"What's it all about?" tittered Don John, trying to brave it out.
"Arf a mo," said Ernie, rolling up his sleeves leisurely, "and then I'll show you. Now chuck him out into the ring. I thank you, Bert."
In the Hotel the feeling between the aliens and the Englishmen ran high; and the latter obeyed Ernie's injunction with a will all the more because the fame of Ernie's left-handed punch had reached the Hotel from Old Town long since.
Don John didn't like it, and he liked it less when Ernie began on him in all seriousness.
One of the foreigners slipped out.
Two minutes later Salvation Joe, magnificent in his red jersey, shouldered into the room.
"What's all this then?" he growled in his voice of a drum-major. "Thought you was a Christian, Caspar?"
Don John was spitting blood over the sink.
Ernie stood in the middle of the floor, his head a little forward, ignoring the head-porter, his fists still milling the air with a rhythmic purposefulness that was almost dreadful.
"Yes, I'm a Christian all right," he replied in musing voice. "It is more blesseder to give than to receive. I've give your friend a middlin bunt, and there's more where the same come from. He's only got to arst for it."