These were now confronted by our town rowdies. We had a few men among our citizenship of whom we were heartily ashamed--men who knew how to fight in ways that surpassed for brutality those methods of warfare learned on shipboard. Eye-gouging, for instance; getting a man down; twisting a forefinger in the side-locks of his hair; thrusting, by means of this hold, a thumb into the victim's eye, thereby threatening to force the eyeball from the socket if the sufferer did not cry "King's cruse!" which, I suppose you know, meant "enough!" The seaman who had been challenged by Steve Dunn, the bully, was Ezra Wilcox, Alexander's chum. He was a stranger in our town and Alexander was eager that he should think favorably of the people of Baltimore, who, everyone knows, are in the main, an open-hearted people. Angered at having his desire thwarted by the rowdy, Alexander rushed between Steve and Ezra, and himself took up Ezra's battle. He and the tough locked arms in a punching and wrestling match, and were soon rolling over each other on the wharf. Steve, finding that he was getting the worst of the tussle, reached his hands towards Alexander's side-locks. "Look out, Alexander," I cried, dancing over the pair in a frenzy, "he's trying to gouge you, man!" "Unfair! Unfair! No gouging!" the other sailors shouted, while the rest of the onlookers stood by with their sense of justice absorbed by their interest. Steve's finger was buried in Alexander's shock of hair, and his thumb crept closer to my brother's eye. I was about to stoop in an attempt to break the brutal grip when Alexander released his hair by a desperate jerk that left a wisp between the ruffian's fingers, rolled Steve over, held him face downward in a grip of iron, and rubbed his nose on the planks of the dock until blood spurted from it. Then, lifting the bully up at arm's length, Alexander cast him against the palings with a force that stunned him. If someone had not grabbed Steve then, he would have rolled over into the river and few would have mourned him if he had sank and never bobbed up again. Steve's friends advanced, pretending great indignation at Alexander's roughness, but paused as Ezra Wilcox, Black Peter, Muldoon, and Swansen came forward itching to take up the battle. "Enough of this," cried the rector, roused from his brooding by the tussle, "Steve's dug into my boy's eye and paid for it with his own nose! We'll call the affair quits, and I'll ask you Baltimore folks to show courtesy to the strangers within your gates." That afternoon we attended a fair on the chapel grounds. I was eager to show Alexander that I too had strength and skill, and at the fair, in a small way, my chance came. As we approached the grounds we saw that, among other sports, a gilt-laced hat had been placed on a greased pole, to be won by the man or boy who climbed the pole and slid down with the hat on his head. Alexander challenged me to try.