you see him working his way aft, after it gets dark,
it will do him no harm if you manage to stumble against him and give him
a clout on the head."

"All right, sir; if I hit him once he won't want another. The fellow
seems quiet enough, and as far as strength goes he don't look stronger
than a girl."

After chatting for some time longer Mark and Dick Chetwynd went aft
again. The Essex did not put into any intermediate port, and it was only
on the sixth day after sailing that she approached Amsterdam. The voyage
had passed off without any incident except that at nine o'clock one
evening there had been a slight noise on deck and the sound of a fall.
The friends went up at once. Several of the sailors had run aft, and
Gibbons was explaining matters to them.

"I was walking up and down the deck," he said, "when I saw this chap
staring down through the skylight, and I said to him, 'I don't call it
good manners to be prying down into your betters' cabin.' He did not
answer or move, so I gave him a push, when he turned upon me like a wild
cat, and drew his knife from his girdle. There it is, on the other side
of the deck. As I did not want daylight put into me, I just knocked him
down."

"Served him right," one of the sailors said. "He had no right to come
aft at all, and if he drew his knife on you, you were quite right in
laying him out. But you must have hit him mighty hard, for you have
knocked the life pretty near out of him. Well, we may as well carry him
forward and throw a bucket of water over him. That is the worst of these
foreign chaps; they are always so ready with their knives. However, I
don't think he will be likely to try his hand on an Englishman again."

Mark and his friend went below again. In the morning Mark asked one of
the sailors if the foreigner was much hurt.

"Well, he is a good bit hurt, sir. That big chap looks as strong as a
bullock, and his blow has flattened the foreign chap's nose. He cannot
see out of his eyes this morning, and is keeping his bunk. They cannot
stand a blow, those foreign chaps; but I don't suppose that any of us
would have stood such a blow as that, without feeling it pretty heavy.
The man who hit him is quite sorry this morning that he hit him quite so
hot, but, as he says, when a fellow draws a knife on you, you have not
got much time for thinking it over, and you have got to hit quick and
hard. I told him he needn't be sorry about it. I consider when a fellow
draws