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 mences to swing 'em from the floor, thinking it's all over.

The boys which has laid four and five to one on me to win by a knockout is screaming madly for me to take at least one punch at the Gunner and not act like a sheep in a slaughter house. I'm all at sea from the punishment I'm taking and the razzing, and in dancing away from one of Slade's wild haymakers I slipped to the canvas on my back, hitting my head with enough force to daze me for a second. The attendance thinks I been knocked stiff and you should of heard 'em. Like the steady roar of a record rain on a tin roof! I took "seven" and got up groggy. Nate yells for me to clinch, but the Gunner beat me to it with a terrible right swing to the pit of the stomach which drops me on my haunches for a clean knockdown. I am a very sick young man when the blessed gong stopped hostilities for that round.

Nate is like a wild man as he drenches me with the water bucket. He rushes over to the referee and begins a argument about Gunner Slade's gloves, demanding that they be examined. Nate knows that their ain't a thing in the world the matter with the Englishman's gloves: what he wants to do is give me a few extra seconds to come back to life. I needed a few years, not a few seconds! This Gunner Slade has cuffed and smacked me till I don't know what it's all about. While the referee and Kayo Kelly is examining the smiling Gunner's gloves, Nate slips back to me and begins to unlace my right glove with feverish haste. Before I can stop him, he pulls a hypodermic syringe