ts about lefts and rights, and 'half-arms', and
that sort of thing. 'He's left-handed, and that's the worst of it,' said
Jack. 'You must only make as good a show as you can, and one of us will
take him on afterwards.'

But I just heard him and that was all. It was to be my first fight since
I was a boy, but, somehow, I felt cool about it--sort of dulled. If the
chaps had known all they would have set me down as a cur. I thought of
that, but it didn't make any difference with me then; I knew it was a
thing they couldn't understand. I knew I was reckoned pretty soft. But
I knew one thing that they didn't know. I knew that it was going to be
a fight to a finish, one way or the other. I had more brains and
imagination than the rest put together, and I suppose that that was the
real cause of most of my trouble. I kept saying to myself, 'You'll have
to go through with it now, Joe, old man! It's the turning-point of your
life.' If I won the fight, I'd set to work and win Mary; if I lost, I'd
leave the district for ever. A man thinks a lot in a flash sometimes; I
used to get excited over little things, because of the very paltriness
of them, but I was mostly cool in a crisis--Jack was the reverse. I
looked ahead: I wouldn't be able to marry a girl who could look back and
remember when her husband was beaten by another man--no matter what sort
of brute the other man was.

I never in my life felt so cool about a thing. Jack kept whispering
instructions, and showing with his hands, up to the last moment, but it
was all lost on me.

Looking back, I think there was a bit of romance about it: Mary singing
under the vines to amuse a Jackaroo dude, and a coward going down to the
river in the moonlight to fight for her.

It was very quiet in the little moonlit flat by the river. We took off
our coats and were ready. There was no swearing or barracking. It seemed
an understood thing with the men that if I went out first round Jack
would fight Romany; and if Jack knocked him out somebody else would
fight Jack to square matters. Jim Bullock wouldn't mind obliging for
one; he was a mate of Jack's, but he didn't mind who he fought so long
as it was for the sake of fair play--or 'peace and quietness', as he
said. Jim was very good-natured. He backed Romany, and of course Jack
backed me.

As far as I could see, all Romany knew about fighting was to jerk one
arm up in front of his face and duck his head by way of a feint, and
then rush an