oss 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 an