How Jappe Fought Do Escobar

I was greatly startled when Johnny Bishop told me that Jappe and Do Escobar wanted to fight each other and that we should go and look on.

It was during the summer holidays, in Travemünde, on a broiling hot day, with a faint land breeze and a flat, wide-ebbing sea. We had been some three-quarters of an hour in the water and were lying under the boards and beams of the bathhouse on the firm sand, together with Jürgen Brattström, the son of the shipowner. Johnny and Brattström lay upon their backs, completely naked. I found it more comfortable to keep my towel wrapped about my hips. Brattström asked me why I did this, and as I had no proper answer forthcoming, Johnny remarked with that winning and winsome smile of his that I was very likely a bit too big to lie about naked. I was actually larger and more developed than he and Brattström, and also, no doubt, a little older⁠—about thirteen. And so I swallowed Johnny’s explanation in silence, even though it implied something derogatory to me. For in Johnny’s company it was easy to cut a comic figure if one happened to be a little less small, a little less delicate and childlike in body than himself, who was all these things to such a high degree. He would then look up at one with his pretty, blue, girlish eyes with an expression at once friendly and full of smiling mockery, as though he would say: “What an overgrown lout you have already become!” The ideal of manliness and long trousers lost its effect in his presence, and this at a time, not long after the war, when strength, courage, and every kind of rude virtue stood in high esteem among us boys, and all kinds of things were considered effeminate. But Johnny, as a foreigner, or half a foreigner, was quite free from this influence. On the contrary there was something about him that reminded one of a woman who has preserved herself well and who is able to make merry at others who are less skilled in this respect. He was also by a long way the only boy in town who was dressed in an elegant and markedly aristocratic manner; that is to say, in genuine English sailor-suits with blue linen collars, sailor’s knots, cords, a silver whistle in his breast-pocket, and an anchor upon the puffy sleeves, which narrowed to a band at the wrists. All this would have been regarded as dandified in any other lad, and punished accordingly. But he carried it off charmingly and as a matter of course, took no harm from it, and was never forced to suffer from it in the slightest.

He looked like a thin little Cupid as he lay there, his arms upraised, his pretty, long, English head, with its soft, blond locks, bedded in his small hands. His father had been a German merchant who had naturalized himself in England and who had died some years before. But his mother was a born Englishwoman, a lady of mild and quiet character, with a longish face, who had settled in our town with her children⁠—Johnny and a little girl who was quite as pretty, even though a bit tricky. The mother always went dressed exclusively in black, in constant mourning for her husband, and no doubt she honoured his last wishes in letting the children grow up in Germany. She was evidently in good circumstances. She owned a spacious house just outside the city, and a villa at the seaside; and from time to time she would make trips to distant health resorts with Johnny and Sissie. She did not belong to society, though all doors would have been open to her. She lived in the utmost retirement, either because of her mourning, or because the horizon of our leading families was too narrow for her. But by means of invitations, and by arranging games in common, by Johnny’s and Sissie’s participation in dancing and deportment classes and suchlike, she provided company for her children, and though she did not herself choose this company, she nevertheless supervised it with quiet solicitude, and in such a way that Johnny and Sissie came into touch only with children of well-to-do houses. This, to be sure, was not the result of a fixed principle, and yet it was a simple fact. Frau Bishop also contributed to my own education, even at a distance, in that she taught me that in order to be respected by others it is only necessary to respect oneself. Though deprived of its masculine head, the little family showed none of the stigmata of neglect and decline which so often arouse middle-class suspicion in similar cases. Without any train of relatives, without a title, or tradition, influence, or public position, her life was at once aloof and self-assured, and firmly and deliberately self-assured to such a degree that every concession was made to her silently and unhesitatingly, and the friendship of her children was held in high esteem by both boys and girls.

As to Jürgen Brattström, his father had only recently risen to a position of wealth and public offices and had built the red sandstone house for himself and his family in the Burgfeld, which made him a neighbour of Frau Bishop’s. Thus, with Frau Bishop’s quiet sanction, Jürgen had become Johnny’s garden playmate and companion on the way to school⁠—a phlegmatic, officious, short-limbed lad without any dominant characteristics. He was already carrying on a little surreptitious trade in licorice.

