allow, furtive blue eye.
The empty socket gave a horribly grim appearance to the whole face.

Momentary as Drew's scrutiny was, he saw that the one-eyed man was
intoxicated. Not desiring to engage in a controversy with a stranger
in that condition, he would have passed on quickly, but the fellow
would not step aside.

"Just let me pass, will you?" Drew said, eyeing the other warily.

"You lubberly swab!" the one-eyed man said thickly, and with it spat
out a vile epithet that instantly raised a flame of hot anger in Allen
Drew.

He plunged down the plank, his fists clenched and his eyes ablaze. The
one-eyed man was by no means unsteady on his legs; he met the charge of
the young fellow boldly enough.

But Drew dodged his swing, and having all the push of his descent of
the plank behind the straight-arm jolt he landed on the other's jaw,
the impact was terrific.

"Whee!" yelled the second officer of the _Normandy_, leaning on the
rail, an interested spectator. "That's a soaker!"

Others came running to the scene. A fight will bring a crowd quicker
than any other happening.

The one-eyed man had been driven back against the nearest pile of
freight. Drew was after him before he could recover from that first
blow, and he got in a couple of other punches that ended the
encounter--for the time being, at least. His antagonist went to the
floor of the dock and stayed there.

"Beat it, 'bo!" advised a seaman at the _Normandy's_ rail. "Here comes
the cop."

Drew accepted the advice as good, dodged around a tier of freight, and
so escaped. He was not of a quarrelsome disposition; yet somehow the
memory of those three blows he had struck gave him a deal of
satisfaction.

"I never supposed those sparring lessons at the gym would come in so
handy," he thought, hurrying officeward. Then he chuckled. "Yesterday
I was grouching because nothing ever happened to me. And look at it
now! That fellow had it coming to him, that's all. I wonder who he
is. Like enough I'll never see him again."

But he was never more mistaken in his life than in this surmise.

Grimshaw had come in by the time Drew got back to the shop, and was
busy in his office. Winters and Sam were condoling with each other
over the amount of work that lay before them.

"It's a whale of a job," complained Winters, looking about the crowded
shop.

"Ah kin feel de mis'ry comin' into ma back ag'in," groaned Sam, who had
formerly been a piano mo