“Sleep! Sleep! Go to sleep, Hitch Diamond—sleep!”
But Hitch never rested a moment, and Conko, looking for an opening to get in his hypnotic eyework, let Hitch chase him all around the ring a dozen times.
There were three minutes of this screaming farce, and when it ended, Hitch Diamond was reeling and staggering from his wild chase around the ring, and his legs were cramping under him and felt like lead.
Without knowing it, Hitch had spun around like a top for three minutes, and a natural dizziness was upon him, and before his bewildered eyes the crowd of faces sagged and swayed, disappeared and reappeared.
Again and again he had struck at Conko and missed. When the round had ended, Hitch found himself swinging on to Mukes with all his weight to keep from falling to the floor, while Conko’s bellowing was like the distant thunder of the surf in his ear, sounding afar off:
“Sleep! Sleep! Sleep, Hitch Diamond, go to sleep!”
When Conko Mukes walked to his corner he was jubilant. He faced the crowd of wondering coons, placed his gloved hands to the side of his face, and crowed like a rooster.
“I got him goin’, niggers!” he squalled. “He’s wabbly on his foots! One mo’ roundance, an’ dat big fat stiff will go to sleep an’ never wake up no mo’!”
He sank down upon his camp-stool, and his heaving chest and abdomen sucked in the air in great, hungry gulps.
Skeeter Butts worked like an engine, cackling his delight at his hero’s wonderful pugilistic ruse.