stood smiling by. After tiffin the child appeared again and sought her new friend. She would sit on his knee and pry open his mouth to see where the strange sounds came from. And his cigarettes delighted her.
It was the Manila Kid himself who asked Miss Means and Miss Andrews if they would mind a bit of a boxing: match in the social hall. They promptly withdrew to their cabin, after Miss Means had uttered a bewildered but dignified: “Not in the least! Don’t think of us!”
Shortly after dinner the cabin stewards stretched a rope around four pillars, just forward of the dining table. The men lighted cigarettes and cigars, and moved up with quickening interest. Tex Connor, who had disappeared directly after the coffee, brought in his budding champion, a large grinning yellow man in a bathrobe. The second mate, and two of the engineers found seats about the improvised rings. Then an outer door opened, and the great mandarin appeared, bowing and smiling courteously with hands clasped before his breast. The fifteen lesser mandarins followed, all rich color and rustling silk.
The young officers sprang to their feel and arranged chairs for the party. The great man seated himself, and his attendants grouped themselves behind him.
Into this expectant atmosphere came the mate, in knickerbockers and a sweater, stooping under the lintel of the door, then straightening up and stopping short. His eyes quickly took in the crowded little picture – the gray-bearded mandarin in the ringside chair, backed with a mass of Oriental color; that other personage, Dawley Kane, directly opposite, with the aquiline nose, the guardedly keen eyes and the quite humorless face, as truly a mandarin among the whites as was calm old Kang among the yellows; the flushed eager face of Rocky Kane; the other whites, all smoking, all watching him sharply, all impatient for the show. He frowned; then, as the mandarin smiled, came gravely forward, bent under the rope and addressed him briefly in Chinese.
The mandarin, frankly pleased at hearing his own tongue, rose to reply. Each clasped his own hands and bowed low, with the observance of a long-hardened etiquette so dear to the Oriental heart.
“How about a little bet?” whispered Rocky Kane to Tex Connor. “I wouldn’t mind taking the big fellow.”
“What odds’ll you give?” replied the impassive one.
“Odds nothing! Your man’s a trained fighter, and he must be twenty years younger.”
“But this man Doane’s an old athlete. He’s boxed, off and on, all his life. And he’s kept in condition. Look at his weight, and his reach.”
“What’s the distance?”
“Oh – six two-minute rounds.”
“Who’ll referee?”
“Well – one of the Englishmen.”
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
