Free The Yellow Admiral by Patrick O’Brian Page B

sir, for light sparring and teaching gentlemen the noble art, as they say; but for a serious boxingmatch, for a genuine prize-fight, it is always the bare mauleys, oh dear me, yes.' He turned his fists in the basin, quite amused.
    'Will you tell me the first principles, now?'
    'Anan, sir?'
    'I mean, just how a prize-fight is conducted - the rules - the customs.'
    'Well, first you have to have two men willing and proper to fight - that is to say a fairly well-matched pair - and someone to put up a purse for the winner. And then you have to find a right place, meadow or heath, where there is plenty of room and no busy-body magistrate likely to come down on you for unlawful assembly or breach of the peace. With all that settled you either mark out a ring with posts and ropes or you leave it to the members of the fancy: they link their arms and stand in a circle. I prefer the ring myself, because if you are knocked down or flung down under the feet of the other man's friends you may get a very ugly kick, or worse.'
    'Is it a brutal sport, then?'
    'Why, truly it is not for young ladies. But no gouging, kicking or biting is allowed, nor no hitting beneath the belt or striking a man when he is down. To be sure, that still leaves a good deal of room for rum capers, such as getting your man's head in chancery, as we call it - pinned under your left arm - and hammering away with the other fist till he can neither see nor stand. Another great thing is grappling close and then throwing your man down with a trip and falling whop on to him as hard as ever you can, accidentally done-a-purpose, if you understand me, sir. Oh, and I was forgetting. Another of the capers used to be to catch your man by the hair and batter him something cruel with his head held down: which was reckoned fair. That is why most bruisers are cropped short nowadays and I shall tie my pigtail up uncommon tight in a bandage. Which Killick will make it right fast again after every round.'
    'You would not consider being cropped yourself, I suppose? I do not like to think of that fellow seizing you by the queue and whirling you about to your destruction.'
    'What?' cried Bonden, jerking the long heavy plait on the table. 'Cut off the best tail in the barky? A ten-year tail that I can sit on, without a lie? And then think of that cove in the Bible, and his bad luck when he was cropped. Oh sir.'
    'Well, you must be the judge. But tell me, how does it all begin?'
    'The two men come into the ring with their seconds and bottle-holders; the referee introduces them, like "Gentlemen, this is Joe Bloggs of Wapping, and this here is the Myrtle Bough of Hammersmith. They are to fight for a prize of - whatever it is - and may the best man win." Then the friends of each chap whistle and cheer and call out, and sometimes the two shake hands before the referee sends them back to the corners where their seconds sit, reminds them of the rules and the agreed time between the rounds, alf a minute usually though some call for three quarters- scratches the mark in the middle of the ring and says "Come on when I say start the mill and fight away until one of you can't come up to the scratch before time is called."'
    'I do not quite gather the force of the words time and round. Is the contest set to last for a certain period - for so many glasses, as it were?'
    'Oh no, sir: it can go on till Kingdom Come if both men have the strength and pluck. It only comes to an end when one cannot come up to the scratch after a round, whatever his second may do to revive him, either because he is dead, which sometimes happens, or because he is too stunned and mazed to stand, or because an arm is broke, and that happens too, or because he don't choose to be punished any longer.'
    'Pray let us come back to this concept of a round, which puzzles me yet.'
    'Which I must have explained it badly, because it is as simple as kiss my hand. A round is when one man is knocked down, or thrown down, or flings himself down