But he could not drive it home in the bulky, dark form leaping down at him. For, lightning-swift, sinewed arms of another man behind him whipped round his neck, jerked his head back, bore him downward.
He realized that he was lost. He had forgotten the forward hatch, opening down into the galley; he had forgotten the little passageway behind him. Now one of McLaughlin’s men, familiar with the build of the Kittiwink, had got a strangling grip on him. A wild yell of triumph racketed through the cabin, as three more men dropped into that little space.
Hal knew he must use strategy. Backward he fell: and as he fell, he twisted. His right hand still held the kris; his left got a grip on the other’s throat.
That other man immediately grew dumb, and ceased to breathe, as the terrible fingers closed. Volleys of blows and kicks rained on Hal ineffectively. Still the fingers tightened; the man’s face grew horribly dusky, slaty-blue under the lamp-light, while his tongue protruded and his staring eyes injected themselves with blood.
The arm round Hal’s neck loosened, fell limp. Hal flung the man from him, groveled up under the cross-cutting slash of blows, and bored in.
The crash of a stool on his right wrist numbed his arm to the elbow; the stool, shattered, fell apart, and one leg made smithereens of the lamp-globe. The smoky flare redly lighted a horrible, fantastic war. Hal fought to snatch up the knife again; the others to keep him from it, to trample him, bash him in, smear his brains and blood on the floor. Scientific fighting went to pot. This was just jungle war, the war of gouge and bite, confused, unreal.
All the boy knew was that he swayed, bent and recovered in the midst of terrible blows, and that one arm would not serve him. The other fist landed here, there; and now it had grown red, though whether from its own blood or from the wounds of foemen, who could tell? Strange fires spangled outward before Hal’s eyes; he tasted blood, and, clacking his jaws, set his teeth into a hand and through it.
Something wrenched, cracked dully. Blasphemy howled through the smoky air, voicing the anguish of a broken arm. A rolling, swaying, tumbling mass, the men trampled the fallen one, pulping his face. Broken glass gritted under hammering bootheels, as the shards of lamp-chimney were ground fine.
Back, forth, strained the fighters, with each heave and wallow of the boat. The floor grew slippery. The folding-table, torn from its hinges, collapsed into kindling; and one of these sticks, aimed at Hal’s head, missed him, but struck the square-face.
Liquor gurgled down; the smell of whisky added its fetor to the stench of oil, bilge, sweat and blood. The floor grew slippery, and crimson splashes blotched the cabin walls.