"Young Pouncer," said Ginger, "you have called the Sailor a liar." He turned to his protégé with the anxious air of an extraordinarily polite Samaritan. "I'll hold your coat, Sailor boy. You've took too much already from the likes o' him. Give me your coat. You are bound to put it acrost him now." Ginger looked around magisterially; the cognoscenti concurred as one. Already the Sailor's coat was in Ginger's hand. In the next moment he had rolled up the sleeves of the Sailor's blue jersey, remarking as he did so, "If ever I see a chap on his bended knees a-lookin' for trouble, it's this here young Pouncer. Sailor boy, if you'll be ruled by me, you won't half give him his gruel." "It's more than you can, Ginger Jukes," said Pouncer, with ill-timed and unworthy defiance. Ginger was aware of that fact. In the first place, fighting was not his long suit. He had too much intellect to love so vulgar a pastime merely for its own sake. Not only was it violent and dangerous, but it seldom meant anything in particular when you were through with it. All the same, it had its uses. Pouncer had been getting above himself for some little time now. If he didn't soon receive a proper licking from somebody, the hegemony of Cox's Piece might cease to be a sinecure. "His left's fairly useful," whispered Ginger, as he brought his man up to the scratch. "But that's all he's got. Now mind you punch a hole right through him." It was a rather disappointing scrap. But for this it would be unfair to blame either Pouncer or the Sailor. The fiasco was due to the unexpected, unwarranted, thoroughly ill-timed, and almost unprecedented behavior of the Metropolitan Police, who in the person of a certain Constable Y28 promptly moved on the combatants while they were sparring for position. He was obviously a young constable who had not quite shaken down into his duties. "It'll have to be a draw," announced Ginger a little lower down the road, while Constable Y28 stood watching the ebb and flow of the cognoscenti. But it may have been that Ginger's verdict was governed less by a consideration of the attitude of Constable Y28, than by the fact that Pouncer's ring-craft appeared to have improved considerably since Ginger had last seen it in action. For obvious reasons, it would not do for the Sailor to meet his Waterloo just then. "Young Pouncer," said Ginger, as a final and dramatic parting shot, "you've called the Sailor a liar, but all the same, we can neither on us play next Saturday for the Isle of Dogs Albion. An' if on Saturday mornin' you take the trouble to roll up at the station about five minutes to seven, you will flaming well see the reason." "Seein' ain't always believin," said Pouncer.