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 CHAPTER XV

MAN TO MAN

It was a scene to be printed indelibly on the memory: The palpitant, swaying crowd, those in front pushed forward by those behind; the baseball players round the edges of the cleared space, bracing to hold the mob back almost by main strength; human beings climbing on other human beings to get a momentary glimpse of the fighters; men and boys jammed in a dense mass on the bleachers, and still more of them clinging like monkeys to the bending limbs of the tree—and every face ablaze with the primitive passion of mankind, the savage zest of battle, the barbarous joy of witnessing a sanguinary struggle between two of their specie.

But Janet saw only the fighters; not for a moment did her straining eyes waver or wander. She watched them leap and retreat, meet again, stagger, recover, sway this way and that, all the time turning round and round to the left or to the right, their arms flashing out, their battering fists giving forth sounds now sharp, now sodden,