# The Goner

Extracted from Pall Mall magazine, 1912 August, pp. 263–279.
THE GONER.
A Stirring Story telling how Billy Blain made Good.
BY TALBOT MUNDY.
BILLY BLAIN stood still at the south-east corner of Houndsditch, and slowly fingered one shilling and a sixpence that constituted all his worldly goods. “——!” he grumbled. “Have I got to take to sellin’ shoe-laces, same as Jimmy Haviland?” It rather looked like it; for Billy could not make the light-weight limit any longer. He had weakened himself by starving and sweating off his weight in preparation for the last fight; the finish of that fight was still almost recent enough to be news, and Billy was not the only person who was thinking of it.
With the knock-out blow that laid him on the broad of his back in the middle of the fourth round had vanished Billy Blain’s chance of winning the Lonsdale Belt, as well as Billy’s livelihood. He had not had a square meal since that event, and men who had formerly been glad to drink at his expense and proud to slap him on the back now passed him by.
A man passed him now, walking westward. He nodded and winked at Billy, but hurried past, and as he did so he nudged his companion.
The companion turned and stared.
“Blain, isn’t it?” he asked.
“Blain it is,” said the first man, not caring apparently whether Billy heard him or not. “Down and out, like the rest of them. Good fellow, you know, and all that kind of thing. Spent the money when he had it. Same old story, I suppose. Booze—didn’t trouble to train properly—entered his last fight green as a Michaelmas goose—got licked, of course—never saved a penny—another goner!”
The two men had stopped to look at a window display, and Billy Blain heard every word they said. It hurt. It was true that he had been a good fellow according to his lights, and that he hadn’t saved a penny; but drink had had nothing whatever to do with his downfall. The only alcohol he ever tasted had been gin, and he took that to stop his growth. But he grew and grew and grew, and his weight with it; and now, in spite of the hunger that gnawed continually, he was five pounds over weight.
“I’m a goner, am I?” growled Billy under his breath. “Maybe I am—not! Maybe I'll show ’em a thing or two yet. . . .! But I gotter eat first!”
He went into a near-by steak-and-kidney-pudding shop, and when he emerged the shilling in his right-hand pocket had nothing left to jingle against.
An hour later he walked into a public-house away in the West End, a house well known to him, and the money in his pocket jingled again, for the fare down had cost him fourpence, and there was a sixpence and two pennies left.
“What’s yours?” asked the barmaid haughtily. She, too, knew of Billy’s downfall, and had no use for “goners.”
“I came down to see Mr. Doyle,” answered Billy, with a smooth civility that was amazing from him.
“You can’t; he’s busy.”
Billy laid one elbow on the bar and leaned across it.
“Go and tell him I’m here!” he snarled. “Throw your weight about, now! I didn’t come here to bandy arguments with you. It’s not my style! Go and tell him!”
The girl stared open-mouthed. Even in his palmy days, more than a week ago, he had never dared to speak to her like that. She must have got the news wrong; perhaps Billy won his last battle after all. A hot answer rose to her lips and died away again as Billy stared at her; then she turned, and entered the inner room.
“You can go in,” she sneered when she came out again.
The proprietor had lunched pretty freely, so Billy found him in a jovial mood. He stroked the bulging piece of shirt that showed through his unbuttoned waistcoat, and shifted the cigar between his teeth, and sized up Billy with an eye that was critical but kindly.
“No, Bill, it’s no go!” he said, shaking his head and blowing out a huge cloud of smoke. “I know what you’re after; but you can’t do it; you'll never make the weight again, and I daren’t risk it. I dropped two-fifty backin’ you in that last go, to say nothin’ about your trainin’ exes.”
“How much ha’ you made the other times, when I won?” asked Billy, pointedly.
“I never made a penny more than I bargained for, Bill. I staked you every time, and I made my bit out of at. What have you done with your bit?”
“It’s gone!” said Billy.
“Aye, it’s gone! Where’d I be if my money was all gone the same way? You spent yours, and now you come to me for more. Where do I come in?”
“Here’s where you come in,” said Billy, leaning forward with his face close up to Doyle’s, and scowling to emphasise his argument. “’Tain’t any use gassin’ to me about where my money’s gone. It’s gone! I’m goin’ to get it back. You've got to help me. See here! You give me a show at the welter-weights, and see what I’ll do to ’em. I’ll make a pile o’ money. I got the punch, an’ I got the heart; all I want’s strength, an’ grub’ll do that, an’ trainin’. You can fix it. You can start me in the welters, an’ you'll see. I'll clean up the whole outfit!”
Doyle shook his head. “It’ll take too long, Bill, an’ it’s too risky. Why, you lost that last fight because you weren't strong enough to kill a fly. You’re too old to get strong now.”
“Am I? I’ll show you! I was weak from starvin’ to make the weight, same as you told me to. Give me a couple o’ months o’ feeding up an’ proper trainin’, an’ just you see what I'll do to the welters. I can lick anythin’ o’ my own size that walks when I’m fit!”
“You could once, Billy. I’m not bettin’ on you to do it again! Are you dead broke?”
“O’ course I’m broke. An’ how am I goin’ to be anythin’ else? That’s what licks me. Who’s goin’ to give me a job? Tell me that! I can’t do nothin’ but fight. See here, you gotter give me another chance at the fightin’ game. I made a pile for you. You gotter!”
“I won’t turn you out to starve, Bill; but you’re through with fightin’. You couldn’t lick a louse any longer. Why don’t you think o’ goin’ to the colonies? There’s lots o’ chances out there. Or—I tell you what—there’s America—the States—why not go there? I'll give you a letter to Tom Geoghan; he’s a friend of mine; he’s well up in the fightin’ game, lookin’ out all the time for new blood. Why not cross over and see if he can’t help you?”
“Haven’t got the price.”
“I’ll give you that, too.”
“An’ you won’t do nothin’ else? After the way I took your orders an’ fought to suit your book, an’ took a beatin’ from Pike Smithers, what I could ha’ licked wi’ one hand, just so’s you could bet against me, an’ then starved an sweated to make the weight, an’ took a real lickin’ to suit you when I wasn’t fit. Is that all you’ll do?”
“Ss-ss-ssh!” said Doyle. “I’ll do more than that, my boy. I’ll pay your passage and give you some money to land with at the other end.”
“How much money?”
“Ten pounds—a third-class passage and ten pounds. They won’t let you land with less.”
“Hand it over!” said Billy, resignedly. “I thought better of you, I did, straight! I done a —— of a lot for you in my time.”
“I’m doing a —— sight more for you now than any other man would,” answered Doyle angrily. “You cost me a heap o’ money in that last fight; anybody else would see you jiggered ’fore he’d give you another lift! Who picked you out o’ the gutter? Me! Who paid for all the teaching you had? Me, wasn’t it? Who got you a job as sparring partner to Mike Daly, so’s you could learn the game? Me! Who backed you when you fought? Me! An’ who was the heaviest loser over your last fight? Me, too!
