"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.
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