Ponta attempted one of his old-time rushes, but was stopped on the mouth.  Implacable, insistent, ever menacing, never letting him rest, Joe followed him up.  The round, the thirteenth, closed with a rush, in Ponta’s corner.  He attempted a rally, was brought to his knees, took the nine seconds’ count, and then tried to clinch into safety, only to receive four of Joe’s terrible stomach punches, so that with the gong he fell back, gasping, into the arms of his seconds.

Joe ran across the ring to his own corner.

“Now I’m going to get ’m,” he said to his second.

“You sure fixed ‘m that time,” the latter answered.  “Nothin’ to stop you now but a lucky punch.  Watch out for it.”

Joe leaned forward, feet gathered under him for a spring, like a foot-racer waiting the start.  He was waiting for the gong.  When it sounded he shot forward and across the ring, catching Ponta in the midst of his seconds as he rose from his stool.  And in the midst of his seconds he went down, knocked down by a right-hand blow.  As he arose from the confusion of buckets, stools, and seconds, Joe put him down again.  And yet a third time he went down before he could escape from his own corner.

Joe had at last become the whirlwind.  Genevieve remembered his “just watch, you’ll know when I go after him.”  The house knew it, too.  It was on its feet, every voice raised in a fierce yell.  It was the blood-cry of the crowd, and it sounded to her like what she imagined must be the howling of wolves.  And what with confidence in her lover’s victory she found room in her heart to pity Ponta.

In vain he struggled to defend himself, to block, to cover up, to duck, to clinch into a moment’s safety.  That moment was denied him.  Knockdown after knockdown was his portion.  He was knocked to the canvas backwards, and sideways, was punched in the clinches and in the breakaways—­stiff, jolty blows that dazed his brain and drove the strength from his muscles.  He was knocked into the corners and out again, against the ropes, rebounding, and with another blow against the ropes once more.  He fanned the air with his arms, showering savage blows upon emptiness.  There was nothing human left in him.  He was the beast incarnate, roaring and raging and being destroyed.  He was smashed down to his knees, but refused to take the count, staggering to his feet only to be met stiff-handed on the mouth and sent hurling back against the ropes.

In sore travail, gasping, reeling, panting, with glazing eyes and sobbing breath, grotesque and heroic, fighting to the last, striving to get at his antagonist, he surged and was driven about the ring.  And in that moment Joe’s foot slipped on the wet canvas.  Ponta’s swimming eyes saw and knew the chance.  All the fleeing strength of his body gathered itself together for the lightning lucky punch.  Even as Joe slipped the other smote him, fairly on the point of the chin.  He went over backward.  Genevieve saw his muscles relax while he was yet in the air, and she heard the thud of his head on the canvas.