“Still, you’ve been game, Bill, I’ll admit that, an’ you done your best. I’ll do something for you yet. Here’s a quid now; that’ll keep you until the boat sails; come back here Thursday mornin’ an’ I’ll have your ticket ready for you, an’ that letter I promised you, an’ I'll send a ten-pun note to the ship’s purser for him to give you when you get aboard. That’s the lot now—cut along and keep sober till Thursday—I’m busy!”
Billy realised that he would lose even that slim chance if he wasted any more words. Doyle was evidently satisfied in his own mind that he was being generous, though, as a matter of fact, of course, he was sending a played-out fighting man to starve where he would not be compelled to witness his sufferings, and even that was better from Billy’s point of view than remaining where he was in London.
Fighting men who fail to reach the top mostly end the same way; they look and talk like “pugs”; they know no useful trade; people simply don’t want them. A helping hand is usually denied them because the sort of people who might help them have an unwholesome horror of the “squared circle,” and everything pertaining to it; so they drift down gradually by the way of the Salvation Army shelters to a seat on the Thames Embankment, and thence to gaol. And the sort of food that is handed out in an English prison had no attraction for Billy Blain; so he took the sovereign and the thin chance that Doyle offered him, and bit hard on his pride.
The trip across the ocean was one of the greatest events of Billy’s life; the food was plain, of course, but there were three square meals a day, and Billy’s notion of a square meal was something to wonder at; he was feeling fine when he reached Ellis Island. But there his troubles began again.
The purser had handed him his ten pounds in gold on the evening of the second day out, and had held his tongue about it in the interest of his company; but it transpired that some one else had paid for Billy’s ticket, so he was held for examination. The doctors were through with him in two minutes, but it took the board of examiners ten.
“How much money have you got?” asked the chairman.
Billy produced four English sovereigns.
“That’s not enough,” said the chairman; “the law is that you must have at least twenty-five dollars in addition to the fare to wherever you are going. Still, we don’t always insist on that. Have you a job to go to?”
“No,” said Bill, who had been primed by the stewards on the way, across.
“Well, what can you do for a living, supposing you are allowed to land?”
“Fight anything on two legs!” said Billy promptly.
So they sent him back to the detention rooms and slated him for deportation: the board’s vote was unanimous.
But there are people on Ellis Island who are not quite so particular as the examining board—big Irish guards, for instance, who love any one who can fight, and are sincerely sorry for any kind of “white man” whose fate it is to be cooped up in a detention room with forty or fifty unwashed men who are “not white.” It was one of these who got the truth out of Billy, and told the Commissioner; and Billy was sent for before the board again.
“Is it true,” asked the chairman, “that you had ten pounds with you when you left England?”
“Yes,” said Billy.
“What did you do with the rest?”
“What’s that got to do with you? Can’t I do what I like with my own?”
“Um-m-m! Did you give any of it to a woman by any chance?”
“Yes, I did. What of it?”
“Why did you give her your money?”
“’Cause she wouldn’t have been able to land if I hadn’t; she’d have broke her heart if she’d been sent back.”
“Um-m-m! What about yourself? You knew that she needed at least five pounds to land with; how did you come to leave yourself with less than that amount?”
“Well, I ain’t a woman, am I?”
“No, I guess you’re not! The order for your deportation has been revoked.”
“You mean I can land?” asked Billy.
“You may.”
“Thank Heaven!” And Billy landed.
II.
Billy felt cocky as you please when he landed, for with Doyle’s letter of introduction to Tom Geoghan, and twenty dollars into the bargain in his pocket, he could see no cloud in the offing anywhere.
He inquired his way to Geoghan’s and accosted that worthy with something approaching the old-time confidence that had won him half his battles.
“What’s your weight?” asked Geoghan, eyeing him with evident suspicion, and cramming the half-read letter into his pocket.
“A hundred and forty when I left London.”
“Thought so! And it’s more likely a hundred and fifty now. You might as well weigh a ton! You haven’t an earthly!”
“I'll do fine for the welters,” said Billy, still confident; he thought that this was possibly Geoghan’s method of bargaining.
‘Did all your fighting as a light-weight, didn’t you?” asked Geoghan.
Billy nodded.
“And couldn’t make good, eh? And now vou come over here and think you'll find a sucker to pay your board-bill and exes and stake you and advertise you and give you a show all for love! You’re not the first that’s tried that on—not by a long way! You’d better go and chase up a job for yourself before you get hungry!”
“But, here! You read that letter again, an’ see what Doyle says. Don’t he say I can use ’em?”
“He says you were an all-right light-weight—were, mind you. Who's Doyle, anyway? Besides, I know what that means; it means you’re not strong enough to punch a hole in a piece of paper; you’re like one o’ those jockeys that can just sit on a horse and grin and long for dinner-time. I know; you can’t play anew one on me! New York’s full o’ good game middle-weights an’ welters that are glad to fight for five bucks a night, and can’t get the chance o’ that more’n once a month or so. Take my tip an’ get a job on a farm, or layin’ bricks, or somethin’ with money in it.”
“Don’t you know any one who wants a sparrin’ partner?” asked Billy, still determined. “I can take all the punchin’ any one can give me, an’ come back for more; I tell you I’m game!”
“So are heaps of others that I know of. No, I can’t do a thing for you. You’re too heavy for a light-weight and too light for a middle-weight; and you don’t look strong, either.”
“Let me put the gloves on with somebody—just once—I’ll show you! Pick a man in training—a middle-weight if you like—see what I do to him!”
“Nah-h. Nothin’ doin’! I can size you up without tryin’ you out. You’re too big an’ too weak. Good-day; I hope you get a job o’ some sort.”
But Billy Blain was still determined; it was not in his scheme of existence to give in as long as he could stand, and he consoled himself with the reflection that there were other men in New York besides Geoghan. So he tried every club-manager on the East Side, and every “pro” in training; he called on three sporting editors, numberless saloonkeepers, and tried even the moving-picture makers; but not'a word of encguragement was to be met with anywhere.
Some of them advised him to hurry home to England before the winter came, and one or two made a note of his address at the Mills Hotel, and promised to write later on; but nobody even hinted at the chance of a present engagement. And Billy was still determined. He kept rigidly away from drink and tobacco in order to be fit when his opportunity did come, and started off to make the rounds again.
It was not until every single cent had vanished and the pangs of hunger had begun gnawing him that he wandered disconsolately over to the West Side to hunt up a temporary job. The fighting game was his chosen profession, and he meant to stick to it, and he would have refused a steady job if any one had offered it; he simply wanted something—hard work in the open air for choice—that would keep him in funds and keep his stomach full until the great day came.
He ran into his opportunity on West-Street, in the shape of an enormous Irishman in the unmistakable kit of a ship's engineer. The immediate cause of the meeting was the absence of five cents to buy a glass of beer with, and it was alcohol of a much more potent kind that later on brought matters to a head. For the present, though, O’Hanlon was particularly sober, Billy was still hungry, and the Fates seemed to be even more relentless than usual.
