Told in the East by Talbot Mundy (best fiction books to read TXT) 📖

“Come on, MacHassan!” ordered Crothers. “Get the key and pass the dog in. That'll settle your account. T hen you'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 English, and Ah'll prove it!”

“Aw, wade into him!” advised Joe Byng. “London Prize Rules—no time called until a man's down. Go on, Curley—lead!”

“Do you agree?” asked Crothers.

“Suttainly!” The black man seemed disposed to agree to anything so long as he could get what he was after.

“Then here goes!” said Crothers; and he stepped in and led for the honor of the British Navy.

Oh! It was a fight! Crothers knew what he was up against the instant that his left fist slid along an ebony forearm and his nose collided with what seemed like an iron club. Steamship pilot this man might not be, but fighting man he very surely was. He hit straight and guarded high. He was no untutored savage. He had the hardest to acquire of all the Christian arts at his fingers' (or rather his fists') ends, and the heavyweight champion of Gosport took a double reef in his fighting tactics while he sparred for time in which to recover from the shock of that first blow. The claret was streaming down his face and he was dizzy.

“Oh, wade into him, mate!” urged Joe.

It is always easier to see what should be done than to do it. The sand was not slipping and giving under Joe Byng's feet, nor were his fists and wrists aching from contact with hard ebony. To him the thing seemed easy, and he was as anxious to get into the fight himself as was the terrier that strained at his chain. But Crothers, who had won a hundred fights at least in cleaner climes, fought canny and tried to make the black man tire himself with wasted effort.

And the Arabs sat in silence, like a row of vultures waiting for the end. Even the little children held their clamor and subsided into motionless calm. There was not a movement along the roofs or the wall, or in the rings of those who squatted. Arabia was spellbound, watching something she had never seen before and trying to puzzle out the wherefore of it. There were knives and guns available, yet these men fought without weapons. The white contender had a friend, but the friend did not join in. Why? Had Allah struck all three men mad? They sat still to see the end, having no doubt but that it would prove to be a judgment.

Curley Crothers was the first to close a round. He put an end to round one at the end of three minutes by missing with a heavy right swing, ducking to avoid terrific punishment, slipping in the yielding sand and falling.

“Back with you!” yelled Joe Byng, afraid that the pilot would take liberties and ready to jump in and stop him if need be. But he wasted his excitement.

“Ah told you Ah'm English!” said the pilot, stepping back and letting Crothers find his corner.

Curley was glad enough of a rest on Joe Byng's knee, and too intent on getting back his wind to listen over carefully to Joe's advice. When Joe called “Time” he stepped in readily again; and this time it was Hassan Ah who suffered from surprise.

Curley had been getting out of practise on board ship; he had needed waking up, and round one had done it for him. Round two and the six that followed it were exhibitions of the “noble art” that men in any of the larger cities of the world would have paid out a fortune to have seen.

There was racial prejudice, and service pride, as well as the usual decent man's desire to win to make a real mill of what might have been nothing out of ordinary; and there were the quite considerable odds against him that—after the first repulse—usually make men like Crothers do their utmost.

Even the Arabs lost their stoicism while round two was under way. Byng yelled, and the terrier yelped, but the Arabs only shifted their position. That, though, was proof enough of their excitement; they actually sighed in unison when Hassan Ah thrust his ungainly chin in the way of a crushing right-hand smash, and laid his broad back on the sand.

After that it was slug-and-come-again with both of them, each getting wilder as round succeeded round, but neither man obtaining much advantage. Twice it was Crothers who went down; then he discovered a soft spot in Hassan's ribs, and after that he kept the black man busy on the desperate defensive.