"Out you!" Pinsent shouted. He stood over the prostrate form, breathing quick, one arm curved back as if it held a stabbing sword: "Out you! Enough o' this! Private between him an' me now. Stand out and let him up for me! Out!" "Boss! Boss!" Japhra called, and dropped on his knees by Percival, dizzily rising on an elbow. "Boss! Boss! What's this? Order him out! Have him out!" "Play fair!" "Fight fair!"--with cries and oaths the Stingo men pressed to the canvas, shaking fists aloft; with cries and oaths and tossing fists were answered. A Stingo man put his leg over the canvas and half his body into the ring: a leg and flushed face struck out on the other side. Then in a rush men broke across the canvas, poured into the ring, and met in two raging, foul-mouthed banks that strained about the boxers. Boss Maddox thrust his way forward. "Ge' back! Ge' back! I'll have 'ee out the tent, every man of 'ee! Ge' back! Ge' back! By God, I'll have the lamp out!" And he fought his way back to the mast and stretched his hand to the chain that released the extinguishers upon the burners. A Stingo and a Maddox man, catching each the other's eye as the two sides bayed and jostled, made private cause of the common brawl, and closed with clutching hands. Another pair engaged, and now another--whirled in that tossing mob, and flung the crowd this way and that in their furious grappling, like fighting tigers in a stockade breaking in pieces at their violence. Boss Maddox's iron throat like a trumpet across the din: "The light goes! The light goes!" It flickered; savage hands tore at the fighters, savage feet kicked furious commands; flickered again--and suddenly the immense clamour went to a cry, to a broken shout, to peace. Pinsent pushed his way to the front. "Easy, Boss--I want that light. I've a job to finish," he said; and in the laugh that went up, added, "The boys 'll be all right." He threw his arms apart in gesture of command. "Out o' the ring!" he cried. "You're robbin' me of it. Gettin' his wits back! I'd ha' cut him out by now!" Three parts supporting Percival, Japhra with Ginger Cronk and the rest had taken him back through the mob and supported him while they tended him.... The tumult gave him five minutes, and he was sitting up as the men returned growling to their places. He looked at Ima, crouching by him, read the entreaty in her eyes, and answered it and at the same time answered Japhra's trembling "How of it, master?" by shaking his head. "No!" he said, "No!" and felt Japhra's arms tighten about him. Another heard him and pressed forward. It was Egbert Hunt, tears running down his face. "You ain't going on?" he cried. "You ain't going on! Stop it, Mr. Japhra! Stop this murder!"