is 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."

But no one stopped it, and he was glad, punching on wearily and endlessly
with his one arm, battering away at a bloody something before him that
was not a face but a horror, an oscillating, hideous, gibbering, nameless
thing that persisted before his wavering vision and would not go away.
And he punched on and on, slower and slower, as the last shreds of
vitality oozed from him, through centuries and aeons and enormous lapses
of time, until, in a dim way, he became aware that the nameless thing was
sinking, slowly sinking down to the rough board-planking of the bridge.
And the next moment he was standing over it, staggering and swaying on
shaky legs, clutching at the air for support, and saying in a voice he
did not recognize:-

"D'ye want any more? Say, d'ye want any more?"

He was still saying it, over and over,--demanding, entreating,
threatening, to know if it wanted any more,--when he felt the fellows of
his gang laying hands on him, patting him on the back and trying to put
his coat on him. And then came a sudden rush of blackness and oblivion.

The tin alarm-clock on the table ticked on, but Martin Eden, his face
buried on his arms, did not hear it. He heard nothing. He did not
think. So absolutely had he relived life that he had fainted just as he
fainted years before on the Eighth Street Bridge. For a full minute the
blackness and the blankness endured. Then, like one from the dead, he
sprang upright, eyes flaming, sweat pouring down his face, shouting:-

"I licked you, Cheese-Face! It took me eleven years, but I licked you!"

His knees were trembling under him, he felt faint, and he staggered back
to the bed, sinking down and sitting on the edge of it. He was still in
the clutch of the past. He looked about the room, perplexed, alarmed,
wondering where he was, until he caught sight of the pile of manuscripts
in the corner. Then the wheels of memory slipped ahead through four
years of time, and he was aware of the present, of the books he had
opened and the universe he had won from their pages, of his dreams and
ambitions, and of his love for a pale wraith of a girl, sensitive and
sheltered and ethereal, who would die of horror did she witness but one
moment