In the excitement of a fight--which is, after all, about the most
exciting thing that ever happens to one in the course of one's life--it
is difficult for the fighters to see what the spectators see. Where the
spectators see an assault on an already beaten man, the fighter himself
only sees a legitimate piece of self-defense against an opponent whose
chances are equal to his own. Psmith saw, as anybody looking on would
have seen, that Adair was done. Mike's blow had taken him within a
fraction of an inch of the point of the jaw, and he was all but knocked
out. Mike could not see this. All he understood was that his man was on
his feet again and coming at him, so he hit out with all his strength;
and this time Adair went down and stayed down.
"Brief," said Psmith, coming forward, "but exciting. We may take that, I
think, to be the conclusion of the entertainment. I will now have a dash
at picking up the slain. I shouldn't stop, if I were you. He'll be
sitting up and taking notice soon, and if he sees you he may want to go
on with the combat, which would do him no earthly good. If it's going to
be continued in our next, there had better be a bit of an interval for
alterations and repairs first."
"Is he hurt much, do you think?" asked Mike. He had seen knockouts
before in the ring, but this was the first time he had ever effected one
on his own account, and Adair looked unpleasantly corpselike.
"_He's_ all right," said Psmith. "In a minute or two he'll be skipping
about like a little lambkin. I'll look after him. You go away and
pick flowers."
Mike put on his coat and walked back to the house. He was conscious of a
perplexing whirl of new and strange emotions, chief among which was a
curious feeling that he rather liked Adair. He found himself thinking
that Adair was a good chap, that there was something to be said for his
point of view, and that it was a pity he had knocked him about so much.
At the same time, he felt an undeniable thrill of pride at having beaten
him. The feat presented that interesting person, Mike Jackson, to him in
a fresh and pleasing light, as one who had had a tough job to face and
had carried it through. Jackson the cricketer he knew, but Jackson the
deliverer of knockout blows was strange to him, and he found this new
acquaintance a man to be respected.
The fight, in fact, had the result which most fights have, if they are
fought fairly and until one side has had enough. It revolutionized
Mike's view of things. It shook him up, and drained the bad blood out of
him. Where before he had seemed to himself to be acting with massive
dignity, he now saw that he had simply been sulking like some wretched
kid. There had appeared to him something rather fine in his policy of
refusing to identify himself in any way with Sedleigh, a touch of the
stone-walls-do-not-a-prison-make sort of thing. He now saw that his
attitude was to be summed up in the words, "Sha'n't play."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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