t King desired.
He feinted with his left, drew the answering duck and swinging upward
hook, then made the half-step backward, delivered the upper cut full to
the face and crumpled Sandel over to the mat. After that he never
let him rest, receiving punishment himself, but inflicting far more,
smashing Sandel to the ropes, hooking and driving all manner of
blows into him, tearing away from his clinches or punching him out of
attempted clinches, and ever when Sandel would have fallen, catching him
with one uplifting hand and with the other immediately smashing him into
the ropes where he could not fall.

The house by this time had gone mad, and it was his house, nearly every
voice yelling: "Go it, Tom!" "Get 'im! Get 'im!" "You've got 'im, Tom!
You've got 'im!" It was to be a whirlwind finish, and that was what a
ringside audience paid to see.

And Tom King, who for half an hour had conserved his strength, now
expended it prodigally in the one great effort he knew he had in him. It
was his one chance--now or not at all. His strength was waning fast, and
his hope was that before the last of it ebbed out of him he would have
beaten his opponent down for the count. And as he continued to strike
and force, coolly estimating the weight of his blows and the quality of
the damage wrought, he realized how hard a man Sandel was to knock out.
Stamina and endurance were his to an extreme degree, and they were the
virgin stamina and endurance of Youth. Sandel was certainly a coming
man. He had it in him. Only out of such rugged fibre were successful
fighters fashioned.

Sandel was reeling and staggering, but Tom King's legs were cramping
and his knuckles going back on him. Yet he steeled himself to strike the
fierce blows, every one of which brought anguish to his tortured hands.
Though now he was receiving practically no punishment, he was weakening
as rapidly as the other. His blows went home, but there was no longer
the weight behind them, and each blow was the result of a severe effort
of will. His legs were like lead, and they dragged visibly under
him; while Sandel's backers, cheered by this symptom, began calling
encouragement to their man.

King was spurred to a burst of effort. He delivered two blows in
succession--a left, a trifle too high, to the solar plexus, and a right
cross to the jaw. They were not heavy blows, yet so weak and dazed was
Sandel that he went down and lay quivering. The referee stood over him,
shouti