"Ho! ye murtherin' baste, ye, I have ye now," cried Pat with a wild Irish yell, and he sprang full on the mate from the top of the house, whence he had climbed by the iron ladder. Down went the pair of them for the second time, and when the mate gained his feet one eye was closed, whilst Pat was spitting blood and teeth out of his capacious mouth. As Jack bent down to lay hold of the chain, Barker, the second mate, sprang upon him, screeching venomously. "I'll teach yew, me loafin' beachcomber; yew don't come it over Jim Barker none so easy, me pretty chanty-man." The Britisher gave a peculiar smile--the little bruiser had grievously misrated his man. Jack's easy smile drove him to a frenzy. His burly fist shot out straight from the shoulder, a knock-out blow aimed at the point of the rover's chin. Jack grinned broadly as he jerked his head to one side. Then, as the second mate's arm shot over his shoulder into space, he seized it by the wrist with one hand. There was a quick half-twist, a slight pull, and the amazed bucko found himself lying on his back, trying to realise that brute force was of little use against the science of a Japanese wrestler. But it was the only point scored against the mates in the contest. Jack turned calmly back to his work under the superintendence of the bosun, and Barker, scrambling to his feet, wisely decided to leave the "durned Britisher" alone, turning to wreak vengeance instead upon an undersized dago. Presently a tall lean man was seen approaching from aft. He had the long hooked beak of a hawk, thin firmly shut lips, and a goatee chin-tuft, whilst from under shaggy grey eyebrows his steely blue eyes gleamed forth with a very sinister glitter. It was Captain Bob Riley, the "old man," one of the most notorious of down-east skippers, a hard nut in sea parlance, but, like all down-east deep-water men, a fine seaman. He arrived just in time to hold off a dago, who, with uplifted knife and a wild cry of "Me keela you, me keela you!" was springing upon the second mate. The latter had not noticed the dago's approach, being busily engaged in punching a Chilean, whose "carrajos" were getting fainter and fainter. The old man's nickle-plated revolver had the effect of cooling matters down. The mates had had a good enough fight even for their appetites. Red Bill had a broken arm. Bedrock Ben, who had been to sea before and was a regular hard case, lay senseless in the scuppers, from the effects partly of belaying-pins and partly of poisonous liquor. The faces of Pat and the cockney were hardly recognisable, and even Broncho was hugging a damaged wrist, though, as he explained: "I shore never goes nearer than the outskirts of the fight." The ship had now passed through the Golden Gate, and the deep blue of the Pacific lay before her, stretching away to the indigo of the horizon, behind which lay the languid islands of the South Seas.