By this time I began to see that there was only one way out of it. “I’ll fight Brown now,” I cried, “if the crowd will make a ring, and see to it that I get fair play.”
“We’ll see to that, never fear,” yelled the crowd; and in a few seconds a big ring was formed, and Brown, taking his place in the centre of it, stripped himself to the waist. His huge hairy chest heaved with excitement, and I noted, not without inward misgiving, his powerful biceps, his brawny bull-like neck, and the closely cropped, bullet-like head of the fighter by instinct and profession.
When I came to strip in my turn, a great roar of laughter went up from the multitude, and no wonder. I was lean and lanky, and my skin, by contrast with his, appeared soft as velvet, and in colour and sheen not unlike to old ivory. “The lad’s beat before he begins,” said one man in the forefront of the crowd, and who looked like a professional pugilist; “I’ll lay £10 to £1 on the big ’un,” and he looked round inquiringly. But alas! in all that crowd there were no takers. I don’t blame them.
Directly I stepped into the ring Brown made a rush at me, his great arms whirling aloft like the sails of a windmill. I stopped him with a straight left on the nose, and down he went. He scrambled to his feet, and came for me again, bellowing with rage. This time I caught him in the eye with my right, more by luck than by judgment, and he tripped and fell over a tuft of grass.
Now in a rough-and-tumble fight such as this was the strict rules of the prize ring are, it is well understood, not exactly enforced. You may not kick of course, and you may not hit a man when he is completely down, and that is about all. Everything else almost is considered fair, or at all events legitimate. So when Brown, having partially recovered himself, raised himself on one knee, I considered that my turn had come, and making a dive at him, and stooping down myself, I upper-cut him under the chin, and down he went again flat on his back.
Moreover, greatly to my relief, this time he elected to stay down. He wasn’t knocked out by any means, but he had had enough. The other gypsies picked him up, and took him away. The crowd dispersed. The roundabouts were restarted, the shows reopened, and all the fun of the fair was soon in full swing once more. Only Brown’s one-time beautiful booth remained lying where it had fallen, a tangled heap of rent canvas and broken cordage. Brown himself spent the rest of the day presiding at a cocoanut-shy, and nursing a bad black eye.
Every now and again he would turn and shoot a malevolent look in my direction, nor did it need this to tell me that my trouble with him was only now beginning. All day long, too, the other gypsies kept coming up to my show in order to tell me of what was in store for me later. “Brown,” they said, “swears he’ll kill you to-night, and he’s a man of his word.” “Tell Brown,” I retorted, showing them my revolver loaded in all six chambers with ball cartridge, “that I’ll certainly shoot dead any man I catch prowling round my marquee after the fair closes down.”
This, I may add, was a bit of sheer bluff, designed to throw them off the scent. I used to sleep in my marquee, there was nowhere else to sleep in fact, and I knew full well that I could not keep awake all the night long, and that once asleep it would be easy for one of them to creep under the canvas and brain me with a stake hammer. True, Cliff and I might have taken it in turns to keep awake and on guard, one watching while the other slept; but even this, I reflected, would only be postponing the evil day, or rather night. I knew too well the fierce, vindictive nature of the gypsies, to imagine for one moment that Brown and his tribe were going to forgo their revenge altogether.
No! I had another plan worked out in my mind, and soon after it was dark I proceeded to put it into execution, with the help of Mr. Wayman in whom I had confided.
He had slipped off to the station at my request, and had ascertained that a fast train left for London at 10.20 p.m. The fair ground closed at 11 p.m. Shortly before ten o’clock struck a man with a barrow, whom I had engaged beforehand, took his position, silently and without being observed, in a lane at the back of my tent.