He kept low and balanced, snorting with each exhalation, and I hit him twice before he bowled me over and bore me down in a tangle of chairs and began the jolly business of rib cracking, gouging, kneeing and breaking everything loose he could reach. He clambered and straddled me, trapping my arms under his blocky legs, picked me up by the ears and banged my head back onto the teak. As the world went slow and dreamy, I got an arm loose and saw my hand way up there, the heel of it under his chin. He tried to hammer his clasped hands down onto my rigid arm, and would have snapped it nicely had I
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