My luck continued. The pile of silver beside me grew and grew, and stray pieces of gold found their way into the pile as well. Every turn-up was an ace or court-card. My luck was unheard of; and all around me Kinlochleven stood agape, and played blindly, as if fascinated. Gain was nothing to me, the game meant all. I called for further drinks; I drank myself, although I was already drunk with excitement. I had forgotten all about the good resolutions made on the doorstep of Kinlochleven but what did it matter? Let my environment mould me, let Nature follow out its own course, she knows what is best. I was now living large; the game held me captive, and the pile of glistening silver grew in size.
A man beside made some objection to my turn-up. He was one of the fiercest men in the shack, and he was known as a fighter of merit. I looked him between the eyes for a minute and he flinched before my gaze.
"I'll thrash you till you roar for mercy!" I called at him and he became silent.
The drink went to my head and the cards turned up began to play strange antics before my eyes. The knaves and queens ran together, they waltzed over the place, and the lesser cards would persist in eluding my hand when it went out to grip them. I was terribly drunk, the whisky and the excitement were overpowering me.
"I'm going to stop, mateys," I said, and I caught a handful of gold and silver and put it into my pocket, then staggered to my feet. A cry of indignation and contempt arose. "I was not going to allow any of them to overtake their luck; I was not a man; I was a mere rogue." I was well aware of the fact that a winner is always honour bound to be the last to leave the table.
"I'm going to play no more," I said bluntly.
The crowd burst into a torrent of abuse. My legs were faltering under me, and I wanted to get into bed. I would go to bed, but how? The players might not allow it; they wanted their money. Then I would give it to them. I put my hand in my pocket, pulled out the cash, and flung it amongst the crowd of players. There was a hurried scramble all round me, and the men groped in the muck and dirt for the stray coins. I got into bed with my clothes on and fell asleep. In a vague sort of way I heard the gamblers talk about my wonderful luck, and some of them quarrelled about the money lifted from the floor. When morning came I was still lying, fully-dressed, over the blankets on the centre of the bed, while Joe and Gahey were under the blankets on each side of me.
I still had two half-sovereigns in my pocket along with a certain amount of smaller cash, and these coins reminded me of my game. But I did not treasure them so much as the long scar stretching across my cheek, and the disfigured eye, which were tokens of the fight in which I thrashed Hell-fire Gahey. All that day I lived the fight over and over again, and the victory caused me to place great confidence in myself. From that day forward I affected a certain indifference towards other fights, thus pretending that I considered myself to be above such petty scrapes.
By instinct I am a fighter. I never shirk a fight, and the most violent contest is a tonic to my soul. Sometimes when in a thoughtful mood I said to myself that fighting was the pastime of a brute or a savage. I said that because it is fashionable for the majority of people, spineless and timid as they are, to say the same. But fighting is not the pastime of a brute; it is the stern reality of a brute's life. Only by fighting will the fittest survive. But to man, a physical contest is a pastime and a joy. I love to see a fight with the bare fists, the combatants stripped naked to the buff, the long arms stretching out, the hard knuckles showing white under the brown skin of the fists, the muscles sliding and slipping like live eels under the flesh, the steady and quick glance of the eye, the soft thud of fist on flesh, the sharp snap of a blow on the jaw, and the final scene where one man drops to the ground while the other, bathed in blood and sweat, smiles in acknowledgment of the congratulations on the victory obtained.
Gambling was another manner of fighting, and brim full of excitement. In it no man knew his strength until he paid for it, and there was excitement in waiting for the turn-up. Night after night I sat down to the cards, sometimes out in the open and sometimes by the deal plank on the floor of Red Billy's shack. Gambling was rife and unchecked. All night long the navvies played banker and brag; and those who worked on the night-shift took up the game that the day labourers left off. One Sunday evening alone I saw two hundred and fifty banker schools gathered in a sheltered hollow of the hills. That Sunday I remembered very well, for I happened to win seven pounds at a single sitting, which lasted from seven o'clock on a Saturday evening until half-past six on the Monday morning. I finished the game, went out to my work, and did ten hours' shift, although I was half asleep on the drill handle for the best part of the time.