“He’s a fifteen-stoner from the loins upwards,” cried Dutch Sam, from his corner.

“We’ll get some of it off him before we finish.”

“You’ll get more off him than ever you bargained for,” answered Jim Belcher, and the crowd laughed at the rough chaff.

CHAPTER XVIII—­THE SMITH’S LAST BATTLE

“Clear the outer ring!” cried Jackson, standing up beside the ropes with a big silver watch in his hand.

“Ss-whack! ss-whack! ss-whack!” went the horse-whips—­for a number of the spectators, either driven onwards by the pressure behind or willing to risk some physical pain on the chance of getting a better view, had crept under the ropes and formed a ragged fringe within the outer ring.  Now, amidst roars of laughter from the crowd and a shower of blows from the beaters-out, they dived madly back, with the ungainly haste of frightened sheep blundering through a gap in their hurdles.  Their case was a hard one, for the folk in front refused to yield an inch of their places—­but the arguments from the rear prevailed over everything else, and presently every frantic fugitive had been absorbed, whilst the beaters-out took their stands along the edge at regular intervals, with their whips held down by their thighs.

“Gentlemen,” cried Jackson, again, “I am requested to inform you that Sir Charles Tregellis’s nominee is Jack Harrison, fighting at thirteen-eight, and Sir Lothian Hume’s is Crab Wilson, at thirteen-three.  No person can be allowed at the inner ropes save the referee and the timekeeper.  I have only to beg that, if the occasion should require it, you will all give me your assistance to keep the ground clear, to prevent confusion, and to have a fair fight.  All ready?”

“All ready!” from both corners.

“Time!”

There was a breathless hush as Harrison, Wilson, Belcher, and Dutch Sam walked very briskly into the centre of the ring.  The two men shook hands, whilst their seconds did the same, the four hands crossing each other.  Then the seconds dropped back, and the two champions stood toe to toe, with their hands up.

It was a magnificent sight to any one who had not lost his sense of appreciation of the noblest of all the works of Nature.  Both men fulfilled that requisite of the powerful athlete that they should look larger without their clothes than with them.  In ring slang, they buffed well.  And each showed up the other’s points on account of the extreme contrast between them:  the long, loose-limbed, deer-footed youngster, and the square-set, rugged veteran with his trunk like the stump of an oak.  The betting began to rise upon the younger man from the instant that they were put face to face, for his advantages were obvious, whilst those qualities which had brought Harrison to the top in his youth were only a memory in the minds of the older men.  All could see the three inches extra of height and