It happened this way. There was a desultory sort of dock-strike dragging out its course, and West-street was thronged with lounging seamen of every nationality under the sun—drunk, sober, half-seas over, maudlin, quarrelsome, good-natured, down-at-heel, prosperous—every kind of seaman of every sort of rating, and most of them with a dollar or more to spend. So the saloons were thriving. Billy, who knew nothing of unions and cared less, intended for the time being to become a blackleg, and he walked along West-street from pier to pier with the laudable idea of helping somebody unload a strike-bound ship, at the imminent risk of bodily injury, no doubt, but at something like double the usual rates. And as he walked his hunger grew, until it was very nearly unbearable.
Over the way, where almost every other building shelters a bar of sorts, the big black notice-boards, advertising the marvellous free lunch to be had inside, grew as big as Broadway sky-signs in Billy’s imagination. He simply couldn’t keep his eyes off them. And, of course, the more he looked at them, the worse his hunger grew. By the time that he had walked the length of West-street and half the way back again the temptation became altogether too strong for him.
He deliberately chose the saloon that was doing the business, entered it, together with half a dozen seamen, and helped himself in liberal handfuls to the pile of sandwiches that was heaped up on a dish on the free-lunch counter. He was well dressed still, and with any luck he should have escaped attention, but Billy’s luck seemed to be altogether out at elbow. The bar-keeper noticed him.
“I didn’t see you buyin’ anything,” said the white-aproned official pointedly.
“No?” said Billy. “You’d better peel your eyes!”
“Out o’ this!” said the barkeeper, throwing up the hinged leaf of the counter and rushing through.
Billy never blamed himself for what followed. If a man’s chin is weak and pointed and he is fool enough to push it straight in the path of an absolute stranger’s fist, what can he expect? The barkeeper lay full length on his back on the floor of the saloon, drumming his heels and dreaming of rainbows; half of the men in the saloon stood and laughed at him, and two or three yelled murder; half a dozen opportunist experts began hastily swiping every sandwich in sight, and Billy dashed through the folding doors into the street, thoroughly frightened for the first time in his existence.
As he ran he heard the yells of “Murder!” and though he thought he had not killed the man, he knew very well by the feel of the blow as it landed on the point of the fellow’s chin that he had knocked him senseless; and he had yet to learn that over here in America the beating up of bartenders is not quite such a serious offence as it is likely to be regarded in England.
As he ran straight up West-street, past the Soldiers’ Home, the thought was in his mind that half the detectives in New York would be on his trail within an hour; so he kept glancing over his shoulder to see whether any one was following him. When a man is running at top speed, he is wise if he looks only in front of him, and it was certainly a stroke of luck for Billy Blain that he crashed into nobody more vindictive than Terence O’Hanlon, chief engineer of the coasting steamer Diogenes.
“Whoops, my dear! said O’Hanlon, throwing two huge arms around him and holding him in a grip like the bight of a ship’s hawser. “Where are you goin’ to, my pretty maid?”
They were two huge hairy arms that held him, dark and long like an orang-outang’s, and stronger than any Billy had yet encountered; but he struck and struggled and plunged his elbow as a last resource into the giant’s stomach, only to find the grip tighter yet.
“Curse ye! Ye little scut!” said O’Hanlon, picking him clean off his legs and squeezing the breath out of him. “Who taught ye that trick, I’d like to know? ’T’ll be the cops ye’re runnin’ from, I'll bet all the money in the worr-ld. Come in here, my son, while I find out why ye’re runnin’, an’ see whether I’ll hand ye over, or wring your neck, or what!”
“Lemme go, guv’nor!” panted Billy.
“So ye’re a dirrty little Sassenach, are ye? ’Tis the first time anybody called me governor on West-street! I’ll not let ye go at all; ye'll come right in here with me!”
He led Billy up the steps of the Sailors’ Home, and, with a nod of recognition to the man at the desk, dumped him on one of the benches in the seamen’s room.
“Now, then, ye little firebrand!” he ordered, still rubbing the place where Billy’s elbow had landed, “tell me all about it before I hand ye over to the minions of the law; they’ll likely treat ye less gently than I did. Come on—talk!”
So Billy talked; he could see nothing else for it, and there was just the faintest chance in the world that this great blue-coated, brass-buttoned giant might be a friend in disguise.
“Are ye sure ye killed him?” asked O’Hanlon.
“Garn!” said Billy, “I never killed him; I put him to sleep, that’s all.”
“Well, that saves ye from the chair, my son. ’Twill be no more than ten years up the river ye’ll get, providin’ he doesn’t die within a week. And I’ve a mind to save ye from that! Did ye ever shovel coal?”
“Me?” asked Bill, in amazement.
“I see ye didn’t. I doubt ye never did an honest day’s wor-r-k in your life. I'll alter it. Will ye shovel coal? I’m short a trimmer or two; I could make shift at a pinch with one more man, but I can’t go to sea till I get him. Ye can be that man if ye like; they’ll never look for ye aboard ship, an’ ye can come back to New York when they’ve forgotten the crime ye’ve committed. I’m compounding a felony or worse, but I can’t go to sea without trimmers, an’ there ye are. Will ye come?”
“Where to?”
“New Orleans and back.”
“I’m on!” said Billy. “But see here, I’ve got to have a feed before I do a stroke o’ work. I’m that ’ungry you’d never believe.”
“You can eat all ye like within the hour!” said O’Hanlon, getting up to go, but keeping hold of Billy’s sleeve. “Come, and I’ll sign ye on.”
III.
So within ten days of his having landed in New York Billy Blain was at sea again, though this time the circumstances were a little different. His conscience pricked him a little, not very much, but sufficiently to make him uncomfortable. He was a fugitive from justice, and a man’s first experience of that sort is never very pleasant. As he walked aboard, close behind O’Hanlon, men shouted “Scab!” at him, and half a brick missed him by less than half an inch.
He got the square meal that he had bargained for, but he had to eat it in a filthy fo’castle, in which a crew of Greeks and Italians and one Chinaman chewed garlic and spat and eyed him all the while with evident suspicion. As Billy eyed the dingy hole he was to sleep in for the next month or so, it would have been very difficult to persuade him that his luck had turned at last and that he was started on the road to fortune. He felt homesick, and as soon as the ship got under way he became seasick; and he hated and despised his companions with the whole-hearted loathing that only a London Cockney knows how to entertain for any kind of foreigner.
Within an hour, seasick though he was, he was fighting with four disgruntled and grievously insulted foreigners. They were the four other trimmers of his watch, and one of them had tried to order him about. The fo’castle was divided in two down the middle; the seamen slept on one side of the partition and the firemen and trimmers on the other, the two classes mixing about as well as gunpowder and lighted matches. The seamen of the watch below, Americans all of them, came round to the firemen’s side when they heard the noise of fighting, and sicked him on joyously, keeping the other inmates of the firemen’s quarters from joining in. They decided that four at a time was enough even for a white man to tackle. Billy felt better when he had blacked the eyes of every one of the four, and he went down to do his trick below, feeling almost pleased with himself.
