g if ye know what's good for you!"

"By gosh!" cried the poor nigger, hopping about on one leg and rubbing
his shin, writhing with pain at being thus assaulted on his tenderest
point; grabbing up some missile or other from the roadway, whither he
retreated, "I'se crack yo' tam skull wid um rockstone, fo' suah!"

Mick did not `come up smiling' as he advanced to meet his foe after the
knock-down blow he had received; but, from the look on his face, with
his lips tight set and his eyes fixed on the mulatto, I could see he
`meant business.'

He did.

Parrying another wild whirl of `Mr Bim's' arms, which he swung out
right and left, Mick dropped his; and with a step forward he grasped the
mulatto round the waist, when, going down on one knee, he sent him
flying over his shoulder completely outside the ring.

Fortunately for the poor beggar, his head went plump into one of the
baskets of fruit, squashing its contents together into the semblance of
jam, which probably saved the mulatto's life; for, had he fallen
headlong on the stone jetty, his cranium would most likely have
resembled the bananas and ripe melons in the black lady's basket that he
had spoilt, and his neck, as likely as not, broken. As it was, `Mr
Bim' had enough of it, coming up quite dazed when he recovered his
senses; then retiring from the combat without a single further word,
either of apology or of defiance.

His compatriots bore no malice to Mick or ourselves, as might have been
expected from their champion having got the worst of it.

On the contrary, they raised a cheer when we turned to leave the scene
of action, accompanying us into the town, and dancing round us in their
amusing way, and making quite a triumphal procession of our progress up
Roebuck Street.

"Golly, Sambo!" one of them shouted out to another of their number, who
evidently was the local poet of the party. "You makee singsong ob de
lilly buckra sailor!"

Thereupon, the poet, who was clearly a man of vivid imagination and
spontaneous genius, at once struck up a doggerel rhyme; all of them
taking up the chorus as they marched along on either side of us:--

"Man ob war buckra, man ob war buckra,
Jus' come ashore, jus' come ashore,
Jus' come ashore!

"'Badian gen'leman, 'Badian gen'leman,
He make um roar, he make um roar,
He make um roar!

"Man ob war buckra an' 'Badian gen'leman,
Dey hab a shindy, dey hab a shindy,
Dey hab a shindy!

"'Badian gen'