Although I had no real fear of him,--for, already I had been schooled to the knowledge that fear and its twin brother worry are man's worst opponents.--I was a little uncertain as to what the outcome would be if I got him thoroughly angered. However, I was in no mind to be interfered with.

He thumped his heavy fist on the table.

"'And that over,--quick," he roared.

His great jaws clamped together and his thick, discoloured lips became compressed.

"Why!--certainly, my friend," I remarked easily, rising with slow deliberation. "Which will you have first:--the bread and cheese, or the ale?"

"'Twere the ale I arst and it's th' ale I wants,--and blamed quick about it or I'll know the reason w'y."

"Stupid of me!" I remarked. "I should have known you wanted the ale first. Here you are, my good, genial, handsome fellow."

I picked up the foaming tumbler and offered it to him. When he stretched out his great, grimy paw to take it, I tossed the stuff smack into his face, sending showers of the liquid into the gaping countenances of his supporters.

He staggered back among them, momentarily blinded, and, as he staggered, I sent the tumbler on the same errand as the ale. It smashed in a hundred pieces on the side of his broken nose, opening up an old gash there and sending a stream of blood oozing down over his mouth.

There was no more laughter, nor grinning. The place was as quiet as a church during prayer. I pushed into the open saloon, with the remonstrating Donald at my heels. Then the bull began to roar. He pulled off his coat, while half a dozen of his own kind endeavoured with dirty handkerchiefs and rags to mop the blood from his face.

"Shut the door. Don't let 'im away from 'ere," he shouted. "I'll push his windpipe into his boots, I will. Watch me!"

As I stood with my back against the part.i.tion, the bar-tender slipped round the end of the counter.

"Look here, guv'nor," he whispered with good intent, "the back door's open,--run like the devil."

I turned to him in mild surprise.

"Don't be an ijit," he went on. "Git. Why! he's Tommy Flynn, the champion rib cracker and face pusher of Harlford, here on his holidays."

"Tommy Flynn," I answered, "Tommy Rot fits him better."

"You ain't a-going to stand up and get hit, are you?"

"What else is there for me to do?" I asked.

He threw up his arms despairingly.

"Lor' lumme!--then I bids you good-bye and washes my hands clean of you." And he went round behind the counter in disgust, spitting among the sawdust.

By this time, Tommy Flynn, the champion rib cracker and face pusher, was rolling up his sleeves businesslike and thrusting off his numerous seconds in his anxiety to get at me.

"'Ere, Splotch," he cried to a one-eyed bosom friend of his, "'old my watch, while I joggles the puddins out of this kid with a left 'ander.

My heye!--'e won't be no blooming golfing swell in another 'alf minute."

He grinned at me a few times in order to hypnotise me with his beauty and to instil in me the necessary amount of frightfulness, before he got to work in earnest. Then, by way of invitation, he thrust forward his jaw almost into my face. I took advantage of his offer somewhat more quickly than he antic.i.p.ated. I struck him on the chin with my left and drew my right to his body. But his chin was hard as flint and it bruised my knuckles; while his great body was podgy and of an india-rubberlike flexibility.

For my pains, he brushed my ear and drew a little blood, with the grin of an ape on his brutish face.

He threw up his arms to guard, feinted at me, and rushed in.

I parried his blows successfully, much to his surprise, for I could see his eyes widening and a wrinkle in his brow.

"Careful, Tommy!--careful," cautioned Splotch of the one eye. "He's a likely looking young bloke."

"Likely be blowed," said Tommy shortly, as he toyed with me. "Watch this!"

I saw that it would be for my own good, the less I let my antagonist know of my ability at his own game, and I knew also I would have to play caution with my strength all the way, owing to the trying ordeals I had already gone through that day.

Once, my antagonist tried to draw me as he would draw a novice. I ignored the body bait he opened up for me and, instead, I swung in quickly with my right on to his bruised nose, with all the energy I could muster. He staggered and reeled like a drunken man. In fact, had he not been half-besotted by dear-only-knows how many days of debauchery, it might have gone hard with me, but now he positively howled with pain.

I had hit on his most vulnerable part, right at the beginning.

Something inside of me chuckled, for, if there was one special place in any man's anatomy that I always had been able to reach, it was his nose.

Flynn rushed on me again and again. I was lucky indeed in beating back his onslaughts.

Once, a spent blow got me on the cheek; yet, spent as it was, it made me numb and dizzy for the moment. Once, he caught me squarely on the chest right over the wound my brother had given me. The pain of that was like the cut of a red-hot knife, but it pa.s.sed quickly. I staggered and reeled several times, as flashes of weakness seemed to pa.s.s over me. I began to fear that my strength would give out.

I pulled myself together with an effort. Then, once,--twice,--thrice,--in a succession bewildering to myself, I smashed that broken nose of Flynn's, sending him sick and wobbling among his following.

He became maddened with rage. His companions commenced to voice cautions and instructions. He swore back at them in a muddy torrent of abuse.

Already, the fight was over;--I could feel it in my bones;--over, far sooner and more satisfactory to me than I had expected. And, more by good luck than by ability, I was, to all intents and purposes, unscathed.

Tommy Flynn could fight. But he was not the fighter he would have been had he been away from drink and in strict training, as I was. It was my good fortune to meet him when he was out of condition. He spat out a mouthful of blood and returned to the conflict, defending his nose with all the ferocity of a lioness defending her whelps.

"Look out! Take care!" a timely voice whispered on my left.

Something flashed in my opponent's hands in the gaslight. I backed to the part.i.tion. We had a terrible mix-up just then. Blow and counterblow rained. He broke down my guard once and drove with fierce force for my face. I ducked, just in time, for he missed me by a mere hair's-breadth. His fist smashed into a metal bolt in the woodwork.

Sparks flew and there was a loud ring of metal against metal.

"You cowardly brute!" I shouted, breaking away as it dawned on me that he had attacked me with heavy knuckle-dusters. My blood fairly danced with madness. I sprang in on him in a positive frenzy. He became a child in my hands. Never had I been roused as I was then. I struck and struck again at his hideous face until it sagged away from me.

He was blind with his own blood. I followed up, raining punch upon punch,--pitilessly,--relentlessly. His feet slipped in the slither of b.l.o.o.d.y sawdust. I struck again and he crashed to the floor, striking his head against the iron pedestal of a round table in the corner.

He lay all limp and senseless, with his mouth wide open and his breath coming roaring and gurgling from his clotted throat.

As his friends endeavoured to raise him, as I stood back against the counter, panting, I heard a battering at the main door of the saloon which had been closed at the commencement of the scuffle.

"Here, sir,--quick!" cried the sympathetic bartender to me. "The cops!

Out the back door like h.e.l.l!"

I had no desire to be mixed up in a police affair, especially in the company of such sc.u.m as I was then among. I picked up my golf bag and swung my knapsack on to my back once more. Then I remembered about Donald. I could not leave him. I searched in corners and under the tables. He was nowhere in sight.

"Is it the tinker?" asked the bar-tender excitedly.

"Yes, yes!"

"He's gone. He slunk out with his tin cans, through the back way, as soon as you got started in this sc.r.a.p."