Great was the joy of the Tsar over this victory of his champion. Peter hoisted Boris upon his own shoulders, and carried him round and round the ship, amid the cheers and laughter of many spectators, not only on board the Zuyder Zee, but also upon many other vessels anchored near her.
After this triumph, the Tsar was still more anxious to pit his Russian champion against those of other nationalities, and involved poor Boris in many defeats by reason of this passion. As an instance, a coal miner from Cumberland, and a champion wrestler of that county, was hunted up by the Tsar and pitted against Boris for a match. In the skilled hands of this man, poor, untutored Boris was as a child in arms. The Cumbrian threw him again and again, adopting at each attempt a new device of the many known to him, and every one of them sufficient to topple over the Russian like a nine-pin. Boris, and Peter also, were to learn that mere strength and activity were insufficient to cope with equal, or even inferior strength, scientifically exercised. But in spite of this, Boris, after having fallen heavily six times, ended the fight in a manner unexpected by his adversary, and little to his taste. The match took place on the deck of a collier, and at the seventh round Boris, suddenly bending before his antagonist could lay hold of him, caught the Cumbrian champion by the knees, and lifting him by a tremendous effort, sent him flying over his shoulder, and over the side of the ship also, into mid-river, where the poor man would have been drowned had not Boris himself gone to his assistance.
Peter gave the Cumbrian champion a present in money, and offered him handsome wages to come over to his country and teach the Russians to wrestle. But the man of Cumberland looked knowingly at the Tsar, and refused the offer; he would rather stay, he said, in a country "where men did not eat their own kind," even though at a lower rate of wages. In vain the Tsar assured him that in Russia men are not cannibals; the sturdy north countryman only looked the more knowing, and the negotiations ended where they began.
Then, again, Boris was required to run races with sundry champions, who easily defeated him, as was natural; though he held his own in jumping. At swimming, however, even the best of his English competitors were obliged to take a second place, for Boris excelled any who were pitted against him, especially in the longer races.
In the noble science of self-defence Boris, though untutored, surprised every one by his aptitude. It was not that he was skilled either in defence or in attack; but his eye was good and his natural guard excellent, while his enemies, or rather antagonists, declared that it was one of the most disagreeable things in the world to receive a blow straight from the Russian's shoulder.
Thus, though often worsted in the competitions wherein, by the desire of the Tsar, he tried his strength and agility against the best foreign exponents, Boris on the whole held his own against all comers, and the Tsar declared himself well satisfied with his faithful bear-hunter, who had upheld, to the best of his ability, the claim of far-away Muscovy to compete with the rest of the world in trials of strength and pluck and endurance. It was, indeed, a matter of no little pleasure and encouragement to Peter to find that he was able to produce a picked man who had proved himself as good as, and sometimes better than, the picked men of other nationalities. The circumstance led him to hope that his Russians, when instructed by qualified tutors, would show themselves worthy to take their proper place in Europe, and to hold their own whether on the battle-field or on board ship, as he would assuredly call upon them to do ere many years were past.
Besides all this, Peter saw and did much, during his stay in London, with which our bear-hunter was not so immediately connected; but for a short account of his doings and seeings among our forefathers in this merry land of England, I must refer my readers to the following chapter.