As I have said, I was exceedingly startled by Johnny’s communication about the impending battle between Jappe and Do Escobar, which was to be fought that day in deadly earnest on the Leuchtenfeld at twelve o’clock. This might prove most terrible, for Jappe and Escobar were strong, daring fellows with a knightly code of honour, and a hostile encounter between them might well arouse anxiety. In memory they still appear to me as big and manly as at that time, although they could not have been older than fifteen. Jappe came from a middle-class family of the town; he was taken very little care of and he was really almost what we called a “butcher” at that time, a daredevil, although with a touch of the man about town. Do Escobar was very free by nature, an exotic alien, who did not even attend school regularly, but merely came as a kind of outsider to listen (a disorderly but paradisal life!)⁠—one who boarded with some burgher’s family and who rejoiced in absolute independence. Both were individuals who went to bed late, visited taverns, went loafing along the Breitenstrasse in the evening, followed girls, did reckless things on the crossbars⁠—in short, they were “sports.” Although they did not stay at the Kurhotel at Travemünde⁠—where they would scarcely have belonged⁠—but lodged somewhere in the town, in the Kurgarten itself they acted the part of men of the world. And I knew that in the evening⁠—that is, Sundays⁠—long after I was lying in my bed in one of the Swiss cottages and had peacefully dropped off to slumber amid the strains of the Kurhaus concert, they as well as other members of the gay young world went strolling adventurously to and fro in the tide of summer visitors and excursionists, past the long tent of the confectioner, seeking adult acquaintance and finding it. In doing this they had crossed each other’s path⁠—God knows why or how. It is possible that they may only have bumped into each other as they slouched past and, being quick in the matter of injured honour, had made a casus belli of the incident. Johnny, who of course had also been asleep long before and who had heard of the quarrel only through hearsay, declared in his agreeable, somewhat veiled, and childish voice that the trouble had very likely arisen over a “wench,” and this was not at all difficult to suppose of such audacious up-to-dateness as characterized Jappe and Do Escobar. In short, they had not made any scene in public, but in curt and sardonic words had agreed on the place and hour for settling this point of honour. Tomorrow at twelve o’clock they would meet at such and such a place upon the Leuchtenfeld. Good evening! Herr Knaak of Hamburg, ballet-master, maître de plaisir, and manager of the “reunions” in the Kurhaus had been present and had agreed to come to the duelling-ground.

Johnny was wholly delighted at the prospect of the fight, and neither he nor Brattström shared the nervousness I felt. He repeatedly assured us, forming his R’s, according to his charming habit, by means of his gums, that the two would fight each other in deadly seriousness and as real enemies, and then with an amused and rather sarcastic matter-of-factness he debated the chances of victory. Jappe and Do Escobar were both dreadfully strong⁠—huh! Both of them powerful bullies. It was amusing that they would now for once solemnly settle which of the two was the more powerful bully. Jappe, Johnny declared, had a broad chest and first-rate muscles of the arms and legs, as one might observe daily when he bathed. But Do Escobar was extraordinarily sinewy and violent, so that it was difficult to predict who would win the upper hand. It was strange to hear Johnny expressing himself in such a superior manner as to the qualities of Jappe and Do Escobar and at the same time to see his own feeble childish arms, which would never have served him for either striking or warding off a blow.

