The mastiff went at his work with veteran ferocity and method, born of fifty death fights. But he had run up against something unique in his long experience. Jeff was not there. Or rather, Jeff was everywhere at once and nowhere in particular. He was in and out and over and under; never wasting time in seeking for a permanent hold, but nipping, tearing or slashing, and then striking at almost the same instant for some totally different part of the mongrel’s big body.
The mastiff reared and thrashed about, ever striving to pin his eel-like adversary under him; to crush him down by dint of vast weight; to pinion him while the heavy foam-flecked jaws should find their death-hold. But Jeff had an annoying fashion of not staying in any one place long enough to be annihilated. And at every impact his white teeth were leaving their red mark.
“It’s—it’s Corbett and Sullivan, all over again!” blithered Dan Rorke, his expert eye following each move, his soul afire with prideful ecstasy at his untried chum’s marvellous war genius. “Will you look at that footwork!” he exhorted high heaven and the fast-gathering knot of spectators.
Then his triumph song became a grunt.
The mastiff, in one of his mad lunges, had found his mark. His jaws closed on Jeff’s furpadded shoulder; and he hung on. With one wrench of his bull head he bore the slighter dog to earth and began to grind his jaws into the shoulder he had seized.
For a moment Jeff writhed and flung himself about impotently in the fearsome grip. In that instant of futile heaving his eyes sought and met Rorke’s. And in the flashing gaze there was no tinge of fear or of appeal. It was as though he tried to assure the man that he had fought his best and that he was sorry he could do no better.
But before Dan’s stick could go up there was a new flurry of fur and flesh, and Jeff’s sharp teeth had sunk in agonising style deep into one of the mongrel’s thick pads. The pain was so sudden and acute that the mastiff loosed his merciless shoulder grip, to lunge for the collie’s head. And in that brief instant Jeff was not only on his feet and free, but was back at the assault with all his primal zest.
The mastiff, bleeding and almost breathless, reared for another attack. His cut hind foot clawed at a film of ice on the slippery pavement. He lost his balance and fell floundering on his back in the slush. For a second he lay there, stunned, for his head had hit the edge of the open door as he fell, and his brindled throat was exposed and defenceless.
“Now’s your chance, Jeff!” chortled Rorke deliriously. “Finish him!”