“Jumpin’ Jehosaphat! What have I struck?” muttered Jake, looking around stupidly, as he lay on his back without attempting to get up.
[Illustration: “Allow me to introduce myself,” said the Englishman. “I am the Hon. Noel Brooke of England.”—Page 93.]
“EXCUSE my want of ceremony,” said Noel Brooke nonchalantly. “I would have waited for an introduction but there wasn’t time.”
“Allow me to introduce myself,” said the Englishman, raising his hat as ceremoniously as if he were addressing a Chicago millionaire. “I am the Hon. Noel Brooke, of England, at your service.”
“An Englishman? That is worse than all. That Jake Amsden should live to be floored by an Englishman!”
“My friend, I hope that is no disgrace. There are plenty of your countrymen who could floor me.”
“But I can’t understand it,” said Jake, rising with difficulty from his recumbent position. “You don’t weigh within twenty-five pounds of me.”
“It isn’t always weight that counts—it’s science. I learned how to box when I was at Eton.”
“I think I could lick you in a fair fight,” went on Jake, surveying the trim figure of his antagonist, who was at least three inches shorter than himself. “You hit me when I wasn’t lookin’.”
“True enough! Would you like to try it again?”
Gerald awaited the result not without anxiety. Certainly the two did not look very well matched. Jake Amsden was a broad-shouldered, powerfully built man of five feet ten, and would tip the scales at a hundred and eighty pounds. Noel Brooke was three inches shorter, and did not look to weigh over a hundred and fifty.
“I am afraid Jake will be too much for him,” he thought, “and if he is, it will be my turn next.”
“Why, you’re a Bantam compared to me,” he said. “You’ll think you’ve been struck by a cyclone.”
“Strike away—cyclone!” said the Englishman calmly.
Jake Amsden took him at his word. He advanced confidently, waving his arms like a flail, and tried to overwhelm his opponent at the first onslaught. But, intent on attack, he did not provide for defense, and received a powerful blow for which he was unprepared, and which quite staggered him. Now he began to get angry and renewed the attack with even less prudence than before. The result may easily be guessed. A blow behind the ear prostrated him, and he resumed his recumbent position.