father had been present. The translation was Salt Prick and Shasa flushed and instinctively bunched his fists at the insult.
A Soutpiel has one foot in London and the other in Cape Town, Manfred explained with relish, and his willy- wagger dangling in the middle of the salty old Atlantic Ocean. You'll take that back! Anger had robbed Shasa of a more telling rejoinder. He had never been spoken to in this fashion by one of his inferiors.
Take it back, you mean like you pull back your salty foreskin? When you play with it? Is that what you mean? Manfred asked. The applause had made him reckless, and he had moved closer, directly under the boy on the jetty.
Shasa launched himself without warning and Manfred had not anticipated that so soon. He had expected to trade a few more insults before they were both sufficiently worked up to attack each other.
Shasa dropped six feet and hit him with the full weight of his body and his outrage. The wind was driven out of Manfred's lungs in a whoosh as, locked together, they went flying backwards into the morass of dead fish.
They rolled over and with a shock Shasa felt the other boy's strength. His arms were hard as timber balks and his fingers felt like iron butcher's hooks as he clawed for Shasa's face. only surprise and Manfred's winded lungs saved him from immediate humiliation, and almost too late he remembered the admonitions of Jock Murphy, his boxing instructor.
Don't let a bigger man force you to fight close. Fight him off. Keep him at arm's length. Manfred was clawing at his face, trying to get an arm around him in -a half Nelson, and they were floundering into the cold slippery mass of fish. Shasa brought up his right knee and, as Manfred reared up over him, he drove it into his chest. Manfred gasped and reeled back, but then as Shasa tried to roll away, he lunged forward again for the head lock. Shasa ducked his head and with his right hand forced Manfred's elbow up to break the grip, then as Jock had taught him, he twisted out against the opening he had created. He was helped by the fish slime that coated his neck and Manfred's arm like oil, and the instant he was free he threw a punch with his left hand.
Jock had drilled him endlessly on the short straight left.
The most important punch you'll ever use. it wasn't one of Shasa's best, but it caught the other boy in the eye with sufficient force to snap his head back and distract him just long enough to let Shasa get onto his feet and back away.
By now the jetty above them was crowded with coloured trawler-men in rubber boots and blue rollneck jerseys. They were roaring with delight and excitement, egging on the two boys as though they were game cocks.
Blinking the tears out of his swelling eye, Manfred went after Shasa, but the fish clinging to his legs hampered him, and that left shot out again. There was no warning; it came straight and hard and unexpectedly, stinging his injured eye so that he shouted with anger and groped wildly for the lighter boy.
Shasa ducked under his arm and fired the left again, just the way Jock had taught him.
Never telegraph it by moving the shoulders or the head, he could almost hear Jock's voice, just shoot it, with the arm alone. He caught Manfred in the mouth, and immediately there was blood as Manfred's lip was crushed onto his own teeth.
The sight of his adversary's blood elated Shasa and the concerted bellow of the crowd evoked a primeval response deep within him. He used the left again, cracking it into the pink swollen eye.
When you mark him, then keep hitting the same spot. Jock's voice in his head, and Manfred shouted again, but this time he could hear the pain as well as the rage in the sound.
It's working, Shasa exulted. But at that moment he ran backwards into the wheelhouse and Manfred, realizing his opponent was cornered, rushed at him through the slimy fish, spreading both arms wide, grinning triumphantly, his mouth full of blood from his cut lip and his teeth dyed bright pink.
In panic Shasa dropped his shoulders, braced himself for an instant against the wheelhouse timbers and then shot forward, butting the top of his head into Manfred's stomach.
Once again Manfred wheezed as the air was forced up his throat, and for a few confused seconds they writhed together in the mess of pilchards, with Manfred gurgling for breath A. and unable to get a hold on his opponent's slippery limbs.
Then Shasa wriggled away and half crawled, half swam to the foot of the wooden ladder of the jetty and dragged himself onto it.
The crowd was laughing and booing derisively as he fled, and Manfred clawed angrily after him, spitting blood and fish slime out of his injured mouth, his chest heaving violently to refill his lungs.
Shasa was halfway up the ladder when Manfred reached up and grabbed his ankle, pulling both his feet off the rungs.
Shasa was stretched out by the heavier boy's weight like a victim on the rack, clinging with desperate strength to the top of the ladder, and the faces of the coloured fishermen e were only inches from his as they leaned over the jetty and howled for his blood, favouring their own.
With his free leg Shasa kicked backwards, and his heel caught Manfred in his swollen eye. He yelled and let go, and Shasa scrambled up onto the jetty and looked around him wildly. His fighting ardour had cooled and he was trembling.
His escape down the jetty was open and he longed to take it. But the men around him were laughing and jeering and pride shackled him. He glanced around and, with a surge of dismay that was so strong that it almost physically nauseated him, he saw that Manfred had reached the top of the ladder.
Shasa was not quite sure how he had got himself into this fight, or what was the point at issue, and miserably he wished he could extricate himself. That was impossible, his entire breeding and training precluded it. He tried to stop himself trembling as he turned back to face Manfred again.
The bigger boy was trembling also, but not with fear. His face was swollen and dark red with killing rage, and he was making an unconscious hissing sound through his bloody lips. His damaged eye was turning purplish mauve and puffing into a narrow slit.
Kill him, kleinbasie! screamed the coloured trawler-men.
murder him, little boss. And their taunts rallied Shasa. He took a deep steadying breath and lifted his fists in the classic boxer's stance, left foot leading and his hands held high in front of his face.
