But to Byng's amazement Ha.s.san Ah pointed to Crothers, who was heavier by forty pounds or more and taller by at least half a head.

"Ah choose him!" he grinned; and Curley Crothers clenched both fists in absolute but quite unterrified amazement.

"Come on, then," he answered. "Open the door." Then, as an afterthought-"I'll fight you for the dog."

"Ah don't want to kill that little man," said Ha.s.san Ah. "But Ah'll give you the dog, win or lose, if you'll fight me. You fight fair? You fight English?"

"Well, I'm d.a.m.ned!" said Crothers. "I fight Queensberry rules. That suit you?"

"Oh-ah, yes! Keensby rules, that's it. All right-o!"

Ha.s.san Ah produced his key and turned it in the creaking lock. He was stripping himself even before the two sailors were out in the sun, and by the time that Crothers and Joe Byng had realized that there was an audience of something like a thousand, including children, he was standing posed like a gladiator, with the straight-down tropic sun streaming off his ebony hide. As Crothers, not quite sure even yet that the whole affair was not a joke, began to doff his blouse it dawned on him that if the thing were true it would not be a picnic.

"Do you mean this?" he asked.

"Ah shohly do. Are you afraid o' me?"

That, of course, settled matters. The thing was not a joke, and Englishman or n.i.g.g.e.r-black, green, white, or gray-the plot must be licked forthwith and in accordance with the rules.

Crothers spat into his hands, while Joe Byng folded up his blouse and knelt on it. He eyed his antagonist for at least a minute, summing him up and ignoring none of the woolly-headed one's physical advantages in weight and strength, in height and reach, in being used to the climate and the glare, the odds were all with Ha.s.san Ah. Then he sized up the moral odds; and though a biased audience might be at first supposed to weigh against him too, the sight of all those Arabs waiting to see him beaten roused his fighting dander.

"Do you represent the bloke that spat on us two men?" asked Crothers.

"Ah represent maself! Ah'm English! Ah fight English, and Ah'll prove it!"

"Aw, wade into him!" advised Joe Byng. "London Prize Rules-no time called until a man's down. Go on, Curley-lead!"

"Do you agree?" asked Crothers.

"Suttainly!" The black man seemed disposed to agree to anything so long as he could get what he was after.

"Then here goes!" said Crothers; and he stepped in and led for the honor of the British Navy.

Oh! It was a fight! Crothers knew what he was up against the instant that his left fist slid along an ebony forearm and his nose collided with what seemed like an iron club. Steamship pilot this man might not be, but fighting man he very surely was. He hit straight and guarded high. He was no untutored savage. He had the hardest to acquire of all the Christian arts at his fingers' (or rather his fists') ends, and the heavyweight champion of Gosport took a double reef in his fighting tactics while he sparred for time in which to recover from the shock of that first blow. The claret was streaming down his face and he was dizzy.

"Oh, wade into him, mate!" urged Joe.

It is always easier to see what should be done than to do it. The sand was not slipping and giving under Joe Byng's feet, nor were his fists and wrists aching from contact with hard ebony. To him the thing seemed easy, and he was as anxious to get into the fight himself as was the terrier that strained at his chain. But Crothers, who had won a hundred fights at least in cleaner climes, fought canny and tried to make the black man tire himself with wasted effort.

And the Arabs sat in silence, like a row of vultures waiting for the end. Even the little children held their clamor and subsided into motionless calm. There was not a movement along the roofs or the wall, or in the rings of those who squatted. Arabia was spellbound, watching something she had never seen before and trying to puzzle out the wherefore of it. There were knives and guns available, yet these men fought without weapons. The white contender had a friend, but the friend did not join in. Why? Had Allah struck all three men mad? They sat still to see the end, having no doubt but that it would prove to be a judgment.

Curley Crothers was the first to close a round. He put an end to round one at the end of three minutes by missing with a heavy right swing, ducking to avoid terrific punishment, slipping in the yielding sand and falling.

"Back with you!" yelled Joe Byng, afraid that the pilot would take liberties and ready to jump in and stop him if need be. But he wasted his excitement.

