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.
He attempted to follow up, but wisely forbore and
contented himself with blocking and covering up in
the whirlwind his blow had raised.
The fight was as it had been at the beginning—Joe
protecting, Ponta rushing. But Ponta was never
at ease. He did not have it all his own way.
At any moment, in his fiercest onslaughts, his opponent
was liable to lash out and reach him. Joe saved
his strength. He struck one blow to Ponta’s
ten, but his one blow rarely missed. Ponta overwhelmed
him in the attacks, yet could do nothing with him,
while Joe’s tiger-like strokes, always imminent,
compelled respect. They toned Ponta’s
ferocity. He was no longer able to go in with
the complete abandon of destructiveness which had
marked his earlier efforts.
But a change was coming over the fight. The
audience was quick to note it, and even Genevieve
saw it by the beginning of the ninth round. Joe
was taking the offensive. In the clinches it
was he who brought his fist down on the small of the
back, striking the terrible kidney blow. He did
it once, in each clinch, but with all his strength,
and he did it every clinch. Then, in the breakaways,
he began to uppercut Ponta on the stomach, or to hook
his jaw or strike straight out upon the mouth.
But at first sign of a coming of a whirlwind, Joe
would dance nimbly away and cover up.
