shock from behind. He had run up against the post. Despite everything, he remembered to keep his guard up, and stopped a lashing hit from his antagonist’s left. But he was too late to keep out his right. In it came, full on the weakest spot on his left side. The pain of it caused him to double up for an instant, and as he did so his opponent upper-cut him. There was no rest for him. Nothing that he had ever experienced with the gloves on approached this. If only he could get out of this corner.
Then, almost unconsciously, he recalled Joe Bevan’s advice.
“If a man’s got you in a corner,” Joe had said, “fall on him.”
Peteiro made another savage swing. Sheen dodged it and hurled himself forward.
“Break away,” said a dispassionate official voice.
Sheen broke away, but now he was out of the corner with the whole good, open ring to manoeuvre in.
He could just see the Ripton instructor signalling violently to his opponent, and, in reply to the signals, Peteiro came on again with another fierce rush.
But Sheen in the open was a different person from Sheen cooped up in a corner. Francis Hunt had taught him to use his feet. He side-stepped, and, turning quickly, found his man staggering past him, over-balanced by the force of his wasted blow. And now it was Sheen who attacked, and Peteiro who tried to escape. Two swift hits he got in before his opponent could face round, and another as he turned and rushed. Then for a while the battle raged without science all over the ring. Gradually, with a cold feeling of dismay, Sheen realised that his strength was going. The pace was too hot. He could not keep it up. His left counters were losing their force. Now he was merely pushing his glove into the Ripton man’s face. It was not enough. The other was getting to close quarters, and that right of his seemed stronger than ever.
He was against the ropes now, gasping for breath, and Peteiro’s right was thudding against his ribs. It could not last. He gathered all his strength and put it into a straight left. It took the Ripton man in the throat, and drove him back a step. He came on again. Again Sheen stopped him.
It was his last effort. He could do no more. Everything seemed black to him. He leaned against the ropes and drank in the air in great gulps.
“Time!” said the referee.
The word was lost in the shouts that rose from the packed seats.
Sheen tottered to his corner and sat down.
“Keep it up, sir, keep it up,” said a voice. “Bear’t that the opposed may beware of thee. Don’t forget the guard. And the straight left beats the world.”
It was Joe—at the eleventh hour.
With a delicious feeling of content Sheen leaned back in his chair. It would be all right now. He felt that the matter had been taken out of his hands. A more experienced brain than his would look after the generalship of the fight.
As the moments of the half-minute’s rest slid away he discovered the truth of Joe’s remarks on the value of a good second. In his other fights the napping of the towel had hardly stirred the hair on his forehead. Joe’s energetic arms set a perfect gale blowing. The cool air revived him. He opened his mouth and drank it in. A spongeful of cold water completed the cure. Long before the call of Time he was ready for the next round.
“Keep away from him, sir,” said Joe, “and score with that left of yours. Don’t try the right yet. Keep it for guarding. Box clever. Don’t let him corner you. Slip him when he rushes. Cool and steady does it. Don’t aim at his face too much. Go down below. That’s the
The pupil nodded with closed eyes.
While these words of wisdom were proceeding from the mouth of Mr Bevan, another conversation was taking place which would have interested Sheen if he could have heard it. Mr Spence and the school instructor were watching the final from the seats under the side windows.
“It’s extraordinary,” said Mr Spence. “The boy’s wonderfully good for the short time he has been learning. You ought to be proud of your pupil.”
“Sir?”
“I was saying that Sheen does you credit.”
“Not me, sir.”
“What! He told me he had been taking lessons. Didn’t you teach him?”
“Never set eyes on him, till this moment. Wish I had, sir. He’s the sort of pupil I could wish for.”
Mr Spence bent forward and scanned the features of the man who was attending the Wrykinian.
“Why,” he said, “surely that’s Bevan—Joe Bevan! I knew him at Cambridge.”
“Yes, sir, that’s Bevan,” replied the instructor. “He teaches boxing at Wrykyn now, sir.”
“At Wrykyn—where?”
“Up the river—at the ‘Blue Boar’, sir,” said the instructor, quite innocently—for it did not occur to him that this simple little bit of information was just so much incriminating evidence against Sheen.
Mr Spence said nothing, but he opened his eyes very wide. Recalling his recent conversation with Sheen, he remembered that the boy had told him he had been taking lessons, and also that Joe Bevan, the ex-pugilist, had expressed a high opinion of his work. Mr Spence had imagined that Bevan had been a chance spectator of the boy’s skill; but it would now seem that Bevan himself had taught Sheen. This matter, decided Mr Spence, must be looked into, for it was palpable that Sheen had broken bounds in order to attend Bevan’s boxing-saloon up the river.
For the present, however, Mr Spence was content to say nothing.
Sheen came up for the second round fresh and confident. His head was clear, and his breath no longer came in gasps. There was to be no rallying this time. He
