Guy Livingstone | Page 9

clear blue eyes lightening savagely; and stout

Tom Lynton, a deeper flush on his honest face, hewing away with all
the unscientific strength of his nervous arm.
But my two guards, very Abdiels in their duty, never let me go; on the
contrary, one tightened his gripe on my throat suffocatingly, while the
other, though I remained perfectly quiescent, kept giving me gentle
hints to keep the peace with the end of his staff. I was getting sick and
dizzy, when something passed my cheek like the wind of a ball; there
was a dull, crashing sound close at my ear; the grasp on my neck
relaxed all at once; I felt something across my feet, and saw a dark blue
mass, topped by the ruin of a shiny hat, lying there quite still; an arm
was round my waist like the coil of a cable, and I heard Guy's voice
laughing loud,
"My dear Frank," he said, as he dragged me away toward the inn, "the
centre of a row, as usual. _Que, diable, allait il faire dans cette
bagarre?_"
I hardly heard him, for my senses were still confused; but in thirty
seconds I was under the archway of "The George." As the heroines of
the Radcliffe romances say, "I turned to thank my preserver, but he was
gone."
When I recovered my breath, I went up to a balcony on the first floor
and looked out. The tide of the affray was surging gradually back into
the wide open space before the inn, and very shortly this was filled with
a chaos of furious faces and struggling arms. The University were
evidently recoiling, pressed back by the sheer weight of their opponents;
but soon came a re-enforcement of grooms and stable-men,
lightweights, active and wiry; and these, with their hunting-crops and
heavy cutting-whips used remorselessly--like Cæsar's legionaries, they
struck only at the face--once more re-established the balance of the
battle.
Suddenly the _melée_ seemed to converge to one point--the mid-eddy,
as it were, of the whirlpool; then came a lull, almost a hush; and then
fifty strong arms, indiscriminately of town and gownsmen, were locked
to keep the ground, while a storm of voices shouted for "A ring!"

In that impromptu arena two men stood face to face under the full glare
of the gas-lamps--one was Guy Livingstone; the other a denizen of the
Potteries, yclept "Burn's Big 'un," who had selected B---- as his training
quarters, in preparation for his fight to come off in the ensuing week
with the third best man in England for £100 a side.
They made a magnificent contrast. Guy, apparently quite composed,
but the lower part of his face set stern and pitiless; an evil light in his
eyes, showing how all the gladiator in his nature was roused; his left
hand swaying level with his hip; all the weight of his body resting on
the right foot; his lofty head thrown back haughtily; his guard low. The
professional, three inches shorter than his adversary, but a rare model
of brute strength; his arms and neck, where the short jersey left them
exposed, clear-skinned and white as a woman's, through the perfection
of his training; his hair cropped close round a low, retreating forehead;
his thick lips parted in a savage grin, meant to represent a smile of
confidence. So they stood there--fitting champions of the races that
have been antagonistic for four thousand years--Patrician and
Proletarian.
Suddenly there was a commotion at one corner of the ring, and I saw a
small, bullet-headed man, with a voice like a fractious child, striving
frantically to force his way through. "Don't let 'em fight!" he screamed:
"it's robbery, I tell you. There's hundreds of pounds on him for
Thursday next, I'm his trainer; and I daren't show him with a scratch on
him."
A great roar of laughter answered his entreaties, and twenty arms thrust
the little man back; but his interesting charge seemed to ponder and
hesitate, when a drawling nasal voice spoke from the opposite corner:
"Ah! you're right; take him away; don't show his white feather till
you're druv to it." That turned the wavering scale. The Big 'un ground
his teeth with blasphemy, and set-to.
I need not go through the minutiæ of the fight; it was all one way. The
professional did his best, and took his punishment like a glutton; but he
could do nothing against the long reach of his adversary, who stopped
and countered as coolly as if he had only the gloves on.

It was the beginning of the sixth round; our champion bore only one
mark, showing where a tremendous right-hander had almost come
home--a cut on his lower lip, whence the bright Norman blood was
flowing freely. I will not attempt to describe