Talbot Mundy

“ A knife flashed, and Billy seized it; and in a second he and the captain and the four Dagoes were fighting like wildcats. The captain was no duffer with his fists; the captain of a coastwise tramp has no business to be. With Billy to help him, he had the four Dagoes out of action in a minute, bleeding and half-senseless on the floor. But men leaped from the bunks suddenly and joined in the fray. Billy and the skipper retreated slowly backward toward the steps, fighting every inch of the way. ”

“ Billy realised that he would lose even that slim chance if he wasted any more words. Doyle was evidently satisfied in his own mind that he was being generous, though, as a matter of fact, of course, he was sending a played-out fighting man to starve where he would not be compelled to witness his sufferings, and even that was better from Billy’s point of view than remaining where he was in London.
Fighting men who fail to reach the top mostly end the same way; they look and talk like “pugs”; they know no useful trade; people simply don’t want them. ”

“ When a man is running at top speed, he is wise if he looks only in front of him, and it was certainly a stroke of luck for Billy Blain that he crashed into nobody more vindictive than Terence O’Hanlon, chief engineer of the coasting steamer Diogenes. ”

“ Toward the end of it Sullivan managed to clinch and hold on; Billy kept up a tattoo on his ribs, but Sullivan roughed it again with his head and elbows, using every foul trick in his catalogue and wearing Billy down with his weight.
O’Hanlon had to bite the sponge to keep himself from claiming a dozen fouls, but he remembered Billy’s orders and said nothing. The bell saved Billy from getting a still worse roughing, but as it was he walked to his corner with his mouth and nose bleeding, and not looking any too fresh.
“Ye ought to hit him more!” said O'Hanlon, plying the bottle and sponge. ”

“ Billy felt cocky as you please when he landed, for with Doyle’s letter of introduction to Tom Geoghan, and twenty dollars into the bargain in his pocket, he could see no cloud in the offing anywhere.
He inquired his way to Geoghan’s and accosted that worthy with something approaching the old-time confidence that had won him half his battles.
“What’s your weight?” asked Geoghan, eyeing him with evident suspicion, and cramming the half-read letter into his pocket. ”

“ Ye can be that man if ye like; they’ll never look for ye aboard ship, an’ ye can come back to New York when they’ve forgotten the crime ye’ve committed. I’m compounding a felony or worse, but I can’t go to sea without trimmers, an’ there ye are. Will ye come?”
“Where to?”
“New Orleans and back.”
“I’m on!” said Billy. “But see here, I’ve got to have a feed before I do a stroke o’ work. I’m that ’ungry you’d never believe.”
“You can eat all ye like within the hour!” said O’Hanlon, getting up to go, but keeping hold of Billy’s sleeve. “Come, and I’ll sign ye on.” ”

“ I never heard of him.”
“He’s a guy that can just make the welter weight limit,” said O’Hanlon. “He’s got a punch like a mule’s kick, and wins by the knock-out route mostly. They say he’s an Eyetalian, but whatever he is there’s no doubt he’s game.”
“So’m I game!” said Billy. “There ain’t nobody in the world that can finish me in five rounds, not at that weight! I maybe can’t lick him, but see here, guv’nor, if I don’t stay five rounds with this bloke Sullivan, you can kick me off the ship afterwards. I’m stronger an’ fitter’n I ever was—I ain’t trained exactly, but I’m hard as nails. ”

“ Everybody laughed, including Billy, but he did not turn his head. The crowd in Sullivan’s corner howled derision—dubbed him sonny on the spot—named O’Hanlon “poppa”—and kept a running fire of jokes on the subject that made O’Hanlon nearly mad with rage.
“Time!”
Sullivan crouched suddenly, as James J. Jeffries used to do, and began walking crab-wise round Billy, looking for an opening. The crouch is a very useful attitude to take with a beginner, for it scares him and rattles him and looks almost impossible to take advantage of. ”

“ During the minute between the fourth round and the fifth, Geoghan hurried round to Sullivan’s corner and gave him whispered instructions; Billy saw Geoghan then for the first time, and recognised him. He realised that the man who was most interested in his defeat was the same man who had turned him down so mercilessly when he arrived in New York. ”

“ The seamen of the watch below, Americans all of them, came round to the firemen’s side when they heard the noise of fighting, and sicked him on joyously, keeping the other inmates of the firemen’s quarters from joining in. They decided that four at a time was enough even for a white man to tackle. Billy felt better when he had blacked the eyes of every one of the four, and he went down to do his trick below, feeling almost pleased with himself. ”

