Rodney Stone, Arthur Conan Doyle [the best books of all time .TXT] 📗

hung from a rafter in the centre.  A coil of rope had been brought in, and under the direction of Jackson four men had been stationed to hold it.

“What space do you give them?” asked my uncle.

“Twenty-four, as they are both big ones, sir.”

“Very good, and half-minutes between rounds, I suppose?  I’ll umpire if Sir Lothian Hume will do the same, and you can hold the watch and referee, Jackson.”

With great speed and exactness every preparation was rapidly made by these experienced men.  Mendoza and Dutch Sam were commissioned to attend to Berks, while Belcher and Jack Harrison did the same for Boy Jim.  Sponges, towels, and some brandy in a bladder were passed over the heads of the crowd for the use of the seconds.

“Here’s our man,” cried Belcher.  “Come along, Berks, or we’ll go to fetch you.”

Jim appeared in the ring stripped to the waist, with a coloured handkerchief tied round his middle.  A shout of admiration came from the spectators as they looked upon the fine lines of his figure, and I found myself roaring with the rest.  His shoulders were sloping rather than bulky, and his chest was deep rather than broad, but the muscle was all in the right place, rippling down in long, low curves from neck to shoulder, and from shoulder to elbow.  His work at the anvil had developed his arms to their utmost, and his healthy country living gave a sleek gloss to his ivory skin, which shone in the lamplight.  His expression was full of spirit and confidence, and he wore a grim sort of half-smile which I had seen many a time in our boyhood, and which meant, I knew, that his pride had set iron hard, and that his senses would fail him long before his courage.

Joe Berks in the meanwhile had swaggered in and stood with folded arms between his seconds in the opposite corner.  His face had none of the eager alertness of his opponent, and his skin, of a dead white, with heavy folds about the chest and ribs, showed, even to my inexperienced eyes, that he was not a man who should fight without training.  A life of toping and ease had left him flabby and gross.  On the other hand, he was famous for his mettle and for his hitting power, so that, even in the face of the advantages of youth and condition, the betting was three to one in his favour.  His heavy-jowled, clean-shaven face expressed ferocity as well as courage, and he stood with his small, blood-shot eyes fixed viciously upon Jim, and his lumpy shoulders stooping a little forwards, like a fierce hound training on a leash.

The hubbub of the betting had risen until it drowned all other sounds, men shouting their opinions from one side of the coach-house to the other, and waving their hands to attract attention, or as a sign that they had accepted a wager.  Sir John Lade, standing just in front of me, was roaring out the odds against Jim, and laying them freely with those who fancied the appearance of the unknown.

“I’ve seen Berks fight,” said he to the Honourable Berkeley Craven.  “No country hawbuck is going to knock out a man with such a record.”

“He may be a country hawbuck,” the other answered, “but I have been reckoned a judge of anything either on two legs or four, and I tell you, Sir John, that I never saw a man who looked better bred in my life.  Are you still laying against him?”

“Three to one.”

“Have you once in hundreds.”

“Very good, Craven!  There they go!  Berks!  Berks!  Bravo!  Berks!  Bravo!  I think, Craven, that I shall trouble you for that hundred.”

The two men had stood up to each other, Jim as light upon his feet as a goat, with his left well out and his right thrown across the lower part of his chest, while Berks held both arms half extended and his feet almost level, so that he might lead off with either side.  For an instant they looked each other over, and then Berks, ducking his head and rushing in with a handover-hand style of hitting, bored Jim down into his corner.  It was a backward slip rather than a knockdown, but a thin trickle of blood was seen at the corner of Jim’s mouth.  In an instant the seconds had seized their men and carried them back into their corners.

“Do you mind doubling our bet?” said Berkeley Craven, who was craning his neck to get a glimpse of Jim.

“Four to one on Berks!  Four to one on Berks!” cried the ringsiders.

“The odds have gone up, you see.  Will you have four to one in hundreds?”

“Very good, Sir John.”

“You seem to fancy him more for having been knocked down.”

“He was pushed down, but he stopped every blow, and I liked the look on his face as he got up again.”

“Well, it’s the old stager for me.  Here they come again!  He’s got a pretty style, and he covers his points well, but it isn’t the best looking that wins.”

They were at it again, and I was jumping about upon my bucket in my excitement.  It was evident that Berks meant to finish the battle off-hand, whilst Jim, with two of the most experienced men in England to advise him, was quite aware that his correct tactics were to allow the ruffian to expend his strength and wind in vain.  There was something horrible in the ferocious energy of Berks’s hitting, every blow fetching a grunt from him as he smashed it in, and after each I gazed at Jim, as I have gazed at a stranded vessel upon the Sussex beach when wave after wave has roared over it, fearing each time that I should find it miserably mangled.  But still the lamplight shone upon the lad’s clear, alert face, upon his well-opened eyes and his firm-set mouth, while the blows were taken upon his forearm or allowed, by a quick duck of the head, to whistle over his shoulder.  But Berks was artful as well as violent.  Gradually he worked Jim back into an angle of the ropes from which there was no escape, and then, when he had him fairly penned, he sprang upon him like a tiger.  What happened was so quick that I cannot set its sequence down in words, but I saw Jim make a quick stoop under the swinging arms, and at the same instant I heard a sharp, ringing smack, and there was Jim dancing about in the middle of the ring, and Berks lying upon his side on the floor, with his hand to his eye.