As to myself, I certainly had no intention of refraining from visiting the scene of combat. That would have been absurd, and besides, what was about to happen attracted me mightily. I was certainly obliged to go and look at everything, now that I had heard all about it⁠—that was a kind of moral obligation, which, however, was forced to contend hardily with other rebellious emotions: with a great shyness and shame, unpugnacious and faint of heart as I was, to venture upon the scene of such virile deeds; a nervous fear of the upheavals which the sight of a grim battle, in dead earnest and, so to speak, to the death, might provoke in me. These upheavals I experienced in anticipation, and also a simple, craven fear that, once there and tarred with the same brush, I might be exposed to demands and challenges which were repugnant to my inmost nature, an anxiety that I might be forced to prove that I too on my part was a dashing fellow, something which I abhorred more than anything. On the other hand, I could not help putting myself in Jappe’s and Do Escobar’s place, and inwardly feeling the devastating emotions which I presupposed in them. I imagined the insult and the challenge in the Kurgarten, and with them I suppressed, for reasons of elegance and savoir faire, the urge to start pummelling with my fists. I experienced the passion of their indignant, outraged sense of justice, the grief, the throbbing, brain-searing hate, the attacks of raving impatience and revenge amidst which they must have spent the night. Then, driven to extremes, and borne beyond all timorousness, I began in spirit to fight blindly and bloodily with an opponent just as dehumanized as myself, drove my fist into his hateful mouth with all the power at my command, so that all his teeth were shattered, received in return a brutal kick in the abdomen, and went down in red waves, whereupon I awoke in my bed, with quieted nerves and ice-packings amidst the gentle reproaches of my family. In short, when it got to be half past eleven and we got up to dress ourselves, I was half exhausted by excitement, and in the dressing-room, as well as afterwards when we left the bathing-establishment fully dressed, my heart beat just as though it were I who was to fight Jappe or Do Escobar, in public and under arduous conditions.

I still remember perfectly how we three went down the narrow plank gangway which led up from the beach to the bathing-establishment. We hopped, of course, so as to make the gangway sway up and down and let us balance upon it, as upon a springboard. Having reached the sands, we did not follow the boardwalk which ran along the beach between the pavilions and the wicker beach-chairs, but struck inland, somewhat in the direction of the Kurhaus, but a little more to the left. The sun brooded upon the sand-dunes and coaxed a dry and heated fragrance from the sand-thistles and the reeds which grew in the sparse and arid soil and pricked our legs. Nothing was to be heard save the uninterrupted buzzing of horseflies of a metallic blue, which apparently stood immovably in the heavy heat, and then suddenly changed their position and resumed their sharp and monotonous song in another place. The cooling effect of the bath was long since past. Brattström and I now and then took off our head-coverings⁠—he his Swedish skipper’s cap with its projecting visor of oilcloth, I my round Heligoland woollen cap, a so-called tam-o’-shanter⁠—and mopped the sweat from our foreheads. Johnny suffered very little from the heat, thanks to his thinness, and no doubt also because his clothes were more elegantly adapted to the summer weather than our own. He walked on between Brattström and me, clad in his light and comfortable sailor’s suit of striped washable goods, his throat and calves bare, his blue sailor’s cap, with its short ribbons and its English inscription, perched upon his pretty little head, his long and slender feet in white kid ties with scarcely a trace of heel. And so he walked with a lengthy, climbing stride and with knees that seemed a little crooked, and with that agreeable accent of his sang a popular song, “O Little Fisher Maiden!” which was current at that time, sang it with an indecent variation, which had been invented by the precocious youth. That was the way he was: despite all his childishness, he already knew various things and was not at all too squeamish to speak of them. But then he would put on a light hypocritical mien and say: “Shame! one ought not to sing such nasty songs!” and pretend that it was we and not himself who had so salaciously apostrophized the little fisher maiden.

I myself had not the slightest inclination for singing, for we were already close to the place of rendezvous and the fateful theatre of combat. The sharp grass of the sand-dunes had changed to sandy moss, to a kind of meagre meadow land⁠—this was the Leuchtenfeld which we were traversing, so named after the round, yellow lighthouse tower which lifted itself at a considerable distance to the left⁠—and so quite unexpectedly we arrived at our goal.

It was a warm and peaceful place, very little frequented by people and hidden from view by brushwood willows. In the clearing within the line of willow-bushes were sitting and lying a group of young people in a circle, like a living barricade, nearly all of them older than we, and belonging to various classes of society. Apparently we were the last spectators to arrive. They were only waiting for ballet-master Knaak, who was to attend the fight as a neutral and as umpire. Both Jappe and Do Escobar were at hand⁠—I saw them at once. They sat in the circle at some distance from each other, and each pretended to be unaware of the other’s existence. After we had greeted a few acquaintances by silent nods, we too sat down upon the warm earth, drawing our legs under us.

