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2.—Hickman came laughing to the scratch, full of confidence; but on his endeavouring to plant his tremendous right-handed hit on the throat of his antagonist, the length of Neat prevented it, and the blow alighted on his shoulder. The Gas again endeavoured to make it, when the Bristol hero gave Hickman so hard a blow on his box of ivories that he chattered without talking, and went back from his position as if he could not keep it; he also was compelled to make a pause before he again commenced the attack. The Gas got away smiling from a left-handed hit, when he rushed in with uncommon severity, and, after an exchange of blows, they both went down, Neat undermost. (Another loud shout for Hickman, the odds rising on him, and “he’ll win it to a certainty,” was the cry.) While sitting on the knee of his second the Gas winked to his friends, as much as to give the office “it was all right.”

3.—If the backers of the Gas could not see the improvement of the Bristol hero, Hickman was satisfied that he had a dangerous customer before him, and found that the length of arm possessed by his opponent rendered it highly necessary for him to act with great caution; he, therefore, on coming to the scratch, made a pause, and did not appear, as heretofore, eager to go to work. Neat was all caution and steadiness, and determined to wait for his opponent; the Gas, in consequence, was compelled to make play, and he planted a sharp hit on Neat’s head, and, laughing, nodded at him. Encouraged by this success, he was about furiously to repeat the dose, when Neat caught him with his left hand on his nob, which sent the Gas down on his knee; but his courage was so high and good, that he jumped up and renewed the fight like a game cock, till he was hit down by another tremendous blow. (The Bristolians now took a turn with their chaffers, and the shouting was loud in the extreme. The partisans of the Gas-light Man were rather on the fret, and several of them had “got the uneasiness.”)

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