liberties and ready to jump in and stop him if need be. But he wasted
his excitement.

"Ah told you Ah'm English!" said the pilot, stepping back and letting
Crothers find his corner.

Curley was glad enough of a rest on Joe Byng's knee, and too intent on
getting back his wind to listen over carefully to Joe's advice. When Joe
called "Time" he stepped in readily again; and this time it was Hassan
Ah who suffered from surprise.

Curley had been getting out of practise on board ship; he had needed
waking up, and round one had done it for him. Round two and the six that
followed it were exhibitions of the "noble art" that men in any of the
larger cities of the world would have paid out a fortune to have seen.

There was racial prejudice, and service pride, as well as the usual
decent man's desire to win to make a real mill of what might have been
nothing out of ordinary; and there were the quite considerable odds
against him that--after the first repulse--usually make men like
Crothers do their utmost.

Even the Arabs lost their stoicism while round two was under way.
Byng yelled, and the terrier yelped, but the Arabs only shifted their
position. That, though, was proof enough of their excitement; they
actually sighed in unison when Hassan Ah thrust his ungainly chin in the
way of a crushing right-hand smash, and laid his broad back on the sand.

After that it was slug-and-come-again with both of them, each getting
wilder as round succeeded round, but neither man obtaining much
advantage. Twice it was Crothers who went down; then he discovered a
soft spot in Hassan's ribs, and after that he kept the black man busy on
the desperate defensive.

There was no doubt of the end, then, barring accidents. Even Hassan Ah
could not have doubted it; but he did his black man's uttermost to put
it off, and he fought as gamely as anybody ever fought since prize-ring
rules were drafted. He did not foul, or take undue advantage once.

It was a plain, right-handed, battering-ram punch to the neck that ended
things, and Hassan Ah lay coughing on the sand with bulging eyes while
Joe Byng tended Curley's hurts.

"Hasn't the nigger got any pals?" asked Crothers; and then it occurred
to Byng that the most hurt man was surely most in need of mending. Both
he and Crothers bent over him, then, and they soon had him on his feet
again.

"Ah told you Ah'm English!" were the first words he succeeded in
spluttering through swollen lips.

"