"Time!" throated Stingo; and at the word the facing crowds, that as one man had caught their breaths, went into two tumults of jostling figures, tossing arms, and of brazen throats before whose thunders, beating the air like thunder's self, Japhra, Ginger Cronk, Snowball White, and One Eye bent their heads as they came rushing forward.
"Time!" Japhra snarled at Pinsent. "Out of this, thou foul-play fox!"
"Out you!" Pinsent shouted. He stood over the prostrate form, breathing quick, one arm curved back as if it held a stabbing sword: "Out you! Enough o' this! Private between him an' me now. Stand out and let him up for me! Out!"
"Boss! Boss!" Japhra called, and dropped on his knees by Percival, dizzily rising on an elbow. "Boss! Boss! What's this? Order him out! Have him out!"
"Play fair!" "Fight fair!"--with cries and oaths the Stingo men pressed to the canvas, shaking fists aloft; with cries and oaths and tossing fists were answered. A Stingo man put his leg over the canvas and half his body into the ring: a leg and flushed face struck out on the other side. Then in a rush men broke across the canvas, poured into the ring, and met in two raging, foul-mouthed banks that strained about the boxers.
Boss Maddox thrust his way forward. "Ge' back! Ge' back! I'll have 'ee out the tent, every man of 'ee! Ge' back! Ge' back! By God, I'll have the lamp out!" And he fought his way back to the mast and stretched his hand to the chain that released the extinguishers upon the burners.
A Stingo and a Maddox man, catching each the other's eye as the two sides bayed and jostled, made private cause of the common brawl, and closed with clutching hands. Another pair engaged, and now another--whirled in that tossing mob, and flung the crowd this way and that in their furious grappling, like fighting tigers in a stockade breaking in pieces at their violence.
Boss Maddox's iron throat like a trumpet across the din: "The light goes! The light goes!"
It flickered; savage hands tore at the fighters, savage feet kicked furious commands; flickered again--and suddenly the immense clamour went to a cry, to a broken shout, to peace.
Pinsent pushed his way to the front. "Easy, Boss--I want that light. I've a job to finish," he said; and in the laugh that went up, added, "The boys 'll be all right." He threw his arms apart in gesture of command. "Out o' the ring!" he cried. "You're robbin' me of it. Gettin' his wits back! I'd ha' cut him out by now!"