The voices commenced their chattering again, through which excitement, like a wandering bee, hummed a moving note.
"You won't make any fuss, will yer, mister?" the master's voice could be heard saying.
"I? Make a fuss? No; why the devil should I? Go on!"
"Third round!" said the master.
Then for a moment Sally's eyes opened. In one of the corners sat Morrison on the knee of an attendant, who was sponging the blood from his face, whilst another flapped a towel before him. She took a deep breath as he rose slowly to his feet and came forward to meet his man. Directly the shuffling sound of feet began again, she closed her eyes once more, holding with fingers numbed and cold to the fringe of the curtain beside her. All the sounds then trooped in pictures before her mind. When she heard the stamp of the foot, the dull slapping thud of the heavy blow, and the moaning rush of breath, she saw that bleeding face falling out of the sickly lamplight into the sooty shadows.
At last she could bear it no longer. Her imagination was gloating in her mind over the horrors that it drew. She forced her eyes to look. It was better to see the worst than conjure still worse terrors in her mind. She let her sight rush to those two half-naked bodies; it sped unerringly to the spot like a filing of iron to the magnet's teeth.
Now Tucker had regained the advantage which that momentary interruption of Traill's had lost him. His man was swaying before him as a sack of sawdust swings inert to the vibrating motion of speed. His blows were falling short and fast. No great force was behind them. He had no time to give them force. But they were bewildering—the stones of hail upon the naked eyes. Morrison dropped slowly and slowly backwards, one staggering step at a time; his defenceless arms held feebly like broken straws before his face. From nose to chin, from chin to neck, and from the neck in a spreading stream across his chest, the blood—black in that light—trickled like molten glue. In his eyes, she could see that questioning glare, the stupid senseless gaze of a man drunk with exhaustion. And still the blows fell to the murmuring accompaniment of that gloating crowd—fell steadily, shortly, tappingly, like the beating of a stick upon dead meat.
"He's got him now, by Jove! he's got him now," she just heard Traill muttering, and then the yellow lamplight slowly went out into the shadows; the deep, black curtain of the sky slowly descended over the whole scene; she felt a cold wind full of moisture fanning gently upon her forehead and her lips; she heard the muffled sounds going further and further away as though some great hand were spreading a black velvet cloth over it all; then Traill heard her uncomplaining moan, and felt the dead weight of her senseless body as it lurched against his own.
CHAPTER XVII
There are men of a certain type in this world whose judgment is exceedingly sound when their instincts are not in play, but who, in certain channels, when the senses are at riot, become puerile; the good ship, rudderless, which only rights itself when the storm has passed. They are men without the necessary leaven of introspection. Of themselves, in fact, they know nothing, learn nothing even in the remorse when the deed is done. For first of all, they are men of strength—men who can over-ride, with determination, rough-shod, the hampering results of their follies. Fate and circumstance have no power over them. They make their own destiny; cutting, if necessary, the knots they have tied, with a knife-edge of will that needs but the one clear sweep to set them free.