He saw the ring of boys, howling like barbarians as he went down at last, writhing in the throes of nausea, the blood streaming from his nose and the tears from his bruised eyes.
"Poor little shaver," he murmured.

"And you're just as badly licked now.
You're beaten to a pulp.

You're down and out." But the vision of that first fight still lingered under his eyelids, and as he watched he saw it dissolve and reshape into the series of fights which had followed.

Six months later Cheese-Face (that was the boy) had whipped him again.

But he had blacked Cheese-Face's eye that time.