“ So when the steamer Diogenes reached New York on her journey back from New Orleans, he was still very much “all there”; his engine-room was the cleanest and best kept of any steamer’s on the coast, and his indents and accounts were ready and in order. He sent for Billy less than an hour after the ship had tied up at the pier-side, and received him in his cabin with his sleeves rolled up and a pen stuck behind his ear.
“Now then, young man,” he demanded, “are you making another trip with us or not? You’ve made good. I never knew a man work better, an’ I like ye. ”

“ He says you were an all-right light-weight—were, mind you. Who's Doyle, anyway? Besides, I know what that means; it means you’re not strong enough to punch a hole in a piece of paper; you’re like one o’ those jockeys that can just sit on a horse and grin and long for dinner-time. I know; you can’t play anew one on me! New York’s full o’ good game middle-weights an’ welters that are glad to fight for five bucks a night, and can’t get the chance o’ that more’n once a month or so. ”

“ Pick a man in training—a middle-weight if you like—see what I do to him!”
“Nah-h. Nothin’ doin’! I can size you up without tryin’ you out. You’re too big an’ too weak. Good-day; I hope you get a job o’ some sort.”
But Billy Blain was still determined; it was not in his scheme of existence to give in as long as he could stand, and he consoled himself with the reflection that there were other men in New York besides Geoghan. So he tried every club-manager on the East Side, and every “pro” in training ”

“ I'll take ye on as fireman for the next trip if ye’ll come; but suit yourself.”
“Sure,” said Billy, “I’ll go again. There ain’t enough money comin’ to me yet—not that I’d quit if there was. I’m getting stronger every day at this shovelin’, an’ that suits me to beat the band. I'll quit when I’ve saved some dollars an’ got a bit more muscle on; then it’s me for the ring again.”
“All right,” said O’Hanlon. “You stand by the ship, then, I'll find ye plenty to do in the engine-room while we’re in port, an’ ye’ll get paid for it. You rank as fireman from now on.” ”

“ I’m to find a man by ten o’clock on Friday night; he’s to weigh in at welter-weight limit or less at the ring-side, and he’s got to go five rounds against Joe Sullivan without gettin’ knocked out. If he does then I won five hundred dollars; if he don’t I lose. If he stands up for ten rounds, my man gets two hundred for himself, and if he knocks out Joe Sullivan he gets three hundred, and Sullivan has to take the thin end; but if he don’t go the ten rounds my man gets nothin’. ”

“ Doyle shook his head. “It’ll take too long, Bill, an’ it’s too risky. Why, you lost that last fight because you weren't strong enough to kill a fly. You’re too old to get strong now.”
“Am I? I’ll show you! I was weak from starvin’ to make the weight, same as you told me to. Give me a couple o’ months o’ feeding up an’ proper trainin’, an’ just you see what I'll do to the welters. I can lick anythin’ o’ my own size that walks when I’m fit!”
“You could once, Billy. I’m not bettin’ on you to do it again! Are you dead broke?” ”

“ Within an hour, seasick though he was, he was fighting with four disgruntled and grievously insulted foreigners. They were the four other trimmers of his watch, and one of them had tried to order him about. The fo’castle was divided in two down the middle; the seamen slept on one side of the partition and the firemen and trimmers on the other, the two classes mixing about as well as gunpowder and lighted matches. ”

“ But there are people on Ellis Island who are not quite so particular as the examining board—big Irish guards, for instance, who love any one who can fight, and are sincerely sorry for any kind of “white man” whose fate it is to be cooped up in a detention room with forty or fifty unwashed men who are “not white.” It was one of these who got the truth out of Billy, and told the Commissioner ”

“ So O’Hanlon went over to the skipper and whispered to him. The other nodded.
“Now, remember,” said Billy, when O’Hanlon came back again, “don’t you claim no foul so long as I can stand up. If that guy finds he can't put me out he’ll like as not try some dirty business in the fifth; if you're fool enough to claim a foul the referee ’ll stop the fight, an’ then the other man ’ll claim your five hundred ’cause the fight didn’t go five rounds as agreed, nor he won’t pay me a cent neither. ”

“ Geoghan was sore as a bear about a fight he’d got arranged for Friday night. Joe Sullivan, of Yonkers, and Mike Evans, of New York. Ten rounds at the welter limit for a purse o’ five hundred dollars—no decision—three hundred for Joe Sullivan, and two hundred for Mike Evans, unless Mike chanced to win by a knock-out, when the division was to be the other way round. Both boys had posted their forfeits, and the fight was goin’ to be a dandy—half ¢he fans in New York were comin’ to see it. ”