One hundred days at sea, and we celebrated the circumstance in real old-fashioned, long-approved Yankee style. Last evening, immediately after supper, we went up on the cabin-house and sat down to enjoy the sunset. All at once we heard angry voices forward, and then Louis, the Frenchman, shot head first out of the lee door of the carpenter-shop, followed by the massive body of Chips himself, who held in his hand a bludgeon. They were both in a passion. Louis dropped his hat as he flew through the doorway, and as he stooped to pick it up, smack! came the truncheon upon his flank. Then Louis straightened up, shot out his fist, and smote Chips painfully on the chin; the latter returned the blow, and in a second they were at it tooth and nail. Now, Louis is a very active, powerful man, and in a long spell he would, no doubt, wear the other out, but in close quarters he was no match for the carpenter’s weight; for a few seconds Louis prevailed, but Chips recovered, and, being a foot taller than the Gaul, he seized him by the throat and backed him over towards the rail, against which he caused Louis’s head to come into such frequent and violent contact that we could hear the tattoo where we sat. Then Louis began his national, low habit of kicking, but was unsuccessful in his contemptible trick, and they were still in the throes of battle when the mate appeared and cautiously hauled them apart. The shirts of both were in shreds and the Frenchman was in a fearful rage. By and by Chips came aft to supper; he bore no facial marks of the encounter save that he was very pale. At seven o’clock I went up to one of the men, Charlie, and asked him what the row was about. He said that, as far as he knew, Louis went into the carpenter-shop to get some kerosene to cleanse the paint from his hands, and, having no business in there without permission, Chips had thrown him out. The carpenter, by the way, hasn’t been fair to the men lately with their water. One day off Cape Horn, when he went into the forecastle with the men’s allowance, one of them said to him, thereby exhibiting an unusually good spirit, “Say, Chips, there’s no good o’ givin’ us all that water in cold weather, we can’t drink it.” Then when the hot weather came and the men grew thirsty, Chips refused to give them more than they asked for off the Horn, though each man is entitled here to four quarts per day.