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“But Ally Bazan tells me to go downstairs in the boat an’ lie up quiet, an’ byne-by I do feel better. By next day I kin sit up and take solid food again. An’ then’s when I takes special notice o’ the everlastin’ foolishness o’ Strokner and Hardenberg.

“You’d a thought each one o’ them two mush-heads was tryin’ to act the part of a ole cow which has had her calf took. They goes a-moonin’ about the boat that mournful it ‘ud make you yell jus’ out o’ sheer nervousness. First one ‘ud up an’ hold his head on his hand an’ lean on the fence-rail that ran around the boat, and sigh till he’d raise his pants clean outa the top o’ his boots. An’ then the other ‘ud go off in another part o’ the boat an’he’dsigh an’ moon an’ take on fit to sicken a coyote.

“But byne-by—we’re mebbee six days to the good o’ ‘Frisco—byne-by they two gits kind o’ sassy along o’ each t’other, an’ they has a heart-to-heart talk and puts it up as how either one o’ ’em ‘ud stand to win so only the t’other was out o’ the game.

“’It’s double or nothing,’ says Hardenberg, who is somethin’ o’ a card sharp, ‘for either you or me, Stroke; an’ if you’re agreeable I’ll play you a round o’ jacks for the chance at the Signorita—the loser to pull out o’ the running for good an’ all.’

“No, Strokher don’t come in on no such game, he says. He wins her, he says, as a man, and not as no poker player. No, nor he
won’t throw no dice for the chance o’ winnin’ Esperanza, nor he won’t flip no coin, nor yet ‘rastle.’But,’ says he all of a sudden, ‘I’ll tell you which I’ll do. You’re a big, thick, strappin’ hulk o’ a two-fisted dray-horse, Hardie, an’ I ain’t no effete an’ digenerate one-lunger myself. Here’s wot I propose—that we-all takes an’ lays out a sixteen-foot ring on the quarterdeck, an’ that the raw-boned Yank and the stodgy Englisher strips to the waist, an’ all-friendly-like, settles the question by Queensbury rules an’ may the best man win.’

“Hardenberg looks him over.

“’An’ wot might be your weight?’ says he.’I don’t figure on hurtin’ of you, if so be you’re below my class.’

“’I fights at a hunder and seventy,’ says Strokher.

“’An’ me,’ says Hardenberg, ‘at a hunder an’ seventy-five. We’re matched.’

“’Is it a go?’ inquires Strokher.

“’You bet your great-gran’mammy’s tortis-shell chessy cat it’s a go,’ says Hardenberg, prompt as a hop-frog catching flies.

“We don’t lose no time trying to reason with ’em, for they is sure keen on havin’ the go. So we lays out a ring by the rear end o’ the deck, an’ runs the schooner in till we’re in the lee o’ the land, an’ she ridin’ steady on her pins.

“Then along o’ about four o’clock on a fine still day we lays the boat to, as they say, an’ folds up the sail, an’ havin’ scattered resin in the ring (which it ain’t no ring, but a square o’ ropes on posts), we says all is ready.

“Ally Bazan, he’s referee, an’ me, I’m the time-keeper which I has to ring the ship’s bell every three minutes to let ’em know to quit an’ that the round is over.

“We gets ’em into the ring, each in his own corner, squattin’ on a bucket, the time-keeper bein’ second to Hardenberg an’ the referee being second to Strokher. An’ then, after they has shuk hands, I climbs up on’ the chicken-coop an’ hollers ‘Time’ an’ they begins.