Read FICTION books online

Reading books fiction Have you ever thought about what fiction is? Probably, such a question may seem surprising: and so everything is clear. Every person throughout his life has to repeatedly create the works he needs for specific purposes - statements, autobiographies, dictations - using not gypsum or clay, not musical notes, not paints, but just a word. At the same time, almost every person will be very surprised if he is told that he thereby created a work of fiction, which is very different from visual art, music and sculpture making. However, everyone understands that a student's essay or dictation is fundamentally different from novels, short stories, news that are created by professional writers. In the works of professionals there is the most important difference - excogitation. But, oddly enough, in a school literature course, you don’t realize the full power of fiction. So using our website in your free time discover fiction for yourself.



Fiction genre suitable for people of all ages. Everyone will find something interesting for themselves. Our electronic library is always at your service. Reading online free books without registration. Nowadays ebooks are convenient and efficient. After all, don’t forget: literature exists and develops largely thanks to readers.
The genre of fiction is interesting to read not only by the process of cognition and the desire to empathize with the fate of the hero, this genre is interesting for the ability to rethink one's own life. Of course the reader may accept the author's point of view or disagree with them, but the reader should understand that the author has done a great job and deserves respect. Take a closer look at genre fiction in all its manifestations in our elibrary.



Read books online » Fiction » The Abysmal Brute by Jack London (best books to read for teens .txt) 📖

Book online «The Abysmal Brute by Jack London (best books to read for teens .txt) 📖». Author Jack London



1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ... 12
Go to page:
was a heavyweight, noted locally for his cleverness. When the gong for the first round sounded, both men met in the center of the ring. Neither rushed. Nor did they strike a blow. They felt around each other, their arms bent, their gloves so close together that they almost touched. This lasted for perhaps five seconds. Then it happened, and so quickly that not one in a hundred of the audience saw. Rufe Mason made a feint with his right. It was obviously not a real feint, but a feeler, a mere tenative threatening of a possible blow. It was at this instant that Pat losed his punch. So close together were they that the distance the blow traveled was a scant eight inches. It was a short-arm left jolt, and it was acccomplished by a twist of the left forearm and a thrust of the shoulder. It landed flush on the point of the chin and the astounded audience saw Rufe Mason’s legs crumple under him as his body sank to the floor. But the referee had seen, and he promptly proceeded to count him out. Again Pat carried his opponent to his corner, and it was ten minutes before Rufe Mason, supported by his seconds, with sagging knees and rolling, glassy eyes, was able to move down the aisle through the stupified and incredulous audience on the way to his dressing room.

“No wonder,” he told a reporter, “that Rough-House Kelly thought the roof hit him.”

After Chub Collins had been put out in the twelfth second of the first round of a fifteen-round contest, Stubener felt compelled to speak to Pat.

“Do you know what they’re calling you now?” he asked.

Pat shook his head.

“One punch Glendon.”

Pat smiled politely. He was little interested in what he was called. He had certain work cut out which he must do ere he could win back his mountains, and he was phlegmatically doing it, that was all.

“It won’t do,” his manager continued, with an ominous shake of the head. “You can’t go on putting your men out so quickly. You must give them more time.”

“I’m here to fight, ain’t I?” Pat demanded in surprise.

Again Stubener shook his head.

“It’s this way, Pat. You’ve got to be big and generous in the fighting game. Don’t get all the other fighters sore. And it’s not fair to the audience. They want a run for their money. Besides, no one will fight you. They’ll all be scared out. And you can’t draw crowds with ten-second fights. I leave it to you. Would you pay a dollar, or five, to see a ten-second fight?”

Pat was convinced, and he promised to give the audiences the requisite run for their money, though he stated that, personally, he preferred going fishing to witnessing a hundred rounds of fighting.

And still, Pat had got practically nowhere in the game. The local sports laughed when his name was mentioned. It called to mind funny fights and Rough-House Kelly’s remark about the roof. Nobody knew how Pat could fight. They had never seen him. Where was his wind, his stamina, his ability to mix it with rough customers through long grueling contests? He had demonstrated nothing but the posession of a lucky punch and a depressing proclivity for flukes.

So it was that his fourth match was arranged with Pete Sosso, a Portuguese fighter from Butchertown, known only for the amazing tricks he played in the ring. Pat did not train for the fight. Instead he made a flying and sorrowful trip to the mountains to bury his father. Old Pat had known well the condition of his heart, and it had stopped suddenly on him.

Young Pat arrived back in San Francisco with so close a margin of time that he changed into his fighting togs directly from his traveling suit, and even then the audience was kept waiting ten minutes.

“Remember, give him a chance,” Stubener cautioned him as he climbed through the ropes. “Play with him, but do it seriously. Let him go ten or twelve rounds, then get him,”

Pat obeyed instructions, and , thought it would have been easy enough to put Sosso out, so tricky was he that to stand up to him and not put him out kept his hands full. It was a pretty exhibition, and the audience was delighted. Sosso’s whirlwind attacks, wild feints, retreats, and rushes, required all Pat’s science to protect himself, and even then he did not escape unscathed.

Stubener praised him in the minute-rests, and all would have been well, had not Sosso, in the fourth round, played one of his most spectacular tricks. Pat, in a mix-up, had landed a hook to Sosso’s jaw, when to his amazement, the latter dropped his hands and reeled backward, eyes rolling, legs bending and giving, in a high state of grogginess. Pat could not understand. It had not been a knockout blow, and yet there was his man all ready to fall to the mat. Pat dropped his own hands and wonderingly watched his reeling opponent. Sosso staggered away, almost fell, recovered, and staggered obliquely and blindly forward again.

