The referee called them to the middle of the ring. It was quiet in an instant--so quiet that Old Jerry's throat ached with it. The announcer lifted his hand. "Jed The Red fights at one hundred and ninety-six," he said, "'The Pilgrim' at one hundred and seventy-two." Immediately he turned and dropped through the ropes. His going was accompanied by a flurry in each corner as the seconds scuttled after him with stools and buckets. They faced each other, alone in the ring save for the referee--The Pilgrim and Jed The Red. Then a gong struck. They reached out and each touched the glove of the other. Old Jerry could not follow it--it came too terribly swift for that--but he heard the thudding impact of gloves as Denny hurtled forward in that first savage rush. "From the gong," Hogarty had ordered, "from the gong!" The Red, covering and ducking, blocking and swaying beneath the whirlwind of that attack, broke and staggered and set himself, only to break again, and retreat, foot by foot, around the ring. The whole house had come to its feet with the first rush, screaming to a man. Old Jerry, too, was standing up, giddy, dizzy, as he watched Conway weather that first minute. He had no chance to swing; with both hands covering he fought wildly to stay on his feet; to live through it; to block that right hand that lashed out again and again and found his face. Each time that blow went across it shook him to the soles of his feet; it lifted the cheering of the crowd to a higher, madder key; but even Old Jerry, eyes a little quicker already, saw that none of those blows landed flush upon the side of the jaw. Conway called to his aid all the ring-generalship of which he was capable in that opening round. Once that lightening-like fist reached out and found his mouth. A trickle of blood oozed red from the lips that puffed up, almost before the glove came away; once when he had seen an opening and led for The Pilgrim's own face, that wicked jolt caught him wide open. He ducked his head between his shoulders then. The shock sent him to his knees, but that upraised shoulder saved him. The force of that glancing smash had spent itself before it reached his unprotected neck. There was no let-up--no lull in the relentless advance. He was on his feet again, grim, grasping, reeling, hanging on! And again that avalanche of destruction enveloped him. He fought to drop into a clinch, for one breath's respite, his huge hairy arms slipping hungrily out about Denny's white body, but even as he snuggled his body close in, that fist lashed up between them and found his chin again. It straightened him, flung him back. And once more, before the certain annihilation of that blow, he ducked his head in between his shoulders. Old Jerry heard the crash of the glove against the top of his head; he saw Conway hurled back into the ropes. But not until seconds later, when he realized that the roar of the crowd had hushed, did he see that a change had come over the fight.