spoken, and get away with it, and so, while he did not act as

quickly as would have been his wont had his brain been clear,

he did act; but the interval of time had led the mate into an

erroneous conception of its cause, and into a further rash

show of authority, and had thrown him off his guard as well.

"What you need," said the mate, advancing toward Billy,

"is a bash on the beezer. It'll help you remember that you

ain't nothin' but a dirty damn landlubber, an' when your

betters come around you'll--"

But what Billy would have done in the presence of his

betters remained stillborn in the mate's imagination in the

face of what Billy really did do to his better as that worthy

swung a sudden, vicious blow at the mucker's face.

Billy Byrne had not been scrapping with third- and fourth-

rate heavies, and sparring with real, live ones for nothing.

The mate's fist whistled through empty air; the blear-eyed

hunk of clay that had seemed such easy prey to him was

metamorphosed on the instant into an alert, catlike bundle

of steel sinews, and Billy Byrne swung that awful right with

the pile-driver weight, that even The Big Smoke himself had

acknowledged respect for, straight to the short ribs of his

antagonist.

With a screech of surprise and pain the mate crumpled in

the far corner of the forecastle, rammed halfway beneath a

bunk by the force of the terrific blow. Like a tiger Billy

Byrne was after him, and dragging the man out into the

center of the floor space he beat and mauled him until his

victim's blood-curdling shrieks echoed through the ship from

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