"Ah choose him!" he grinned; and Curley Crothers clenched both fists
in absolute but quite unterrified amazement.
"Come on, then," he answered. "Open the door." Then, as an
afterthought--"I'll fight you for the dog."
"Ah don't want to kill that little man," said Hassan Ah. "But Ah'll
give you the dog, win or lose, if you'll fight me. You fight fair?
You fight English?"
"Well, I'm damned!" said Crothers. "I fight Queensberry rules.
That suit you?"
"Oh-ah, yes! Keensby rules, that's it. All right-o!"
Hassan Ah produced his key and turned it in the creaking lock. He
was stripping himself even before the two sailors were out in the
sun, and by the time that Crothers and Joe Byng had realized that
there was an audience of something like a thousand, including children,
he was standing posed like a gladiator, with the straight-down tropic
sun streaming off his ebony hide. As Crothers, not quite sure even
yet that the whole affair was not a joke, began to doff his blouse
it dawned on him that if the thing were true it would not be a picnic.
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