The work below, of course, was awful; there were four hours of it straight on end in the stuffy, dusty bunkers, shovelling low-grade soft coal out on to the fire-room floor. The Dagoes that he worked with were used to it; they knew the trick, and left all the heavier work to Billy; but he went at it as though it were a fight that he had to win.
With his eyes and mouth and hair full of black grit, with the sweat that streamed off him formed into rivers of black mud and caking into solid blocks around his waist, he bored in and shovelled for his life. He meant to show the Dagoes that he was the better man at trimming as well as fighting. And they let him do the lion’s share of the work, and laughed at him.
His tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, and his head sang; the ship rolled her gunwales under in a beam sea; great chutes of coal came sliding down from the upper bunkers in thundering, dusty, sudden cataclysms; the dim, screened light cast a ghastly, smoky pallor over everything; and Billy drove his shovel in and swung it round, drove it in again and stuck to it like a good ’un, while the Dagoes took it fairly easy, and glanced at him from time to time and grinned.
Inside the fire-room the furnaces roared like the voice of a hungry mob. “Clang!” went the fire-doors, and “Ra-a-a-h!” went the firemen’s shovels on the steel door. “Do it again—do it again—do it again!” sang the engines.
Every now and then a sweating fireman shoved his head through the bunker-door and shouted: “Hi, there! More coal! Are ye sleepin’ or what?”
“Pur-r-r! went the dynamo somewhere inside the engine-room. “Tuk-click—tuk-click—tuk-click!” sang the score of pumps. Through and under and over everything was the hiss of escaping steam. “Boom!” went the sea outside, and the ship cork-screwed and plunged and rolled, and worried her nose into a mountain of black water. “Crash!” came the coal again from the upper bunkers, and “More coal!” roared the fireman. Billy stood there, black as the ace of spades, and thought he was back in the ring again! The four hours were at an end before he knew it.
His back ached as he had never known it to ache, even after a long, hard day of training; his hands—and he hadn’t ladies’ hands—were blistered and burned like fire; he was parched, giddy, and very nearly tired out; but he still had his wits about him. He knew that the four Dagoes had soaked him with more than his share of work, and he meant to get even. As the next watch came down to relieve them, he flung his shovel down and made for the iron ladder that led up on deck, but a Dago elbowed past him.
“You go to da galley. You geta da grub,” said the Dago.
That sounded good to Billy; he realised suddenly that he was hungry again. If he did as he was told for once, and fetched the grub, he would at least get first go at it; he could take his fill before the others could stick their filthy fingers in the mess, as he had seen them do when he first came on board. So he struggled along to the galley, hanging on by anything that gave a purchase, and carried the “kid” of stew forward to the fo'castle.
But the Dagoes had not let him fetch the food for nothing; among the four of them they had seven black eyes and thirty-two several insults to wipe out, and they meant to do it without any unseemly delay that might reflect still further upon their honour. They were waiting for him at the foot of the fo’castle steps when Billy came down with the “kid,” holding it carefully in both hands, and unable, as they imagined, to protect himself.
It surely was a fight that followed.
O’Hanlon, the chief engineer, who had recruited Billy, was up on the bridge, getting a mouthful of fresh air and talking to the skipper. A heavy sea was running, and the night was full of noises, but both men heard the rough-house in the fo’castle, and leaned over the bridge to listen.
“What ha’ ye shipped this trip, Terence?” asked the skipper. “A carload o’ tigers, or what? That's the second fight since we left New York.”
“Seems I’ve signed on one tiger, anyhow!” said O’Hanlon. “There’s only one white man among all that bunch of dock-rats—a little Cockney Englishman I picked up in West-street. Sounds to me as though he’s tryin’ to kill the lot o’ them. One of us two had better go and see what’s up, or shall I call the mate?”
“No. You stay here, Terence, and take charge till I come back; I’ll go myself.”
The captain clambered down the ladder from the bridge and worked his way slowly forward.
All was silent in the fo’castle, or, at least, in the firemen’s side of it, when the skipper got there. He pushed his head through the fo’castle door.
“What’s been doing down there?” he bellowed.
There was no answer.
“Are ye all dead or what?”
There was still no answer, so he started down the stairs. The light was full on in the fo’castle. There were men sleeping in some of the bunks, or pretending to sleep. The four Dagoes of Billy’s watch sat in uneasy attitudes on a locker, and on the floor lay Billy, bleeding from a knife-wound in the head.
“Who knifed him?” demanded the skipper.
Nobody answered. The skipper bent over the prostrate body and tried to feel the heart-beats; but Billy moved, and began trying to sit up, so the skipper turned to the Dagoes again.
“Which o’ you men knifed him?” he demanded.
Nobody answered.
“All right! Hand over your knives, the whole lot of you. Come on! Bring ’em all here, and lay them on the table!”
Nobody answered and nobody moved but Billy; he got up off the floor, staggered a little, and sat down on the nearest locker. The skipper stepped forward and seized the nearest Dago by the throat, banging his head against the woodwork of the bunk behind him.
“D’ye hear me? Give me your knife! Hand it over!”
Billy shook the blood out of his eyes, and began to feel better; his wound was only superficial, and he was recovering from the effects of it with the fighting man’s amazing quickness that is one of his chief assets.
“Hand ’em over!’ said the skipper again, still holding the first man by the throat and reaching out to seize another one.
“Look out, guv’nor!” shouted Billy, springing across the floor.
A knife flashed, and Billy seized it; and in a second he and the captain and the four Dagoes were fighting like wildcats. The captain was no duffer with his fists; the captain of a coastwise tramp has no business to be. With Billy to help him, he had the four Dagoes out of action in a minute, bleeding and half-senseless on the floor. But men leaped from the bunks suddenly and joined in the fray. Billy and the skipper retreated slowly backward toward the steps, fighting every inch of the way.
“Stay by me!” roared the skipper. “Keep close!”
But Billy was a born fighter, and he bored into the bunch of snarling trimmers as he had bored into the heap of coal a quarter of an hour ago, slugging with all his might, and the skipper had, perforce, to follow him.
It would have been all up with both of them if Terence O’Hanlon had not arrived on the scene. He had heard the noise, and had lost no time in summoning the mate. The moment the mate came on to the bridge, Terence rushed forward to help the skipper, and waded into the fray with his enormous fists like a full-sized typhoon in a land-locked bay.
He was like to burst the bulkhead in his fury. They got every knife in the fo’castle, and took them upon deck and threw them overboard. The captain took hold of Billy’s arm and pushed him up the steps in front of him, Terence O’Hanlon coming up last to guard against surprises from behind.