There was smoking. Even Jappe and Do Escobar had cigarettes in the corners of their mouths, and as they sat there, blinking in the smoke and each closing one eye, it was clear to all that they had a certain appreciation of the grandeur of being able to sit there thus and smoke a cigarette with such nonchalance, just before the battle. Both were already dressed in adult fashion, but Do Escobar in a far more man-of-the-world fashion than Jappe. He wore tan shoes with very pointed toes to go with his light-grey summer suit, a rose-coloured shirt with attached cuffs, a gay-coloured silk tie, and a round, small-brimmed straw hat, pushed back upon his head, so that the thick, firm, shiny black, well-oiled hillock of hair⁠—for he had brushed it up sideways across his forehead to make this eminence⁠—showed under the hat. Now and then he lifted and shook his right hand, so that the silver bracelet he wore might slip back under his cuff. Jappe looked far less pretentious. His legs were enclosed in tight trousers, which were lighter than his coat and waistcoat and fastened under his black boots by means of straps. The checked sports-cap which covered his blond hair he had, in contrast to Do Escobar, drawn far down over his forehead. He squatted upon the ground and embraced his knees with his arms, and one could then observe, first, that he wore loose cuffs over the sleeves of his shirt, and, second, that the nails of his entwined fingers were cut far too short, or that he was addicted to the vice of gnawing them off. The mood that prevailed in the group was serious and, despite the jaunty and independent pose of smoking, embarrassed and in the main silent. The only one who rebelled against this was Do Escobar himself, who kept on speaking to his entourage, in a loud, hoarse voice with rolling R’s whirling off his tongue, and blowing the smoke through his nostrils. His rattling manner revolted me, and I felt inclined to side with Jappe in spite of his all too short fingernails. Jappe merely passed a word now and then over his shoulder with his neighbours, and seemed apparently quite composed, as he followed the smoke of his cigarette with his eyes.

And then Herr Knaak arrived. I still see him advance with elastic steps from the direction of the Kurhaus, clad in his morning suit of blue striped flannel, and, raising his straw hat, remain standing just beyond our circle. I do not believe that he came very willingly; rather, I am convinced that he made the best of a bad job, by lending his presence to a fistfight; but his position, his difficult relation to the belligerent and pronouncedly masculine youth of the place, no doubt forced him to accede. Brown-skinned, handsome, and fat (fat especially in the region of the hips), he gave lessons in dancing and deportment during the winter, not only privately in families, but also publicly in the Casino, and during the summer he fulfilled the functions of an arranger of festivals and a commissioner of baths at the Kurhaus at Travemünde. What with his vain eyes, his elastic, rhythmical walk⁠—he would always carefully set the out-turned toes of his boots first upon the ground and then let the ball of the foot follow⁠—with his self-satisfied and studied manner of speech, the theatrical self-assurance of his address, the impossible, demonstrative finickiness of his manners, he proved the delight of the female sex, whereas the masculine world, especially the critical juvenile section, regarded him sceptically.

I have often thought of the position in life occupied by François Knaak and have always found it strange and fantastic. The son of simple parents, such as he was, he stood poised, as it were, in midair by his very cultivation of the highest forms of human intercourse, and though he did not belong to society, he was appointed the guardian and teacher of its moral ideals, and paid accordingly. Jappe and Do Escobar were also pupils of his, not private pupils like Johnny, Brattström, and me, but in his public classes at the Casino; and it was there that the ways and character of Herr Knaak suffered the most rigorous criticism at the hands of the young people⁠—for we of the private lessons were more mildly disposed. A fellow who taught how one was to behave nicely to little girls, a fellow concerning whom there were unconsidered rumours that he wore a corset, who seized the edge of his frock-coat with his fingertips, bent the knee, cut caprioles, and then leaped suddenly into the air, where he twinkled with his feet and then plumped back elastically upon the parquetry⁠—well, was such a fellow a man at all? Such was the suspicion that burdened Herr Knaak’s person and destiny, and this was aggravated precisely by his excessive assurance and superiority. His advantage in years was great and it was said (a most amusing idea!) that he had a wife and children in Hamburg. This attribute of his as an adult and the circumstance that one met him only in the dance-hall saved him from being caught and unmasked. Could he do athletics? Had he ever been able to do them? Had he courage? Had he strength? In short, was he to be regarded as a gentleman? He had no chance for manifesting any of the more respectable qualities, qualities which might have balanced his drawing-room arts and conferred respectability upon him. But there were boys who went about and simply called him an ape and a coward. He was apparently aware of this, and it was for this reason that he had come today⁠—in order to proclaim his interest in a real fight and to act as a comrade to the young people, even though his office as bathing-commissioner should have prevented him from tolerating this illegal recourse to the code of honour. But it was my conviction that he did not feel very comfortable in this position, and that he was clearly conscious of having trodden on dangerous ground. Several of the spectators measured him with cold eyes and he himself peered anxiously about to see if people might be coming.

