The pleasure of anticipation was perceptibly waning among the spectators. With the initial stakes placed, the betting could not hold much interest until Meanix’s opponent appeared. They took to looking about them, examining their neighbours, half expecting anyone of better-than-average build to disrobe and duck under the ropes. Cribb nudged young Jago, winked and tilted his head fractionally towards the vacant corner. Thackeray noticed this, and saw the flash of momentary uncertainty in the Constable’s eyes. The Sergeant had found a new subject for his dubious wit.
In the ring even Meanix was betraying unease. He crossed his arms to massage his biceps, searching the faces of the crowd who stood near.
“Here they come!” The general mutterings stopped. Three riders approached at a canter across the field, raising a small mist of water vapour from the saturated turf. The interest shifted from Meanix to the newcomers. Volunteers ran forward to hold the horses as they were reined, steaming, some distance from the ring. The riders dismounted, a dandified figure in ulster, black boots and top hat, and two younger men, massively built, one a Negro. He began to strip.
“Seven to four against the Ebony!” shouted a bookie, and the betting resumed in earnest.
“He’ll be the local champion,” Cribb explained. “The challenger is Meanix. He had to toss his cap into the ring first.”
“The betting goes with Meanix, even so,” remarked Thackeray. “He carries too much top hamper for the Ebony to fell him.”
“We’ll see.”
A minute or so later the Ebony joined the Ox in the ring, bare-chested, and in striking white boxing drawers fastened at mid-calf level. His swarthy muscularity drew whistles of genuine admiration from the ringside. If Meanix was an ox, here was a panther.
Now to a riot of abuse and booing, Meanix’s two attendants ducked under the rope and reported to the referee, a pale man in muffler and cap who had appeared from nowhere. He seemed well enough known, and proved to be a Rainham innkeeper. The weighings, he announced, to those who could hear, had shown a stone and a quarter in favour of Meanix at fourteen stone seven. Were the colours in position?
The larger of the Ebony’s attendants hustled forward with a square of black silk, which he tied above Meanix’s scarlet kerchief on one of the centre stakes. A toss was made for corners. Meanix selected the one his attendants had already claimed.
“Will seconds and bottleholders now withdraw?”
Even the referee left the ring.
“Time.”
They walked to the centre and crossed hands, glowering menace at each other.
“Go to it, Ox,” bawled a bystander.
The fight began.
The shifting mass of umbrellas and hats surrounding the small square of green jerked to stillness. It crystallized into hundreds of faces, regularly spaced, each distinct in character.
Every moustache, beard, cigar came into focus. Every eye was fastened on the pugilists. They, firm in the classical stance, faced each other, probing the space between them with hard-clenched fists. For a time the impact of rain on umbrella silk was almost the only sound. Then, with the preliminary measuring up complete, the patrons began to demand action.
Meanix ventured a left arm, the Ebony swayed out of range, and shouts of encouragement descended on them from all sides. Two or three flicking movements from Meanix’s leading arm failed to connect with the bobbing Negro, who showed no aggression. Responding to the impatient cries of his following, Meanix advanced several inches with a simultaneous heel-toe movement of both feet, rather as a fencer progresses. Then he brought his right fist above his shoulder and swung it violently towards his opponent’s face. It was an obvious punch, and easily parried, but he followed it with a stabbing left thrust that found its mark on the Ebony’s belly. Then Meanix closed, butting his head hard into his man’s chest and wrapping his arms around the torso. With a swift lunge forward of his right leg and a simultaneous jerk, he swung the Negro against the bridge made by his thigh and toppled him. To a warm ovation the first round was over.
“First knockdown to the Ox,” said Thackeray with significance. The fight would not last long in his opinion.
“He’s a redoubtable fellow,” agreed Jago.
Cribb was watching the Ebony, who stood in his corner while his attendant wiped mud from his arms.
Half a minute was allowed between rounds. At a signal from the referee the pair squared up again, and soon began to exchange strenuous punches, the Negro giving as good as he received. Red patches began to colour Meanix’s chest, where it had received the Ebony’s attention. A sudden crash of heads jolted both men and for a few seconds, as if by mutual consent, they wrestled against the ropes and then crashed together to the grass.
