous alleys, until the rush and patter of the many feet died away, and the Spider, pulling up at the corner of a dismal, narrow street hard by the river, stood awhile to listen.

“Jiminy Christmas! but you’re some hot stuff at the swattin’ business—­you’re a glutton, you are, bo.  I been in one or two scraps meself, but I never seen a guy so hungry for—­”