“What do you think of your chances, Harrison?” I heard my uncle ask, as the two mares picked their way over the broken ground.
“It’s my last fight, Sir Charles,” said the smith. “You heard the missus say that if she let me off this time I was never to ask again. I must try and make it a good one.”
“But your training?”
“I’m always in training, sir. I work hard from morning to night, and I drink little else than water. I don’t think that Captain Barclay can do much better with all his rules.”
“He’s rather long in the reach for you.”
“I’ve fought and beat them that were longer. If it comes to a rally I should hold my own, and I should have the better of him at a throw.”
“It’s a match of youth against experience. Well, I would not hedge a guinea of my money. But, unless he was acting under force, I cannot forgive young Jim for having deserted me.”
“He was acting under force, Sir Charles.”
“You have seen him, then?”
“No, master, I have not seen him.”
“You know where he is?”
“Well, it is not for me to say one way or the other. I can only tell you that he could not help himself. But here’s the beak a-comin’ for us again.”
The ominous figure galloped up once more alongside of our curricle, but this time his mission was a more amiable one.
“My jurisdiction ends at that ditch, sir,” said he. “I should fancy that you could hardly wish a better place for a mill than the sloping field beyond. I am quite sure that no one will interfere with you there.”
His anxiety that the fight should be brought off was in such contrast to the zeal with which he had chased us from his county, that my uncle could not help remarking upon it.
“It is not for a magistrate to wink at the breaking of the law, sir,” he answered. “But if my colleague of Hampshire has no scruples about its being brought off within his jurisdiction, I should very much like to see the fight,” with which he spurred his horse up an adjacent knoll, from which he thought that he might gain the best view of the proceedings.
And now I had a view of all those points of etiquette and curious survivals of custom which are so recent, that we have not yet appreciated that they may some day be as interesting to the social historian as they then were to the sportsman. A dignity was given to the contest by a rigid code of ceremony, just as the clash of mail-clad knights was prefaced and adorned by the calling of the heralds and the showing of blazoned shields. To many in those ancient days the tourney may have seemed a bloody and brutal ordeal, but we who look at it with ample perspective see that it was a rude but gallant preparation for the conditions of life in an iron age. And so also, when the ring has become as extinct as the lists, we may understand that a broader philosophy would show that all things, which spring up so naturally and spontaneously, have a function to fulfil, and that it is a less evil that two men should, of their own free will, fight until they can fight no more than that the standard of hardihood and endurance should run the slightest risk of being lowered in a nation which depends so largely upon the individual qualities of her citizens for her defence. Do away with war, if the cursed thing can by any wit of man be avoided, but until you see your way to that, have a care in meddling with those primitive qualities to which at any moment you may have to appeal for your own protection.
Tom Owen and his singular assistant, Fogo, who combined the functions of prize-fighter and of poet, though, fortunately for himself, he could use his fists better than his pen, soon had the ring arranged according to the rules then in vogue. The white wooden posts, each with the P.C. of the pugilistic club printed upon it, were so fixed as to leave a square of 24 feet within the roped enclosure. Outside this ring an outer one was pitched, eight feet separating the two. The inner was for the combatants and for their seconds, while in the outer there were places for the referee, the timekeeper, the backers, and a few select and fortunate individuals, of whom, through being in my uncle’s company, I was one. Some twenty well-known prize-fighters, including my friend Bill Warr, Black Richmond, Maddox, The Pride of Westminster, Tom Belcher, Paddington Jones, Tough Tom Blake, Symonds the ruffian, Tyne the tailor, and others, were stationed in the outer ring as beaters. These fellows all wore the high white hats which were at that time much affected by the fancy, and they were armed with horse-whips, silver-mounted, and each bearing the P.C. monogram. Did any one, be it East End rough or West End patrician, intrude within the outer ropes, this corp of guardians neither argued nor expostulated, but they fell upon the offender and laced him with their whips until he escaped back out of the forbidden ground. Even with so formidable a guard and such fierce measures, the beaters-out, who had to check the forward heaves of a maddened, straining crowd, were often as exhausted at the end of a fight as the principals themselves. In the mean time they formed up in a line of sentinels, presenting under their row of white hats every type of fighting face, from the fresh boyish countenances of Tom Belcher, Jones, and the other younger recruits, to the scarred and mutilated visages of the veteran bruisers.
Whilst the business of the fixing of the stakes and the fastening of the ropes was going forward, I from my place of vantage could hear the talk of the crowd behind me, the front two rows of which were lying upon the grass, the next two kneeling, and the others standing in serried ranks all up the side of the gently sloping hill, so that each line could just see over the shoulders of that which was in front. There were several, and those amongst the most experienced, who took the gloomiest view of Harrison’s chances, and it made my heart heavy to overhear them.
“It’s the old story over again,” said one. “They won’t bear in mind that youth will be served. They only learn wisdom when it’s knocked into them.”
“Ay, ay,” responded another. “That’s how Jack Slack thrashed Boughton, and I myself saw Hooper, the tinman, beat to pieces by the fighting oilman. They all come to it in time, and now it’s Harrison’s turn.”