He excused himself politely for his belated arrival. A discussion with the directors of the Kurhaus in connection with the “reunion” on Saturday evening had detained him. “Are the combatants on hand?” he then asked in a firm voice. “Then we can begin.” Leaning on his cane and crossing his feet, he stood outside our circle, began gnawing his brown moustache with his lower lip, and narrowed his eyes darkly like an expert.

Jappe and Do Escobar stood up, threw away their cigarettes, and began to make ready for the fight. Do Escobar did so with most impressive swiftness and dispatch. He threw his hat, his jacket and waistcoat upon the ground, unloosed his cravat, unbuttoned his collar and suspenders, and cast them upon the same pile. He even pulled his rose-coloured shirt with attached cuffs out of his trousers, wriggled nimbly out of the sleeves, and stood there in a red and white striped undershirt with short sleeves which revealed his tawny arms, already covered with black hair, bare to the middle of his biceps.

“At your service, sir,” he said, rolling his R’s, and stepped swiftly into the centre of the field, throwing out his chest and adjusting his shoulder-blades with a jerk. He had kept on his silver bracelet.

Jappe, who was not yet ready, turned his head towards him, and with raised brows and eyelids almost closed, looked at his feet for a moment, as though he would say: “Be so good as to wait. I’ll come all right, even without those monkey-shines of yours.” Although he was broader in the shoulders, he did not appear half so athletic and fit for the fight as Do Escobar, as he stood up to him. His legs, in the tight-fitting breeches with the strap, were knock-kneed, and his soft shirt, already somewhat yellowed, with the wide sleeves closed at the wrists by plain pearl buttons, and crossed by grey elastic suspenders, looked like nothing, whilst Do Escobar’s striped undershirt and especially the black hairs upon his arms conveyed an extraordinarily pugnacious and dangerous impression. Both were pale, but this was more noticeable in Jappe, because he usually had red cheeks. He had the face of a merry and rather brutal towhead with a pug-nose, covered with a sprinkling of freckles. Do Escobar’s nose, on the other hand, was short, straight, and inclined to droop, and there was a dark trace of moustache upon his pouting upper lip.

They stood with hanging arms almost chest to chest and each stared at the abdominal region of the other with sinister and contemptuous mien. It was obvious that they did not know what they were to do with each other, and that was what I, too, distinctly felt. Since their encounter a whole night and half a day had elapsed and the zest for hammering each other, which had been so active only the night before and which had been bridled only by their chivalrousness, had had time to cool off. And now at a fixed hour, in cold blood and in the face of an assembled audience, they were supposed, at a word of command, to do that which they would so gladly have done yesterday out of sheer living impulse. And finally, after all, they were well-behaved boys and not ancient gladiators. Calm reason surely induces a human reluctance to pummel somebody’s sound body to pieces with one’s fists. Such were my thoughts and such, no doubt, was the truth.

But as something had to be done for sheer honour’s sake, they began to prod each other’s chests with the ends of their five outspread fingers, as though they believed, in mutual contempt, that each could level his opponent to the ground by so slight an effort, and also with the obvious intention of irritating each other. The moment, however, that Jappe’s face began to contort itself, Do Escobar broke off this preliminary skirmish.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” said he, as he retreated two steps and turned aside. He did this in order to draw the buckle at the back of his trousers tighter, for he had taken off his braces, and, as he was narrow in the hips, it is likely that his trousers had begun to slip down. After he had once more girded up his loins, he uttered some rattling phrase, something gummy, something Spanish, which no one understood and which was no-doubt meant to signify that he was now readier than ever, threw back his shoulders once more, and stepped forward. It was clear that he was supremely vain.

