Like a simpleton I hauled out my watch to tell him. It did not occur to me that there might be any purpose behind the question. The river-front in St. Louis was not a place where one could safely exhibit signs of affluence in the way of cash or jewelry—and I knew it. I hadn’t grown up in a city without knowing some of its ways. No doubt it looked like an easy game, out there on the end of a deserted wharf. My watch was a plain hunting-case affair, with a fob. Without an inkling of what was to come I turned toward the dim light as I sprung the case open. In that instant the fellow struck the watch out of my grasp with one hand, and smashed me full on the jaw with the other—a vicious, pugilistic punch. I went down. Curiously, I didn’t lose consciousness; and the blow gave little pain. But it paralyzed my motor nerves for a few seconds, gave me a queer, helpless feeling in my legs and arms, such as one has in a nightmare. It passed though, and the pair of them were just going through my pockets with a celerity that bespoke much practice when I recovered sufficiently to jab my fist into a face that was bent close to mine—at the same time driving both heels against the shins of the other fellow with what force I could muster. This instinctive outbreak rather surprised them, I think. Anyway, they gave ground. Only for a moment, however. I made one valiant effort to gain my feet, and they were on me like twin wolves. Kicking, striking, struggling like primal beasts we three lurched this way and that on the brink of the wharf. A hundred yards away people were hurrying by, and if I’d had sense enough to realize that a shout was my best weapon I could easily have routed the thugs. But I was too frightened to think. And in a very short time sheer weight of numbers decided the issue. One of them got a strangle hold about my neck. The other clasped me fervently around the waist. Thus they dragged me down. For one brief instant I rested on the hard planking, my head in a whirl, their weight like a mountain on my heaving chest. Then, with a quick shove they thrust me over the edge of the wharf.