“Don’t you be so sure about that!” cried a third. “I’ve seen Jack Harrison fight five times, and I never yet saw him have the worse of it. He’s a slaughterer, and so I tell you.”
“He was, you mean.”
“Well, I don’t see no such difference as all that comes to, and I’m putting ten guineas on my opinion.”
“Why,” said a loud, consequential man from immediately behind me, speaking with a broad western burr, “vrom what I’ve zeen of this young Gloucester lad, I doan’t think Harrison could have stood bevore him for ten rounds when he vas in his prime. I vas coming up in the Bristol coach yesterday, and the guard he told me that he had vifteen thousand pound in hard gold in the boot that had been zent up to back our man.”
“They’ll be in luck if they see their money again,” said another. “Harrison’s no lady’s-maid fighter, and he’s blood to the bone. He’d have a shy at it if his man was as big as Carlton House.”
“Tut,” answered the west-countryman. “It’s only in Bristol and Gloucester that you can get men to beat Bristol and Gloucester.”
“It’s like your damned himpudence to say so,” said an angry voice from the throng behind him. “There are six men in London that would hengage to walk round the best twelve that hever came from the west.”
The proceedings might have opened by an impromptu bye-battle between the indignant cockney and the gentleman from Bristol, but a prolonged roar of applause broke in upon their altercation. It was caused by the appearance in the ring of Crab Wilson, followed by Dutch Sam and Mendoza carrying the basin, sponge, brandy-bladder, and other badges of their office. As he entered Wilson pulled the canary-yellow handkerchief from his waist, and going to the corner post, he tied it to the top of it, where it remained fluttering in the breeze. He then took a bundle of smaller ribands of the same colour from his seconds, and walking round, he offered them to the noblemen and Corinthians at half-a-guinea apiece as souvenirs of the fight. His brisk trade was only brought
to an end by the appearance of Harrison, who climbed in a very leisurely manner over the ropes, as befitted his more mature years and less elastic joints. The yell which greeted him was even more enthusiastic than that which had heralded Wilson, and there was a louder ring of admiration in it, for the crowd had already had their opportunity of seeing Wilson’s physique, whilst Harrison’s was a surprise to them.
I had often looked upon the mighty arms and neck of the smith, but I had never before seen him stripped to the waist, or understood the marvellous symmetry of development which had made him in his youth the favourite model of the London sculptors. There was none of that white sleek skin and shimmering play of sinew which made Wilson a beautiful picture, but in its stead there was a rugged grandeur of knotted and tangled muscle, as though the roots of some old tree were writhing from breast to shoulder, and from shoulder to elbow. Even in repose the sun threw shadows from the curves of his skin, but when he exerted himself every muscle bunched itself up, distinct and hard, breaking his whole trunk into gnarled knots of sinew. His skin, on face and body, was darker and harsher than that of his youthful antagonist, but he looked tougher and harder, an effect which was increased by the sombre colour of his stockings and breeches. He entered the ring, sucking a lemon, with Jim Belcher and Caleb Baldwin, the coster, at his heels. Strolling across to the post, he tied his blue bird’s-eye handkerchief over the west-countryman’s yellow, and then walked to his opponent with his hand out.
“I hope I see you well, Wilson,” said he.
“Pretty tidy, I thank you,” answered the other. “We’ll speak to each other in a different vashion, I ‘spects, afore we part.”
“But no ill-feeling,” said the smith, and the two fighting men grinned at each other as they took their own corners.
“May I ask, Mr. Referee, whether these two men have been weighed?” asked Sir Lothian Hume, standing up in the outer ring.
“Their weight has just been taken under my supervision, sir,” answered Mr. Craven. “Your man brought the scale down at thirteen-three, and Harrison at thirteen-eight.”
“He’s a fifteen-stoner from the loins upwards,” cried Dutch Sam, from his corner.
“We’ll get some of it off him before we finish.”
“You’ll get more off him than ever you bargained for,” answered Jim Belcher, and the crowd laughed at the rough chaff.
CHAPTER XVIII - THE SMITH’S LAST BATTLE
“Clear the outer ring!” cried Jackson, standing up beside the ropes with a big silver watch in his hand.
“Ss-whack! ss-whack! ss-whack!” went the horse-whips - for a number of the spectators, either driven onwards by the pressure behind or willing to risk some physical pain on the chance of getting a better view, had crept under the ropes and formed a ragged fringe within the outer ring. Now, amidst roars of laughter from the crowd and a shower of blows from the beaters-out, they dived madly back, with the ungainly haste of frightened sheep blundering through a gap in their hurdles. Their case was a hard one, for the folk in front refused to yield an inch of their places - but the arguments from the rear prevailed over everything else, and presently every frantic fugitive had been absorbed, whilst the beaters-out took their stands along the edge at regular intervals, with their whips held down by their thighs.