The skirmishing with shoulders and open hands began again. But suddenly, quite unexpectedly, there was a short, blind, violent tussle, a whirling mix-up of fists, which lasted three seconds and which then broke off just as suddenly.

“Now they’re in form,” said Johnny, who sat beside me and held a dry grass-stalk in his mouth. “I’ll bet you that Jappe will get the best of him. Do Escobar is too showy. Just see! he is always squinting at the other! Jappe has himself well in hand. Will you bet that he’ll lick him to a finish?”

They had rebounded from each other and now stood with heaving chests, and with fists braced against their hips. Both, certainly, had taken a good blow or two, for their faces had grown wicked, and both protruded their lips with an indignant air, as much as to say: “What do you mean by hurting me that way?” Jappe’s eyes were red, and Do Escobar showed his white teeth, as they once more started in.

They now pummelled each other with all their might, alternately, and after brief pauses, upon the shoulders, the forearms, and the breast.

“That’s nothing,” said Johnny in his sweet voice. “They’ll never finish each other that way. They ought to hit each other under the chin, an upper cut under the chin. That settles it.”

In the meantime Do Escobar had seized both of Jappe’s arms with his left arm, holding them against his chest as in a vice, and with his right fist he belaboured Jappe’s ribs incessantly.

This caused a great commotion. “No clenching!” shouted a number of the spectators and leaped to their feet. Herr Knaak, with a frightened face, rushed into the middle of the “ring.” “No clenching!” he too shouted. “You are clenching, my dear friend! That is against the rules!” He separated them and once more admonished Do Escobar that clenching was absolutely forbidden. And then he once more withdrew behind the periphery.

Jappe was furious⁠—that was plain to see. He was very pale and kept massaging his side, at the same time looking at Do Escobar and nodding his head slowly in a manner that boded no good. And when the next round began, his face bore an expression of such determination that all were sure that he would give the decisive blow.

And, really, as soon as the new encounter had begun, Jappe executed a coup⁠—made use of a feint, which he had apparently thought out beforehand. A feint with the left towards the head caused Do Escobar to cover his face, but no sooner had he done this than Jappe’s right landed so hard in the region of the solar plexus that Do Escobar doubled up and his face took on the aspect of yellow wax.

“That went home,” said Johnny. “That hurts. And now it’s possible that he’ll pull himself together and go at it in earnest, so as to get even.”

But the blow in the stomach had been too heavy and it was clear that Do Escobar’s nervous system had suffered. One could see that he could no longer double his fists properly in order to land his blows, and his eyes had an expression as though he were not quite conscious. But as he felt that his muscles were giving way, he began, out of sheer vanity, to conduct himself as follows: he began to play the temperamental Latin, who was bent upon teasing the German bear by his nimbleness and thus driving him to desperation. He began to cavort all around Jappe in a small circle, taking short steps and making all kinds of superfluous movements, and then he attempted to laugh in an arrogant manner, which, considering his weakened condition, did not fail to make a heroic impression upon me. But Jappe did not grow at all desperate; he simply kept turning on his heel and delivering many a good blow, at the same time with his left arm fending off Do Escobar’s feeble and trifling attacks. What sealed Do Escobar’s fate, however, was the circumstance that his trousers kept constantly slipping down, so that even his striped undershirt began to creep out and up, revealing a strip of his bare, yellowish body, which caused some to laugh. Why had he taken off his braces? He should not have paid any attention to considerations of mere looks. For now his trousers incommoded him, had in fact incommoded him during the entire fight. He was always trying to tighten them, and to thrust his little undershirt inside them, for in spite of his evil state he could not bear the thought that he offered a deranged and comic spectacle. And so it happened, as he was still fighting with only one hand and trying to improve his toilet with the other, that Jappe gave him such a blow on the nose that I am still unable to understand to this day why it was not completely demolished.

