vict’s face. The mask had dissolved; the distended nostrils breathed and the eyes blazed joy as the red-barred arm plunged up and down, accurately, as if working in a groove, and the red-barred knees crushed the thick neck between them.
The guards’ rifles bellowed from the cage overhead. They flashed; their crash filled the long, high room. They crashed again—the red-striped convict and the garotter became a still huddle in the midst of a widening pool on the gray concrete floor.
The looms hummed and purred and the hundred shuttles beat their clacking measure. The striped heap stirred, then was still again. The red-striped convict lay on his back, his knees still gripping the garotter’s neck. His upturned face now held no stony mask; its lines had distended in an expression of peace, of great satiety.
Beats of rapid footsteps sounded on the concrete. The machinery came to a stop in a big silence. Smoke wreaths were still hovering
