“The wind is northeasterly,” one of them said. “We can only just lay our course now, and it will be dead against us in some of the reaches. Still, I think we shall manage to make down to sea with only a tack or two, but when we are once fairly out of the river it will be a long leg and a short one, and going up round the Texel it will be dead against us. Except that it would be a bit worse if it had a little more east in it, it is about as foul a wind as we could have, and I don't see any sign of a change, worse luck.” Presently, moving about among them, he got next to Gibbons. “I don't think we shall have any trouble on board,” he said; “if there is any, it will be after we have landed. But you can keep an eye on that foreign sailor standing alone there up in the bows.” “All right, sir; if you like, I can manage to get into a quarrel with him, and can warrant that he won't get out of his berth before it is time to go ashore.” “No, I would leave him alone, Gibbons; as long as he is forward he can do no harm; but if you see him working his way aft, after it gets dark, it will do him no harm if you manage to stumble against him and give him a clout on the head.” “All right, sir; if I hit him once he won't want another. The fellow seems quiet enough, and as far as strength goes he don't look stronger than a girl.” After chatting for some time longer Mark and Dick Chetwynd went aft again. The Essex did not put into any intermediate port, and it was only on the sixth day after sailing that she approached Amsterdam. The voyage had passed off without any incident except that at nine o'clock one evening there had been a slight noise on deck and the sound of a fall. The friends went up at once. Several of the sailors had run aft, and Gibbons was explaining matters to them. “I was walking up and down the deck,” he said, “when I saw this chap staring down through the skylight, and I said to him, 'I don't call it good manners to be prying down into your betters' cabin.' He did not answer or move, so I gave him a push, when he turned upon me like a wild cat, and drew his knife from his girdle. There it is, on the other side of the deck. As I did not want daylight put into me, I just knocked him down.” “Served him right,” one of the sailors said. “He had no right to come aft at all, and if he drew his knife on you, you were quite right in laying him out. But you must have hit him mighty hard, for you have knocked the life pretty near out of him. Well, we may as well carry him forward and throw a bucket of water over him. That is the worst of these foreign chaps; they are always so ready with their knives. However, I don't think he will be likely to try his hand on an Englishman again.” Mark and his friend went below again. In the morning Mark asked one of the sailors if the foreigner was much hurt.