Jim Spurling, Fisherman Part 20

"I asked you why you were maulin' my brother," reiterated the newcomer in a still more belligerent tone.

"Because he burned this hole in my coat," replied Percy, exhibiting the damaged garment.

"I didn't do it!" howled the boy.

"You hear that?" exclaimed the freckled lad, angrily. "He says he didn't and I say he didn't."

"Well, I say he did!"

"Do you mean to tell me I lie?"

Percy became suddenly aware that a ring was forming round him. He cast a hasty glance about the lowering faces and recognized some of his would-be hecklers of the afternoon. No Tarpaulin Islanders were there.

He was a stranger in a strange land. But the Whittington in him was up, and he did not blench. He faced his questioner.

"If you say he didn't burn that hole--yes!"

An indignant chorus rose from the group.

"Did you hear that, Jabe? He called you a liar. I wouldn't stand that.

Make him eat those words! It's the fresh guy who made the cheap talk at the ball-game. Soak him! Do him up!"

Spurred on by these exhortations, Jabe dropped his head between his shoulders and came at his enemy with the rush of a mad bull.

Percy was a good boxer. He had taken lessons from several first-cla.s.s sparring-masters, and would have been no mean antagonist for anybody of his age and weight. But Jabe was a year older and fully twenty-five pounds heavier. Evidently, too, he had the abounding health and strength that come from life in the open. The odds against the city boy were heavy, but he stood up gamely.

Jabe rushed in upon him and struck with all his might. Percy side-stepped, and the blow went harmlessly by, while his a.s.sailant's rush carried him to the other side of the ring. Whirling about with a cry of rage, he came back, swinging his arms like a windmill.

"Now, Jabe! Now, Jabe!" rose the cry.

Again Percy leaped aside, and his right arm shot out. The blow caught his foe fairly under the left ear, and he went sprawling; but he was down only for a moment. Springing to his feet, he hurled himself into the fray with redoubled fury. Again he was knocked down, and again he renewed the battle, with more strength than before.

The fight could not last long. It was muscle against science, and in the end muscle won. Percy began to tire and to grow short of breath. He had smoked too many cigarettes to be able to keep up such a whirlwind pace for many minutes. Though he landed five blows to his enemy's one, the latter's one did more damage than his five.

For the first time in the contest Jabe used his head. Hitherto he had struck straight for the mark each time. Now he feinted with his right for his foe's body. Percy dropped his guard somewhat wearily. Before he realized what was happening, Jabe's left, sent in with tremendous force, hit him a smas.h.i.+ng blow squarely on the nose, knocking him over backward.

It was the beginning of the end. Percy tottered up, blood spurting from his nose, his head spinning. He saw Jabe preparing for another rush and knew it would be the last one. He stiffened himself to receive the knock-out.

A tall, broad-shouldered figure broke through the circle.

"What's the trouble here?"

It was Spurling's voice. His glance took in the situation.

"That'll be about all," he said. "Come away, Whittington!"

A bullet-headed, s.h.i.+rt-sleeved man bristled up defiantly. It was Jabe's father.

"Guess we'll let 'em fight it out," he observed.

His boy was winning.

"No," said Jim. "It's gone far enough."

"Not looking for trouble, are you?"

"No," remarked Jim, easily. "I don't want any trouble with you, and you don't want any with me."

The s.h.i.+rt-sleeved man glanced appraisingly at his square shoulders and strongly knit figure.

"Right you are, George!" he laughed. "I don't want any trouble with you.

You must be a mind-reader. You call off your dog and I'll call off mine."

He grasped Jabe by the collar and jerked him backward. Jim dropped a compelling hand on Percy's shoulder.

"Come on, Whittington! You ought to have brains enough to know you've been licked. It's time we started for Tarpaulin Island."

X

REBELLION IN CAMP

Conversation lagged on the _Barracouta_ as she jogged smoothly over the starlit sea toward Tarpaulin Island. By the dim light of two lanterns, Jim, Throppy, Budge, and Filippo were busy baiting the trawls with herring and coiling them into the tubs in the standing-room. Percy had withdrawn from his companions and lay across the heel of the bowsprit on the decked-over bow.

He had stanched the flow of blood from his nose, but it still pained him, and he was otherwise bruised and badly shaken by the buffets from Jabe's k.n.o.bby fists. Judged by Percy's feelings, Jabe must have been all knuckles. Percy had to acknowledge that only Spurling's opportune appearance had saved him from being pounded unmercifully. But his pride had been injured far more than his physical body. It seemed improbable that he would ever see Jabe again, but he determined that some time, somewhere, and somehow the freckled lad should pay dearly for the slight he had put upon the house of Whittington.

It was a few minutes past eleven when the sloop's engine stopped and she glided up to her mooring in Sprowl's Cove. Five sleepy boys tumbled into the dory and paddled ash.o.r.e. The Fourth was over and the routine of workaday life would begin again for them early the next morning.

Nemo dashed back and forth on the beach, barking a furious welcome and springing upon his masters indiscriminately. Unwittingly he leaped at Percy and in playful mood closed his teeth over the lad's right thumb, sprained and aching from the fight.

"Get out, you cur!" exclaimed Whittington.

He launched an aimless, vindictive kick in the general direction of the gamboling beast. As often happens with random blows, it went too true.

Nemo ki-yied up the beach on three legs.

"What are you about, Whittington?" burst out Lane, angrily. Among the entire five he was the fondest of the dog.

Percy was ashamed and sorry that he had hurt the animal, but Lane's eruption of temper smothered his repentant feelings.

"He bit my thumb," he muttered, sullenly.

"You know well enough he was just in sport. Don't you kick him again!

You hear me!"

Percy mumbled an indistinct reply. As soon as the cabin was unlocked he turned into his bunk, without a word to anybody. For him the Fourth had been anything but a holiday.