He swore more horribly than ever I heard any one swear, and springing forward, would certainly have hit her down; but I jumped between them and knocked up his arm. 'Brayvo!' said some women, who had been attracted by the girl's scream; and 'Brayvo!' said the men who hadn't interfered. At once the captain turned on me, and let fly desperately at my head; but I was not to be had in that way, and I stopped him and returned a hit that I know must have loosened a couple of teeth; and then he swore again, and began to pull off his coat. So did I. 'Don't fight wid him, my darlin',' said an old Irishwoman, who was selling herrings, laying her hand on my arm. 'You 're an honest English boy, and these fellows will have a knife in ye if they can't bate ye fair.' 'No, Biddy, they shan't,' said one of the men coming forward, followed by half-a-dozen more. 'If there's to be a fight, it shall be a fair one; and mates, we'll put any fellow into six feet of mud who only shews a knife.' His mates said so too, and they were a rough and likely lot for it, and the river was within a score or so of yards. So with a scowl at them (for I do believe now he meant murder; I didn't think of it then, although I was a policeman), he rolled up his sleeves and came at me. He was a strong fellow, not so tall perhaps, but certainly heavier than I was, and I daresay, from his manner, fancied he could fight. But fight _me_! Why, a gent once offered through Alec Keene (he had seen me spar in private at Alec's), to make it worth my while to leave the police, and he would back me against any ten-stone-four man I fancied, for a hundred; and I was half inclined to take it too, only something important turned up just then. Well, in two rounds I settled the captain. He tried to catch hold of me and throw me; but I knocked him clean off his legs each round; and then his friends took him away. 'There's one comfort at any rate in having had the row,' I thought: 'he'll never suppose I'm a detective after this.' I wished, however, it had never come off, there was such a fuss. Why, if I could have drunk shillings and sixpences, I might have had them, I do believe. In a place like that you get a crowd directly; and although the affair did not last three minutes, there was a hundred men and as many women too, anxious to treat me; and I was naturally obliged to drink with one or two; not at the _Anchor_ though. The affair made such a stir, that I read in one of the local papers the next week how Jem Mace had been down in the neighbourhood of the Docks, incog.; and that for once the brute strength of a boxer had been used in a good cause, and all that sort of nonsense. I know I have always found the best class of boxers very good fellows.