“Gentlemen,” cried Jackson, again, “I am requested to inform you that Sir Charles Tregellis’s nominee is Jack Harrison, fighting at thirteen-eight, and Sir Lothian Hume’s is Crab Wilson, at thirteen-three. No person can be allowed at the inner ropes save the referee and the timekeeper. I have only to beg that, if the occasion should require it, you will all give me your assistance to keep the ground clear, to prevent confusion, and to have a fair fight. All ready?”
“All ready!” from both corners.
“Time!”
There was a breathless hush as Harrison, Wilson, Belcher, and Dutch Sam walked very briskly into the centre of the ring. The two men shook hands, whilst their seconds did the same, the four hands crossing each other. Then the seconds dropped back, and the two champions stood toe to toe, with their hands up.
It was a magnificent sight to any one who had not lost his sense of appreciation of the noblest of all the works of Nature. Both men fulfilled that requisite of the powerful athlete that they should look larger without their clothes than with them. In ring slang, they buffed well. And each showed up the other’s points on account of the extreme contrast between them: the long, loose-limbed, deer-footed youngster, and the square-set, rugged veteran with his trunk like the stump of an oak. The betting began to rise upon the younger man from the instant that they were put face to face, for his advantages were obvious, whilst those qualities which had brought Harrison to the top in his youth were only a memory in the minds of the older men. All could see the three inches extra of height and two of reach which Wilson possessed, and a glance at the quick, cat-like motions of his feet, and the perfect poise of his body upon his legs, showed how swiftly he could spring either in or out from his slower adversary. But it took a subtler insight to read the grim smile which flickered over the smith’s mouth, or the smouldering fire which shone in his grey eyes, and it was only the old-timers who knew that, with his mighty heart and his iron frame, he was a perilous man to lay odds against.
Wilson stood in the position from which he had derived his nickname, his left hand and left foot well to the front, his body sloped very far back from his loins, and his guard thrown across his chest, but held well forward in a way which made him exceedingly hard to get at. The smith, on the other hand, assumed the obsolete attitude which Humphries and Mendoza introduced, but which had not for ten years been seen in a first-class battle. Both his knees were slightly bent, he stood square to his opponent, and his two big brown fists were held over his mark so that he could lead equally with either. Wilson’s hands, which moved incessantly in and out, had been stained with some astringent juice with the purpose of preventing them from puffing, and so great was the contrast between them and his white forearms, that I imagined that he was wearing dark, close-fitting gloves until my uncle explained the matter in a whisper. So they stood in a quiver of eagerness and expectation, whilst that huge multitude hung so silently and breathlessly upon every motion that they might have believed themselves to be alone, man to man, in the centre of some primeval solitude.
It was evident from the beginning that Crab Wilson meant to throw no chance away, and that he would trust to his lightness of foot and quickness of hand until he should see something of the tactics of this rough-looking antagonist. He paced swiftly round several times, with little, elastic, menacing steps, whilst the smith pivoted slowly to correspond. Then, as Wilson took a backward step to induce Harrison to break his ground and follow him, the older man grinned and shook his head.
“You must come to me, lad,” said he. “I’m too old to scamper round the ring after you. But we have the day before us, and I’ll wait.”
He may not have expected his invitation to be so promptly answered; but in an instant, with a panther spring, the west-countryman was on him. Smack! smack! smack! Thud! thud! The first three were on Harrison’s face, the last two were heavy counters upon Wilson’s body. Back danced the youngster, disengaging himself in beautiful style, but with two angry red blotches over the lower line of his ribs. “Blood for Wilson!” yelled the crowd, and as the smith faced round to follow the movements of his nimble adversary, I saw with a thrill that his chin was crimson and dripping. In came Wilson again with a feint at the mark and a flush hit on Harrison’s cheek; then, breaking the force of the smith’s ponderous right counter, he brought the round to a conclusion by slipping down upon the grass.
“First knock-down for Harrison!” roared a thousand voices, for ten times as many pounds would change hands upon the point.
“I appeal to the referee!” cried Sir Lothian Hume. “It was a slip, and not a knock-down.”
“I give it a slip,” said Berkeley Craven, and the men walked to their corners, amidst a g
eneral shout of applause for a spirited and well-contested opening round. Harrison fumbled in his mouth with his finger and thumb, and then with a sharp half-turn he wrenched out a tooth, which he threw into the basin. “Quite like old times,” said he to Belcher.
“Have a care, Jack!” whispered the anxious second. “You got rather more than you gave.”
“Maybe I can carry more, too,” said he serenely, whilst Caleb Baldwin mopped the big sponge over his face, and the shining bottom of the tin basin ceased suddenly to glimmer through the water.
I could gather from the comments of the experienced Corinthians around me, and from the remarks of the crowd behind, that Harrison’s chance was thought to have been lessened by this round.
“I’ve seen his old faults and I haven’t seen his old merits,” said Sir John Lade, our opponent of the Brighton Road. “He’s as slow on his feet and with his guard as ever. Wilson hit him as he liked.”
“Wilson may hit him three times to his once, but his one is worth Wilson’s three,” remarked my uncle. “He’s a natural fighter and the other an excellent sparrer, but I don’t hedge a guinea.”
Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated) Page 420