s
heard again. He had lost prestige, and was coming to recover it with
a bowie knife. He said:

"Where's that Britisher? I am going to cut his liver out."

The Englishman heard the threat, and said to him mates:

"I told you so! He means to murder me. Why didn't you leave me
alone when I had the fine holt of him?"

He then hurried away and ran upstairs to the saloon.

Jack followed to the foot of the ladder, and one wild-eyed young lady said:

"Look at the Englishman [he was sitting on a chair a few feet
distance]. Ain't he pale? Oh! the coward!"

She wanted to witness a real lively fight, and was disappointed. The
smell of blood seems grateful to the nostrils of both ladies and
gentlemen in the States. A butcher from St. Louis explained it thus:

"It's in the liver. Nine out of ten of the beasts I kill have liver
complaint. I am morally sartin I'd find the human livers just the
same if I examined them in any considerable quantity."

The captain came to the head of the stairs and descended to the deck.
He was tall and lanky and mild of speech. He said:

"Now, Jack, what are you going to do with that knife?"

"I am waiting to cut the liver out of that Englishman. Send him
down, Captain, till I finish the job."

"Yes, I see. He has been peeling your neck pretty bad, ain't he?
Powerful claws, I reckon. Jack, you'll be getting into trouble some
day with your weepons." He took a small knife out of his pocket.
"Look here, Jack. I've been going up and down the river more'n
twenty years, and never carried a weepon bigg'n that, and never had a
muss with nobody. A man who draws his bowie sometimes gets shot.
Let's look at your knife."

He examined it closely, deciphered the brand, drew his thumb over the
edge, and observed:

"Why, blame me, if it ain't one of them British bowies--a
Free-trade Brummagen. I reckon you can't carve anyone with a thing
like this." He made a dig at the hand-rail with the point, and it
actually curled up like the ring in a hog's snout. "You see, Jack, a
knife like that is mean, unbecoming a gentleman, and a disgrace to a
respectable boat." He pitched the British article into the river and
went up into the saloon.

As Jack had not yet recovered his prestige, he went away, and
returned with a dinner knife in one hand and a shingling hammer in
the other. He waited for his adversary until the sun was low and the
deck passengers were preparing their evening meal. Two