sir?" I asked him; "how are you feeling now?"

He replied light-heartedly enough, wishful, I could see, to make light
of it.

"Like a man who has bought a wooden leg and prefers the old one," said
he; asking at the same time, "What's the course, captain, and why do we
follow it?"

"The course," said I, "is to Mme. Czerny's boudoir, and a good couch to
lie upon. Do you two get on as fast as you can and leave us to the
parley. It's coming, sure enough, and lame men won't help the argument.
We'll need your help by-and-bye, doctor, when the heads are broken."

I made the guess at hazard, little knowing how near the truth it was to
prove. We were almost at the head of the first stairway by this time,
and the uproar in the corridor might have awakened the seven sleepers.
Impossible, I said, that such a warning should not bring in men from
the sea, sentinels who would ask by whose hand the key had been turned;
but the danger lay behind us in the shadows where we had not looked for
it. Aye, the three in the engine-house, how came I to forget them? They
were atop of us before the doctor was out of hearing, and a great
hulking German, his face smeared with soot and a bar of iron in his
hands, caught me by the shoulder and swung me round almost before I had
done speaking.

"Who, in thunder, are you?" asks he. It was a question which had to be
answered.

Now, I had picked up a wrinkle or two about "rough-and-tumbles" in the
years I traded to Yokohama, and though my heart was in my mouth and it
was plain to me that this was the crisis of the night, when a single
unlucky stroke or misspoken word might undo all that chance had done
for us, I nevertheless kept my wits about me, and letting the man turn
me round as he willed I presently caught his arm between both of mine
and almost broke the bone of it. Upon which he lifted up a cry you
might have heard at the sword-fish reef, and writhing down I struck him
with all my force and he fell insensible.

"Seven and one makes eight," said I, and a man might forgive himself
for boasting at such a time; for, mark you, but two were left to deal
with, and while one was making for little Dolly Venn, Peter Bligh had
the throat of the other in such a grip that his friends might well have
said, "God help him!"

"Hold him, Peter, hold him!" cried I, my blood fired and my tongue set
loose; but there was no need to be anxious for Mister Bligh, I do
assure you.

"He'll need new teeth to-morr