The odds were now 100-10 on Johnson, but he had by no means won the fight. Perrins was boxing desperately, striving with his great superiority in reach to close Johnson’s remaining eye. He knew very well that many a fight had been won like that, an otherwise unhurt man being forced to throw up the sponge because he was totally blinded by the swelling of his eyes. In the forty-first round Johnson either slipped down or deliberately fell without a blow and Perrins and his backers claimed the victory. If Johnson did actually play this very dirty trick to gain time and have a rest, he deserved to lose. We don’t know what actually happened. The records merely state that he fell without being hit. But the umpires allowed it because that contingency had not been covered in the articles of agreement made before the fight. Perrins now changed his method, attacking his man with chopping blows presumably on the back of the neck and head, and back-handed blows which are seldom efficacious. These puzzled Johnson at first, and he took some of them without a return until he learned the knack and guarded himself. And Perrins’s strength now began to go: while Johnson, who for a few rounds had seemed tired, began to improve again. But yet he never began the attack. He left that always to the giant. In fact, Johnson did everything to save himself and to make his man do most of the work. Then Perrins, who had lunged forward with a terrific blow, fell forward, partly from his own impetus, and partly from weakness. Johnson, who had stepped aside from the blow, watched him and as he fell hit him in the face with all his might, at the same time tumbling over him. After that Perrins was done. Every round ended by his falling either from a blow or from sheer weakness. Johnson hit him as he pleased, with the consequence that Perrins’s face was fearfully damaged, “with scarce the traces left of a human being.” But he refused to give in, and round after round his seconds brought him to the scratch, when he swayed and staggered and struggled for breath and tried to fight on. His pluck in this battle was the inspiration of the Prize-Ring for ever afterwards. More than once Johnson, still strong, sent in tremendous blows which would utterly have finished lesser men, but Isaac Perrins held on until his friends and seconds gave in and refused to let the good fellow fight any more. The match had lasted for an hour and a quarter, during which sixty-two rounds had been fought. In many ways it was an unsatisfactory fight, but for cunning (if rather low cunning) on one side and magnificent courage and determination on the other, it must be counted one of the greatest combats of the old days. CHAPTER III RICHARD HUMPHRIES, DANIEL MENDOZA, AND JOHN JACKSON