They were struggling with him for personal safety
now. The play was forgotten, though mechanically O'Ryan and Fergus
repeated the exclamations and the few phrases belonging to the part.
Jopp was silent, fighting with a malice which belongs to only half-breed,
or half-bred, natures; and from far back in his own nature the distant
Indian strain in him was working in savage hatred. The two were
desperately hanging on to O'Ryan like pumas on a grizzly, when suddenly,
with a twist he had learned from Ogami the Jap on the Smoky River, the
slim Fergus was slung backward to the ground with the tendons of his arm
strained and the arm itself useless for further work. There remained now
Constantine Jopp, heavier and more powerful than O'Ryan.
For O'Ryan the theatre, the people, disappeared. He was a boy again on
the village green, with the bully before him who had tortured his young
days. He forgot the old debt to the foe who saved his life; he forgot
everything, except that once again, as of old, Constantine Jopp was
fighting him, with long, strong arms trying to bring him to the ground.
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