“That's no place for a white man,” said the skipper. “You'll stay in the starboard fo’castle from now on with the seamen, d’you understand? Come into the light here and let me see that cut on your head.”
“Fetch him up on the bridge,” said O’Hanlon; “we can see better up there. Lord love us, but the boy can fight! Did ye ever see the likes of it?”
“Not me!” said the skipper. “They’d have had me down but for him. Does that cut hurt you?” he asked.
“Nothin’ to worry about,” Billy answered. “I’ve had a sight worse hurts than that.”
“Ah!” said the skipper, bending over him up on the bridge and examining the cut closely, “by the time that’s washed out and I’ve put a couple o’ stitches in it, or maybe three, you'll be little the worse. Who taught you to fight like that, eh?”
“It’s my trade,” said Billy, laughing.
IV.
The steadiest, most resourceful, and severest engineer in all the coast-going fleet of merchant ships was Terence O’Hanlon—while he was at sea. On shore he was a different person. His ship was usually in New York for six days at a time; he was always sober the first day, because he had the owners to interview, and there were various matters relating to indents for the engine-room to be attended to; and on the last day before his vessel left port he was also sober—as an example to the crew. But in between times he was usually drunk. He never became fighting drunk or melancholy or sleepy; his was the foolish, good-natured type of jag that set his tongue wagging sixteen to the dozen, and made him boast of things that never happened and never could happen.
So when the steamer Diogenes reached New York on her journey back from New Orleans, he was still very much “all there”; his engine-room was the cleanest and best kept of any steamer’s on the coast, and his indents and accounts were ready and in order. He sent for Billy less than an hour after the ship had tied up at the pier-side, and received him in his cabin with his sleeves rolled up and a pen stuck behind his ear.
“Now then, young man,” he demanded, “are you making another trip with us or not? You’ve made good. I never knew a man work better, an’ I like ye. I'll take ye on as fireman for the next trip if ye’ll come; but suit yourself.”
“Sure,” said Billy, “I’ll go again. There ain’t enough money comin’ to me yet—not that I’d quit if there was. I’m getting stronger every day at this shovelin’, an’ that suits me to beat the band. I'll quit when I’ve saved some dollars an’ got a bit more muscle on; then it’s me for the ring again.”
“All right,” said O’Hanlon. “You stand by the ship, then, I'll find ye plenty to do in the engine-room while we’re in port, an’ ye’ll get paid for it. You rank as fireman from now on.”
“Good for you, guv’nor!” said Billy. O’Hanlon grinned as his back disappeared through the doorway; he was accustomed to being called “sir” when aboard ship, but, barring an occasional referee, Billy had never called anybody “sir” in his life.
“There’s the makin’s of a man in that little stick o’ dynamite,” muttered O’Hanlon as he walked round the deckhouse to the captain’s cabin.
“I’ll be going ashore this afternoon,” he told the skipper; “I’ve a matter o’ seven-fifty comin’ to me at the office—back pay, an’ a bit I’ve saved an’ one thing an’ another. I’m goin’ up to draw it.”
“I suppose that means you’re goin’ on the bust again? Lord! What a fool you are, Terence! Why, man, with your brains you could be anything if you’d keep off the booze!”
“Aw can that,” said O’Hanlon. “Let me talk a minute. I’m goin’ to deposit it with a buildin’ society that’s got an office on Broadway. I’ve a mind to build a house o’ my own some day, to retire into when I quit the sea.”
“I only hope you’ll really do it, Terence. All right, the Second ’ll be in charge, then?”
“I only wish you’d stop preachin’. I might like ye better then. Yes, the Second ’ll be in charge. I’ve told him what I want doin’. Oh, an’, by the way, ye know that little scut of an Englishman that ye put on the seamen’s side o’ the fo’castle? He’s comin’ for another trip. I’m takin’ him on as fireman, so ye’d better let him stay where he is.
“You don’t mean to say he likes the job?”
“He likes the grub, an’ he likes me, an’ he thinks he’s puttin’ on muscle. I wish I could chase up another dozen o’ his sort, but they ain’t easy to find. Well, so long!”
Terence O’Hanlon had really made up his mind this time to turn over a new leaf. He ought to have saved a deal more than seven hundred and fifty dollars during his career, but the fact that he had not done it could not be helped. He intended to begin now and make that seven hundred and fifty the basis of a snug little fortune. So he walked up to the office and drew his nest-egg, and then started off toward Broadway, where the Building and Home Association office was.
It was just in keeping with his usual luck, though, that he should run straight into a fight manager of his acquaintance at the corner of Fourteenth-street, and quite in keeping with his character that he should accept an invitation to drink.
“Where are you bound for, anyway?” asked the fight promoter.
“Oh, just up Broadway—a little matter o’ private business—it can wait.”
“Why not put it over till to-morrow, then, if there’s no hurry? I’m goin’ down to Sharkey’s to-night to watch the prelims. I’ve got to find a man for Friday night. Have some dinner with me, and we’ll go on there afterward.”
Now, O’Hanlon loved a fight better than anything else in the world. He would fight himself without overmuch inducement, but the knowledge of his enormous strength, and the risk he ran of injuring somebody permanently, took half of the pleasure out of that. But to see two evenly-matched men scrapping for a purse was another story; he could think of nothing that he liked better than to watch it, and he knew, as all out-and-out fight-fans know, that the best fights are to be seen between men or boys at the bottom of the pugilistic tree, who need the money badly and are out to win it.
“I’ll go with ye, Geoghan!” he said. “I'll be —— if I won't.”
Drinks followed—round after round of drinks. Everybody in pugilistic circles knew Terence O’Hanlon, and a reputation such as his is not to be lived down in half a day. He soon grew tired of explaining why he wouldn’t drink, and drank to save argument. He was “half-seas-over” before he reached the gymnasium even; it was long after midnight when he got back to the ship in what the skipper called “his usual condition,” and tumbled into bed all standing.
He showed up in the—skipper’s cabin the following morning with a look of woe on his good-natured face that far surpassed any of his former symptoms of contrition.
“I know!” said the skipper promptly. “Drew the money out—took it up-town—got drunk, and lost it! That right?”
“Not so bad as that! By the great horn spoon, Robert, I’ve done the drunkest, —— foolest, idioticest thing I ever did in my life! I remembered it this morning when I looked in my wallet and found five hundred dollars missing.”
“How did you come to lose it? Get held up?”
“I tell ye I didn’t lose it! Won’t ye listen! I gave it away, or as near as may be! I gave it to an official stake-holder down at Sharkey’s club. He’s got it now, and five hundred of the other man’s, an’ he’ll give ’em both to the other man next Friday night unless a mirr-acle happens. It’s awful to think about!”
“What have you been backin’ yourself to do this time?” asked the skipper. “Jump over the Singer Building, or what? Or maybe you’re going to jump off it?”
