"Ya, ya," said Hans, who at any rate understood the last three words.
"I apologise?" gasped Noyes. "By God, I'll lick him first and do that after! Apologise!"
"Either that, or I shall back him up in proceeding against you. Unless you would like to settle it with him now in my courtyard, with a couple of pairs of boxing gloves," said Mr. Johnson persuasively, and the crowd behind hummed applause.
"Lick him," said Bragg, "and lick him good."
He was not anxious for the job himself, but was as eager to see the scrap as the consul. It is so seldom that an officer gets a chance of seeing a real fight, and besides, he did not love Noyes at all.
And inside of two minutes the inner court saw the skipper of the State of Oregon and the man from Abo stripped to their waists and singlets.
"Pick your own seconds," said the consul gleefully, "and I'll be referee and timekeeper."
He forgot there was such a thing as the Foreign Office; but he did not forget some of the habits and customs of Western America.
"There's to be no biting, or gouging or kicking," he said, "and when a man goes down he'll have ten seconds to get up in."
The next moment Noyes sailed in. He was not a bad fighter; he could hit hard at any rate, and sometimes stopped a blow. His previous acquaintance with Hans's head led him to go for his body, and that was perhaps a little in his favour, for the Finn was all abroad all the time. At first Hans hit so slowly that when he first got there Noyes was gone, but he gradually got a little quicker. When I was eleven stone weight I used sometimes to box with a man who weighed seventeen. In the first round I used to hit him when and where I pleased; in the second I had to look out; in the third he used to get there once and finish me for the day. Like Hans, he grew quicker as he grew warmer, and yet Hans never touched the skipper at all in the first round. He was knocked all over the place, and to any outsider it looked a thousand to one on Authority. But the odd thing was that Hans's ribs seemed as hard as his head, and his wind was invulnerable. Twice he went down, but he rose quick enough, and when time was called no one puffed but the skipper.