s free. You needn't be
'fraid."

"Ah'm English," said the pilot of the day before, with an enormous grin
that showed a pound or two of yellow ivory. "Ah'm not afraid; Ah can
lick you; Ah can fight same as you men. Ah'm English!"

"Fight? You Irish Chink! Which of us two do you want to fight?" asked
the outraged Byng. "Come on in here! I'll fight you!"

But to Byng's amazement Hassan 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 Hassan 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 damned!" said Crothers. "I fight Queensberry rules. That suit
you?"

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

Hassan 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 nigger--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 Hassan 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