Dramatically, there should have been
cautious sparring for openings and a number of tensely contested rounds,
as if it had been the final of a boxing competition. But school fights,
when they do occur--which is only once in a decade nowadays, unless you
count junior school scuffles--are the outcome of weeks of suppressed bad
blood, and are consequently brief and furious. In a boxing competition,
however much one may want to win, one does not dislike one's opponent.
Up to the moment when "time" was called, one was probably warmly
attached to him, and at the end of the last round one expects to resume
that attitude of mind. In a fight each party, as a rule, hates
the other.
So it happened that there was nothing formal or cautious about the
present battle. All Adair wanted was to get at Mike, and all Mike wanted
was to get at Adair. Directly Psmith called "time," they rushed together
as if they meant to end the thing in half a minute.
It was this that saved Mike. In an ordinary contest with the gloves,
with his opponent cool and boxing in his true form, he could not have
lasted three rounds against Adair. The latter was a clever boxer, while
Mike had never had a lesson in his life.
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