“’Tisn’t myself I’ve betted on. I'd be feelin’ better if it was! I went down wi’ a man named Geoghan——”
“I know Geoghan,” interrupted the skipper. “He’s an —— out-and-out crook.”
“No, he’s not! He’s a little near the knuckle, that’s all. Well, as I was tellin’ you, only ye wouldn’t listen, I went wi’ Geoghan down to Tom Sharkey’s, an’ we got talkin’ fight. In between times I wouldn’t be surprised if we had a drink or two—there was several there that knew me. Geoghan was sore as a bear about a fight he’d got arranged for Friday night. Joe Sullivan, of Yonkers, and Mike Evans, of New York. Ten rounds at the welter limit for a purse o’ five hundred dollars—no decision—three hundred for Joe Sullivan, and two hundred for Mike Evans, unless Mike chanced to win by a knock-out, when the division was to be the other way round. Both boys had posted their forfeits, and the fight was goin’ to be a dandy—half ¢he fans in New York were comin’ to see it.
“What happens then but Mike Evans gets a grouch about the division of the purse—or gets scared more likely—lets his forfeit go hang, and calls the fight off. I had some more drinks while he was tellin’ me all that, an’ when he told me he couldn’t find a guy to fight in place o’ this man Mike Evans, I bet him five hundred right off the reel that I’d got a man who could knock Joe Sullivan’s block off—me never havin’ seen Sullivan in my life, mind you.”
“Well?” said the skipper. “Did he take the bet?”
“We argued a bit first, but in the end the bet stood this way: I’m to find a man by ten o’clock on Friday night; he’s to weigh in at welter-weight limit or less at the ring-side, and he’s got to go five rounds against Joe Sullivan without gettin’ knocked out. If he does then I won five hundred dollars; if he don’t I lose. If he stands up for ten rounds, my man gets two hundred for himself, and if he knocks out Joe Sullivan he gets three hundred, and Sullivan has to take the thin end; but if he don’t go the ten rounds my man gets nothin’.”
“That sounds pretty much like Geoghan,” said the skipper. “He’s probably got a man in Sullivan that’s never been knocked out yet, and has won all his fights in the second or third round with a sleep-punch.”
“That’s just what he has got. But listen to me. The point is, d’ye think that little Englishman we’ve got in the fo’castle can fill the bill?”
“I don’t know. I guess he’s got pluck enough to try though, and he’s your only chance unless you’ve met somebody else in your wanderings. You'd better fetch him up here and ask him.”
So Billy was fetched up on to the bridge again, and stood there in greasy overalls while O’Hanlon put the proposition up to him.
“Sounds like a chance to me!” said Billy. “Who's this bloke Sullivan? I never heard of him.”
“He’s a guy that can just make the welter weight limit,” said O’Hanlon. “He’s got a punch like a mule’s kick, and wins by the knock-out route mostly. They say he’s an Eyetalian, but whatever he is there’s no doubt he’s game.”
“So’m I game!” said Billy. “There ain’t nobody in the world that can finish me in five rounds, not at that weight! I maybe can’t lick him, but see here, guv’nor, if I don’t stay five rounds with this bloke Sullivan, you can kick me off the ship afterwards. I’m stronger an’ fitter’n I ever was—I ain’t trained exactly, but I’m hard as nails. An’ two hundred for me if I stay the ten? Crikey! You see me try for it!”
“If you only stay five, you'll get a hundred from me,” said O’Hanlon, “I don’t want you to fight for nothing.”
“Good. for you, guv’nor. You'll have to give me a chance to get clean, though—I can’t go into the ring like this. It ’ud take me a week to scrape this muck off aboard ship.”
“We'll go ashore this afternoon and have a Turkish bath together,” said the engineer. “I’m thinkin’ I could do wi’ one myself. Get down to the engine-room now an’ finish your work—I’ll call for you at three o’clock—an’ not a drink an’ not a cigarette till Friday night, mind.”
“You bet yer life,” said Billy.
V.
When Friday night came O’Hanlon and the skipper were as nervous as children. Not so Billy. The ring looked good to him, the glare of the electrics over the rope-enclosed, canvas-covered square and the hum of the talking fans reminded him of home again, though he missed the sea of white shirt-fronts that used to make the background in the National Sporting Club in London.
The management had offered to provide him seconds and attendants, but he had insisted on having O’Hanlon in his corner, and Charley the cabin steward to use the towel; he had not even asked the name of the man who was staging the fight, but took it for granted that he was not all he ought to be.
“You don’t know this game like I do,” he told O’Hanlon. “They think I’m new to it and they'll try all the dirty tricks they know on me.”
There were two hard-fought preliminaries before the time came for Billy’s fight, so the fans were in a fairly good humour, and a small burst of applause greeted him as he crawled through the ropes and sat in his corner. He had to sit there for five full minutes before the other man showed up, but that was only the first of their tricks to make him nervous, and Billy knew it. He felt about as nervous as a steam-roller.
“Let's look at that bottle,” he ordered. “Give it here.”
O’Hanlon passed him a bottle, already filled with water that had been provided by the management. Billy took it, smelt it, examined the rim carefully, and then emptied its contents on the floor behind him.
“Pitch that away, and the sponge and the bucket too,” he ordered. “Now take the ones that Charlie brought along, and go fill ’em at the tap yourself; then bring ’em back here and let nobody touch ’em till the fight’s over. Keep the bottle in your hand the whole time, an’ you, Charlie, keep your eye on that towel. Take care that no one monkeys with it. Where’s the skipper?”
“Sittin’ over there in the front row.”
“Well, go and tell him never to mind the fight; tell him to keep his two eyes on my corner, an’ watch out for tricks.”
“What sort o’ tricks?”
“—— you’re green. Tell him if he sees any one come creepin’ round here when you’re busy, to come over himself an’ watch the other man, that’s all; I don’t want my water doped, nor I don’t want any pepper on the towel neither.”
So O’Hanlon went over to the skipper and whispered to him. The other nodded.
“Now, remember,” said Billy, when O’Hanlon came back again, “don’t you claim no foul so long as I can stand up. If that guy finds he can't put me out he’ll like as not try some dirty business in the fifth; if you're fool enough to claim a foul the referee ’ll stop the fight, an’ then the other man ’ll claim your five hundred ’cause the fight didn’t go five rounds as agreed, nor he won’t pay me a cent neither. Savvy?”
“I never thought o’ that,” said O’Hanlon.
“Well, think about it now, then, an’ don’t you forget it. Know the referee?”
“Known him years—he's straight as a die.”
“Sure?”
“Certain.”
“Good. Here they come. Now watch the fun begin.”
Joe Sullivan of Yonkers crawled leisurely between the ropes, scowled at Billy, and sat down in his corner. He was well known, and rounds of applause broke out the moment he showed himself. Six or seven men grouped themselves in the corner behind him; most of them looked like fighters, and all of them looked over in Billy’s direction and laughed outright. One of them walked across the ring and stood straight in front of Billy, looking him over.
