"All right, then. Seaman Hickey, do we get it straight that you defy the rules of our profession by refusing to wear the badge of that profession?"
"Call it what you want to. I'm not going to have any heathen rites performed over me, or my skin pricked full of holes."
"Then, shipmate, you'll have to take your medicine. Jump on him, boys!"
Black and White, the two Hawaiians who had been standing by grinning, made a concerted rush for Hickey. He wheeled just as they threw themselves upon him. But the Pacific Islanders were reckoning without the cost.
"So that's the game, is it?" gritted Sam.
Grabbing Black by the collar and one leg, he pitched the fellow half way across the deck, standing the Hawaiian on his head. White followed. He, too, was sailing through the air before Black struck. Both landed on the same spot, and instantly were fighting each other in their efforts to get clear.
But the admiring jackies had no time to spare. They would have liked nothing better than to have let that affair go on to a finish. Instead, the whole crowd, fifteen or twenty of them, fell upon the red-haired boy, hand and foot. Sam went down in a heap. He was not angry, but he was giving these fellows all they wanted in their attempts to hold him down.
"Grab the foot!" shouted one.
The jackie did so, but was promptly knocked over by a kick on the nose, causing that member to bleed freely.
This time two sailors grasped the Battleship Boy's naked foot and straightened it out.