For the first and the last time in his fighting career, Pat was caught off his guard. He actually stepped aside to let the reeling man go by. Still reeling, Sosso suddenly loosed his right. Pat received it full on his jaw with an impact that rattled his teeth. A great roar of delight went up from the audience. But Pat did not hear. He saw only Sosso before him, grinning and defiant, and not the least bit groggy. Pat was hurt by the blow, but vastly more outraged by the trick. All the wrath that his father ever had surged up in him. He shook his head as if to get rid of the shock of the blow and steadied himself before his man. It all occurred in the next second. With a feint that drew his opponent, Pat fetched his left to the solar plexus, almost at the same instant whipping his right across to the jaw. The latter blow landed on Sosso’s mouth ere his falling body struck the floor. The club doctors worked half an hour to bring him to. After that they put eleven stitches in his mouth and packed him off in an ambulance.

“I’m sorry,” Pat told his manager, “I’m afraid I lost my temper. I’ll never do it again in the ring. Dad always cautioned me about it. He said it had made him lose more than one battle. I didn’t know I could lose my temper that way, but now that I know I’ll keep it in control.”

And Stubener believed him. He was coming to the stage where he could believe anything about his young charge.

“You don’t need to get angry,” he said, “you’re so thoroughly the master of your man at any stage.”

“At any inch or second of the fight,” Pat affirmed.

“And you can put them out any time you want.”

“Sure I can. I don’t want to boast. But I just seem to possess the ability. My eyes show me the opening that my skill knows how to make, and time and distance are second nature to me. Dad called it a gift, but I thought he was blarneying me. Now that I’ve been up against these men, I guess he was right. He said I had the mind and muscle correlation.”

“At any inch or second of the fight,” Stubener repeated musingly.

Pat nodded, and Stubener, absolutely believing him, caught a vision of a golden future that should have fetched old Pat out of his grave.

“Well, don’t forget, we’ve got to give the crowd a run for its money,” he said. “We’ll fix it up between us how many rounds a fight should go. Now your next bout will be with the Flying Dutchman. Suppose you let it run the full fifteen and put him out in the last round. That will give you a chance to make a showing as well.”

“All right, Sam,” was the answer.

“It will be a test for you,” Stubener warned. “You may fail to put him out in that last round.”

“Watch me.” Pat paused to put weight to his promise, and picked up a volume of Longfellow. “If I don’t I’ll never read poetry again, and that’s going some.”

“You bet it is,” his manager proclaimed jubilantly, “though what you see in such stuff is beyond me.”

Pat sighed, but did not reply. In all his life he had found but one person who cared for poetry, and that had been the red-haired school teacher who scared him off into the woods.

CHAPTER V

“Where are you going?” Stubener demanded in surprise, looking at his watch.

Pat, with his hand on the door-knob, paused and turned around.

“To the Academy of Sciences,” he said.

“There’s a professor who’s going to give a lecture there on Browning tonight, and Browning is the sort of writer you need assistance with. Sometimes I think I ought to go to night school.”

“But great Scott, man!” exclaimed the horrified manager. “you’re on with the Flying Dutchman tonight.”

“I know it. But I won’t enter the ring a moment before half past nine or quarter to ten. The lecture will be over at nine fifteen. If you want to make sure, come around and pick me up in your machine.”

Stubener shrugged his shoulders helplessly.

“You’ve got no kick coming,” Pat assured him. “Dad used to tell me a man’s worst time was in the hours just before a fight, and that many a fight was lost by a man’s breaking down right there, with nothing to do but think and be anxious. Well, you’ll never need to worry about me that way. You ought to be glad I can go off to a lecture.”

And later that night, in the course of watching fifteen splendid rounds, Stubener chuckled to himself more than once at the idea of what that audience of sports would think, did it know that this magnificent young prize-fighter had come to the ring directly from a Browning lecture.

The Flying Dutchman was a young Swede who possessed an unwonted willingness to fight and who was blessed with phenomenal endurance. He never rested, was always on the offensive, and rushed and fought from gong to gong. In the out-fighting his arms whirled about like flails, in the infighting he was forever shouldering or half-wrestling and starting blows whenever he could get a hand free. From start to finish he was a whirlwind, hence his name. His flailing was lack of judgement in time and distance. Nevertheless he had won many fights by virtue of landing one in each dozen or so of the unending fusillades of punches he delivered. Pat, with strong upon him the caution that he must not put his opponent out, was kept busy. Nor, though he escaped vital damage, could he avoid entirely those eternal flying gloves. But it was good training, and in a mild way he enjoyed the contest.

“Could you get him now?” Stubener whispered in his ear during the minute rest at the end of the fifth round.

“Sure,” was Pat’s answer.

“You know he’s never yet been knocked out by any one,” Stubener warned a couple seconds later.

“Then I’m afraid I’ll have to break my knuckles,” Pat smiled. “I know the punch I’ve got in me, and when I land it something’s got to go. If he won’t, my knuckles will.”

“Do you think you could get him now?” Stubener asked at the end of the thirteenth round.

“Any time, I tell you.”

“Well, then. Pat, let him run to the fifteenth.”

In the fourteenth round the Flying Dutchman exceeded himself. At the stroke of the gong he rushed clear across the ring to the opposite corner

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ... 12
Go to page:

Free ebook «The Abysmal Brute by Jack London (best books to read for teens .txt) 📖» - read online now

Comments (0)

There are no comments yet. You can be the first!
Add a comment