"You--you--red-headed clod-hopper!" grated Kennell savagely through his mask of "war-paint," when he found his voice. Somehow, he looked so ludicrous, showing his teeth, like a snarling dog, through his panoply of pigment, that Herc, to save his life, could not have restrained himself from bursting into a hearty laugh. "I--pardon me, Kennell; oh, ha! ha! ha! ha! I--I'm awfully sorry. Please accept my apologies. It was, ha, ha, ha, ha! an accident--really it was. Won't you forgive me?" Herc held out his hand once more. As he did so, Ned shouted a sharp warning from above. It came too late. Kennell's mighty arm shot out with the speed of a piston-rod, and its impact, full on Herc's laughing face, carried the boy crashing against the side rails. "Take that, you pup, as a starter!" hissed Kennell "and I'm not through with you yet, either. I'll keep after you two whelps till you slink out of the service." Herc, half-stunned, clambered to his feet, and stood swaying for a moment, as if he were about to keel over altogether. He rapidly pulled himself together, however, and fixed a furious gaze on Kennell, who stood glaring at him with an upcurled lip and narrowed eyes. Echoing the bellow that Kennell had let forth when the paint obscured his vision temporarily, Herc threw himself into a boxing attitude, and sprang straight for his opponent. It was the onslaught of a wild-cat on a bull. "Take that, for tripping me overboard, you big coward," he snapped, as he aimed a terrific uppercut at the ship's bully. The unexpected blow caught Kennell with the force of a young battering-ram. Full on the point of his blunt jaw it landed, and raised him a good foot off the deck. He came crashing down like a felled tree, in a heap at the foot of the turret's barbette. He lay there, seemingly senseless, while the ship plunged onward, and a thin stream of red began to trickle from his head and spread over the newly whitened deck. Herc gazed down at his handiwork in consternation. What if he had killed the man? Kennell lay there so still that it seemed reasonable to suppose that his life might be extinct. The stream of blood, too, alarmed Herc, who had struck out more on impulse than with any well-defined idea of knocking out the ponderous "Kid Kennell." "Kennell, Kennell!" he breathed, bending over the prostrate man. "Speak! Are you badly hurt?" "Leave him alone, matey," counseled old Tom, who, with Ned, had slid down from the turret-side. "He's a long way from dead. He's just asleep for a few minutes, and only got what was coming to him." "Oh, is he all right?" questioned Herc, much relieved. "Sure; it would take a harder punch than you've got to hurt 'Kid' Kennell seriously," put in a sailor at Herc's elbow; "but Heaven help you when the kid gets about again." "Why?" asked Herc simply.