heaven at the Auditorium. He was seventeen and just back from sea.
A row started. Somebody was bullying somebody, and Martin
interfered, to be confronted by Cheese-Face’s blazing eyes.
“I’ll fix you after de show,” his ancient enemy hissed.
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Martin nodded. The nigger-heaven bouncer was making his way toward
the disturbance.
“I’ll meet you outside, after the last act,” Martin whispered, the
while his face showed undivided interest in the buck-and-wing
dancing on the stage.
The bouncer glared and went away.
“Got a gang?” he asked Cheese-Face, at the end of the act.
“Sure.”
“Then I got to get one,” Martin announced.
Between the acts he mustered his following – three fellows he knew
from the nail works, a railroad fireman, and half a dozen of the
Boo Gang, along with as many more from the dread Eighteen-and-
Market Gang.
When the theatre let out, the two gangs strung along
inconspicuously on opposite sides of the street. When they came to
a quiet corner, they united and held a council of war.
“Eighth Street Bridge is the place,” said a red-headed fellow
belonging to Cheese-Face’s Gang. “You kin fight in the middle,
under the electric light, an’ whichever way the bulls come in we
kin sneak the other way.”
“That’s agreeable to me,” Martin said, after consulting with the
leaders of his own gang.
The Eighth Street Bridge, crossing an arm of San Antonio Estuary,
was the length of three city blocks. In the middle of the bridge,
and at each end, were electric lights. No policeman could pass
those end-lights unseen. It was the safe place for the battle that
revived itself under Martin’s eyelids. He saw the two gangs,
aggressive and sullen, rigidly keeping apart from each other and
backing their respective champions; and he saw himself and Cheese-
Face stripping. A short distance away lookouts were set, their
task being to watch the lighted ends of the bridge. A member of
the Boo Gang held Martin’s coat, and shirt, and cap, ready to race
with them into safety in case the police interfered. Martin
watched himself go into the centre, facing Cheese-Face, and he
heard himself say, as he held up his hand warningly:-
“They ain’t no hand-shakin’ in this. Understand? They ain’t
nothin’ but scrap. No throwin’ up the sponge. This is a grudge-
fight an’ it’s to a finish. Understand? Somebody’s goin’ to get
licked.”
Cheese-Face wanted to demur, – Martin could see that, – but Cheese-
Face’s old perilous pride was touched before the two gangs.
“Aw, come on,” he replied. “Wot’s the good of chewin’ de rag about
it? I’m wit’ cheh to de finish.”
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Then they fell upon each other, like young bulls, in all the glory
of youth, with naked fists, with hatred, with desire to hurt, to
maim, to destroy. All the painful, thousand years’ gains of man in
his upward climb through creation were lost. Only the electric
light remained, a milestone on the path of the great human
adventure. Martin and Cheese-Face were two savages, of the stone
age, of the squatting place and the tree refuge. They sank lower
and lower into the muddy abyss, back into the dregs of the raw
beginnings of life, striving blindly and chemically, as atoms
strive, as the star-dust if the heavens strives, colliding,
recoiling, and colliding again and eternally again.
“God! We are animals! Brute-beasts!” Martin muttered aloud, as
he watched the progress of the fight. It was to him, with his
splendid power of vision, like gazing into a kinetoscope. He was
both onlooker and participant. His long months of culture and
refinement shuddered at the sight; then the present was blotted out
of his consciousness and the ghosts of the past possessed him, and
he was Martin Eden, just returned from sea and fighting Cheese-Face
on the Eighth Street Bridge. He suffered and toiled and sweated
and bled, and exulted when his naked knuckles smashed home.
They were twin whirlwinds of hatred, revolving about each other
monstrously. The time passed, and the two hostile gangs became
very quiet. They had never witnessed such intensity of ferocity,
and they were awed by it. The two fighters were greater brutes
than they. The first splendid velvet edge of youth and condition
wore off, and they fought more cautiously and deliberately. There
had been no advantage gained either way. “It’s anybody’s fight,”
Martin heard some one saying. Then he followed up a feint, right
and left, was fiercely countered, and felt his cheek laid open to
the bone. No bare knuckle had done that. He heard mutters of
amazement at the ghastly damage wrought, and was drenched with his
own blood. But he gave no sign. He became immensely wary, for he
was wise with knowledge of the low cunning and foul vileness of his
kind. He watched and waited, until he feigned a wild rush, which
he stopped midway, for he had seen the glint of metal.
“Hold up yer hand!” he screamed. “Them’s brass knuckles, an’ you
hit me with ’em!”
Both gangs surged forward, growling and snarling. In a second
there would be a free-for-all fight, and he would be robbed of his
vengeance. He was beside himself.
“You guys keep out!” he screamed hoarsely. “Understand? Say,
d’ye understand?”
They shrank away from him. They were brutes, but he was the arch-
brute, a thing of terror that towered over them and dominated them.
“This is my scrap, an’ they ain’t goin’ to be no buttin’ in.
Gimme them knuckles.”
Cheese-Face, sobered and a bit frightened, surrendered the foul
weapon.
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“You passed ’em to him, you red-head sneakin’ in behind the push
there,” Martin went on, as he tossed the knuckles into the water.
“I seen you, an’ I was wonderin’ what you was up to. If you try
anything like that again, I’ll beat cheh to death. Understand?”
They fought on, through exhaustion and beyond, to exhaustion
immeasurable and inconceivable, until the crowd of brutes, its
blood-lust sated, terrified by what it saw, begged them impartially
to cease. And Cheese-Face, ready to drop and die, or to stay on
his legs and die, a grisly monster out of whose features all
likeness to Cheese-Face had been beaten, wavered and hesitated; but
Martin sprang in and smashed him again and again.
Next, after a seeming century or so, with Cheese-Face weakening
fast, in a mix-up of blows there was a loud snap, and Martin’s
right arm dropped to his side. It was a broken bone. Everybody
heard it and knew; and Cheese-Face knew, rushing like a tiger in
the other’s extremity and raining blow on blow. Martin’s gang
surged forward to interfere. Dazed by the rapid succession of
blows, Martin warned them back with vile and earnest curses sobbed
out and groaned in ultimate desolation and despair.
He punched on, with his 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:-
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“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