Poison Island | Page 6

us Captain Coffin turned about to smite, a stone came flying and struck him smartly on the funny-bone. His hand opened with the pain of it, but the stick hung by a loop to his wrist, and, gripping it again, he charged among his tormentors, lashing out to right and left.
So savagely he charged that I looked for nothing short of murder; and just then, while I stood at gaze, a boy stepped up to me--the same that Ted Bates had plucked by the arm.
"Look here!" said he, frowning, with his legs a-straddle. "Doggy Bates tells me that you told him you could whack me with one hand behind you."
I replied that I had told Doggy Bates nothing of the sort.
"That's all right," said he. "Then you take it back?"
He had the air of one sure of his logic, but his under lip--not to mention his ears--protruded in a way that struck me as offensive, and I replied--
"That depends."
"My name's Stokes," said he, still in the same reasonable tone. "And you'll have to take coward's blow."
"Oh, indeed!" said I.
"It's the rule," said he, and gave it me with a light, back-handed smack across the bridge of the nose; whereupon I hit him on the point of the chin, and, unconsciously imitating Captain Coffin's method of charging a crowd, lowered my head and butted him violently in the stomach.
I make no doubt that my brain was tired and giddy with the day's experiences, but to this moment I cannot understand why we two suddenly found ourselves the focus of interest in a crowd which had wasted none on Captain Coffin.
But so it was. In less time than it takes to write, a ring surrounded us--a ring of men staring and offering bets. The lamp at the street-corner shone on their faces; and close under the light of it Master Stokes and I were hammering one another.
We were fighting by rule, too. Some one--I cannot say who--had taken up the affair, and was imposing the right ceremonial upon us. It may have been the cheerful, blue-jerseyed Irishman, to whose knee I returned at the end of each round to be freshened up around the face and neck with a dripping boat-sponge. He had an extraordinarily wide mouth, and it kept speaking encouragement and good advice to me. I feel sure he was a good fellow, but have never set eyes on him from that hour to this.
Bully Stokes and I must have fought a good many rounds, for towards the end we were both panting hard, and our hands hung on every blow. But I remember yet more vividly the strangeness of it all, and the uncanny sensation that the fight itself, the street-lamp, the crowd, and the dim houses around were unreal as a dream: that, and the unnatural hardness of my opponent's face, which seemed the one unmalleable part of him.
A dreadful thought possessed me that if he could only contrive to hit me with his face all would be over. My own was badly pounded; for we fought--or, at any rate, I fought--without the smallest science; it was blow for blow, plain give-and-take, from the start. But what distressed me was the extreme tenderness of my knuckles; and what chiefly irritated me was the behaviour of Doggy Bates, dancing about and screaming, "Go it, Stimcoes! Stimcoes for ever!" Five times the onlookers flung him out by the scruff of his neck; and five times he worked himself back, and screamed it between their legs.
In the end this enthusiasm proved the undoing of all his delight. Towards the end of an intolerably long round, finding that my arms began to hang like lead, I had rushed in and closed; and the two of us went to ground together. Then I lay panting, and my opponent under me--the pair of us too weary for the moment to strike a blow; and then, as breath came back, I was aware of a sudden hush in the din. A hand took me by the shirt-collar, dragged me to my feet, and swung me round, and I stared, blinking, into the face of Mr. Stimcoe.
"Dishgrashful!" said Mr. Stimcoe. He was accompanied by a constable, to whom he appealed for confirmation, pointing to my face. "Left immy charge only this evening, Perf'ly dishgrashful!"
"Boys will be boys, sir," said the constable.
"M' good fellow "--Mr. Stimcoe comprehended the crowd with an unsteady wave of his hand--"that don't 'pply 'case of men. _Ne tu pu'ri tempsherish annosh_; tha's Juvenal."
"Then my advice is, sir--take the boy home and give him a wash."
"He can't," came a taunting voice from the crowd. "'Cos why? The company 've cut off his water."
Mr. Stimcoe gazed around in sorrow rather than in anger. He cleared his throat for a public speech; but was forestalled