A thousand deaths by Jack London

over him, began to count the seconds, emphasizing the passage of

each second with a downward sweep of his right arm.

The audience was still as death. Ponta had partly turned to the

house to receive the approval that was his due, only to be met by

this chill, graveyard silence. Quick wrath surged up in him. It

was unfair. His opponent only was applauded–if he struck a blow,

if he escaped a blow; he, Ponta, who had forced the fighting from

the start, had received no word of cheer.

His eyes blazed as he gathered himself together and sprang to his

prostrate foe. He crouched alongside of him, right arm drawn back

and ready for a smashing blow the instant Joe should start to rise.

The referee, still bending over and counting with his right hand,

shoved Ponta back with his left. The latter, crouching, circled

around, and the referee circled with him, thrusting him back and

keeping between him and the fallen man.

“Four–five–six–” the count went on, and Joe, rolling over on his

face, squirmed weakly to draw himself to his knees. This he

succeeded in doing, resting on one knee, a hand to the floor on

either side and the other leg bent under him to help him rise.

“Take the count! Take the count!” a dozen voices rang out from the

audience.

“For God’s sake, take the count!” one of Joe’s seconds cried

warningly from the edge of the ring. Genevieve gave him one swift

glance, and saw the young fellow’s face, drawn and white, his lips

unconsciously moving as he kept the count with the referee.

“Seven–eight–nine–” the seconds went.

The ninth sounded and was gone, when the referee gave Ponta a last

backward shove and Joe came to his feet, bunched up, covered up,

weak, but cool, very cool. Ponta hurled himself upon him with

terrific force, delivering an uppercut and a straight punch. But

Joe blocked the two, ducked a third, stepped to the side to avoid a

fourth, and was then driven backward into a corner by a hurricane of

blows. He was exceedingly weak. He tottered as he kept his

footing, and staggered back and forth. His back was against the

ropes. There was no further retreat. Ponta paused, as if to make

doubly sure, then feinted with his left and struck fiercely with his

right with all his strength. But Joe ducked into a clinch and was

for a moment saved.

Ponta struggled frantically to free himself. He wanted to give the

finish to this foe already so far gone. But Joe was holding on for

life, resisting the other’s every effort, as fast as one hold or

THE GAME

24

grip was torn loose finding a new one by which to cling. “Break!”

the referee commanded. Joe held on tighter. “Make ‘m break! Why

the hell don’t you make ‘m break?” Ponta panted at the referee.

Again the latter commanded the break. Joe refused, keeping, as he

well knew, within his rights. Each moment of the clinch his

strength was coming back to him, his brain was clearing, the cobwebs

were disappearing from before his eyes. The round was young, and he

must live, somehow, through the nearly three minutes of it yet to

run.

The referee clutched each by the shoulder and sundered them

violently, passing quickly between them as he thrust them backward

in order to make a clean break of it. The moment he was free, Ponta

sprang at Joe like a wild animal bearing down its prey. But Joe

covered up, blocked, and fell into a clinch. Again Ponta struggled

to get free, Joe held on, and the referee thrust them apart. And

again Joe avoided damage and clinched.

Genevieve realized that in the clinches he was not being beaten–

why, then, did not the referee let him hold on? It was cruel. She

hated the genial-faced Eddy Jones in those moments, and she partly

rose from her chair, her hands clenched with anger, the nails

cutting into the palms till they hurt. The rest of the round, the

three long minutes of it, was a succession of clinches and breaks.

Not once did Ponta succeed in striking his opponent the deadly final

blow. And Ponta was like a madman, raging because of his impotency

in the face of his helpless and all but vanquished foe. One blow,

only one blow, and he could not deliver it! Joe’s ring experience

and coolness saved him. With shaken consciousness and trembling

body, he clutched and held on, while the ebbing life turned and

flooded up in him again. Once, in his passion, unable to hit him,

Ponta made as though to lift him up and hurl him to the floor.

“V’y don’t you bite him?” Silverstein taunted shrilly.

In the stillness the sally was heard over the whole house, and the

audience, relieved of its anxiety for its favorite, laughed with an

uproariousness that had in it the note of hysteria. Even Genevieve

felt that there was something irresistibly funny in the remark, and

the relief of the audience was communicated to her; yet she felt

sick and faint, and was overwrought with horror at what she had seen

and was seeing.

“Bite ‘m! Bite ‘m!” voices from the recovered audience were

shouting. “Chew his ear off, Ponta! That’s the only way you can

get ‘m! Eat ‘m up! Eat ‘m up! Oh, why don’t you eat ‘m up?”

The effect was bad on Ponta. He became more frenzied than ever, and

more impotent. He panted and sobbed, wasting his effort by too much

effort, losing sanity and control and futilely trying to compensate

for the loss by excess of physical endeavor. He knew only the blind

desire to destroy, shook Joe in the clinches as a terrier might a

rat, strained and struggled for freedom of body and arms, and all

the while Joe calmly clutched and held on. The referee worked

manfully and fairly to separate them. Perspiration ran down his

face. It took all his strength to split those clinging bodies, and

no sooner had he split them than Joe fell unharmed into another

THE GAME

25

embrace and the work had to be done all over again. In vain, when

freed, did Ponta try to avoid the clutching arms and twining body.

He could not keep away. He had to come close in order to strike,

and each time Joe baffled him and caught him in his arms.

And Genevieve, crouched in the little dressing-room and peering

through the peep-hole, was baffled, too. She was an interested

party in what seemed a death-struggle–was not one of the fighters

her Joe?–but the audience understood and she did not. The Game had

not unveiled to her. The lure of it was beyond her. It was greater

mystery than ever. She could not comprehend its power. What

delight could there be for Joe in that brutal surging and straining

of bodies, those fierce clutches, fiercer blows, and terrible hurts?

Surely, she, Genevieve, offered more than that–rest, and content,

and sweet, calm joy. Her bid for the heart of him and the soul of

him was finer and more generous than the bid of the Game; yet he

dallied with both–held her in his arms, but turned his head to

listen to that other and siren call she could not understand.

The gong struck. The round ended with a break in Ponta’s corner.

The white-faced young second was through the ropes with the first

clash of sound. He seized Joe in his arms, lifted him clear of the

floor, and ran with him across the ring to his own corner. His

seconds worked over him furiously, chafing his legs, slapping his

abdomen, stretching the hip-cloth out with their fingers so that he

might breathe more easily. For the first time Genevieve saw the

stomach-breathing of a man, an abdomen that rose and fell far more

with every breath than her breast rose and fell after she had run

for a car. The pungency of ammonia bit her nostrils, wafted to her

from the soaked sponge wherefrom he breathed the fiery fumes that

cleared his brain. He gargled his mouth and throat, took a suck at

a divided lemon, and all the while the towels worked like mad,

driving oxygen into his lungs to purge the pounding blood and send

it back revivified for the struggle yet to come. His heated body

was sponged with water, doused with it, and bottles were turned

mouth-downward on his head.

CHAPTER VI

The gong for the sixth round struck, and both men advanced to meet

each other, their bodies glistening with water. Ponta rushed two-

thirds of the way across the ring, so intent was he on getting at

his man before full recovery could be effected. But Joe had lived

through. He was strong again, and getting stronger. He blocked

several vicious blows and then smashed back, sending Ponta reeling.