Page:Vivian Grey, Volume 1.djvu/39

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VIVIAN GREY.
29

youthful, was full his match in spirit, and, thanks to his being a Cockney! ten times his match in science. He had not built a white great coat, nor drunk blue ruin at Ben Burn's for nothing!

Oh! how beautifully he fought! how admirably straight he hit! and his stops quick as lightning! and his followings up confounding his adversary with their painful celerity! Smith, alike puzzled and punished, yet proud in his strength, hit round, and wild, and false, and foamed like a furious elephant. For ten successive rounds the result was dubious; but in the eleventh the strength of Smith began to fail, and the men were more fairly matched. "Go it. Ranger!—go it. Ranger!" halloed the Greyites. "No stranger!—no stranger!" eagerly bawled the more numerous party. "Smith's floored, by Jove!" exclaimed Poynings, who was Grey's second. "At it again! at it again!" exclaimed all. And now, when