It landed on the point of the chin of Smithson major.
[p67]
‘I don’t know and I don’t care,’ said Quentin.
Smithson looked round. No master was in sight. It seemed an excellent opportunity to teach young de Ward his place.
‘Atlantic pig-swine,’ he said very deliberately. And Quentin sprang at him, and instantly it was a fight.
Now Quentin had only once fought—really fought—before. Then it was the grocer’s boy and he had been beaten. But he had learned something since. And the chief conclusion he now drew from his memories of that fight was that he had not hit half hard enough, an opinion almost universal among those who have fought and not won.
As the fist of Smithson major described a half circle and hurt his ear very much, Quentin suddenly screwed himself up and hit out with his right hand, straight, and with his whole weight behind the blow as the grocer’s boy had shown him. All his grief for his wounded father, his sorrow at the parting from his mother, all his hatred of his school, and his contempt for his schoolfellows went into that blow. It landed on the point of the chin of Smithson major who fell together like a heap of rags.
‘Oh,’ said Quentin, gazing with interest at his hand—it hurt a good deal but he [p68 looked at it with respect—‘I’m afraid I’ve hurt him.’
He had forgotten for a moment that he was in an enemies’ country, and so, apparently, had his enemies.
‘Well done, Piggy! Bravo, young ’un! Well hit, by Jove!’
Friendly hands thumped him on the back. Smithson major was no popular hero.