The incident, however, passed off without notice from the authorities; although the news of our encounter, with its almost tragic finale, got about amongst the boys, most of the well-conducted of whom gave `Ugly' a wide berth in consequence, the poor beggar being shunned thenceforth by all but the ne'er-do-wells of the ship, that is, until the circumstance became gradually buried in the past through the pressure of more prominent events. We managed, combatants and seconds alike, not forgetting the director- in-chief of the fight, Master Larrikins, to reach the sanctuary of the lower deck unseen by any of the ship's corporals, or `crushers,' as Larrikins facetiously called them. Not only this; through that wily individual's artful manoeuvring and pathetic appeal to the gods of the cook's galley, we also contrived to get some dinner, which, indeed, was particularly grateful to all of us after our exertions. The meal this day, being a Wednesday, consisted, for a change, of salt pork and pea-soup; `pea doo and bolliky,' as it is styled in _Saint Vincent_ slang. "Faith, it smills good," exclaimed Mick, with a loud and prolonged sniff of enjoyment, on the friendly Larrikins anon placing a bowl of the steaming compound under his nose on the mess-table. "A'most as good as tay, begorrah!" "Ga-a!" cried our caterer. "Only a Paddy wud say that!" "Bedad, I don't say much differ," said Mick, after quickly gulping down the contents of his bowl with great gusto and much apparent inward satisfaction. "Pay-soup an' tay soup--sure, they bees as loike as two pays!" This certainly seemed a very logical deduction; but, before we could argue the point out, or indeed laugh at Mick's Irish way of putting it, the bugle sounded again for `divisions.' As we all scrambled up the after-hatch, the ship's corporal, Brown, who had helped me to sling my hammock again after I had been cut down the first night I was on board, a very decent man altogether, stopped `Ugly,' who was on his way up ahead of me. "Hallo!" he said. "What's the matter with your face, boy?" "I dunno," replied my late antagonist, trying vainly to hide the effects of my fists with the sleeve of his blue jumper. "S'pose I run agin summat a-comin' downstairs jest now!" The sun, though, streaming down through the open hatchway, handicapped all the yokel's attempts of concealment; and Mr Brown looked at him with a quizzical expression on his face and a comical twinkle in his eye that spoke a volume without words! "It strikes me, young man," he said, with his broad good-humoured grin, "that theer `summat' you knocked against must have been moving round you pretty smart! Bless me, if it ain't fetched you one on your booby hatch and another on the conk, and bottled up your peepers as well! What's your name, boy?"