"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.
"Did you read the paper?" asked Crothers. "It was dated Aden--non-coms'
mess of some regiment or other. `This is to certify that this regiment
taught Hassan Ah to use his fists, and that he has since licked every
single mother's son of us!' Pity I didn't see that first, eh?"
"Oh, I dunno," said Joe Byng, who had not had to do the fighting.
"You licked the savage, anyway."
Hassan Ah was right. There was no more shore leave granted. Crothers
and Joe Byng were punished with extra duty and "confined to ship"
for coming back with the marks of fighting on them; and the Puncher
gave no further signs of life until, some three I days later, her
long-suffering engines turned again and she departed through the
channel that had brought her in.
Then the sheik and three others and a certain Hassan Ah went down
at midnight to the jail and lifted with the aid of long poles passed
through the rings in them the largest floor stones of that vermin-
infested building.
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