After the excitement and turmoil incident to such an affair as happened yesterday, or rather the night before last, it is hard to get at the real facts of the case until the agitation calms down. Therefore it was not until a little while ago that we learned the truth about the row between Louis and Chips. It appears that before stowing away the heavy suit of sails when they had been unbent, some slight repairs were necessary on the lower foretop-sail. They were completed day before yesterday, and the sail was carefully rolled and tied up. The men were ordered to rinse the paint off their hands with kerosene, furnished them by the carpenter, so that they should leave no finger-marks on the white duck. Afterward, for some unknown reason, Louis wanted more oil, and personally went into the carpenter-shop to get it. Now, it is one of the strictest rules aboard all ships that no sailor shall ever enter the carpenter-shop in the absence of Chips; and when the latter, no doubt in an ugly mood, found Louis in there, he threw him out. After the fight the Frenchman was in a blind passion, and there were probably two reasons for his taking summary vengeance upon the second mate. In the first place, I have often seen him flush up with anger at the way in which some of the men have been treated, this being his first American ship; and he probably determined that if either mate laid hand on him unlawfully, he would show them that there was at least one man forward with the courage to defend himself. The second mate took him by the throat (Rarx admits that) while he, Louis, was quietly standing by the chicken-coop cutting off a plug of tobacco, being at the time perfectly well behaved, and the Frenchman, remembering his comrades, used his knife, ready in his hand. In the second place, the name which the second mate called him was the last straw. English, German, Scandinavian, and American sailors do not seem to care what they are called by the mates; but any one of the violent Latin races always resents this epithet with all the fury of which they are possessed. It is inconceivable, anyhow, why Rarx should have stirred up the row again. Chips ejected Louis from his shop. All right; he is there to guard that part of the ship, and did right in heaving him out of it; yet the second mate must needs rake it all up again two hours afterward, when he didn’t even see the original disturbance. Gradually I am beginning to lean toward the belief that Rarx and Louis have had a grudge against each other for a long time, and mayhap that little incident in the South Atlantic while the sails were being shifted, during which Rarx nearly threw the Frenchman off one of the mizzen-top-sail-yards, was not so much of an accident as it seemed.