Chapter VI
The gong for the sixth round struck, and both men advanced to meet each
other, their bodies glistening with water. Ponta rushed two-thirds of
the way across the ring, so intent was he on getting at his man before
full recovery could be effected. But Joe had lived through. He was
strong again, and getting stronger. He blocked several vicious blows and
then smashed back, sending Ponta reeling. He attempted to follow up, but
wisely forbore and contented himself with blocking and covering up in the
whirlwind his blow had raised.
The fight was as it had been at the beginning--Joe protecting, Ponta
rushing. But Ponta was never at ease. He did not have it all his own
way. At any moment, in his fiercest onslaughts, his opponent was liable
to lash out and reach him. Joe saved his strength. He struck one blow
to Ponta's ten, but his one blow rarely missed. Ponta overwhelmed him in
the attacks, yet could do nothing with him, while Joe's tiger-like
strokes, always imminent, compelled respect. They toned Ponta's
ferocity. He was no longer able to go in with the complete abandon of
destructiveness which had marked his earlier efforts.
But a change was coming over the fight. The audience was quick to note
it, and even Genevieve saw it by the beginning of the ninth round. Joe
was taking the offensive. In the clinches it was he who brought his fist
down on the small of the back, striking the terrible kidney blow. He did
it once, in each clinch, but with all his strength, and he did it every
clinch. Then, in the breakaways, he began to uppercut Ponta on the
stomach, or to hook his jaw or strike straight out upon the mouth. But
at first sign of a coming of a whirlwind, Joe would dance nimbly away and
cover up.
Two rounds of this went by, and three, but Ponta's strength, though
perceptibly less, did not diminish rapidly. Joe's task was to wear down
that strength, not with one blow, nor ten, but with blow after blow, without end, until that enormous strength should be beaten sheer out of its body. There was no rest for the man. Joe followed him up, step by step, his advancing left foot making an audible tap, tap, tap, on the hard canvas. Then there would come a sudden leap in, tiger-like, a blow struck, or blows, and a swift leap back, whereupon the left foot would take up again its tapping advance. When Ponta made his savage rushes, Joe carefully covered up, only to emerge, his left foot going tap, tap, tap, as he immediately followed up.
Ponta was slowly weakening. To the crowd the end was a foregone
conclusion.
"Oh, you, Joe!" it yelled its admiration and affection.
"It's a shame to take the money!" it mocked. "Why don't you eat 'm, Ponta? Go on in an' eat 'm!"
In the one-minute intermissions Ponta's seconds worked over him as they
had not worked before. Their calm trust in his tremendous vitality had
been betrayed. Genevieve watched their excited efforts, while she
listened to the white-faced second cautioning Joe.
"Take your time," he was saying. "You've got 'm, but you got to take
your time. I've seen 'm fight. He's got a punch to the end of the
count. I've seen 'm knocked out and clean batty, an' go on punching just
the same. Mickey Sullivan had 'm goin'. Puts 'm to the mat as fast as
he crawls up, six times, an' then leaves an opening. Ponta reaches for
his jaw, an two minutes afterward Mickey's openin' his eyes an' askin'
what's doin'. So you've got to watch 'm. No goin' in an' absorbin' one
of them lucky punches, now. I got money on this fight, but I don't call
it mine till he's counted out."
Ponta was being doused with water. As the gong sounded, one of his
seconds inverted a water bottle on his head. He started toward the
centre of the ring, and the second followed him for several steps, keeping the bottle still inverted. The referee shouted at him, and he fled the ring, dropping the bottle as he fled. It rolled over and over, the water gurgling out upon the canvas till the referee, with a quick flirt of his toe, sent the bottle rolling through the ropes.