brute!" I shouted, breaking away as it dawned on me that
he had attacked me with heavy knuckle-dusters. My blood fairly danced
with madness. I sprang in on him in a positive frenzy. He became a
child in my hands. Never had I been roused as I was then. I struck
and struck again at his hideous face until it sagged away from me.

He was blind with his own blood. I followed up, raining punch upon
punch,--pitilessly,--relentlessly. His feet slipped in the slither of
bloody sawdust. I struck again and he crashed to the floor, striking
his head against the iron pedestal of a round table in the corner.

He lay all limp and senseless, with his mouth wide open and his breath
coming roaring and gurgling from his clotted throat.

As his friends endeavoured to raise him, as I stood back against the
counter, panting, I heard a battering at the main door of the saloon
which had been closed at the commencement of the scuffle.

"Here, sir,--quick!" cried the sympathetic bartender to me. "The cops!
Out the back door like hell!"

I had no desire to be mixed up in a police affair, especially in the
company of such scum as I was then among. I picked up my golf bag and
swung my knapsack on to my back once more. Then I remembered about
Donald. I could not leave him. I searched in corners and under the
tables. He was nowhere in sight.

"Is it the tinker?" asked the bar-tender excitedly.

"Yes, yes!"

"He's gone. He slunk out with his tin cans, through the back way, as
soon as you got started in this scrap."

I did not wait for anything more, for some one was unlocking the front
door. I darted out the back exit and into the lane. Down the lane, in
the darkness, I tore like a hurricane, then along the waterfront until
there was a mile between me and the scene of my late encounter.

I slowed up at a convenient horse-trough, splashed my hands and face in
the cooling water and adjusted my clothing as best I could, then I
strolled into the shipping shed, where stevedores and dock labourers
were busy, by electric light, completing the loading of a smart-looking
little cargo boat.

A notion seized me. It was a coaster, so I knew I could not be going
very far away.

I walked up the gang-plank, and aboard.

CHAPTER VI

Aboard the Coaster

An ordinary seaman, then the second officer of the little steamer
passed me on the deck, but both were busy and paid no more attention to
my presence than if I had been one o