The battle ended when with one swift stroke he severed the stem in the middle and with a sweeping twirl sent it thudding down.
“Cut his head off!” he chuckled, throwing himself upon the ground to mop the perspiration from his brow.
“It’s like boxing,” he thought, “this great Central American sport of machete fighting, only—it’s different. You feel as if only half of you were in it.”
As a boxer Johnny was neither right nor left handed. He was ambidextrous. Therein lay much of his power. How few of us ever learn to use both hands well. Yet what an advantage comes to those who do.
“That’s the trouble with this machete business,” he now thought to himself. “Only one hand, that’s all you use. And yet, why not?”
He sprang to his feet, selected a second bunch of bananas, hung it on high, then prepared as before to attack it. This time, however, he wielded a machete in each hand.
At first he found it awkward. Once he barely missed cutting his own wrist. By the time he had demolished three other bunches he felt that he was making progress and that an ambidextrous fighter with two knives would have a decided advantage over one who fought with a single blade.
Johnny, as you may have guessed, was preparing for that moment which he felt must come sooner or later, when he and Diaz would stand face to face ready to fight their battle out with the great Central American blade.
“And when that time comes,” he told himself, “it must not find me unprepared.”