be aft again.
Then, too, you may be 'fore the mast. Well, sir, I know the law.'

"'Forecastle lawyer, are you?' I asked derisively.

"'Yes, and more,' he exploded. 'Your superior in seamanship, you
blanked whitewashed son of a ship owner!'

"My fist shot out; but he dodged it, and ran forward. I sent a belaying
pin after him, and it hit him on the shoulder; but I doubt that it hurt
him.

"In the next twenty-four hours four men came aft to the skipper for
medical treatment from the medicine chest. Red-head had disabled them,
in one way or another. One had a broken rib, the result of a punch; the
skipper set it. Another had lost some teeth, and showed a few more that
were loose. The skipper called upon the carpenter and his pliers to
remove these, and sent the man forward. Another was carried aft,
unconscious from a fist blow under the ear; and the skipper could only
lay him out on a cabin transom to wait until he came to. The last was a
case of asthma. Red-head had planted his fist plumb upon his throat,
and the resultant inflammation threatened to strangle the man. But the
skipper gave him a porous plaster for his chest, and a big cathartic
pill by means of which the man came around. You know the Yankee
skipper's formula: break your leg or lose your mother--take a pill.

"Well, the outcome of this was that the skipper held a conference of
himself, the first mate, and myself. He stated the situation: a man
forward was a menace to the tranquillity and the safety of the ship.
Who would take him down?

"The first mate, with a look of patronizing pity at me, said to the
captain, 'I'll do this, if nobody else can,' again the look of pity.
'I'll show him who's who, and what, and which.'

"'Well,' said the skipper, 'do so, or I'll be afraid of my officers.'

"I looked on while the mate called that troublesome malcontent down
from aloft, where he had reported the paral seizing of the fore royal
yard adrift without saying sir to Mr. Parker. I watched tranquilly,
while the big, whiskered first mate, meeting the man as he dropped from
the fore-rigging to the deck, received a threshing of fists and kicks
that laid him out. We carried him aft, while Red-head retired to the
forecastle. And, as we nursed the mate back to self-respect, we heard
the profane vows of Red-head to clean us up, all of us.

"The skipper was furious. 'Have I got to go forrard and lick that
fellow?' he said. 'Haven't I got a mate aft able to do his dut