“Oh—oh—oh!” yelled Pete, in a hoarse, doleful mingling of cry and word. “Yer’ve killed me! yer’ve killed me!”
“Dead people can’t talk,” cried Tom tauntingly. “Serve you right if I had.”
Probably this was a bit of hectoring, and not the real feeling, consequent upon the great state of exaltation to which the fight had raised him.
“Yer’ve killed me, yer great coward; yer’ve killed me!” wailed Pete again, excitement having probably acted upon his eyes after the fashion attributed to a horse’s, which are said to magnify largely, and made Tom seem unusually big.
“Coward, am I?” cried Tom, rising. “You get up, and I’ll show you.”
“Ow—ow—ow! Help! help!”
“Get up,” said Tom, giving his adversary a thrust with his foot, and another and another, feeling a kind of fierce satisfaction in so doing, for every thrust brought forth a howl.
“Will you get up?” cried Tom.
“I carn’t; yer’ve broke my ribs and killed me—yer coward.”
It could not have been after all any magnification of Pete’s eyes that caused him to say this, for Tom now saw, that where the malicious-looking orbs had been which looked at him so triumphantly a short time before, there were two tight-looking slits, from which the great tears were squeezing themselves out, as the humbled tyrant went on blubbering like a boy of eight or nine.