How they roared!  Prize-fighters, Corinthians, Prince, stable-boy, and landlord were all shouting at the top of their lungs.  Old Buckhorse was skipping about on a box beside me, shrieking out criticisms and advice in strange, obsolete ring-jargon, which no one could understand.  His dull eyes were shining, his parchment face was quivering with excitement, and his strange musical call rang out above all the hubbub.  The two men were hurried to their corners, one second sponging them down and the other flapping a towel in front of their face; whilst they, with arms hanging down and legs extended, tried to draw all the air they could into their lungs in the brief space allowed them.

“Where’s your country hawbuck now?” cried Craven, triumphantly.  “Did ever you witness anything more masterly?”

“He’s no Johnny Raw, certainly,” said Sir John, shaking his head.  “What odds are you giving on Berks, Lord Sole?”

“Two to one.”

“I take you twice in hundreds.”

“Here’s Sir John Lade hedging!” cried my uncle, smiling back at us over his shoulder.

“Time!” said Jackson, and the two men sprang forward to the mark again.

This round was a good deal shorter than that which had preceded it.  Berks’s orders evidently were to close at any cost, and so make use of his extra weight and strength before the superior condition of his antagonist could have time to tell.  On the other hand, Jim, after his experience in the last round, was less disposed to make any great exertion to keep him at arms’ length.  He led at Berks’s head, as he came rushing in, and missed him, receiving a severe body blow in return, which left the imprint of four angry knuckles above his ribs.  As they closed Jim caught his opponent’s bullet head under his arm for an instant, and put a couple of half-arm blows in; but the prize-fighter pulled him over by his weight, and the two fell panting side by side upon the ground.  Jim sprang up, however, and walked over to his corner, while Berks, distressed by his evening’s dissipation, leaned one arm upon Mendoza and the other upon Dutch Sam as he made for his seat.

“Bellows to mend!” cried Jem Belcher.  “Where’s the four to one now?”

“Give us time to get the lid off our pepper-box,” said Mendoza.  “We mean to make a night of it.”

“Looks like it,” said Jack Harrison.  “He’s shut one of his eyes already.  Even money that my boy wins it!”

“How much?” asked several voices.

“Two pound four and threepence,” cried Harrison, counting out all his worldly wealth.

“Time!” said Jackson once more.

They were both at the mark in an instant, Jim as full of sprightly confidence as ever, and Berks with a fixed grin upon his bull-dog face and a most vicious gleam in the only eye which was of use to him.  His half-minute had not enabled him to recover his breath, and his huge, hairy chest was rising and falling with a quick, loud panting like a spent hound.  “Go in, boy!  Bustle him!” roared Harrison and Belcher.  “Get your wind, Joe; get your wind!” cried the Jews.  So now we had a reversal of tactics, for it was Jim who went in to hit with all the vigour of his young strength and unimpaired energy, while it was the savage Berks who was paying his debt to Nature for the many injuries which he had done her.  He gasped, he gurgled, his face grew purple in his attempts to get his breath, while with his long left arm extended and his right thrown across, he tried to screen himself from the attack of his wiry antagonist.  “Drop when he hits!” cried Mendoza.  “Drop and have a rest!”

But there was no shyness or shiftiness about Berks’s fighting.  He was always a gallant ruffian, who disdained to go down before an antagonist as long as his legs would sustain him.  He propped Jim off with his long arm, and though the lad sprang lightly round him looking for an opening, he was held off as if a forty-inch bar of iron were between them.  Every instant now was in favour of Berks, and already his breathing was easier and the bluish tinge fading from his face.  Jim knew that his chance of a speedy victory was slipping away from him, and he came back again and again as swift as a flash to the attack without being able to get past the passive defence of the trained fighting-man.  It was at such a moment that ringcraft was needed, and luckily for Jim two masters of it were at his back.

“Get your left on his mark, boy,” they shouted, “then go to his head with the right.”

Jim heard and acted on the instant.  Plunk! came his left just where his antagonist’s ribs curved from his breast-bone.  The force of the blow was half broken by Berks’s elbow, but it served its purpose of bringing forward his head.  Spank! went the right, with the clear, crisp sound of two billiard balls clapping together, and Berks reeled, flung up his arms, spun round, and fell in a huge, fleshy heap upon the floor.  His seconds were on him instantly, and propped him up in a sitting position, his head rolling helplessly from one shoulder to the other, and finally toppling backwards with his chin pointed to the ceiling.  Dutch Sam thrust the brandy-bladder between his teeth, while Mendoza shook him savagely and howled insults in his ear, but neither the spirits nor the sense of injury could break into that serene insensibility.  “Time!” was duly called, and the Jews, seeing that the affair was over, let their man’s head fall back with a crack upon the floor, and there he lay, his huge arms and legs asprawl, whilst the Corinthians and fighting-men crowded past him to shake the hand of his conqueror.

For my part, I tried also to press through the throng, but it was no easy task for one of the smallest and weakest men in the room.  On all sides of me I heard a brisk discussion from amateurs and professionals of Jim’s performance and of his prospects.

“He’s the best bit of new stuff that I’ve seen since Jem Belcher fought his first fight with Paddington Jones at Wormwood Scrubbs four years ago last April,” said Berkeley Craven.  “You’ll see him with the belt round his waist before he’s five-and-twenty, or I am no judge of a man.”

“That handsome face of his has