“As well as can be expected,” thought Sayers to himself. Yes: he was doing very nicely, but he was not quite as happy as he looked. How long would it be before Heenan or his seconds spotted the truth. Hadn’t they noticed yet that he was extremely shy of hitting with his right--had been shy for the last two rounds? And in his previous battles it was his right upon which he had depended for victory. One really good right-hander from Sayers was commonly reckoned to be enough for anybody. But he couldn’t use his right now. He had tried and it was useless. That tremendous whack that he had stopped with his forearm had numbed it at the moment, and he had thought nothing of it until he tried to use it in offence. And then he knew that his right was out of action. He thought at the time that the bone was broken. As a matter of fact it was not, but a tendon was, which (for such intensely practical purposes) was just as bad. The arm was also one mass of inter-running bruises and fearfully swollen. So he held it across his chest in its orthodox position, and it was all he could do to keep it there: and he kept his face wooden and innocent and went on fighting with his left. The enemy shouldn’t know before they must. And round after round the little man came up smiling, relying on his feet for defence and his left for attack. Heenan also grinned. They were a good-humoured couple, as these couples of the Prize-Ring so often were. Once he landed a horribly severe smasher on Heenan which knocked him down, and instead of taking his rest for half a minute, he went prying into Heenan’s corner to watch his seconds wiping away the blood. He might learn something in that way, he thought, which would be more valuable than thirty seconds on an another fellow’s knee. Heenan, however, could take plenty of punishment, too, without complaining. After this they fought a tremendous round which lasted nearly a quarter of an hour, and at the end were so exhausted that both of them had to be carried to their corners by their respective seconds. It had been foolish, Sayers now realised, not to take the rest he was entitled to. He must not play tricks like that again. He was greatly knocked about. His mouth and nose seemed as though they had been knocked into one, but his trick of throwing back his head as Heenan’s huge fist caught him had done much to preserve his eyes.