The dinner over, the young men rushed from their colleges, flushed, full-fed, and eager for battle. If the Gown was angry, the Town, too, was on the alert. From Iffly and Barnwell, from factory and mill, from wharf and warehouse, the Town poured out to meet the enemy, and their battle was soon general. From the Addenbrook's hospital to the Blenheim turnpike, all Cambridge was in an uproar—the college gates closed—the shops barricaded—the shop-boys away in support of their brother townsmen—the battle raged, and the Gown had the worst of the fight.
A luncheon of many courses had been provided for Rafael Mendoza at his inn; but he smiled at the clumsy efforts of the university cooks to entertain him, and a couple of dates and a glass of water formed his meal. In vain the discomfited landlord pressed him to partake of the slighted banquet. “A breakfast! psha!” said he. “My good man, I have nineteen cooks, at salaries rising from four hundred a year. I can have a dinner at any hour; but a Town and Gown row” (a brickbat here flying through the window crashed the caraffe of water in Mendoza's hand)—“a Town and Gown row is a novelty to me. The Town has the best of it, clearly, though: the men outnumber the lads. Ha, a good blow! How that tall townsman went down before yonder slim young fellow in the scarlet trencher cap.”
“That is the Lord Codlingsby,” the landlord said.
“A light weight, but a pretty fighter,” Mendoza remarked. “Well hit with your left, Lord Codlingsby; well parried, Lord Codlingsby; claret drawn, by Jupiter!”
“Ours is werry fine,” the landlord said. “Will your Highness have Chateau Margaux or Lafitte?”
“He never can be going to match himself against that bargeman!” Rafael exclaimed, as an enormous boatman—no other than Rullock—indeed, the most famous bruiser of Cambridge, and before whose fists the Gownsmen went down like ninepins—fought his way up to the spot where, with admirable spirit and resolution, Lord Codlingsby and one or two of his friends were making head against a number of the town.
The young noble faced the huge champion with the gallantry of his race, but was no match for the enemy's strength and weight and sinew, and went down at every round. The brutal fellow had no mercy on the lad. His savage treatment chafed Mendoza as he viewed the unequal combat from the inn-window. “Hold your hand!” he cried to this Goliath; “don't you see he's but a boy?”
“Down he goes again!” the bargeman cried, not heeding the interruption. “Down he goes again: I likes wapping a lord!”
“Coward!” shouted Mendoza; and to fling open the window amidst a shower of brickbats, to vault over the balcony, to slide down one of the pillars to the ground, was an instant's work.
At the next he stood before the enormous bargeman.