"If I'm not," he blurted out, "then who is de captain? Tell me dat?"
"Why, I am," roared Amos. "And what have you to say to it?"
Hogg realised he was challenged. Perhaps, under the influence of rum, he had already gone further than he meant to; but, in any case, so far as he was concerned there was no question of retreat.
"Put up your fists!" he shouted. "We fight for it and let de best man win."
He grinned from ear to ear, as, standing in front of Amos--above whom he towered by a good clear head and shoulders--he lifted his great, black fists to the level of his face. I thought that he would kill Amos with a single blow; for the one was so big and bony, and the other so frail and shrivelled up. But I did not then know Amos Baverstock.
"Come on!" cried Hogg, still grinning.
I looked at Amos, thinking to find him alarmed; but never upon the face of any man have I beheld an expression of such complete contempt.
"You black dog!" said he, with an oath.
He drew back his right hand, as if about to strike, and immediately I caught the glint of a revolver barrel in the moonlight.
There was a flash, a single loud report, and then a dull, heavy thud as the negro's great ungainly body came down upon the deck. And there he lay, full in the red moonshine, upon that tropic night, huddled and stone-dead--the black, bragging fool who had claimed to be our captain.