Added to his stubborn and uncompromising honesty, Dick possessed another trait which severely handicapped him in this German-governed dust-hole of creation, in that he was uncompromisingly British, and took no pains to conceal the fact; and here in Luderitzbucht the arrogance of the German officials, and the way in which they boasted of Their Army, and Their Kaiser, and Their Beer, and Their Sauerkraut, and, in short, of every product of their whole blamed Fatherland, exasperated Dick to a degree. Though not very big, he was a bundle of muscle and sinew, and already he had been fined heavily for making a mess of one or two spread-eagled Teutons who had been unwise enough to mistake his quiet manner for timidity.
Dick strolled back over the low-lying sand-dunes to the little township, where lights were already twinkling in the stores and beer- halls; and, passing the largest of these, he suddenly realized that he was thirsty, and, momentarily forgetting the state of his finance, he turned into the bar for a bottle of beer. The brightly-lit room was full of people, naturally mostly Germans, who, whilst imbibing vast quantities of their national beverage, were singing, bragging and swearing at the top of their voices, and after the manner of their kind. At the farther end of the room a big corpulent swashbuckler was holding forth loudly to a circle of admiring cronies; his peroration was an introduction to a toast; that toast was "To the Day!"
Dick had heard it frequently of late; in fact, wherever Germans and beer came together, that toast was being drank at the time.
"The Day!" . . . Dick, and every other Britisher knew what "Day" was meant, and as a rule took but little notice of these fire-eating gas- bags; anyway, though he understood German, he spoke it but little. And so he stood quietly imbibing his bottle of beer whilst Bombastus Furiosis still held forth. His quiet attitude evidently misled the orator, whose guttural German became mixed with quite enough English to make his remarks perfectly understandable to the few Britishers amongst the crowd.
Boasting and bragging, and with his discourse liberally garnished with "Donner-wetters," and such-like meteorological expressions dear to the Teuton, this big chap let the world at large know what would happen on the great "Day"; when the whole "schwein-hund" Englander nation would, at long last, be knocked sky-high and to everlasting flinders by the ineffable and invincible Army of Kaiser Wilhelm II.
Dick got tired of the drunken man's blatant boasting, and finished his beer with the intention of leaving the bar before he lost his temper, but as he put down the empty mug he realized with consternation that he had not the wherewithal to pay for the drink! He stood embarrassed and irresolute. What could he say to excuse himself how explain before this crowd of contemptuous Germans?
At that moment, however, something happened to put the matter out of his mind entirely. The orator had gone one better, and was now describing what various kinds of "schwein-hunden" all Britishers were, and those in Luderitzbucht in particular, when suddenly a small man, who had been sitting quietly in a corner of the room, left his seat, and, walking up to the group, called out, "'Ere, you with the mouth! Shut yer fat head abaht Englishmen or I'll make yer! I'm English. Wot yer got to say abaht it?"
A roar of laughter went up from the Germans, any of whom looked big enough to eat the small man. Dick pushed nearer to the group. He knew the chap now—he was a little Cockney Jew, a bookmaker, horse-dealer, and what not, scarcely the kind of chap to be expected to show pluck and patriotism, yet these are often met with in the most unexpected places. There he stood, opposite a German big enough to eat him and in fluent Cockney he proceeded to tell that big man more about himself than is good for any fat man to know.
Of course it could not last long. The jeering laughter changed to threats and curses, and then suddenly the colossus made a terrific round-arm all-embracing swipe at that small man, calculated to obliterate him once for all. But he wasn't there when it arrived; and, to Dick's joy and amazement, he saw the little Jew dodge in under the stroke, and with a spring and a lightning blow on the point bring down the big bully with a crash to the floor.
"A boxer, by gad!" yelled Dick, capering with excitement; "bravo, little 'un!" But the small man's victory was only that of a moment. The next the whole crowd had flung themselves upon him, and the miniature champion of "Rule Britannia" was borne to the ground in the centre of a whirl of legs, arms, chairs, bottles, and the other weapons usually preferred by the German larrikin to bare fists.