“It does look a tidy bit of grass,” assented the fighting man.
As the two walked forward to this turfy spot of fairness it brought them nearer to Peg and myself, and squarely under our eyes. It was as though they set a stage, and would produce their drama of blows for us and in such wise that we should not lose the least of it.
As the pair moved to the selected place, that moaning one whose arm I had broken, and who, when the rest had fled, still lay in a fit of fainting, so far recovered as to sit weakly up. But he could not yet walk, being shaken and dizzy mayhap, and so he, too, would be a looker on, albeit I do not think he was to see much, being taken with his own woes and groaning over them.
“W'at a come-down is this!” exclaimed the fighting man, as he moved into the center of the ground, “me, who should be champion, vighting by moonlight in a vorest vith a mad Yankee! W'at a tale to tell in W'itechapel!”
“I'm not a Yankee,” said Rivera, as if for the other's consolation, I thought, “I'm an Irish-Jew.”
“An Irish-Jew!” returned the other, with a note of admiration. “Now that's better, lad; Irish on Jew makes a bitter cross for the ring. But all the same, it's a shame vor me to be 'ere millin' by moonlight in voreign parts, an' never no purse nor ropes nor nothink, an' no 'igh toby blokes to referee or even 'old a vatch. An' me, mind you, as should be champion.”
“Why do you say that?” asked Rivera, in a hunger of boyish curiosity to know how honorable the conquest was he went about. “Of what should you be champion?”
“Hengland, lad, w'at else!” said the other. “It's all on account of an accident that I beant. I vights vith Big Tom Brown of Bridgenorth, I does; an' Tom, 'e naps it on the bugle so 'ard 'e's all vor bleedin' to death. An' vith that, the beaks is vor puttin' me on a transport to go to New South Wales, when I moseys down to Bristol an' goes aboard ship an' comes over 'ere. If I could 'ave stayed at 'ome, I'd a-beat Bendigo by now, an' been the champion 'stead of 'e. 'Owever, volks must do the best vith w'at they has, so hup vith your mauleys, lad. Time!”
More than once I had seen our rough keel-boatmen of the Cumberland indulge, when soaked of rum, in what they termed a “rough and tumble,” but this, when Rivera and the fighting man of Whitechapel stood up to one another, was the first time I was to observe how ones trained to fisticuffs expound the game. My keel-boatmen fought in a biting, clawing, gouging, wildcat way that was a climax of brutality and blood. This would not be the story of Rivera and his foe, for their labors were as cleanly accurate as a cameo, while yet the blows they dealt would have shaken an oak to its core.
As the fighting man of Whitechapel exclaimed “Time!” Rivera and he drew cautiously over to one another. I could see how each kept his left hand well forward and his left foot advanced to bear it company, while the right foot was planted with firm squareness, and no spring nor give to the knee, but the leg stiff to prop against a blow. The right arm would be used, too, more as a guard to save the body, but with hand in reserve clenched like iron to deal a finishing blow whenever the vanguard or left hand had opened the way with the enemy.