Curley had been getting out of practise on board ship; he had needed waking up, and round one had done it for him. Round two and the six that followed it were exhibitions of the “noble art” that men in any of the larger cities of the world would have paid out a fortune to have seen. There was racial prejudice, and service pride, as well as the usual decent man's desire to win to make a real mill of what might have been nothing out of ordinary; and there were the quite considerable odds against him that--after the first repulse--usually make men like Crothers do their utmost. Even the Arabs lost their stoicism while round two was under way. Byng yelled, and the terrier yelped, but the Arabs only shifted their position. That, though, was proof enough of their excitement; they actually sighed in unison when Hassan Ah thrust his ungainly chin in the way of a crushing right-hand smash, and laid his broad back on the sand. After that it was slug-and-come-again with both of them, each getting wilder as round succeeded round, but neither man obtaining much advantage. Twice it was Crothers who went down; then he discovered a soft spot in Hassan's ribs, and after that he kept the black man busy on the desperate defensive. There was no doubt of the end, then, barring accidents. Even Hassan Ah could not have doubted it; but he did his black man's uttermost to put it off, and he fought as gamely as anybody ever fought since prize-ring rules were drafted. He did not foul, or take undue advantage once. It was a plain, right-handed, battering-ram punch to the neck that ended things, and Hassan Ah lay coughing on the sand with bulging eyes while Joe Byng tended Curley's hurts. “Hasn't the nigger got any pals?” asked Crothers; and then it occurred to Byng that the most hurt man was surely most in need of mending. Both he and Crothers bent over him, then, and they soon had him on his feet again. “Ah told you Ah'm English!” were the first words he succeeded in spluttering through swollen lips. “Now, what d'you mean by that exactly?” asked Joe Byng, his attitude toward him almost entirely changed. A man who loses gamely is entitled to respect if not to friendship. Hassan Ah searched in the tattered shirt that he had laid aside, and pulled out a folded piece of paper after a lot of fumbling. He opened it gingerly, and holding one corner of it displayed the rest with evident intention not to allow it out of his grasp. “That says Ah'm English!” he explained. “Oh!” said Crothers, rubbing an injured eye in order to see it better. “Can you read, you black heathen?” “No,” said the pilot. “That says Ah'm English, but Ah can't read!” “Well, MacHassan,” said Curley Crothers, reading the document a second time. “Black or white, you fight like a gentleman. I'm proud to have licked you. Good-by, and good luck! Here's my hand!” They shook hands, and the seamen started shoreward with the terrier in tow.