Mrs. Ryer and Heise's lame wife were filling the air with their outcries. Selina was giggling with hysteria. Marcus, terrified, but too brave to run, had picked up a jagged stone with his left hand and stood on the defensive. His swollen right arm, from which the shirt sleeve had been torn, dangled at his side, the back of the hand twisted where the palm should have been. The shirt itself was a mass of grass stains and was spotted with the dentist's blood.
But McTeague, in the centre of the group that struggled to hold him, was nigh to madness. The side of his face, his neck, and all the shoulder and breast of his shirt were covered with blood. He had ceased to cry out, but kept muttering between his gripped jaws, as he labored to tear himself free of the retaining hands:
“Ah, I'll kill him! Ah, I'll kill him! I'll kill him! Damn you, Heise,” he exclaimed suddenly, trying to strike the harness-maker, “let go of me, will you!”
Little by little they pacified him, or rather (for he paid but little attention to what was said to him) his bestial fury lapsed by degrees. He turned away and let fall his arms, drawing long breaths, and looking stupidly about him, now searching helplessly upon the ground, now gazing vaguely into the circle of faces about him. His ear bled as though it would never stop.
“Say, Doctor,” asked Heise, “what's the best thing to do?”
“Huh?” answered McTeague. “What—what do you mean? What is it?”
“What'll we do to stop this bleeding here?”
McTeague did not answer, but looked intently at the blood-stained bosom of his shirt.
“Mac,” cried Trina, her face close to his, “tell us something—the best thing we can do to stop your ear bleeding.”
“Collodium,” said the dentist.