is breath, spitting the
words as a snake spits its venom. The little audience uttered a cry.
With the oath Marcus had twisted his head and had bitten through the
lobe of the dentist's ear. There was a sudden flash of bright-red blood.

Then followed a terrible scene. The brute that in McTeague lay so close
to the surface leaped instantly to life, monstrous, not to be resisted.
He sprang to his feet with a shrill and meaningless clamor, totally
unlike the ordinary bass of his speaking tones. It was the hideous
yelling of a hurt beast, the squealing of a wounded elephant. He
framed no words; in the rush of high-pitched sound that issued from his
wide-open mouth there was nothing articulate. It was something no longer
human; it was rather an echo from the jungle.

Sluggish enough and slow to anger on ordinary occasions, McTeague when
finally aroused became another man. His rage was a kind of obsession, an
evil mania, the drunkenness of passion, the exalted and perverted fury
of the Berserker, blind and deaf, a thing insensate.

As he rose he caught Marcus's wrist in both his hands. He did not
strike, he did not know what he was doing. His only idea was to batter
the life out of the man before him, to crush and annihilate him upon the
instant. Gripping his enemy in his enormous hands, hard and knotted,
and covered with a stiff fell of yellow hair--the hands of the old-time
car-boy--he swung him wide, as a hammer-thrower swings his hammer.
Marcus's feet flipped from the ground, he spun through the air about
McTeague as helpless as a bundle of clothes. All at once there was a
sharp snap, almost like the report of a small pistol. Then Marcus rolled
over and over upon the ground as McTeague released his grip; his arm,
the one the dentist had seized, bending suddenly, as though a third
joint had formed between wrist and elbow. The arm was broken.

But by this time every one was crying out at once. Heise and Ryan ran in
between the two men. Selina turned her head away. Trina was wringing her
hands and crying in an agony of dread:

"Oh, stop them, stop them! Don't let them fight. Oh, it's too awful."

"Here, here, Doc, quit. Don't make a fool of yourself," cried Heise,
clinging to the dentist. "That's enough now. LISTEN to me, will you?"

"Oh, Mac, Mac," cried Trina, running to her husband. "Mac, dear, listen;
it's me, it's Trina, look at me, you----"

"Get hold of his other arm, will you, Ryer?" panted Heise. "Quick!"

"