Corkey minimus saw Milly once or twice before the fight, and he said he
couldn’t make out whether she was going mad or what. One minute she
wanted him to fight, the next she implored him not to; one minute she
hoped he would mutilate Bray to pieces, the next she blubbed and prayed
him if ever he had any liking for her to give Bray “best.” She said she
kept dreaming of him brought back stark and stiff; and then, when he
began to think she meant it, she called him her “knight” and her “hero”
and her “King Arthur” and other frightful rot, and actually wanted him
to wear one of her Sunday gloves under his shirt at the time of
fighting! Corkey minimus said he very likely wouldn’t wear a shirt; and
then she thought he might hang it--I mean the glove--round his neck by a
bit of string!
“Blessed if I shall ever feel quite the same to her after this,” said
Corkey.
“It seems rather rough to get broken up for life to please a skimpy
girl,” I said. Then he burst out as red in the face as an apple, and
told me he would not hear a word against Milly, so I dried up.
There were three days before the fight, and Corkey minimus trained for
it, and gave away his pudding at dinner in exchange for the meat of the
chaps who sat next to him. But you can’t get your muscle up in a day or
two like that, and it only made him awfully thirsty.
The day came at last, and I may as well go on to the fight itself. The
First were having a big match on our own ground, so nobody paid any
attention to us, and we arranged a game that should have Corkey, Bray,
and me on the same side. Then, when our chaps were in, we three sneaked
away into the plantations, behind some holly-trees and a woodstack. Bray
arranged all the preliminaries as cheerful as a bird, and Blanchard said
they were right. They marked out a ring and ran a string round and
arranged corners for the seconds; and I saw that the obscene Fowle had
towels and bottles of water and a basin--all, of course, for Bray
between the rounds. Corkey minimus was rather waxy with me for not
bringing the same for him; but I’d brought a sponge, which I know is a
thing a second chucks up in the air when his man is done for; and I
explained and showed it to Corkey; and he thanked me and said he
supposed that was about the only thing he should want. Blanchard said
the rounds were to be two minutes long each, and Bray grumbled because
they ought by rights to be three. But Blanchard told him to shut up and
begin. When we saw Bray take his shirt off I told Corkey he ought to,
and he did. Then Blanchard laughed and said:
“By gum! they peel rather different!”
Bray was like a barrel, with muscles a lot bigger than hen’s eggs on his
arms. Corkey minimus seemed to be all ribs somehow, with arms about as
lean as rulers. I told him to keep moving about and try and puff Bray a
bit if he had time, and he said:
“All right, I’ll try. If I can get a smack at his face, so as to black
an eye or something, and show I’ve hit him before he does for me, I
don’t care.”
I will say for Corkey minimus that he had about the best pluck I ever
saw in a chap. He was quite calm, and just his usual color; and when
Bray tossed him for corners Corkey won; and Blanchard said I picked the
right corner for him. Then he told them to fight fair, and said “Time!”
I’d prayed Corkey to try and surprise Bray at the very start if he
could, and have a hit at Bray’s face the moment they began. And I’m
blessed if he didn’t go and do it! Bray began fiddling about jolly
scientifically with his hands, and I fancy he just squinted down to see
if his feet were scientific too. At the same moment Corkey buzzed round
his right and let Bray have it fairly on the nose. Bray jumped and
looked about as much surprised as if he’d been struck by lightning; and
Blanchard said:
“First blood for Corkey minimus!”
I yelled--I oughtn’t to have, but I did--because to see blood dropping
about on Bray’s chest was a fine sight. He sniffed and went for Corkey
smiling. The smile was the beastliest part of it, for I hoped he would
have got his wool off a bit and been wild. But he wasn’t, and when he
began to hit, Corkey got flustered and swung about like a windmill and
caught it pretty hot. Yet he jerked his head so jolly quick that he
didn’t get more than about four smacks on it in the first round, though
his body, which was white by nature, was pretty soon covered with red
marks. He said they didn’t hurt, and I cleaned him up and blew water
over him at the end of the round. His lip was bleeding like mad, but
luckily inside, where his tooth had cut it; and he swallowed all the
blood, so nobody knew; besides which the blood wasn’t lost. Bray flung
himself down in his corner, and Fowle looked after him; and even at a
solemn time like that I laughed, and so did Corkey minimus, because
Fowle tried to be too clever, and spurted a lot of water out of his
mouth into Bray’s eye. Then Bray told him that after the fight he’d tie
him in knots and kick him, looking forward to which, of course, wrecked
Fowle’s enjoyment entirely.
Blanchard said “Time!” again awfully soon, and I saw Bray meant settling
Corkey now, because his reputation as a fighter was at stake, and he
knew Corkey hoped to get through three rounds with luck. So Bray began
hitting him like hammers, and though I was about as sorry for Corkey
minimus as a chap could be, nobody would have been able to help admiring
the way Bray hit. It was just at the end of this round, when Corkey had
been knocked down once, but got up again, that the awful rum thing with
Milly Dunston happened.
Suddenly, without any warning, there was a noise like fowls getting up a
hedge, and she rushed out from behind the woodstack with her eyes
blazing and her hair streaming like a comet in a bate. She’d been
running a good way, I should think, and she tore right into the ring
straight at Bray, and not trusting to words at a time like that, and not
remembering her father was a clergyman, or anything, slapped his face
both sides, and jolly hard too. Bray swore the horriblest words I ever
heard used by a chap, because she’d given him more in half a second than
Corkey could have in a year. Then he got into his shirt upside-down and
hooked it with Fowle, but not before he heard her say:
“You little, fat, red-headed coward to fight and try and murder a boy
half your age and size! I wish I could kill you, I do. It’s shameful to
think you’re an English boy at all!”
Then she turned on the chaps from the Fifth, and told Blanchard he was a
disgrace to the school. So they cleared out too; and then she cried over
Corkey, and said she would rather have been torn to pieces by unchained
monsters than have let him be mangled like he was. And Corkey, who was
pretty well dazed, forgave her, and told her kindly to go away. And she
gasped and gurgled, and went.
I took Corkey back, and one or two things got to be known. It came out
that Fowle had told Milly the place and the hour of the fight, but only
after she had sworn--on some rotten saint Fowle knew--that she would not
tell a single soul about it. She kept her swear all right, but came
herself. And when Bray got to hear how it was she came--of course,
thinking Corkey had told her, which he would rather have died than
do--then Bray tried a lot of Chinese tortures on Fowle that he’d seen at
a wax-works. And chaps who saw it said that Fowle was so excited at the
time that he called upon about twenty different well-known Bible
characters by name to come and help him and destroy Bray. But they
didn’t.
As for Corkey minimus, the things he got from Milly after that fight you
wouldn’t believe. There were bottles of stuff to rub bruises with, and
lozenges and grapes, and some muck for his eye, and little baskets of
strawberries, and jolly books and rosebuds. She told the Doctor about
slapping Bray’s face, and wrote a long letter of apology afterwards; and
a week later she broke it to Corkey minimus that she was going to a
boarding-school herself next term; which she did.
When Corkey told me about it he added:
“And she’s going to write me letters, because she’s said several times
that there’s only one chap in the world for her now, and I’m the chap.”
“I shouldn’t think she could change her mind after all that’s happened,”
I said.
And Corkey minimus said:
“I bet she will when Corkey minor turns up again, especially if he
brings rum things with him from Australia. And you needn’t repeat it,
but to you, McInnes, as my chum, I say that I don’t care how soon he
does come back either.”
Which showed that there was more sense in Corkey minimus than you might
have thought.