e fortunes of the fight.
Cleggett, straining to meet Loge, who hung sword to sword with Wilton
Barnstable, saw Giuseppe Jones, deserted by his nurses, tumbling feebly
over the bow of the Jasper B. in the rear of Loge's line. Barelegged,
a red blanket fastened about his throat with a big brass safety pin, a
thermometer in one hand and a medicine bottle in the other, he
tottered, crazily and weakly between Loge and Barnstable, chanting a
vers libre poem in a shrill, insane voice.
Loge, who had extended himself in a vigorous lunge, was struck by the
weight of the young anarchist's body at the crook of the knees, and
came down on the deck at full length, his machete flying from his hand
as he fell.
Cleggett was upon the criminal in an instant, his hand at the outlaw's
throat. They grappled and rolled upon the deck. But in another second
Wilton Barnstable and Barton Ward, coming to Cleggett's assistance, had
snapped irons upon the president of the crime trust, hand and foot.
His overthrow was the signal of his men's defeat. As he went down they
hesitated and wavered. The two great negroes, taking advantage of this
hesitation, burst among them with mighty blows and strange
Afro-American oaths, Castor and Pollux in bronze. With a shout of
"Banzai!" Kuroki rushed forward with his kris; the other defenders
added weight and fury to the rally. Before the irons were on the
wrists of Loge his men were routed. They leaped the rail and made off
for their fleet of taxicabs, flinging away their weapons as they ran.
Loge writhed and twisted and lashed the deck with his legs and body for
a moment, striving even against the bands of steel that bit into his
wrists and ankles. And then he lay still with his face against the
planks as if in a vast and overwhelming bitterness of despair.
It had been Cleggett's earlier thought to take the man alive, if
possible, and turn him over to the authorities. But now that Loge was
taken he burned with the wish for personal combat with him. He desired
to be the agent of society, and put an end to Logan Black himself.
Cleggett, as he gazed at the fellow lying prone upon the deck, could
not repress a murmur of dissatisfaction.
"We never fought it out," he said.
Whether Loge heard him or not, the same thought was evidently running
is his mind. He lifted his head. A slow, malignant grin that showed
his yellow canine teeth lifted his upper lip. He fixed his eyes on
Cleggett with
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