Patrick O'Brian - The Yellow Admiral

There was no motion towards shaking hands. They eyed one another intently for a moment, with a few slight feints of head and stance, and at exactly the same moment exchanged a series of heavy blows to head and body, most warded off on either side, and then closed, each trying the other's weight and strength.

'This is more like wrestling than anything else,' said Stephen: he, Jack, Dundas and Philip were sitting on the rising slope behind Bonden's corner. 'See, that ill-looking hairy fellow has seized Bonden's arm.'

'He is trying for a cross-buttock,' said Jack.

He was indeed - a deadly throw - but unsuccessfully, for with a sudden twist and heave Bonden flung Evans forward, flat on his face.

'Drop on him. Fall heavy. Kick him in the balls,' bellowed the Woolcombe House supporters on either side of Jack and far up the hill behind him; but Bonden only nodded and smiled, and walked back to his corner, where he sat on his bottle-holder's knee - Tom Farley, a former shipmate, who had come with Captain Dundas - while his second, Preserved Killick, sponged the blood from his face: an unimportant glancing blow that had nevertheless opened his eyebrow. He was breathing rather quick, but he looked cheerful and composed and when the umpire called time he sprang up as lively as his friends could wish, met Evans at the scratch and instantly struck him over his guard, left and right to forehead and ear, blows that were borne with apparent indifference though they staggered him and drew a surprising flow of blood. Once again Evans closed and once again there was a long obscure struggle for mastery until Bonden, breaking away at last, leapt back and then sprang forward, leading with his left at full stretch - a punch that would have ended the match had it gone home. But surprisingly fast for so heavy a man, Evans shifted six inches to the left and Bonden, slipping on the green grass, came down, to hoots of derision from the far side of the Dripping Pan, where the keeper's friends and Captain Griffiths' more subservient tenants sat with the hereditary opponents of Woolcombe, the men who lived in the villages of Holt, Woolcombe Major and Steeple Munstead.

It was not until the third and above all the fourth and fifth round that Stephen began to see that much more than mere brute strength was involved, very much more. Both men had been hit and hurt; their blood was up; each had taken the other's measure; and although Bonden moved quicker and had more science, Evans's blows, above all his body blows, were heavier by far. At one point they stood toe to toe in the middle of the ring, hammering one another with extraordinary rapidity and force, but he perceived that almost all the blows he could follow were diverted by the guard: indeed, in spite of the apparent confusion of arms and fists the whole was not unlike a fencing-match with

its almost instant anticipation of attack, recoil, parry and lightning counter-strokes.

He sat there, watching them circle, manoeuvre, come in with a storm of blows, close and strive locked together, or break apart for a fresh attack: he watched them under the clear light of a high, veiled sky, fighting there to the roar of the opposing sides - they might have been in the arena of a small provincial Roman town - and he too was as tense as any as he urged his old friend and shipmate to go in and win, shouting for him in a voice he could barely hear for the huge din on either side.

Two long rounds close on ten minutes each, and the next, all ended in a knock-down blow, the first two in Bonden's favour; but neither was a genuine stunner, though Evans's bottle-holder had to help him back to his corner after the second. The third came after a confused m�e in which Evans closed, tripping Bonden and throwing him backwards, most deliberately falling on him and, amid a great howl of reprobation, planting his knees where they would do most harm. To the shrieks and yells of Foul the two umpires looked at one another and at the referee, who agreed with one of them that the match should go on, though he shook his head as he said so. Killick and Fancy brought Bonden back to his corner, revived him as well as they could, and when time was called he came up to the scratch quite briskly.

By this point both men were much marked: Evans's face and ears were mostly blood and his left eye was nearly closed; but Bonden, though showing less, had been severely punished during the in-fighting and from his attitude and breathing Stephen thought that two or three ribs might be sprung. Their lack of training told on them too and as though by tacit agreement they closed early in the next round, not so much hitting as trying for the cross-buttock and the decisive throw: or at least for a certain respite and breathing-space,they had been fighting for forty minutes now (Stephen, watching them gasp in their corners between rounds, was astonished that they could have lasted so long), and in their untrained state both were nearly exhausted, while Bonden's knuckles were split to the bone.

During this slow, laborious, grunting dance the blood from his open forehead blurred Bonden's sight and he let himself be manoeuvred to the far side, almost on the ropes of a neutral corner, where Evans's bulk hid him from the umpires and the referees. Here he felt a sudden change in the tension of the clasping arms, a different grunt, and the wicked knee came furious up between his legs. He shot back before it reached its mark, leaving Evans with dangling hands, and hit him two terrible blows, somewhat short since he was on the ropes, but full in the unguarded face. He felt the teeth go, heard an animal shriek of pain and rage and he was heaved back against the ropes by a great hairy sweating weight. In the brutish grapple his head was thrust under the top rope; the lashing of his hair parted and as he forced his way back into the ring to end the fight Evans seized his pigtail in both hands and with his last remaining strength hurled him against the corner post, himself falling as he did so.

In the silence that followed the enormous din the seconds carried their men away: but whereas Evans's friends could just prop him, staggering, half-conscious, half-blind to the mark when time was called, Killick and Farley could not.

Bonden lay flat on his back, his face to the placid sky; and Stephen, kneeling over him, said, 'Do not fear, Jack. There is a concussion, sure, but there is no fracture. The coma may last some hours or even days, but then, with the blessing you will have your coxswain again. Killick, now, will you find a hurdle? We must carry him home and put him in the dark.'

Behind them fighting had broken out between the Woolcombe men, who swore the throw was foul, and the now anxious minority of the gamekeeper's friends and their supporters. But Killick and a shepherd had brought the hurdle, and the sad little train walked off towards Woolcombe House, disregarding the battle.

'Was it fair, at all?' asked Stephen in a low voice, when they had gone a little way.

'Well, just, just, I believe,' said Dundas. 'Gentleman Jackson held Mendoza by the hair when he beat him in '97 and surely that is Mrs Oakes coming along the path with the stable dog?'

It was indeed: and a variety of signs - her somewhat hesitant attitude, the improbability of her choice of a walk, and many more scarcely to be defined - awoke all the intelligence-agent in Maturin. Profiting from the hurdle-bearers' necessary slowness he hurried forward: Clarissa had a total confidence in him and told him exactly what was afoot, taking no more than ten words to do so. 'Will I deal with it?' he asked. She nodded and he rejoined the party. 'Jack,' he cried at some distance, 'I grieve to say that there has been a sad misunderstanding and the chaise you are sharing with Mr Judd has been ordered for Wooton: it stands there at this moment, and he begs you will join him directly.'