He waited Schaeffer’s savage charge instead of meeting it; waited with a cunning pretense of weakly swaying on his heels. But when the riverman was almost on him, he side-stepped neatly, lashing out a stinging right which caught his antagonist on one cheek, and sent him spinning around. That blow was the beginning of the end. In itself it was nothing, but it marked a vital change in Bainbridge’s method of fighting. Hitherto his work had been clever boxing, to be sure, but just a trifle lacking in that dynamic energy which animated his opponent. The sense of fight convention was so strongly ingrained that, without consciousness of so doing, he was playing according to the rules. Now, though he lost not a particle of his former skill, he used the defensive part of it less. He did not parry or block or feint so much. His work became more simple, more elemental, and--more deadly. He was out for results now. The hot blood tingled through his veins and flamed into his brain. The crude brute lust for combat gripped him to the exclusion of all else. This man had hurt him cruelly, and humiliated him beyond words. He meant to make him pay, and pay well, for both these injuries. The only difference now between himself and his opponent was that he continued to fight fairly, if ferociously, while Schaeffer did not. The latter found little opportunity of fouling, however. To his amazement, he discovered that he needed every bit of skill and strength he possessed to keep his feet. Bob bored into him relentlessly, slugging like a pile driver, hammering at his stomach, raining well-directed blows on the heart and kidneys, or varying them now and then with a solid jolt to the jaw. At first Schaeffer met this extraordinary assault with blind confidence in his ability to wear it out, accompanied by a furious anger at the presumption of the man. But swiftly this mental attitude changed to doubt, nervousness--at length to fear. It was all so pitilessly indomitable, so machinelike, yet not at all mechanical, that Schaeffer began to grow afraid. He had a yellow streak, of course--men of his stamp usually have--and now it began to come out. His defense grew weaker and more flurried. Bainbridge’s punches struck home with increasing strength and frequency. Once, after a series of swift, smashing blows in the face, Schaeffer staggered back and dropped his guard involuntarily. Bob was following up with a straight body punch, but his cracked and bleeding fist stopped less than an inch, it seemed, from his opponent’s heaving chest. “Put up your hands, you cur!” he panted harshly. “This fight isn’t over yet. Put ’em up and get busy!” A second later, having obeyed ineffectually, Schaeffer was flung back into the astonished crowd by a jolt which nearly cracked his jaw. “Let up on him!” suddenly cried one of the men who had been particularly eager, earlier in the game, in urging Schaeffer to the attack. “He’s had enough, I says. Time to quit an’ have done with it.”