The following two rounds were brief and uneventful, both ending with Meanix back-heeling his rival. The bookies in the crowd tried to revive interest in the odds at each break between rounds, but they were doing poor business.
“Everyone waits for first blood,” Cribb explained. “Watch the rush to bet when the claret flows.”
It happened in the fifth round. Meanix caught the Ebony squarely on the nose.
“Scarlet as a geranium. What d’you think of that?” declared one of their neighbours. “As sweet a punch as I’ve seen!
Plant one on ’is peepers, Meanix.”
Without quite managing that, the Ox succeeded in felling his wounded rival with a swinging blow to the ear. The Ebony’s seconds hauled him to the corner. There he sat on one attendant’s arched thigh, while the other stanched the flow from his nose.
“That’s the kind of blow that tells,” said Cribb. “A good fist fighter will touch up the listeners as often as he’s able. It’s an art that died when glove fighting came in. If you’ve ever felt a man’s raw ’uns about your ears, you’ll know what I mean.”
For the next six rounds the Ox repeatedly battered his rival to his knees, several times falling heavily across him to add to the effect. The betting, which had never favoured the Ebony, was now heavily against him. Meanix had not once resorted to his second’s knee between rounds.
“No sort of mill at all, this,” declared Thackeray with a superior air. “They shouldn’t have brought a novice out to face the Londoner. He hasn’t fairly grassed Meanix once.”
“There’s time enough,” Cribb pointed out. “The black’s scarce marked as yet. Meanix has the edge on the pully-hauly work, but it won’t count for much in a fight to the finish. There’s steam in the Ebony.”
Almost in response to this tribute the Negro rose to the referee’s next call and began to counterassault, plainly surprising Meanix. A well-directed left caught the Ox in the throat as he lumbered forward incautiously. A second jab with the same fist split his lip.
“On the ivories!” shouted one of the crowd.
Meanix put the back of his right hand to the bleeding mouth. It was an instinctive movement to check for blood. Unfortunately for him, it left his body unguarded. A lightning blow caught him in the stomach, and he dropped like a stone.
“Beautiful! On the mark!” called the admirer. Now it was the turn of Meanix’s seconds to drag him clear and revive him with sal volatile.
“The mark?” queried Thackeray.
“Point of the stomach. Known as Broughton’s mark,” Cribb explained. “One of the classic punches.”
Meanix had scarcely recovered when the end of the thirty seconds was called. The seconds heaved him upright and pushed him heftily towards his punisher.
“Now we’ll see if there’s any science to the Ebony,” Cribb said, in some excitement. “Any hawbuck fighter can fell a man. It takes class to keep him upright while you dose him.”
Class it was that the Ebony displayed, for the round lasted six minutes, and Meanix was hit with every variety of punch. Some in the crowd delightedly classified each blow in the patois of pugilism: “On the ivories!” “Whisker!” “Liver hit!” “On the mark!” “Peepers!” Others, more materialistic, sought out the bookmakers to cover their losses. The Ebony continued efficiently with his work, concentrating punches on the swollen areas of flesh around Meanix’s eyes and mouth. There was no need now for crude hammer blows; he hit with the cutting edge of the fist, the sharply angled central joints of the clenched fingers, lancing the swellings with a surgeon’s precision in short, swift stabs. When specks of blood showed at five or six points, he stood back to survey the work. Then, as Meanix blundered against the ropes, the Ebony attacked again with harder blows, broadening the incisions to free-flowing gashes, until lines of crimson patterned Meanix’s face and chest. Once Meanix threatened to overbalance, and the Negro hugged him maternally until he was sufficiently stable to take the next volley of blows. They were aimed at the mouth and jowls, which must have been particularly sore, for Meanix actually made a pathetic parrying movement before backing to the nearest corner. There he waited, leaning hard on the corner stake, his open hands raised to protect the wounds on his face. Instead the attack came in a series of cruel blows to the ribs. He bowed in agony, quite open now to an uppercut that would have settled the match. But the Ebony had other plans. He gripped his opponent under the chin and led him like the ox he was claimed to resemble to the centre of the ring. Then with astonishing agility he turned his back on Meanix and upended him over his thigh in a perfect cross-buttock.