Tom Johnson by this time had the measure of his man. The usual waiting game would not serve now. He must not only wait, but he must keep away, and in order to keep away, he must run away. This may not have been wholly admirable from a purely sporting point of view, but we must forgive Johnson a good deal (and as we shall see there really was a good deal to forgive) on account of his inches. “He had recourse,” says Egan, “to shifting”--that is, he kept out of the way for as long as possible, and then, as by the rules of the Prize-Ring a round only ended when one of the men went down, probably closed and let Perrins throw him. But the spectators approved of this method no better than they would to-day, and there was a good deal of murmuring against Johnson. At last Perrins, unable to reach his nimble-footed antagonist, began to mock at him. “Why!” he exclaimed to the company at large, “what have you brought me here? This is not the valiant Johnson, the Champion of England: you have imposed upon me with a mere boy!” At this Johnson was stung to retort, for he was no coward and was but fighting in the only way which his size allowed. Moreover, Perrins’s observation roused his dander, and he blurted out, “By God, you shall know that Tom Johnson _is_ here!” and immediately flew at his man in a passion of rage and planted a terrific blow over his left eye, so that it closed almost at once. This incident nearly decides for us that Perrins was not much of a boxer. A wild charge of that sort, particularly by a much smaller man, is seldom difficult to frustrate. And the opinion of the crowd began to veer round. Those who had put their money on Perrins began to hedge. Undaunted by his closed eye, Perrins pulled himself together in the next round and returned as good as he had got, closing Johnson’s right eye. And so for a while the fight remained level. Many rounds and very short ones. A half-minute’s rest between. Much hard punishment given and got, but a great deal of it not of a kind obvious to the inexpert spectator. Quite apart from short-arm body-blows which are sometimes apt to elude observation, there was wrestling for a fall with which far more rounds ended than with falls from a blow. The effort to throw is exhausting enough, but to be thrown and for a heavy man to fall on top of you is terribly wearing. And though the strength of these two men was prodigious, yet Johnson was the closer knit of the two, from a boxer’s point of view the better made. Now when they had fought forty rounds, Johnson was confident and happy, but he knew that he was pitted against a lion-hearted man who was by no means yet worn out. Suddenly he got an opening for a clean straight blow with all his weight behind it. This was a right-hander, which struck Perrins on the bridge of his nose and slit it down as though it had been cut with a knife.