In another instant Mr. Sullivan had clambered into the ring. Confusion reigned. The audience was on its feet. Pushing his fist into the referee's face, Mr. Sullivan cried: "Now, Siler, you saw that foul, didn't you? It's a foul, isn't it? Gans wins, doesn't he?" All of this happened quick as a flash. Mr. Siler, pale as a ghost, whispered something inaudibly. Mr. Sullivan, turning to the assemblage and raising both arms to the skies, yelled: "Gentlemen, the referee declares Gans the winner on a foul!" The audience acclaimed his decision with salvos of applause. There did not appear to be a man in the crowd who doubted a foul had been committed, although Nelson at once protested his innocence. Next day Mr. Sullivan told me that in or near the twenty-fourth round Gans had broken his wrist and knew he could not win the fight by a knockout. He also said that Gans went down in the forty-second round in order to save the day. "_I_ won that fight," said Mr. Sullivan. "I told Gans while he was in his corner after the fortieth round that if he lost he would be laying down on his friends, that he had the audience with him, and that it was time to take advantage of Nelson's foul tactics." This was my first experience in prize-fighting, and my last. My sympathies were, however, with the winner. Gans' tactics throughout up to the last round were gentlemanly and those of Nelson unfair. Even the partisans of Nelson who had wagered on him agreed after the fight that the battle put up by the negro up to the forty-second round was a white man's fight and he was entitled to win. Nelson had been guilty of foul tactics in almost every round, but the probabilities are that Gans was not disabled by a foul blow in the forty-second round and that he took advantage of the sentiment in his favor, which had been created by his manly battle up to that time, to go down at a psychological moment. I saw Mr. Siler after the contest, and he appeared pleased that his decision was so well received, but he assured me that if he was invited to referee another bout in any mining camp he would decline the job. The Sullivan Trust Company, of course, won a big bet on the result, but it lost a bigger one as an outcome of the battle on the very next day. The impression created by Announcer Sullivan's attempt to reach lofty flights of eloquence in his speech to the fight-audience was bad for the trust company, and it required the use of over $100,000 on the day following to meet the flood of selling orders in Sullivan stocks which poured into the San Francisco Stock Exchange. THE YEAR OF BIG FIGURES