“I ’fought I offered you to make yourself a cigarette, ’Enery,” observed the astounded owner of the materia nicotina.

“I grabbed for to make myself a cigarette, Willyerm,” was the pedantically correct restatement of Henry.

“Then why go for to try an’ mannyfacter a bloomin’ banana?” asked the indignant victim, whose further remarks were drowned in the roars of applause which greeted the appearance from the dressing-tents of the Champion and the Challenger.

Dam and Corporal Dowdall entered the ring from opposite corners, seated themselves in the chairs provided for them, and submitted themselves to the ministrations of their respective seconds.

Trooper Herbert Hawker violently chafed Dam’s legs, Trooper Bear his arms and chest, while Trooper Goate struggled to force a pair of new boxing-gloves upon his hands, which were scientifically bandaged around knuckles, back, and wrist, against untimely dislocations and sprains.

Clean water was poured into the bowls which stood behind each chair, and fresh resin was sprinkled over the canvas-covered boards of the Ring.

Men whose favourite “carried their money” (and each carried a good deal) anxiously studied that favourite’s opponent.

The Queen’s Greys beheld a gorilla indeed, a vast, square, long-armed hairy monster, with the true pugilist face and head.

“Wot a werry ugly bloke,” observed Seaman Arthur Andrews to Seaman Henry Smith. “‘E reminds me o’ Hadmiral Sir Percy ’Opkinton, so ’e do.  P’raps ’e’s a pore relation.”

“Yus,” agreed Seaman Smith.  “A crost between our beloved ‘Oppy an’ ole Bill Jones ’ere.  Bill was reported to ’ave ’ad a twin brother—­but it was allus serposed Bill ate ’im when ‘e wasn’ lookin’.”

The backers of Corporal Dowdall were encouraged at seeing a man who looked like a gentleman and bore none of the traditional marks of the prize-fighter.  His head was not cropped to the point of bristly baldness, his nose was unbroken, his eyes well opened and unblackened, his ears unthickened, his body untattooed.  He had the white skin, small trim moustache, high-bred features, small extremities, and general appearance and bearing of an officer.

Ho, G’rilla Dowdall would make short work of that tippy young toff.  Why, look at him!

And indeed it made you shudder to think of that enormous ferocity, that dynamic truculence, doing its best to destroy you in a space twenty-four feet square.

Let the challenger wait till G’rilla put his fighting face on—­fair terrifyin’.

Not an Artilleryman but felt sure that the garrison-gunner would successfully defend the title and “give the swankin’ Queen’s Greys something to keep them choop[25] for a bit.  Gettin’ above ’emselves they was, becos’ this bloke of theirs had won Best Man-at-Arms and had the nerve to challenge G’rilla Dowdall, R.G.A.”

Even the R.H.A. admitted the R.G.A. to terms of perfect equality on that great occasion.