"To the devil?" he shouted. "You chase me to the devil? You had first better go there yourself. I've been to the devil already. For eight months I was in hell. Here's my face—you can tell from my face that I come from hell. To play the protector here and stuff your pockets full and send the others out to die—that's easy. A man who dawdles at home has no right to send men to the devil who have already been in hell for his sake."
So overwhelming was his indignation that he spoke like the humpback Socialist and was not ashamed of it. He stood there ready to leap, with tensely drawn muscles, like a wild animal. He saw the lord make ready to strike him, saw his distorted face, saw the riding-crop flash through the air, and even saw it descending upon him. But he did not feel the short, hard blow on his back.
With one bound he ripped the hunting-knife out of the scabbard and thrust it between the lord's ribs—not with a long sweep, so that some one could have stayed his arm before he struck. Oh, no! But quite lightly, from below, with a short jerk, exactly as he had learned by experience in battle. The hunting-knife was as good as his bayonet. It ran into the flesh like butter.
Then everything came about just as it always did. John Bogdán stood with his chin forward and saw the lord's face distorted by anger suddenly smooth out and turn as placid and even as if it had been ironed. He saw his eyes widen and look over at him in astonishment with the reproachful question, "What are you doing?" The one thing Bogdán did not see was the collapsing of the lord's body, for at that instant a blow crashed down on the back of his head, like the downpour of a waterfall dropping from an infinite height. For one second he still saw Marcsa's face framed in a fiery wheel, then, his skull split open, he fell over on top of his master, whose body already lay quivering on the ground.