Picture of the ring after a fight.
--The London, Times, in its account of the "great mill" between Heenan and King, gives the following description of the horrible scene after the fight was over:‘ There were great cheers as King won, to which for a few moments he was very deaf, for the pace had been rapid, and, all powerful as he was, the heavy falls had shaken his vitality, and the giant who had strode into the ring an overmatch for all could scarcely close his fingers round the glass of water which was to keep him from fainting. Yet there must be a soul of goodness even in things evil, for the first really conscious thought that flitted through his mind was a wish to make friends with his late antagonist, and, as he said it, he lunged heavily through the crowd of his admirers to a little knot of curious lookers on, amid whom what seemed the corpse of the redoubtable Heenan now lay. Sayers was with him, and kept with him but better advice was needed than any pugilist ought to be called upon to give; for Heenan, though not nearly so much punished as when he fought at Farnborough, was evidently much more injured. He was pulseless at the wrist, and even over the heart the palpitation was fluttering, faint, and low. Yet he had not fainted. It was the insensibility of exhaustion, the sheer want of vitality, though almost till he collapsed so suddenly he was supposed to be the winner.
’ One man was trying to heave up his immense inanimate form, while another stripped the wet drawers, stained deep with his own blood, from the limbs of the stunned athlete. There was a dreadful significance in the way in which he was hauled about limb by limb, as warmer clothes were dragged over his unconscious form, like dressing a corpse. Yet no one seemed to mind much, for all were crowding round the victor, who, with very little signs of punishment about his face, came gaily up in the train back to town. Heenan was left with his seconds on the field he had fought to win. No one seemed to think much of him — he was a beaten man, and among pugilists there is no mercy for the defeated.
