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Rh bloody foam bubbling from his mouth and nostrils, two streams, dark-red—almost black in the night—trickling down until they were caught in the hairy chest, and a big, puffed-out, blue-black mass, which ring-followers call a "mouse," over his left eye, contrasting oddly with the fiery scar.

Ben stepped back to let him get his footing.

"Round two—" cursed the old man, thrusting before Pete's face a flask, from which, seeing his opponent scornfully waiting, the bruiser, spewing the bloody froth from his mouth, took a swift gulp. The taste of the whiskey, and his own swallowed blood, fired him a little, and he rushed like the wounded boar Sally had seen on the trail, straight towards the boy, bellowing blasphemies and obscenities.

The attack was savage. Sally couldn't understand how Ben escaped any of the blows from the great fists, smashing through the air and landing, many of them, with the force of those powerful machines that drove the piles in the mud around the Salthaven docks. She clenched and unclenched her own small hands, and bit her lips till little dark beads stood on them, then prayed with sobbing intakes of breath.

"Oh God! Oh God! Give him strength, give him strength. Save him!"

She rushed to Captain Brent, and clutched his arms with both her hands.

"Stop them. Oh Uncle Harve, why don't you stop them! You've got the gun. Shoot them. Do anything. Only save him for God's sake."

"They've got to fight it out. This is men's work, Sally. Sorry you had to see it. Don't be afraid—look at that!"