e couldn't tote de whole worl' breed,
He couldn't tote de whole worl' breed,
He los' de crap, but he save' de seed!
Do you belong to Gideon's band?
. . . . . . . .
Fight'n' fo' yo' home!"

Hugh moved on down. "Both at once," he had said, but on every
account--their mother's, her daughter's, his father's--it must be both
at once without a high word from him. On the bottom step he was about to
speak, when a tall, flaxen-haired German in big boots and green cap and
coat, meek of brow and barely a year or two his senior, came out from
behind the stair and stepped between the dancers, silent but with a hand
lifted to one and then to the other.

"No," said Hugh to him. The alien's meekness vanished. He motioned
toward the sick. His blue eyes flashed. But in the same instant he was
jolted half off his feet by the lunging shoulder of one of the Hayles
marching to the refrain:

"Do _you_ belong to Gideon's band?"

His answer was a blow so swift that Hugh barely saw it. The singer fell
as if he had slipped on ice. Yet promptly he was up again, and from
right and left the brothers leaped at their foe. But while men rushed in
and hustled the immigrant aft the negro who had saved Ramsey caught one
twin as lightly as he had caught her, and Hugh, jerking the other to his
knees, snatched up the bottle and whirled it overboard. A moment later
he found himself backing up-stairs, followed closely by the pair. These
were being pushed up from below by others, and, in lofty phrases hot
with oaths, were accusing all Courteneys of a studied plan to insult,
misguide, imperil, assault, and humiliate every Hayle within reach and
of a cowardly use of deckhands and Dutchmen for the purpose.

His replies were in undertone: "Come up! Hush your noise, your mother'll
hear you! Come on! Come up!"

On the boiler deck they halted. The crowd filled the stair beneath and
he marvelled once more as he gazed on the two young Hectors, who, true
to their ideals and loathing the obliquities of a moral world that left
them off deputations, blazed with self-approval in a plight whose shame
burned through him, Hugh Courteney, by sheer radiation.

"And as sure," said Julian, "as sure as _hell_, sir, your life's blood
or that of your kin shall one day pay for this! To-night we are
helpless. What is your wish?"

"My father's wish is that you go to your stateroom and berths and keep
your word of ho