"Ah told you Ah'm English!" said the pilot, stepping back and letting Crothers find his corner.

Curley was glad enough of a rest on Joe Byng's knee, and too intent on getting back his wind to listen over carefully to Joe's advice. When Joe called "Time" he stepped in readily again; and this time it was Ha.s.san Ah who suffered from surprise.

Curley had been getting out of practise on board ship; he had needed waking up, and round one had done it for him. Round two and the six that followed it were exhibitions of the "n.o.ble art" that men in any of the larger cities of the world would have paid out a fortune to have seen.

There was racial prejudice, and service pride, as well as the usual decent man's desire to win to make a real mill of what might have been nothing out of ordinary; and there were the quite considerable odds against him that-after the first repulse-usually make men like Crothers do their utmost.

Even the Arabs lost their stoicism while round two was under way. Byng yelled, and the terrier yelped, but the Arabs only shifted their position. That, though, was proof enough of their excitement; they actually sighed in unison when Ha.s.san Ah thrust his ungainly chin in the way of a crushing right-hand smash, and laid his broad back on the sand.

After that it was slug-and-come-again with both of them, each getting wilder as round succeeded round, but neither man obtaining much advantage. Twice it was Crothers who went down; then he discovered a soft spot in Ha.s.san's ribs, and after that he kept the black man busy on the desperate defensive.

There was no doubt of the end, then, barring accidents. Even Ha.s.san Ah could not have doubted it; but he did his black man's uttermost to put it off, and he fought as gamely as anybody ever fought since prize-ring rules were drafted. He did not foul, or take undue advantage once.

It was a plain, right-handed, battering-ram punch to the neck that ended things, and Ha.s.san Ah lay coughing on the sand with bulging eyes while Joe Byng tended Curley's hurts.

"Hasn't the n.i.g.g.e.r got any pals?" asked Crothers; and then it occurred to Byng that the most hurt man was surely most in need of mending. Both he and Crothers bent over him, then, and they soon had him on his feet again.

"Ah told you Ah'm English!" were the first words he succeeded in spluttering through swollen lips.

"Now, what d'you mean by that exactly?" asked Joe Byng, his att.i.tude toward him almost entirely changed. A man who loses gamely is ent.i.tled to respect if not to friendship.

Ha.s.san Ah searched in the tattered shirt that he had laid aside, and pulled out a folded piece of paper after a lot of fumbling. He opened it gingerly, and holding one corner of it displayed the rest with evident intention not to allow it out of his grasp.

"That says Ah'm English!" he explained.

"Oh!" said Crothers, rubbing an injured eye in order to see it better. "Can you read, you black heathen?"

"No," said the pilot. "That says Ah'm English, but Ah can't read!"

"Well, MacHa.s.san," said Curley Crothers, reading the doc.u.ment a second time. "Black or white, you fight like a gentleman. I'm proud to have licked you. Good-by, and good luck! Here's my hand!"

They shook hands, and the seamen started sh.o.r.eward with the terrier in tow.

"Did you read the paper?" asked Crothers. "It was dated Aden-non-coms' mess of some regiment or other. 'This is to certify that this regiment taught Ha.s.san Ah to use his fists, and that he has since licked every single mother's son of us!' Pity I didn't see that first, eh?"

"Oh, I dunno," said Joe Byng, who had not had to do the fighting. "You licked the savage, anyway."

Ha.s.san Ah was right. There was no more sh.o.r.e leave granted. Crothers and Joe Byng were punished with extra duty and "confined to ship" for coming back with the marks of fighting on them; and the Puncher gave no further signs of life until, some three I days later, her long-suffering engines turned again and she departed through the channel that had brought her in.

Then the sheik and three others and a certain Ha.s.san Ah went down at midnight to the jail and lifted with the aid of long poles pa.s.sed through the rings in them the largest floor stones of that vermin-infested building. But the vermin did not trouble them. What they were after and what they lifted out was the cases of guns and cartridges the Puncher had contrived to miss.

THE END