Mike

“The rounds,” he said, producing a watch, as they passed through a gate into a field a couple of hundred yards from the house gate, “will be of three minutes’ duration, with a minute rest in between.  A man who is down will have ten seconds in which to rise.  Are you ready, Comrades Adair and Jackson?  Very well, then.  Time.”

After which, it was a pity that the actual fight did not quite live up to its referee’s introduction.  Dramatically, there should have been cautious sparring for openings and a number of tensely contested rounds, as if it had been the final of a boxing competition.  But school fights, when they do occur—­which is only once in a decade nowadays, unless you count junior school scuffles—­are the outcome of weeks of suppressed bad blood, and are consequently brief and furious.  In a boxing competition, however much one may want to win, one does not dislike one’s opponent.  Up to the moment when “time” was called, one was probably warmly attached to him, and at the end of the last round one expects to resume that attitude of mind.  In a fight each party, as a rule, hates the other.

So it happened that there was nothing formal or cautious about the present battle.  All Adair wanted was to get at Mike, and all Mike wanted was to get at Adair.  Directly Psmith called “time,” they rushed together as if they meant to end the thing in half a minute.

It was this that saved Mike.  In an ordinary contest with the gloves, with his opponent cool and boxing in his true form, he could not have lasted three rounds against Adair.  The latter was a clever boxer, while Mike had never had a lesson in his life.  If Adair had kept away and used his head, nothing could have prevented him winning.

As it was, however, he threw away his advantages, much as Tom Brown did at the beginning of his fight with Slogger Williams, and the result was the same as on that historic occasion.  Mike had the greater strength, and, thirty seconds from the start, knocked his man clean off his feet with an unscientific but powerful right-hander.

This finished Adair’s chances.  He rose full of fight, but with all the science knocked out of him.  He went in at Mike with both hands.  The Irish blood in him, which for the ordinary events of life made him merely energetic and dashing, now rendered him reckless.  He abandoned all attempt at guarding.  It was the Frontal Attack in its most futile form, and as unsuccessful as a frontal attack is apt to be.  There was a swift exchange of blows, in the course of which Mike’s left elbow, coming into contact with his opponent’s right fist, got a shock which kept it tingling for the rest of the day; and then Adair went down in a heap.

He got up slowly and with difficulty.  For a moment he stood blinking vaguely.  Then he lurched forward at Mike.

In the excitement of a fight—­which is, after all, about the most exciting thing that ever happens to one in the course of one’s life—­it is difficult for the fighters to see what the spectators see.  Where the spectators see an assault on an already beaten man, the fighter himself only sees a legitimate piece of self-defence against an opponent whose chances are equal to his own.  Psmith saw, as anybody looking on would have seen, that Adair was done.  Mike’s blow had taken him within a fraction of an inch of the point of the jaw, and he was all but knocked out.  Mike could not see this.  All he understood was that his man was on his feet again and coming at him, so he hit out with all his strength; and this time Adair went down and stayed down.

“Brief,” said Psmith, coming forward, “but exciting.  We may take that, I think, to be the conclusion of the entertainment.  I will now have a dash at picking up the slain.  I shouldn’t stop, if I were you.  He’ll be sitting up and taking notice soon, and if he sees you he may want to go on with the combat, which would do him no earthly good.  If it’s going to be continued in our next, there had better be a bit of an interval for alterations and repairs first.”

“Is he hurt much, do you think?” asked Mike.  He had seen knock-outs before in the ring, but this was the first time he had ever effected one on his own account, and Adair looked unpleasantly corpse-like.

“He’s all right,” said Psmith.  “In a minute or two he’ll be skipping about like a little lambkin.  I’ll look after him.  You go away and pick flowers.”