Sluggish enough and slow to anger on ordinary occasions, McTeague when
finally aroused became another man. His rage was a kind of obsession, an
evil mania, the drunkenness of passion, the exalted and perverted fury
of the Berserker, blind and deaf, a thing insensate.
As he rose he caught Marcus's wrist in both his hands. He did not
strike, he did not know what he was doing. His only idea was to batter
the life out of the man before him, to crush and annihilate him upon the
instant. Gripping his enemy in his enormous hands, hard and knotted,
and covered with a stiff fell of yellow hair--the hands of the old-time
car-boy--he swung him wide, as a hammer-thrower swings his hammer.
Marcus's feet flipped from the ground, he spun through the air about
McTeague as helpless as a bundle of clothes. All at once there was a
sharp snap, almost like the report of a small pistol. Then Marcus rolled
over and over upon the ground as McTeague released his grip; his arm,
the one the dentist had seized, bending suddenly, as though a third
joint had formed between wrist and elbow. The arm was broken.
But by this time every one was crying out at once. Heise and Ryan ran in
between the two men.
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