“Gee! What an awful-looking rummy,” he remarked, and sauntered back again.
Billy appeared quite indifferent; he was eyeing Joe Sullivan with nothing more than curiosity.
“He don’t look such a bloomin’ Jim Jeffries after all,” he remarked. “He's a Dago, too, if ever I see one.
“Feel like whipping him?” asked O'Hanlon, who was sweating and trembling with anxiety.
“Dunno yet. He’s trained and I ain’t. He looks trained a bit fine to me, though—he only made the weight by four ounces, an’ I bet he’s sweating to do it. Wait here while I go an’ see his bandages.”
Billy strolled very coolly across the ring and claimed his privilege of inspection; it might have been a pack of wolves that faced him, the way they snarled and tried to scare him; but the referee entered the ring at that minute and Billy appealed to him.
“Here,” he said, “look at this. He’s got about a ton of iron wire round each fist. Call that tape? Why, it’s as hard as rock, an’ there’s enough of it to rope a box with. Look at his gloves, too. That’s dry blood, that’s what that is—dry blood and resin.. P’raps you think this is a slaughter-’ouse you’ve come to.”
There was a chorus of expostulation from Sullivan’s corner, headed by Sullivan himself. They called Billy every kind of faker they could think of—accused him of living off free-lunch counters, and of keeping fit by running away from the police—howled at him—threatened him—snarled at him.
But Billy stood his ground, still smiling; and the referee backed him up. Sullivan had to take off more than half the tape, and the referee ordered new gloves as well, which Billy examined carefully before tossing them to Sullivan.
He strolled back to his corner then, and two of Sullivan’s seconds came across to retaliate. But Billy wore no bandages, and the gloves he had were new; they felt them carefully, and accused him of wanting to put gas-pipe in them. They told him that they knew his reputation, and that they couldn’t be too careful with a crook like him in the ring; and then they sneered at O’Hanlon and asked who let him escape from the Bronx Zoo.
In fact, they played all the old accepted tricks, and several new ones, for “getting their opponent’s goat.” But Billy sat still and smiled at them; they failed to realise that he was used to it, and wasted enough good hot-air on him to float a full-sized balloon.
The next move was made by the announcer, and both men stood up while he introduced them and bellowed his set speech to the audience.
“Gentlemen,” he shouted, “the match between Joe Sullivan, of Yonkers, and Mike Evans, of New York, for ten rounds at the welter-weight limit, this evening, unfortunately fell through owing to a misunderstanding at the last moment. Rather than disappoint you all, the management has secured the services of Billy Blain, of London, England, who will take Mike Evans’s place. You all know Joe Sullivan, winner of ——,” and he reeled off a list of Sullivan’s victories, actual and alleged.
“This, gentlemen, is Billy Blain, unknown hitherto on this side of the water, but a former runner-up for the light-weight championship on the other side. This is his first appearance in the ring in America, and his first appearance in any country at more than a hundred and thirty-three pounds ring-side. Kindly keep your seats, gentlemen, while the match is in progress.”
The announcer retired to the accompaniment of a little clapping, and a distinct murmur of disappointment; then the referee called the two men into the centre for instructions. Joe Sullivan made one more attempt to get on Billy’s nerves, standing between him and the referee and turning his back on him scornfully; Billy seized him by the elbows, and spun him around and backward out of the way. The fans roared with laughter, and it was Sullivan who lost his temper—not Billy. The talk with the referee was soon over; they agreed to fight straight Queensberry rules, break clean, and protect themselves at all times.
Then the referee drew back to one side of the ring, and the men shook hands perfunctorily, and stood sizing each other up—Billy smiling and indifferent, and Sullivan—scowling fiercely under lowered eyebrows.
“Now keep your head, sonny!” called O’Hanlon in a stage whisper that could be heard ail the way across the house.
Everybody laughed, including Billy, but he did not turn his head. The crowd in Sullivan’s corner howled derision—dubbed him sonny on the spot—named O’Hanlon “poppa”—and kept a running fire of jokes on the subject that made O’Hanlon nearly mad with rage.
“Time!”
Sullivan crouched suddenly, as James J. Jeffries used to do, and began walking crab-wise round Billy, looking for an opening. The crouch is a very useful attitude to take with a beginner, for it scares him and rattles him and looks almost impossible to take advantage of. Billy reached over suddenly, and caught him a chopping blow on the top of the head that brought him upright in a second, and as he straightened out of the crouch Billy ripped in a left-hook to the mouth that drew blood, jumping clear again like a flash.
It was neat work, and first blood for Billy; the house roared. Sullivan bored in then with his head low, swinging a savage left for the body; Billy waltzed out of the reach of it and punched him on the ear as he passed, drawing blood again. Sullivan rushed in to a clinch, and Billy chopped him out of it again with short-arm body-blows, but slipped as he broke away, and Sullivan got home with a regular pile-driver to the heart that sent Billy sprawling on his back.
“Ah-h-h!” roared the house.
But Billy was up again like a flash and as lively on his feet as ever, avoiding Suilivan’s swings and getting in an occasional blow to the head that roused Sullivan’s temper but did little damage. At the call of time it was anybody’s round.
“D’ye think ye can go to the five?” asked O’Hanlon, leaning over him diligently with the towel.
“Dunno yet,” said Billy. “He'll begin fightin’ in the second—you see!”
He did, too. At the call of “Time,” Sullivan tore across the ring, well over to Billy’s side, and began slugging like a madman. Billy blocked one blow, and ducked another, managing to get home one on Sullivan’s chin, a stinging upper-cut; but Sullivan began roughing him at close quarters, so Billy sprang away, dancing in and out and beating a light tattoo every now and then on Sullivan’s head.
Sullivan got him against the ropes once, half-way through the round, and slammed in a terrific right to the body; Billy clinched, and Sullivan leaned all his weight on him and roughed it with his elbows and forehead, but Billy chopped him out of it before the referee had time to interfere. It was Sullivan’s round, but the blood in his mouth was bothering him, and he had used up an awful lot of steam. Billy seemed quite fresh still.
Sullivan repeated his tactics in the third round, scarcely troubling to guard, and slamming for the body with all his might. Billy took advantage of every opening, sending in stinging blows to the face, paying particular attention to Sullivan’s left eye, which was beginning to look red and swollen, and avoiding his opponent's swings by clever foot-work. He waltzed backward round and round the ring, using all the science he possessed; Sullivan followed viciously, trying to bore in and force him against the ropes, but Billy always slipped away.
“Hit him, Billy!” shouted O’Hanlon; and again the house roared.
“Yah!” shouted Sullivan’s adherents, “your man’s afraid! Make him go in and fight!”
But Billy kept on running away, avoiding anything like in-fighting, and letting Sullivan tire himself by slugging at the empty air. A few of the wiser fans applauded, but most of them wanted to see blood.
“Take him out!” shouted fifty or sixty of them, rising in their seats; “put on some one who can fight.”
