CHAPTER XVII.
JIU-JITSU VS. MUSCLE.
All else forgotten now, Ned fought warily.
Time and again Kennell rushed at him, apparently trying to end thebattle in a hurry. But every time he rained his blows on thin air. Ned,perceiving that his only chance lay in tiring the man out, had earlydecided to adopt cautious tactics.
While avoiding the terrific rushes of his opponent, however, he stillmanaged once in a while to land an effective blow.
On Kennell's seasoned body, however, they seemed to have but littleeffect.
The jackies groaned in sympathy for the lad as he put up his plucky andskillful defense. It was clear that they believed that the battle wouldbe simply a question of a few minutes, unless it was cut short by thearrival of an officer.
As the petty officers were at dinner, however, and the commissioneddignitaries were enjoying a smoke aft, there seemed little likelihoodof any interference before the contest was ended. The men werefighting in the shelter of the turret, so from the bridge nothing ofwhat was transpiring was visible to the navigating officers or thequartermasters.
"You young hound, I'm going to kill you!" hissed Kennell, white withrage, as, for the twentieth time one of his terrific swings met thinair.
"Catch me first!" mocked Ned, skipping backward with agile footwork.
Kennell, who was breathing heavily, seemed fairly to spring at the ladas he spoke, but Ned nimbly sidestepped, and Kennell went careeningahead like a man shot out of a suddenly checked auto.
"Keep your wind to fight with!" advised Ned jeeringly. But, alas forhis confidence, as he spoke his foot caught on a deck ring he had notobserved, and he fell backward, sprawling.
He was up in a breath, but Kennell, with a roar of triumph, was on himin a flash.
The bluejacket's great arms, hairy as a bear's, shot out and encircledNed in a grip that threatened to crush his ribs in.
It was a lock grip.
Ned, as the breath was slowly crushed out of his body, felt as if thefight had ended.
He saw defeat, utter and absolute, staring before him.
Perhaps this thought gave him almost superhuman strength, for the nextminute, with an agile twist, he had writhed clear of the deathly gripand had in his turn laid hold of the bully in a wrestling clutch.
It was the ancient "grapevine," and Kennell smiled a cold, deadly smileas he felt and knew the old school-boy grip. Throwing it off as easilyas if it had been the clutch of an infant, he crouched, and, rushingin, caught Ned craftily about the middle; but Ned, slipping aside,gripped the sailor with a peculiar twist, and seemingly with no greatexertion, shot him over his head.
The tars set up a cautious shout.
It was an old trick of wrestling, in which Ned was perfectly at home;but, to his amazement, the agile Kennell fell on his feet as lightly asa cat, instead of crashing to the deck as Ned had expected.
The bluejacket, brute though he was, was just as evidently a masterwrestler and up to all the tricks of the game.
Indeed, as Ned watched his confident leer as he recovered from what theboy had expected to be a crushing overthrow, there was an expressionon the fellow's crafty face that struck a chill that was almost one ofdread into Ned's heart.
As for the jackies, they watched in silent fascination.
Not a sound was to be heard but the quick "patter-patter" of thewrestlers' feet on the decks as they "sparred" for a fresh opening.
Suddenly Kennell crouched low, and, before Ned could check him, wasonce more upon the boy.
But now his tactics were wholly changed.
His method of wrestling was unlike any that Ned had ever seen or heardof.
Yet how deadly it was the boy quickly began to experience.
Kennell's fingers, spread like the talons of a hawk, glided here andthere about the lad's body rapidly as the undulating movements of asnake. Wherever they touched, the boy felt a sharp shock of intensepain shoot through his frame.
Beads of cold perspiration jetted out on his forehead.
A numbing sickness seized hold of him.
And still Kennell's deadly fingers pressed here, there, and everywhere,bringing the sickening agony that Ned had already tasted in their wake.
The very fact that he could not understand what was happening added tothe boy's alarm.
He had been in many wrestling matches. In fact, he was a betterperformer on the mat than with the padded gloves, but in all hisexperience he had never met an opponent like Kennell.
Clumsily built as the man was--he had not an iota of the agilitypossessed by the lithe and supple Ned--yet he seemed to wind and twistlike a sapling under Ned's holds; recovering from each grip, he laidhis hands on the boy with the same deadly precision.
Ned began to feel that his nervous system was a pincushion for hisopponent to puncture at will.
The old hiplock, the Nelson, the half-Nelson, the grip at the back ofthe neck--all these tricks of the wrestler's craft Ned tried in turn,but none of them seemed to have any effect on Kennell.
And all the time the bluejacket kept up his deadly assaults on Ned'snerve centers, pressing them deftly and producing excruciating pain.
Once Ned wrenched free, and glad he was of the brief spell in which hecould take stock of his remaining faculties.
It was not that he was winded, or that Kennell was too strong for him.In fact, Ned felt that, well-muscled as the bluejacket was, he had hisown system in better fighting shape.
The strange methods of Kennell were what worried him. He could not seemto escape the assaults of those hawklike hands.
Suddenly a partial explanation of the mystery came to him.
Old Tom stepped forward and whispered in his ear, during the briefperiod in which the two sprang about, eying each other narrowly.
"He's jiu-jitsu! Look out!"
