But he got no chance whatever to use the weapon; for the moment
Duchemin found his own feet in the swaying vehicle he leaped on the
shoulders of the other and dragged him backwards from the box.

What followed was not very clear to him, a mélange of impressions. The
mock-American fought like a devil unchained, cursing Duchemin fluently
in the purest and foulest argot of Belleville--which is not in the
French vocabulary of the doughboy. The animals at the pole caught fire
of this madness and ran away in good earnest, that wretched barouche
rolled and pitched like a rudderless shell in a crazy sea, the two men
floundered in its well like fish in a pail.

They fought by no rules, with no science, but bit and kicked and gouged
and wrenched and struck as occasion offered and each to the best of his
ability. Duchemin caught glimpses of a face like a Chinese devil-mask,
hideously distorted with working features and disfigured with smears of
soot through which insane eyeballs rolled and glared in the moonlight.
Then a hand like a vice gripped his windpipe, he was on his back, his
head overhanging the edge of the floor, a thumb was feeling for one of
his eyes. Yet it could not have been much later when he and his
opponent were standing and swaying as one, locked in an embrace of
wrestlers.

Still, Duchemin knew as many tricks of hand-to-hand fighting as the
other, perhaps a few more. And then he was, no doubt, in far better
condition. At all events the fellow was presently at his mercy, in a
hold that gave one the privilege of breaking his back at will. A man of
mistaken scruples, Duchemin failed to do so, but held the other
helpless only long enough to find his hip-pocket and rip out the