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Soon we were smiling at each other in the frankest comradeship, we two who but the other day had carried ourselves like game-cocks. He had forgotten his fine manners and his mincing London voice, and we spoke of the outland country of which he knew nothing, and of the hunting of game of which he knew much, exchanging our different knowledges, and willing to learn from each other.
We had plenty of odd jobs to do at home, but such work was a matter of obligation and not remunerative, nor was it interesting. With this money Henry and I each bought a game-chicken, which we kept cooped up separately in the back lot behind the stable. Neither father nor mother knew anything about it, of course. We would let these two game-cocks out half a dozen times a day.
Those who have watched game-cocks in combat have had a chance to see the vaults by which the creature, partly turning in the air, is able to throw the spur in such a manner that it shares the impulse of the body when it strikes the antagonist. This peculiar craft has been in good part lost among our common varieties.
In Turnix taigoor of India the male "wants the black on the throat and neck, and the whole tone of the plumage is lighter and less pronounced than that of the female." The female appears to be noisier, and is certainly much more pugnacious than the male; so that the females and not the males are often kept by the natives for fighting, like game-cocks.
"Put them in any other company you please wheel them to the equator in a barrowful of gravel, or line their box with sand-paper, and you may leave them naked as they were born! But, bless thy five wits! did you never hear the proverb,'Diamond cut diamond'? They're all of a sort, you see! I'd as soon shut up a thousand game-cocks in the same cellar.
I have had game-cocks attack my hand when it was held near the ground and given an up-and-down movement in imitation of their antagonist's head. I once reared a game-cock by hand, keeping him secluded from his kind until he was adult.
At last it came to this, that the young Wardour, that was Red-hand's son, challenged Misticot to fight with him in the lists as they ca'd them that's no lists or tailor's runds and selvedges o' claith, but a palin'-thing they set up for them to fight in like game-cocks.
They sat together in a dark, low-ceilinged room; its open door it was far too hot to close anything that admitted air gave straight onto the street, and the one big window opened on a courtyard, where a pair of game-cocks fought in and out between the restless legs of horses, while a yelling horde betted on them.
He presided at all public dinners, and was the first that introduced turtle from the West Indies. He improved the breed of race-horses and game-cocks, and was so great a patron of modest merit, that any one who could sing a good song, or tell a good story, was sure to find a place at his table.
At the end of fifteen minutes, Hugo, all battered, bruised, and the target for a pitiless bombardment of ridicule, slunk from the field; and the unscathed hero of the fight was seized and borne aloft upon the shoulders of the joyous rabble to the place of honour beside the Ruffler, where with vast ceremony he was crowned King of the Game-Cocks; his meaner title being at the same time solemnly cancelled and annulled, and a decree of banishment from the gang pronounced against any who should thenceforth utter it.
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