But Billy kept on waltzing backward, round and round the ring; and Sullivan kept on slugging. He landed one on Billy’s ribs in the last half-second, and Billy went to the floor and stopped there till the bell rang. He got up then, though, and walked to his corner calmly enough.
“Can ye do it?” asked O’Hanlon. “D’ye think ye can do it boy?”
“Dunno,” said Billy. “Use your sponge, an’ quit talkin’!”
Sullivan’s efforts in the first three rounds had evidently tired him a little, for he changed his tactics in the fourth and waited for Billy to begin. Billy obliged him by dancing round him and closing his left eye completely with a punch that could be heard all over the gymnasium. He followed it up with a left-right-left to the body, and took a fairly hard wallop on the jaw in exchange.
“Cover up!” called Sullivan’s seconds.
But the Italian was getting wild and refused to listen. He went in after Billy like a madman again, and Billy spent the rest of the round waltzing away from him. Toward the end of it Sullivan managed to clinch and hold on; Billy kept up a tattoo on his ribs, but Sullivan roughed it again with his head and elbows, using every foul trick in his catalogue and wearing Billy down with his weight.
O’Hanlon had to bite the sponge to keep himself from claiming a dozen fouls, but he remembered Billy’s orders and said nothing. The bell saved Billy from getting a still worse roughing, but as it was he walked to his corner with his mouth and nose bleeding, and not looking any too fresh.
“Ye ought to hit him more!” said O'Hanlon, plying the bottle and sponge.
“Aw, shut up!” said Billy, spitting. “You wait!”
During the minute between the fourth round and the fifth, Geoghan hurried round to Sullivan’s corner and gave him whispered instructions; Billy saw Geoghan then for the first time, and recognised him. He realised that the man who was most interested in his defeat was the same man who had turned him down so mercilessly when he arrived in New York.
“Geoghan runnin’ this?” he asked O’ Hanlon.
“Sure! Didn’t you know it?”
Billy said nothing.
If he had been evasive and exasperating in the first four rounds, he was infinitely more so in the fifth. He knew very well without being told what Geoghan’s instructions had been to Sullivan; he was to try for a knock-out at once. So he ran away during almost the whole round, tiring Sullivan in his efforts to come up with him, and not even trying to do any damage.
“Oh, hit him, Billy!” called O'Hanlon.
“Hit him!” shouted the fans.
“Yah, he’s afraid!” shouted Sullivan’s crowd.
And Billy dodged and danced and ran and jumped away, while Sullivan sent over pile-driver after pile-driver that hit the empty air or grazed off Billy’s elbows.
Suddenly, when the round was all but over, Billy straightened like a flash, his right shot out like a piston-rod; there was a smack that sounded like the report of a pistol, and Sullivan reeled backward with the lower part of his face a mass of blood. Billy followed up with a left-right-left to the body, and the bell saved Sullivan from going to the mat.
He went to his corner with a broken nose, and a crimson spot just below his heart that was growing bigger and angrier-looking every minute. His seconds had no time for abuse now; they were too busy attending to their man.
“That’s the style, boy!” said O’Hanlon. “Give him some more like that, and ye’ve got him!”
“You’ve won your money,” answered Billy; “now watch me win mine.”
A full half-minute of the sixth round went by before the fans really got going; they were too surprised to do more than yell in monosyllabic chorus. Sullivan came into the ring with one eye closed, and looking tired, but nothing like beaten. Billy walked into him from the word “Go,” rushed him, mixed it at close quarters, stood up to him toe to toe and slugged him, drove him backward against the ropes and sent his head back with three rousing hooks to the jaw.
Sullivan woke up and answered slug for slug, but Billy’s boxing was too clever for him; when he tried to clinch to save himself, Billy waltzed round him and hit where he pleased, while the fans nearly tore the roof off with their noise.
At the end of the round Sullivan staggered, rather than walked, to his corner; the red blotch under his heart had spread till it was about six inches square, and his other eye seemed to be closing too..
“I’ve got him in the next!” said Billy, panting and taking a swig from the bottle.
“—— ye! I believe ye have!” said O’Hanlon. “Ye little firebrand, why didn’t ye fight like that at first?”
The seventh went less than half a minute. Billy started the ball by sending an awful wallop home straight on the crimson blotch, and Sullivan groaned and doubled up. A right on the top of the head brought his chin up again, and Billy swung for it with all his strength and weight. Down went Sullivan, flat on the broad of his back—his arms outspread on either side of him, and his eyes shut.
“Stand back!” ordered the referee, and Billy stood back and dropped his hands and waited.
“Seven — eight — nine — ten!” counted the referee. “He's out!”
Sullivan’s seconds ran into the ring and picked their man up; the referee patted Billy on the shoulder.
“Well done!” he said; “that’s some punch you’ve got!”
Billy walked over to his corner and clambered out of the ring. “Go get your money!” he told O’Hanlon. “You'll find me in the dressing-room; Charlie can rub me down.”
When O’Hanlon and the skipper reached the dressing-room ten minutes later, Billy was already washed, and very neatly dressed.
“Ye darned little scut!” said O’Hanlon. “Why didn’t ye knock him out sooner? I believe ye could ha’ done it. What did ye run away from him for?”
“I never met anybody greener than you,” said Billy. “What was the bet? I had to go five rounds, didn’t I? Well? S’posin’ I’d handed him a sleep-punch in the fourth—you wouldn’t have won the bet, would you? Have you got the money?”
“I have,” said O’Hanlon; “here’s my thousand, and here’s your three hundred.”
“Good!” said Billy, “keep it. I’m goin’ to do one more trip to sea, an’ shovel coal; there ain’t a better way o’ puttin’ muscle on as ever I see; I ain’t strong enough yet. Did you see how he wore me down in the clinches?”
“There’s that hundred, too, that I promised ye,” said O’Hanlon.
“Keep it!” said Billy. “No. Wait a bit—tell you what you do. There’s a bloke, name o’ Doyle—I’ll send him eighty dollars wi’ my regards. He’s a piker, he is. I wouldn’t like to owe him money longer’n I could help. He might need it for the washin’ or somethin’; send him that at once. Put the rest in a bank, an’ remember, you’ve got to get me a good match when we get back from the next trip. You’ll be my manager, an’ we’ll use that money for forfeits an’ side bets, an’ trainin’ exes—see?”
“You’re on!” said O’Hanlon.
At that minute in came Geoghan.
“Say,” he exclaimed, “why didn’t you tell me what class of man you were when you came to me before? I’d no idea you could fight like that! I’ll take you over from now on; you ought to make a middle-weight by and by; and anyhow I’m dead sure you can clean up the welters.”
“I done all the talkin’ to you I’m ever goin’ to, an’ I got all the managers I want,” said Billy. “You go to ——!”
And he took the arms of the skipper and O’Hanlon and disappeared into the street outside.
Copyright, 1912, by Talbot Mundy
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1940, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 83 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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