Читать книгу The Doomington Wanderer - Louis Golding - Страница 13

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Tom Molyneux’s mind worked very simply. They had cheated him of the championship. He must bide his time. He would issue another challenge. Next time they would not cheat him.

Then, being champion of England and the world, he would make his way to the village of Winfold, in the state of Somerset, find the maid he had been asked to find, and bring her and the championship over to America, a double gift to lay at the feet of his dear friend, Sailor Joe Mason.

In due time, Tom Molyneux issued a second challenge. Tom Cribb, for one or two reasons, was not very pleased about it. Why couldn’t the black man let him be? He was quite happy with his wife and his friends and his business. He declared he would not fight for a stake less than three hundred guineas.

Three hundred guineas! A huge sum of money! Black Bill Richmond scratched his head. Tom Molyneux sat and stared like an ebony image. Then slowly, slowly, certain memories drifted before his mind—the open road, the boxing-booth, the crowds of yokels, the shining heap of dollars.

“Ah’ve got it, Bill!” said Tom Molyneux. “Listen!” Bill Richmond clapped his huge hands excitedly. “You’ve got it, Tom! You’ve got it!”

And so the two black men went forth into the English countryside, into the country places, showing their muscles, sparring with each other, challenging all comers. The shining shillings clinked musically into the box, heaping themselves higher and higher, till there should be three hundred guineas’ worth of silver shillings.

And it was in this way that they reached the state of Somerset on their wanderings, and put up their booth in a meadow not far from the village of Crowleigh, and some two miles away from a smaller village, Winfold by name.