umbling out of the narrow doorway to save himself.

There were not a few who were glad enough that the dreaded Irishman
should have been worsted, and it was to this feeling Salve was indebted
for being allowed to fight it out alone with him. He stuck his knife now
into the table by the side of his dish, and, looking round him, asked,
"Is there any one else now who would like to keep me out of my meat?"

There was no answer.

"While I am about it," he continued, without noticing the blood that was
running down his face and over his hands, "I'll settle this matter once
for all. I have two days' rations owing to me. Very well. For the next
two days I shall keep one dish to myself. I shall see then what the
Irishman or any one else thinks of it."

The Irishman was confined to his hammock the whole week with
wound-fever, and Salve had for the first time won the respect of the
crew. He felt at the same time that he had commenced a desperate
struggle, and that if he was to enjoy any sort of security in this
company of ruffians whom he had now set at defiance, he must take the
game into his own hands, and make himself at least as much feared as the
Irishman had been. Accordingly, instead of waiting to be challenged, he
deliberately became the aggressor, and set himself to dispense justice
as he pleased.

The one who, next to the Irishman, was most dreaded, was a
broad-shouldered mulatto, who carried on a petty system of pillage
against any one that was not supported, unluckily for him, by any party;
and Salve himself had been obliged one evening to put up with having his
hammock taken down, and the mulatto's hung in its place. He had seen him
in several fights, and had observed his peculiar tactics; the result of
his observations being the conviction that the man had not the strength
which he was anxious to make the others think he had. In pursuance of
this policy, he had picked a quarrel with him on the head of that matter
of the hammock, and with a similarly decisive result. The mulatto
rejoiced in the name of Januarius, and Salve accordingly requested him
to remember that there was something still owing to him for the eleven
other months of the year. He was a cur by nature, and never seemed to
have the slightest desire to renew the struggle afterwards, which was
not the case with the Irishman, with whom Salve perceived, directly the
man came on deck again, that a fresh trial of strength was inevitable.

An opportunity