companied by two huge negroes,
came in, and it was easy to see that he was already three
parts drunk. He was looking for trouble. He lurched against
a table at which three soldiers were sitting and knocked over
a glass of beer. There was an angry altercation, and the
owner of the bar stepped forward and ordered Tough Bill to go.
He was a hefty fellow, in the habit of standing no nonsense
from his customers, and Tough Bill hesitated. The landlord
was not a man he cared to tackle, for the police were on his side,
and with an oath he turned on his heel. Suddenly he
caught sight of Strickland. He rolled up to him. He did not speak.
He gathered the spittle in his mouth and spat full in
Strickland's face. Strickland seized his glass and flung it
at him. The dancers stopped suddenly still. There was an
instant of complete silence, but when Tough Bill threw himself
on Strickland the lust of battle seized them all, and in a
moment there was a confused scrimmage. Tables were
overturned, glasses crashed to the ground. There was a
hellish row. The women scattered to the door and behind the bar.
Passers-by surged in from the street. You heard curses
in every tongue the sound of blows, cries; and in the middle
of the room a dozen men were fighting with all their might.
On a sudden the police rushed in, and everyone who could made
for the door. When the bar was more or less cleared, Tough
Bill was lying insensible on the floor with a great gash in
his head. Captain Nichols dragged Strickland, bleeding from a
wound in his arm, his clothes in rags, into the street.
His own face was covered with blood from a blow on the nose.

"I guess you'd better get out of Marseilles before Tough Bill
comes out of hospital," he said to Strickland, when they had
got back to the Chink's Head and were cleaning themselves.

"This beats cock-fighting," said Strickland.

I could see his sardonic smile.

Captain Nichols was anxious. He knew Tough Bill's vindictiveness.
Strickland had downed the mulatto twice, and the mulatto,
sober, was a man to be reckoned with. He would bide
his time stealthily. He would be in no hurry, but one
night Strickland would get a knife-thrust in his back, and in
a day or two the corpse of a nameless beach-comber would be
fished out of the dirty water of the harbour. Nichols went
next evening to Tough Bill's house and made enquiries. He was
in hospital still, but his wife, who had been to see him, said