Sawed-Off appeared upon the horizon as a temporary rescuer; and while he could not put the sixteen-pound bag of shot so far as he had in better days sent the sixteen-pound solid shot, still he threw it farther than any of the Trojans could, and brought the Kingston score up to within one of the events gone to Troy. Pretty added one more by a display of grace and skill in the fencing-match with foils, that surprised even his best friends from Lakerim, and won the unanimous vote of the three judges, themselves skilful fencers.
A wet blanket was thrown on the encouragement of the Kingstonians by their inferiority at weight-lifting. Sawed-Off was many pounds from the power of a certain powerful Trojan, who was a smaller man with bigger muscles.
Then all the members of the Dozen had a special parlay with Jumbo, imploring him to save the day and the honor of both Kingston and Lakerim by winning the wrestling-match.
XXV
When Jumbo glanced across the floor and saw the man that was to be his opponent striding toward the mat in the center of the floor, he wished that some one else had been placed as the keystone in the Kingston arch of success. For Jumbo knew well the man's record as a wrestler. But Jumbo himself, while small, was well put together; and though built, as he said, "close to the ground," he was built for business.
Since he had gone in for wrestling he had made it the specialty of all his athletic exercises. He had practised everything that had any bearing on the strengthening of particular muscles or general agility. He had practised cart-wheels, hand-springs, back and front flips. He had worked with his neck at the chest-weight machine. He would walk on his hands to strengthen his throat, and his collars had grown in a few weeks from thirteen and a half to fifteen, and he could no longer wear his old shirts without splitting them. He made the mats in the Kingston gymnasium almost his home.
His special studies were bridging and spinning. He spent hours on his back, rising to his two feet and his head and then rolling from one shoulder to the other and spinning to his front. When he had his bridge-building abilities fairly well started, he compelled his heavy chum Sawed-Off to act as a living meal-bag, and rolled around upon the top of his head and bridged, with Sawed-Off laying all his weight across his chest. When he went to bed he bridged there until the best of wrestlers, sleep, had downed him. When he woke in the morning, he fell out of bed to the floor, turning his head under him and rolling so as not to break his neck or any bones, and bridging rigidly upon his head and bare feet.
Jumbo knew that, whatever might be the ability of his rival, the Trojan Ware, at least he, Jumbo, could have his conscience easy with the thought that he had made the most profitable use of the short time he had spent on wrestling, and that he would put up as good a fight as was in him.
More than that no athlete can do.
Jumbo and Ware met upon the mattress with their close-shaven heads looking like bulldogs' jowls; and they shook hands—if one can imagine bulldogs shaking hands.