This was the big beach comber with whom Gavin had fought barely twenty-four hours earlier. The man bore bruises and swellings a-plenty on his rugged features, where Brice's whalebone blows had crashed. And they had distorted his face almost past recognition. He moved, too, with manifest discomfort, as if all his huge body were as sore as his visage. "Hello, Roke!!" hailed Milo genially, then in amaze, "what in thunder have you been doing to yourself? Been trying to stop the East Coast Flyer? Or did you just get into an argument with one of the channel dredges?" "Fell," said Roke, succinctly, jerking his thumb back toward the corrugated iron hut. "Climbed my roof to mend a leak. Fell. My face hit every bump. Then I landed on a pile of coconuts. I'm sore all over. I--" He gurgled, mouthingly, as his swollen eyes chanced to light on Gavin Brice, who was just following Milo from the launch to the float. And his discolored and unshaven jaw went slack. "Oh, Brice," said Standish carelessly. "This is my foreman here, Perry Roke. As a rule he looks like other people, except that he's bigger, just now his cravings for falling off corrugated roofs have done things to his face. Shake hands with him. If you like the job I'm going to offer you he and you will be side-partners over here." Gavin faced his recent adversary, grinning pleasantly up at the battered and scowling face, and noting that the knife sheath at Roke's hip was still empty. "Hello!" he said civilly, offering his hand. Roke gulped again, went purple, and, with sudden furious vehemence, grabbed at the proffered hand, enfolding it in his own monstrous grip in an industrious attempt to smash its every bone. But reading the intent with perfect ease. Brice shifted his own hand ever so little and with nimbly practised fingers eluded the crushing clasp, at the same time slipping his thumb over the heel of Roke's clutching right hand and letting his three middle fingers meet at the exact center of that hand's back. Then, tightening his hold, he gave an almost imperceptible twist. It was one of the first and the simplest of the tricks his jiu-jutsu instructor had taught him. And, as ever with an opponent not prepared for it, the grip served. To the heedlessly watching Standish he seemed merely to be accepting the invitation to shake hands with Roke. But the next instant, under the apparently harmless contact, Roke's big body veered sharply to one side, from the hips upward, and a bellow of raging pain broke from his puffed lips. "Oh, I beg your pardon!" cried Brice in quick contrition: "You must have hurt your hand when you fell off that roof. I'm sorry if I made it worse."