"Anybody counting?" he said stupidly. But he could not get up.
"It was a foul," said Rackett.
"Foul be blithered!" shouted Easu. "It was a free fight and no blasted umpires asked for. If that bloody bastard wants some more, let him get up. I'm goin' to teach him to come crowin' from England, crowin' over an Australian."
But Jack was on his unsteady feet. He would fight now if he died for it.
"Teach me!" he said vaguely, and sprang like a cat out of a bag on the astonished and rather frightened Easu.
But something was very wrong. When his left fist rang home, it caused such an agony that a sheer scream of pain tore from him, clearing the mists from his brain in a strange white light. He was now fully conscious again, super-conscious. He knew he must hit with his right, and hit hard. He heard nothing, and saw nothing. But with a kind of trance vision he was super-awake.
Man is like this. He has various levels of consciousness. When he is broken, killed at one level of consciousness, his very death leaves him on a higher level. And this is the soul in its entirety, being conscious, super-conscious, far beyond mentality. It hardly needs eyes or ears. It is clairvoyant and clair-audient. And man's divinity, and his ultimate power, is in this super-consciousness of the whole soul. Not in brute force, not in skill or intelligence alone. But in the soul's extreme power of knowing and then willing. On this alone hangs the destiny of all mankind.
Jack, uncertain on his feet, incorporate, wounded to horrible pain in his left hand, was now in the second state of consciousness and power. Meanwhile the doctor was warning Easu to play fair. Jack heard absolutely without hearing. But Easu was bothered by it.
He was flustered by Jack's unexpected uprising. He was weary and wavering, the paroxysm of his ungovernable fury had left him, and he had a desire to escape. His rage was dull and sullen.
Jack was softly swaying. Easu shaped up and waited. And suddenly Jack sprang, with all the weight of his nine stone behind him, and all the mystery of his soul's deadly will, and planted a blow on Easu's astonished chin with his granite right fist. Before there was any recovery he got in a second blow, and it was a knockout. Easu crashed, and Jack crashed after him, and both lay still.