270 Did you ever Drive a Jibber down to a Fight ? 



hand, but I must own I was rather surprised when he asked me in a 

 bullying tone what I meant by serving him such a trick as driving 

 away from him in the manner I had done, and telling me he 

 should hold me answerable for the new dog-cart. I was not just 

 then in the humour for any nonsense, and I plainly told him where 

 I had left the cart, and when he wanted it he might go and see 

 after it himself. The dispute between us would have waxed high, 

 but we were stopped by poor Tom Spring, who asked, "■ What are 

 you loys quarrelling about ?" and suggested that if we could not settle 

 our dispute in any other way, we had better step into the ring after 

 the black and tlie Australian had left it. The Capten soon cooled 

 down, and in a tone of irony begged to know what I was doing 

 with that handkerchief round my neck, adding that he supposed, 

 now I had mounted the Australian's colours, I was game enough 

 to back him for a ^'^ tenner." I told him I had no objection, and 

 almost before the words were out of my mouth, he laid me 10/. to ^/. 

 on the black. Hardly was the bet closed before a quiet, downy-look- 

 ing, long-faced gentleman, who was with him, remarked in the 

 most polite manner, that although himself quite a stranger to the 

 Capten's young friend, as I seemed bent upon losing my money, 

 I might as well let him have a little as any one else. To use a 

 Yankee phrase, I was then about '' as savage as a meat-axe," and 

 the drawling tone and supercilious air of the Capten's long-faced 

 friend did not improve my temper, so I directly took his 20/. to 

 I o/. All the bets were staked in Spring's hands, and the fight began. 

 Now don't let the reader be the least afraid that I am about to 

 treat him with an account of the fight after the fashion of the sen- 

 sation articles in the morning papers of the present day — telling him 

 how the blows sounded like "dead thuds on raw meat," and such 

 other interesting details which render a prize-fight far more disgust- 

 ing upon paper than in the ring itself. Suffice it to say, I think that 

 I never did see so bad a fighter as the Australian. He had not the 

 slightest chance with the black man, who, to use an expressive 

 simile of the Capten's, "walked round him Hke a cooper round 

 a tub," and hit him just when and where he pleased, with- 



