The rest was farce. Thorpe was built on the true athletic lines,
broad, straight shoulders, narrow flanks, long, clean, smooth
muscles. He possessed, besides, that hereditary toughness and bulk
which no gymnasium training will ever quite supply. The other man,
while powerful and ugly in his rushes, was clumsy and did not use
his head. Thorpe planted his hard straight blows at will. In this
game he was as manifestly superior as his opponent would probably
have been had the rules permitted kicking, gouging, and wrestling.
Finally he saw his opening and let out with a swinging pivot blow.
The other picked himself out of a corner, and drew off the gloves.
Thorpe's status was assured.

A Frenchman took down his fiddle and began to squeak. In the course
of the dance old Jackson and old Heath found themselves together,
smoking their pipes of Peerless.

"The young feller's all right," observed Heath; "he cuffed Ben up
to a peak all right."

"Went down like a peck of wet fish-nets," replied Jackson tranquilly.



Chapter VII


In the office shanty one evening about a week later, Radway and
his scaler happened to be talking over the situation. The scaler,
whose name was Dyer, slouched back in the shadow, watching his great