“Ugh!” he exclaimed, stepping back. Then he grinned viciously. “You know something, do you,” he half soliloquized. “So much the better. There’ll be some sport in it.”
He rushed in again, striking furiously.
Howard gave ground slowly under the attack, dodging when he could, parrying as he might, every nerve alert to save himself from being crushed by the sheer weight of his adversary. In vain Forbes tried to beat down his guard. Dorothy’s frightened face was ever before his eyes, and he fought on breathless, but unharmed, until the first fury of the attack had spent itself; until the passing moments told him that the struggle would not be so uneven as it had seemed. Exultation swelled in him when at last he could stand steady and give back blow for blow.
Gradually his opponent’s mood changed. From coolness to anger; from anger to baffled fury. Howard watched the changes as they mirrored themselves in the other’s face. And when, with the recklessness of utter rage, Forbes dropped his guard and threw all his weight into one smashing blow, Howard ducked beneath it, swung his right with deadly force against the bull neck and beat the devil’s tattoo on the thick ribs before him.
Then the round ended.
But Howard knew that there was still plenty of fight in the big man. He had shaken him, but had accomplished nothing more. Indeed, the fury of the attack in the second round was little less than that of the first, and Howard again had to give ground. Had Forbes been able to regain his temper as he had regained his strength, there would still have been little doubt as to the result.
But this the captain could not do. So often had he fought and won in the past, so invariably had his bull strength served him well, that he could not believe that he had at last met one who could withstand him. Wild with rage, he spent himself against the impenetrable defense of the naval officer until the second round ended with the odds of the fight in favor of the latter.
So plain was this that Gallegher urged treachery, only to be repelled; not yet would Forbes admit the possibility of defeat. “Naw! I’ll kill him myself,” he muttered hoarsely, as, red-eyed, he stumbled forward once more to the attack.
Howard met him with changed tactics. Jackson’s trained eye had read the signs, and he had counselled the officer wisely. “Rush him,” he had said. “Rush him. He’s all in. Don’t give him time to get his second wind. Rush him.”
And Howard obeyed, drawing on some fount of nervous energy for a fury of attack almost as violent as Forbes’s had been. The fighting rage was on him at last, and bubbled over in words.