The blood gushed forth and Do Escobar turned aside, trying to stop the blood with his right hand, and with his left he made a most eloquent gesture behind his back. Jappe still stood, his knock-kneed legs apart and with fists held in position, and waited for Do Escobar to come on again. But Do Escobar had had enough. If I understood him correctly, he was the more respectable of the two and had come to the opinion that it was high time to put an end to the game. Jappe, no doubt, would have continued to fight even with a bloody nose, but almost as surely Do Escobar would have refused his cooperation in this case, and so he did this all the more resolutely since it was he himself who was bleeding. His nose had been made to bleed⁠—the devil!⁠—things ought never to have gone as far as that, he thought! The blood ran down between his fingers upon his clothes, defiled his light-coloured trousers, and dripped upon his light-tan boots. This was simple beastliness, nothing else, and in such circumstances he simply refused to fight any longer, for that would have been inhuman.

And besides, his view of the situation was that of the majority. Herr Knaak came into the circle and declared the fight over. “Honour has been amply satisfied,” said he. “Both have put up a good fight.” One could see how greatly relieved he was that the affair had gone off so smoothly.

“But there was no knockout!” cried Johnny, astonished and disillusioned.

Jappe was also quite content to regard the case as settled and went towards his clothes, drawing a deep breath. Herr Knaak’s fragile fiction that the match had remained undecided was unanimously accepted. Jappe was congratulated, but only on the sly; others lent their handkerchiefs to Do Escobar, as his own was soon saturated with blood. “Next!” was now the cry. “Now we must have another match!”

This voiced the wish of the entire crowd. The fight between Jappe and Do Escobar had been too brief, a mere ten minutes, hardly longer. All were on hand, there was plenty of time, something ought to be undertaken! So on with the next match and let him who wished to prove that he was a real fellow enter the arena in his turn.

No one applied. But why did my heart begin to beat like a little kettledrum at this summons? What I had feared had come to pass; demands were being made upon the spectators. But why did it seem to me now almost as though I had been looking forward with a kind of terrified joy to this supreme moment; and why was I, as soon as it had come, plunged into a whirl of antagonistic emotions? I looked at Johnny; he sat there beside me in perfect serenity, without the slightest participation, turned the straw in his mouth, and looked round him with an open and curious mien, to see whether another pair of strong bullies could not be found willing to let their noses be smashed for his own private enjoyment. How did it happen that I should find this challenge directed personally at me and, in the midst of my terrible excitement, feel myself in honour pledged to overcome my shyness by some tremendous, almost dreamlike effort and to attract the attention of all to myself by entering the lists as a hero? As a matter of fact, whether from vanity or excessive shyness, I was about to raise my hand and report myself for battle when an impudent voice, somewhere from out the crowd, was heard to cry: “Now Herr Knaak ought to fight!”

All eyes were sharply turned upon Herr Knaak. Was I not right in saying that he had ventured upon dangerous ground, that he was in peril of being forced to undergo an ordeal, a test of heart, lights, and liver? But he merely replied: “Oh, thanks! I got enough lickings when I was a boy!” He was saved. With eel-like glibness he had maneuvred himself out of the snare, had hinted at his years, had given them to understand that he had not evaded an honest fight in earlier days, and in doing this he had not even boasted, but had lent his words the very cast of truth, by confessing in sympathetic mockery of himself that he had been thrashed. And so he was left alone. One could see that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to get the best of him.

“Well, then, let’s have a wrestling-match!” someone demanded. This proposal met with little favour. But in the very midst of the discussion following this suggestion Do Escobar (and I shall never forget the painful impression this made) let his hoarse Spanish voice be heard from behind his reddened handkerchief: “Wrestling is cowardly. Germans love to wrestle!”

This was an unheard-of bit of tactlessness on his part, and it was punished forthwith as it deserved to be. For Herr Knaak at once gave him this excellent answer: “Possibly. But it also seems that Germans are able at times to give Spaniards a good thrashing.”

A burst of approving laughter rewarded him; his position was greatly fortified after this encounter, and Do Escobar was finished for good that day.

And yet it was the general impression that wrestling really was more or less tiresome and so one took to killing time with all sorts of acrobatic feats⁠—with playing leapfrog, standing on one’s head, walking on one’s hands, and the like.

“Come on, we’ll go now,” said Johnny to Brattström and me and stood up. That was just like Johnny Bishop. He had come here because something real with a sanguinary conclusion was to be offered him. But when the affair turned into mere play, he went away.

It was through him that I received my first impressions of the peculiar superiority of the national character of the English, which later on I learned so greatly to admire.