"He says he don't think you are of much account with all your brag. Reckons he could lick you in a couple of minutes."
Uttering imprecations, Jack approached the Englishman, and dancing about the deck, cleared the ring for the coming combat.
"Come on, you green-horn, and take your gruel. Here's the best man on the river for you. You'll find him real grit."
The stranger sat still, said he was not a fighting man, and did not want to quarrel with anybody.
Jack grew more ferocious than ever, and aimed a blow at the peaceful man to persuade him to come on. He came on suddenly. The two men were soon writhing together on the guard deck, and I was pleased to observe the desperado was undermost. The Englishman was full of fear, and was fighting for his life. He was doing it with great earnestness. He was grasping the throat of his enemy tightly with both hands, and pressing his thumbs on the wind-pipe. We could see he was going to win in his own simple way, without any recourse to science, and he would have done so very soon had he not been interrupted. But as Jack was growing black in the face, the other Englishmen began to pull at their mate, and tried to unlock his grip on Jack's throat. It was not easy to do so. He held on to his man to the very last, crying out: "Leave me alone till I do for him. Man alive, don't you know the villain wants to murder me?"
The desperado lay for a while gulping and gasping on his bed of glory, unable to rise. I observed patches of bloody skin hanging loose on both sides of his neck when he staggered along the deck towards the starboard sponson.
There was peace for a quarter of an hour. Then Jack's voice was heard again. He had lost prestige, and was coming to recover it with a bowie knife. He said:
"Where's that Britisher? I am going to cut his liver out."
The Englishman heard the threat, and said to him mates:
"I told you so! He means to murder me. Why didn't you leave me alone when I had the fine holt of him?"