“But you do not consider yourself a boy, Don Estevan?”
“I do indeed,” Stephen laughed; “and no one thinks himself a man until he is quite a senior midshipman.”
“But if you play tricks on each other you must quarrel sometimes?”
“Oh, yes, we quarrel, and then we have a fight, and then we are good friends again.”
“Ah! Do you fight with swords or pistols?”
Stephen laughed. “We fight with our fists.”
“What, like common people!” the young Chilian said, greatly shocked.
“Just the same, except that we fight a little better. That is the way we always settle quarrels among boys in England, and a very good way it is. One gets a black eye or something of that sort, and there is an end of it. As for fighting with swords or pistols, I do not know what would happen if two midshipmen were to fight a duel. In the first place they would get into a frightful row, and in the second place they would be the laughing-stock of the whole fleet. Of course, in a country like this, where a blow is considered as the deadliest of insults, things are different; but in England it is not viewed in the same light. Everyone knows something of boxing, that [pg 175]is, of the proper way of using the fists, and it has come to be the national way of fighting among the common people and among boys of all classes.”
“And would you, for example, Don Estevan, consent to fight with a boy or with a man of the peasant class if he injured you?”
“Certainly I would,” Stephen said. “I don’t know that I would fight a big man, because evidently I should have very little chance with him; but if I quarrelled with a fellow my own age, we should of course pitch into each other without any question of rank.”