"All but one," said Smith in a moment of weakness, when a dozen men, who owed so much money that they crawled to him as a Chinaman does to a joss, were hanging upon his lips--"all but one." "Oh, we don't take that in," said one of the most indebted; "we can 'ardly believe that, Mr. Smith." Sometimes this unsubtle flattery would have ended in the flatterer being thrown out. But Smith was now gently reminiscent. "Yes, I was done brown and never got the best of one swine," said the boarding-house keeper. "I don't ask you to believe it, for I own it don't sound likely, me being what I am. But there was one swab as give me a hidin', and he give it me good, so he did." He looked them over malignantly. "I kin lick any of you here with one hand," he swore, "but the man as bested me could have taken on three of you with both hands. And I own I was took aback considerable when I run against him on the pier at Sandridge when I was in Australia fifteen years ago. He was a naval officer, captain of the _Warrior_, and dressed up to kill, though he had a face like a figure-head cut out of mahog'ny with a broad-axe. And I was feelin' good and in need of a scrap. So when he bumped agin me, I shoved him over--prompt, I shoved him. Down he went, and the girls that know'd me laughed. And two policemen came along quick. I didn't care much, but this naval josser picks himself up and goes to 'em. Would you believe it, but when he'd spoke a bit I seed him donate them about a dollar each and they walked off round a heap of dunnage on the wharf, and the captain buttoned up his coat and came for me. I never seen the likes of it. He comes up dancin' and smilin', and he kind of give me half a bow, polite as you like, and inside of ten seconds I knew I'd struck a cyclone, right in the spot where they breed. I fought good--(you know me)--and I got in half a dozen on his face. But I never fazed him none, and he wouldn't bruise mor'n hittin' a boiler. And every time he got back on me I felt as if I'd been kicked. He scarred me something cruel. I could see it by the blood on his hands. Twarn't his, by a long sight, for his fists was made of teak, I should say. And in the end, when I seemed to see a ship's company of naval officers around me, one of them hit me under the ear and lifted me up. And another hit me whilst I was in the air, and a third landed me as I fell. And that was the end of it, so far's I remember. When I came to, which was next day in a kind of sailors' hospital, I reached up for a card over my head, and I read 'concussion of the brain' on it. What's more, I believed it. If the card had let on that I'd been run over by a traction engine and picked up dead, I'd have believed it. And when I reely came to my senses, a med'cal student says as Captain Richard Dunn, of the _Warrior_, had bin to inquire when the funeral was, so's he could send a wreath. They said he was the topside fighter in the hull British Navy.