“There’s nothing wrong with the gloves here,” added Delorme, after visiting Harberth’s corner.
This was the less remarkable in that there were no gloves whatsoever.
Presumably the fiction of a “friendly boxing contest” was to be stoutly maintained. The crowd of delighted boys laughed.
“Then come here, both of you,” said Cokeson.
The combatants complied.
“Don’t hold and hit. Don’t butt nor trip. Don’t clinch. Don’t use knee, elbow, nor shoulder. When I call ‘Break away,’ break without hitting. If you do any of these things you will be jolly well disqualified. Fight fair and God have mercy on your souls.” To Dam it seemed that the advice was superfluous—and of God’s mercy on his soul he had had experience.
Returning to their corners, the two stripped to the waist and sat ready, arrayed in shorts and gymnasium shoes.
Seen thus, they looked most unevenly matched, Harberth looking still bigger for undressing and Dam even smaller. But, as the knowing Coxe Major observed, what there was of Dam was in the right place—and was muscle. Certainly he was finely made.
“Seconds out of the ring. Time!” called the time-keeper and Dam sprang to his feet and ran at Harberth who swung a mighty round-arm blow at his face as Dam ducked and smote him hard and true just below the breast-bone and fairly on the “mark “.
The bully’s grunt of anguish was drowned in howls of “Shake hands!” “They haven’t shaken hands!”