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.