“Wait till I get ashore, my young bloke!”
“Exactly what I’m going to do,” replied Fulrake, with a calm smile, as he blew a huge cloud of tobacco out of his nostrils.
The ferryman made one mistake; for when the boat reached land he jumped out to fasten her to her usual moorings—a tree some way up the bank. This gave Fulrake the opportunity he had foreseen. All his apparent languor disappeared as he sprang ashore with the ability of a cat, and before the rower had completed the fastening of the boat, he had given Tom the hound to hold, and taken off a pair of well-fitting kid gloves. He then addressed the ferryman in a tone that sounded almost tender, and certainly was quite touching in its plaintiveness,—
“You told me just now, in a rough and uncivil manner, that the dog was interfering with the balance of your boat. I caused the animal to shift his position. You then called me a blank new chum, and applied the same epithet to the cur. I think I shall presently show you which is the real cur; but, firstly, perhaps you think that that vulgar word which your low class use on every possible occasion is an oath: it is merely the corruption of an old expression.”
The man he was addressing had never been appealed to in this kind and gentle manner before, and stood listening with open mouth, which, however, he closed as Fulrake continued,—
“Secondly, and what was more important, you called me new chum. As a matter of fact, this is true; but at all events, I paid my passage out, and, judging by your dirty scrub of a head, I should unhesitatingly put you down as a blackguard of a remarkably low type; what you are pleased to call out here a ‘lag’—an old hand—but which I prefer to put into new chum language as a convict, sent out at the expense of the country, and I should judge, in your especial case, for kicking some defenceless creature to death. I have no doubt, if you ever fought, you would fight like the cur that you are.”
The ruffian before him evidently could not get the meaning of Fulrake’s calmly delivered sermon into his thick head at first, but towards the end of it a full sense of the words dawned on his heavy mind, and when he heard the concluding words, coupled with immoderate laughter of Tom, he broke out into a volley of furious oaths, and seizing a huge stone which lay at his feet, hurled it with terrific force at Fulrake’s head. The latter, quite prepared for this, never shifted his ground, but simply throwing his head to one side with a professional movement, the well-aimed missile flew harmlessly by.
“I thought so,” said our new chum, “you’re too big a coward even to fight fair. Who is the cur now?”
This last taunt brought on his adversary, livid with rage, and, sparring with both arms in the air, he tried to deliver a round-handed blow on the new chum’s head. If that blow had got home, the little white-haired man would have gone down, probably never to rise again.
But the boatman did not know that he had to deal with the “Spider,” for such was the name that his insignificant-looking antagonist went by in London, and in his own county, where he was well known to both friends and foes by his extreme agility, clever defence, and the punishing power of his fists, and by the cool and indomitable pluck he showed when facing heavy odds.