"Half a minute, please," said Hughie, as unruffled as if he were putting on the gloves for a ten-minute spar in a gymnasium. "I'm not going to fight a man in sea-boots in my bare feet. Can any gentleman oblige me with--Thank you, sir! You are a white man." A pair of oily canvas tennis shoes, with list soles, pattered down on the deck beside him. Their donor, the "white man,"--a coal-black individual attired chiefly in cotton-waste,--was smiling affably from the engine-room hatchway. "They'll dae ye fine," he observed unexpectedly, and disappeared below. In a moment Hughie had slipped on the shoes. Then, casting away the bar, he hurled himself straight at the head of Mr. Gates. In the brief but exhilarating exhibition which followed Mr. Gates realised that a first mate on the defensive is a very different being from a first mate on the rampage. He had become so accustomed to breaking in unresisting dock-rats and bemused foreigners, taking his own time and using his boots where necessary, that a high-pressure combat with a man who seemed to be everywhere except at the end of his fist--to his honour he never once thought of employing his foot--was an entire novelty to him. He fought sullenly but ponderously, wasting his enormous strength on murderous blows which never reached their mark, and stolidly enduring a storm of smacks, bangs, and punches that would have knocked a man of less enduring material into a pulp. But there is one blow which no member of the human family can stand up to, glutton for punishment though he be. Hughie made a sudden feint with his left at his opponent's body, just below the heart. Gates dropped his guard, momentarily throwing forward his head as he did so. Instantaneously a terrific upper-cut from Hughie's right took him squarely under the chin. Mr. Gates described a graceful parabola, and landed heavily on his back on deck, striking his head against a ring-bolt as he fell. The whole fight had lasted less than four minutes. Hughie was about to assist his fallen opponent to rise, when he heard a warning cry from half-a-dozen voices. He swung round, to find the captain making for him, open-mouthed, with the capstan-bar. He sprang lightly aside--a further blessing on those list shoes!--and his opponent charged past him, bringing down the bar with a flail-like sweep upon the drum of a steam windlass. Next moment Hughie, grasping the foremast shrouds, leaped on the bulwarks and pulled himself up to the level of the bridge, which was unoccupied save by the man at the wheel, who had been an enthusiastic spectator of the scene below. Having climbed upon the bridge, and so secured the upper ground in case of any further attack, Hughie leaned over the rails and parleyed. In his hand he held a pair of heavy binoculars, which he had taken out of a box clamped to the back of the wind-screen.