Page:Man Who Laughs (Estes and Lauriat 1869) v1.djvu/332

292 "Good! well done, Highlander!"

"Now, Phelem!"

And the friends of Helmsgail repeated their benevolent exhortation: "Bung up his peepers!"

Helmsgail did better. Rapidly bending down and back again, with the undulating movement of a serpent, he struck Phelem-ghe-Madone in the sternum. The Colossus staggered.

"Foul blow!" cried Viscount Barnard.

Phelem-ghe-Madone sank down on the knee of his second, saying: "I am beginning to get warm."

Lord Desertum consulted the umpires, and said: "Five minutes before time is called."

Phelem-ghe-Madone was becoming weaker. Kilter wiped the blood from his face and the sweat from his body with a flannel, and placed the neck of a bottle to his mouth. They had come to the eleventh round. Phelem, besides the scar on his forehead, had his breast disfigured by blows, his belly swollen, and the fore part of the head scarified. Helmsgail was untouched.

A kind of tumult arose among the gentlemen.

"Foul blow!" repeated Viscount Barnard.

"Bets void!" said the Laird of Lamyrbau.

"I claim my stake!" replied Sir Thomas Colpepper.

"Give me back my five hundred guineas, and I will go. Stop the fight!" added the honourable member for the borough of St. Ives, Sir Bartholomew Gracedieu.

Phelem arose, staggering like a drunken man, and said: "Let us go on fighting, on one condition,—that I also shall have the right to give one foul blow."

They cried, "Agreed!" from all parts of the ring. Helmsgail shrugged his shoulders. Five minutes elapsed, and they set to again.