obtuseness he knew I was in a bad
way. And right there, at any moment, I know now, I might have died. I
often think it is the nearest to death I have ever been. I have only
Nelson's description of my behaviour to go by.

I was scorching up, burning alive internally, in an agony of fire and
suffocation, and I wanted air. I madly wanted air. My efforts to raise
a window were vain, for all the windows in the car were screwed down.
Nelson had seen drink-crazed men, and thought I wanted to throw myself
out. He tried to restrain me, but I fought on. I seized some man's
torch and smashed the glass.

Now there were pro-Nelson and anti-Nelson factions on the Oakland
water-front, and men of both factions, with more drink in them than was
good, filled the car. My smashing of the window was the signal for the
antis. One of them reached for me, and dropped me, and started the
fight, of all of which I have no knowledge save what was told me
afterward, and a sore jaw next day from the blow that put me out. The
man who struck me went down across my body, Nelson followed him, and they
say there were few unbroken windows in the wreckage of the car that
followed as the free-for-all fight had its course.

This being knocked cold and motionless was perhaps the best thing that
could have happened to me. My violent struggles had only accelerated my
already dangerously accelerated heart, and increased the need for oxygen
in my suffocating lungs.

After the fight was over and I came to, I did not come to myself. I was
no more myself than a drowning man is who continues to struggle after he
has lost consciousness. I have no memory of my actions, but I cried
"Air! Air!" so insistently, that it dawned on Nelson that I did not
contemplate self-destruction. So he cleared the jagged glass from the
window-ledge and let me stick my head and shoulders out. He realised,
partially, the seriousness of my condition, and held me by the waist to
prevent me from crawling farther out. And for the rest of the run in to
Oakland I kept my head and shoulders out, fighting like a maniac whenever
he tried to draw me inside.

And here my one glimmering streak of true consciousness came. My sole
recollection, from the time I fell under the trees until I awoke the
following evening, is of my head out of the window, facing the wind
caused by the train, cinders striking and burning and blinding me, while
I breathed with will. All my will was concent