The full meaning of these words shot into Ned's brain.
He recollected now having heard some talk about Kennell's having servedin the Far East on his first enlistment.
Doubtless it was there that he had learned the subtle, deadly Japanesetricks that he was now exercising on his inexperienced opponent.
Gladly would Ned have come to open boxing. In a ring, under properrules, he was well convinced he could whip the burly Kennell; butunder the conditions he now faced, he was by no means certain of hisultimate chance of victory.
And now Kennell, with his snakelike glide, closed in again, and Nedseized him without warning in a half-Nelson.
Back and back bent the bulky form of the bluejacket till it seemed thathis vertebra must crack under the cruel pressure.
But to Ned's sickened amazement, the other wriggled from the hold as ifhe had been some reptile, and there was the work all to be done overagain.
One fact, however, Ned noticed with satisfaction.
If he was becoming exhausted, Kennell was also tiring. His breath wascoming sharply, with a hissing intake, like that of a laboring pump.
The strain was telling on him.
Ned felt, if he could only hold out a little longer, that he would layhis opponent low.
But could he last?
The contest now was simply a matter of brute endurance plus skill,and in the latter quality Ned felt that Kennell, in his Oriental way,possessed the advantage.
Suddenly Ned found himself with a grip on both of Kennell's arms atonce.
A flood of joy rushed through his veins. He felt certain that few mencould resist the pressure he could now exert with his mighty forearmsand biceps.
"Now where are your jiu-jitsu tricks?" he hissed, as he drew thestruggling Kennell nearer and ever nearer with the same resistlessforce as is exerted by the return plunge of a piston.
Kennell, his face white, with an ashy tinge about the corners of hismouth, said nothing, but fought with every ounce of strength within himagainst the steady pressure that was drawing him closer and closer intoNed's crushing embrace.
As Ned had said, "Where were his jiu-jitsu tricks now?"
The breathing of the two men came in short, sharp barks that soundedhoarsely as coughs as they stood straining there in a deathlike lock.
For a second or two all motion ceased, and they stood, except for theworking of their opposed muscles, like two stone figures.
The next instant, however, the slow, irresistible force of Ned'scompressing arms overcame Kennell's stubborn resistance, and thebluejacket was dragged yet nearer into the toils he dreaded--dreadedwith white, frightened face and beaded brow.
But even as Ned prepared to throw him with a mighty crash to the deck,a strange thing happened.
Kennell's body grew limp as a half-filled flour sack and slid like aninert mass down Ned's body.
The next instant the boy felt his ankles gripped in a steel-likehold, and, utterly unable to resist, he was toppled over to thedeck. As he fell, one of Kennell's big hands slid round to the backof the Dreadnought Boy's neck, and Ned simultaneously experienced aqueer, fainting feeling, as if he were being borne far away from the_Manhattan_ and his surroundings, up, far aloft, into the fleecy clouds.
Again the hand struck, so softly it seemed as if his neck had beenmerely stroked, but the sense of illusion increased.
Ned's eyes closed.
Suddenly--just as it seemed to the boy that he was entering adelightful land, where flowers bloomed luxuriantly and birds sang thesweetest song--a sharp voice shattered his illusion like a soap bubble.
"Ned! Ned, old chap! Get him, for the love of Mike!"
It was the red-headed Herc released from his cell ahead of time by thecaptain's commutation of sentence.
Like a steel spring suddenly released, Ned's body curved upward, andthe next instant the wily Kennell's body was in his close embrace.
This time Ned had caught him where all his Oriental tricks were of noavail.
Back and back he bent Kennell till, with a great gasp, the bluejacketcrashed down to the deck, his head striking with a heavy thud.
"Downed him!" shouted old Tom, capering.
"The kid wins!" yelled the delighted jackies.
Kennell, dazed and astounded at his sudden loss of the match he hadmade sure was his, got clumsily to his feet.
"Shake hands," said Ned simply, extending his palm. "I don't like you,Kennell, but I think you are the cleverest wrestler I have ever met."
With a scowl of fury and a half-articulated cry of rage, Kennell dashedthe outstretched hand from him and hastened away from the jeeringcries of his shipmates, with whom, as has been said, he was by no meanspopular.
"Well, if he doesn't care to be friends," remarked Ned, as the jackies,led by Herc, crowded around him and shook his hand warmly, "he doesn'thave to. I suppose we shall have to take the consequences."
What those consequences were to be neither of the Dreadnought Boysdreamed at that instant. Perhaps it was as well they did not.
While the congratulations were still going on, a boatswain's mate camebustling up.
Perhaps he detected the symptoms of something unusual having occurredin the excited faces of the jackies and in Ned's still heaving chestand flushed face, but he was too wise a man to inquire into somethinghe had not witnessed with his own eyes. As it was, therefore, he simplycontented himself by inquiring for Kennell.
"With the gun crew," suggested one of the throng.
"He won't be long," replied the boatswain's mate shortly and with ameaning look.
"Why not?" asked old Tom, the privileged character.
"Because, my boy, he has been relieved from duty in the forward turretand the two recruits put there in his place."
"Phew!" whistled the jackies, as the boatswain's mate hurried forwardon his quest.
"Now look out for squalls!"