By this time my exploits were attracting attention.
Middle-aged Italian labourers, old-country peasants who did not talk English, and who could not dance with the Irish girls, surrounded me.
They were swarthy and wild-looking; they wore belts and red shirts; and I knew they carried knives; and they ringed me around like a pirate chorus.
And Peter and Dominick made me show off for them.
Had I lacked imagination, had I been stupid, had I been stubbornly mulish in having my own way, I should never have got in this pickle.

And the lads and lassies were dancing, and there was no one to save me from my fate.

How much I drank I do not know.

My memory of it is of an age-long suffering of fear in the midst of a murderous crew, and of an infinite number of glasses of red wine passing across the bare boards of a wine-drenched table and going down my burning throat.

Bad as the wine was, a knife in the back was worse, and I must survive at any cost.
Looking back with the drinker's knowledge, I know now why I did not collapse stupefied upon the table.