But the Englishmen were not at hand. A friendly bout between yellow and white overstepped their code. One of the customs men, an Australian, accepted the responsibility, however.
“I’ll lay you a thousand, even,” said Rocky Kane.
“Make it two thousand.”
“I’ll give you two thousand, even,” said Dawley Kane quietly.
“Taken! Three thousand, altogether – gold.”
The mate, turning away from the mandarin, caught this; stood motionless looking at them, his brows drawing together.
“Gentlemen,” he finally remarked, “I came here with the understanding that it was to be only a little private exercise. I had no objection, of course, to your looking on, some of you, but this…”
“Oh, come!” said Connor. “It’s just for points. Tom’s not going to fight you.”
Young Kane, gripping the rope nervously with both hands, cried: “You wouldn’t quit!”
The mate looked down at these men. “No,” he replied, in the same gravely quiet manner, “I shall go on with it. I do this” – he made the point firmly, with a dignity that in some degree, for the moment, overawed the younger men – “I do it because his excellency has paid us the honor of coming here in this democratic way. He tells me that he is fond of boxing. I shall try to entertain him.” And he drew the sweater over his head, and caught the gloves that the Kid tossed him.
The elder Kane shrewdly took him in. The authority of the man was not to be questioned. Without so much as raising his voice he had dominated the strange little gathering. Physically he was a delight to the eye; anywhere In the forties, his hair thin to the verge of baldness, his strong sober face deeply lined, yet with shoulders, arms and chest that spoke of great muscular power and a waist without a trace of the added girth that middle age usually brings; of sound English stock, doubtless; the sort that in the older land would ride to hounds at eighty.
Dawley Kane looked, then, at the Chinese heavyweight. This man, though not quite a match in size for the giant before him, appeared every inch the athlete. Kane understood the East too well to find him at all surprising; he had seen the strapping northern men of Yuan Shi K’ai’s new army; he knew that the trained runners of the Imperial Government were expected, on occasion, to cover their hundred miles in a day; in a word, that the curious common American notion of the Chinese physique was based on an occasional glimpse of a tropical laundryman. And he settled back in his comfortable chair confident of a run for his money. The occasion promised, indeed, excellent entertainment.
The mate, still with that slight frown, glanced about. Not one of the crowded eager faces about the ropes exhibited the slightest interest in himself as a human being. He was but the mate of a river steamer; a man who had not kept up with his generation (the reason didn’t matter) – an individual of no standing… He put up his hands.
Tom Sung fell into a crouch. With his left shoulder advanced, his chin tucked away behind it, he moved in dose and darted quick but hard blows to the stomach and heart. Duane stepped backward, and edged around him, feeling him out, studying his hands and arms, his balance, his footwork. It early became clear that he was a thoroughgoing professional, who meant to go in and make a fight of it… Doane, sparring lightly, considered this. Conner, of course, had no sportsmanship.
Tom’s left hand shot up through Doane’s guard, landing clean on h. – S face with a sharp thud; followed up with a remarkably quick right swing that the mate, by sidestepping, succeeded only in turning into a glancing blow. And then, as Doane ducked a left thrust, he uppercut with all his strength. The blow landed on Doane’s forearms with a force that shook him from head to foot.
A sound of breath sharply indrawn came from the spectators, to most of whom it must have appeared that the blow had gone home. Doane, slipping away and mopping the sweat from eyes and forehead, heard the sound; and for an instant saw them, all leaning forward, tense, eager for a knockout, the one possible final thrill.
The yellow man was at him again, landing left, right and left on his stomach, and butting a shaven head with real force against his chin. For an instant stars danced about his eyes. Elbows had followed the head, roughing at his face. Doane, quickly recovering, leaped back and dropped his hands.
“What is this?” he called sharply to Connor, whose round expressionless face with its one cool light eye and thin little mouth looked at him without response. “Head? Elbows? Is your man going to box, or not?”
The eyes that turned in surprise about the ringside were not friendly. These men cared nothing for his little difficulties; their blood was up. They wanted what the Americans among them would term “action” and “results.”
Tom was tearing at him again. So it was, after all, to be a fight. No preliminary understandings mattered. He felt a profound disgust, as by main strength he stopped rush after rush, making full use of his greater reach to pin Tom’s arms and hurl him back; a disgust however, that was changing gradually to anger. He had known, all his life, the peculiar joy that comes to a man of great strength and activity in any thorough test of his power.
The customs man called time.
Rocky Kane – flushed, excited, looking like a boy – felt in his pockets for cigarettes; found none; and slipped hurriedly out to the deck.
There a silken rustle stopped him short.
A slim figure, enveloped in an embroidered gown, was moving back from a cabin window. The light from within fell – during a brief second – full on an oval face that was brightly painted, red and white, beneath glossy black hair. The nose was straight, and not wide. The eyes, slanted only a little, looked brightly out from under penciled brows. She was moving swiftly toward the canvas screen; but he, more swiftly, leaped before her, stared at her; laughed softly in sheer delighted surprise. Then, with a quick glance about the deck, breathing out he knew not what terms of crude compliment he reached for her; pursued her to the rail; caught her.
“You little beauty!” he was whispering now. “You wonder! You darling! You’re just too good to be true!” Beside himself, laughing again, he bent over to kiss her. But she wrenched an arm free, fought him off, and leaned, breathless, against the rail.
“Little yellow tiger, eh?” he cried softly. “Well, I’m a big white tiger!”
She said in English: “This is amazing!”
He stood frozen until she had disappeared behind the canvas screen. Then he staggered back; stumbled against a deck chair; turning, found the strange thin girl of the middy blouse stretched out there comfortably in her rug.
She said, with a cool ease: “It’s so pleasant out here this evening, I really haven’t felt like going in.”
With a muttered something – he knew not what – he rushed off to his cabin; then rushed back into the social hall.
The customs man called time for the second round.
As Doane advanced to the center of the ring, Tom rushed, as before, head down. Doane uppercut him; then threw him back, forestalling a clinch. The next two or three rushes he met in the same determined but negative way; hitting a few blows but for the most part pushing him off. The sweat kept running into his eyes as he exerted nearly his full strength. And Tom Sung’s shoulders and arms glistened a bright yellow under the electric lights.
Rocky Kane, lighting a cigarette and tossing the blazing match away, called loudly: “Oh, hit him! For God’s sake, do something! Don’t be afraid of a Chink!”
Doane glanced over at him. Tom rushed. Doane felt again the crash of solid body blows delivered with all the force of more than two hundred pounds of well-trained muscle behind them. Again he winced and retreated. He knew well that he could endure only a certain amount of this punishment… Suddenly Tom struck with the sharpest impact yet. Again that hard head butted his chin; an elbow and the heel of a glove roughed his face… Doane summoned all his strength to push him off. Then he stepped deliberately forward.
At