lower deck who was frequently "trailing his
coat." He had, in fact, no coat at all, only a grey flannel shirt
and nankeen trousers, but he was remarkably in want of a fight, and
anxious to find a man willing to be licked. He was a desperado of
the great river. We had heard and read of such men, of their
reckless daring and deadly fights; but we were peaceful people; we
had come out west to make a living, and therefore did not want to be
killed. When the desperado came near we looked the other way.

There was a party of five immigrant Englishmen sitting on their
luggage. One of them was very strongly built, a likely match for the
bully, and a deck-hand pointing to him said:

"Jack, do you know what that Englishman says about you?"

"No, what does he say?"

"He says he don't think you are of much account with all your brag.
Reckons he could lick you in a couple of minutes."

Uttering imprecations, Jack approached the Englishman, and dancing
about the deck, cleared the ring for the coming combat.

"Come on, you green-horn, and take your gruel. Here's the best man
on the river for you. You'll find him real grit."

The stranger sat still, said he was not a fighting man, and did not
want to quarrel with anybody.

Jack grew more ferocious than ever, and aimed a blow at the peaceful
man to persuade him to come on. He came on suddenly. The two men
were soon writhing together on the guard deck, and I was pleased to
observe the desperado was undermost. The Englishman was full of
fear, and was fighting for his life. He was doing it with great
earnestness. He was grasping the throat of his enemy tightly with
both hands, and pressing his thumbs on the wind-pipe. We could see
he was going to win in his own simple way, without any recourse to
science, and he would have done so very soon had he not been
interrupted. But as Jack was growing black in the face, the other
Englishmen began to pull at their mate, and tried to unlock his grip
on Jack's throat. It was not easy to do so. He held on to his man
to the very last, crying out: "Leave me alone till I do for him.
Man alive, don't you know the villain wants to murder me?"

The desperado lay for a while gulping and gasping on his bed of
glory, unable to rise. I observed patches of bloody skin hanging
loose on both sides of his neck when he staggered along the deck
towards the starboard sponson.

There was peace for a quarter of an hour. Then Jack's voice wa