h slow mockery.

Conroy hesitated. "It was over coilin' away some gear," he said.
Slade waited, and he had to go on. He had misunderstood the mate's
order to coil the ropes on the pins, where they would be out of the
way of the deck-washing, and he had flemished them down on the poop
instead. It was the mistake of a fool, and he knew it.

Slade nodded. "Ye-es," he drawled. "You earned a punch an' you got
it. But he kicked you, too, didn't he?"

"Kicked me!" cried Conroy. "Why, I thought he was goin' to kill me!
Look here--look at this, will you?"

With fumbling hands he cast loose his belt and flung it on the floor,
and plucked his shirt up so as to leave his side bare. He stood up,
with one arm raised above his head, showing his naked flank to the
slow eyes of his shipmates. His body had still a boyish delicacy and
slenderness; the labor of his trade had not yet built it and
thickened it to a full masculinity of proportion. Measured by any of
the other men in the watch, it was frail, immature, and tender. The
moving sunlight that flowed around the door touched the fair skin and
showed the great, puffed bruises that stood on it, swollen and
horrid, like some vampire fungus growing on the clean flesh.

A great Greek, all black hair and eyeball, clicked softly between his
teeth.

"It looks like--a hell!" he said softly, in his purring voice.

"Dem is kicks, all right--ja!" said some one else, and yet another
added the comment of a heavy oath.

Old Slade made no comment, but sat, balancing his hook-pot of coffee
and watching the scene under his heavy white brows. Conroy lowered
his arm and let the shirt fall to cover the bruises.

"You see?" he said to Slade.

"I see," answered the other, with a bitter twist of his old,
malicious lips. Setting down the pot which he held, he stooped and
lifted the belt which Conroy had thrown down. It seemed to interest
him, for he looked at it for some moments.

"And here's yer knife," he said, reaching it to the youth, still with
his manner of mockery. "There's some men it wouldn't be safe to
kick, with a knife in their belts."

He and Conroy were the only Englishmen there; the rest were of the
races which do not fight bare-handed. The big Greek flashed a smile
through the black, shining curls of his beard, and continued to smile
without speaking. Through the tangle of incomprehensible conventions,
he had arrived at last at a familiar principle.

Conroy flushed hotly, the