Читать книгу Hands Up! онлайн

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At last I landed him a blow that not only laid him flat upon the ground, but kept him there.

I was blown, my heart going like a piston, the sweat was cold on me suddenly in the autumn night. I looked at my antagonist again. The horrible, pallid light of an arc lamp at the corner sifted through the hanging boughs of a lime-tree and glistened on his teeth. My heart, that had been going like a piston, seemed to clutch, and clutch, and clutch; an immense panic fell on me. I bent down and felt his heart and could find no beating.

I remember the torture of the moment, how I was maddened with annoyance at myself because all I could feel was the throb, throbbing of the blood in my own hand. I almost wept. I put my ear to his breast and what I heard was like the echo of my own heart-throbs in my ear. I could hear nothing outside of my terror.

I stood up and said to myself over and over again, "Be calm! Be calm—be calm!" I pressed my lips together; I went over the alphabet, all in a mad endeavour to collect myself. So I gained some measure of calm, at least enough to hold his wrist again, not with my thumb—remembering that there is a pulse in the thumb; but there was no pulse of life in his wrist.