'You think so, do you?' I cried. 'Well, you just set as much as your little toe on this beach and you'll see that I mean it!'
'So I'm to choose between fighting you and going away with my errand unaccomplished?' he answered, still as cool as a cucumber. 'Do I take you properly?'
'That is my meaning, and I reckon it's a bigger one than you can digest,' I replied, like the hot-tempered fool I was. 'Let me tell you, you're not the first of your breed that has tasted my fist and gone away with his appetite satisfied.'
'Then since it is to be the Church Militant here on Earth, and there's no other way out of it, I suppose I must agree to your proposal,' he said, after a moment's thought, and forthwith jumped out of the boat on to the beach. 'But let it be somewhere where my boatmen cannot see. I don't know that the example would be altogether beneficial to them.'
As he stood on the beach before me, Heaven knows it was a poor enough figure of a man he made. He was not as big as me by a head and a half; for I stand close on six feet in my socks, and am bigger in the beam than the ordinary run of men; besides which, I am always, of necessity, in the pink of condition. To think, therefore, that such a little whipper-snapper should contemplate fighting me was too absurd. I stood and stared at him.
'You don't mean to say you intend to put your fists up?' I cried, letting him see how astonished I was.
'That I do!' he said, and bidding his men wait for him he led the way up the path to the jungle at the back of the station house. 'Since you deem it necessary that I should introduce myself to you in such a strange fashion, I feel it incumbent upon me to do so. Besides, I want to teach you a lesson you will not forget.' Then, stopping short in his walk, he felt the muscle of my right arm critically and smiled. 'You'll be a man worth fighting,' he said, and continued his walk.
Well, here I was in a mighty curious position, as you will understand. Having seen the plucky way he had jumped ashore and taken me up, right in my teeth, so to speak, I felt I had made a precious fool of myself in being so ready with my challenge. He was a man and not a monkey, like most of his fraternity, and he might have converted every nigger in the South Pacific for all I should have cared. I wouldn't have stopped a man like him for all the world, for I reckon he wouldn't have taught 'em anything shady for the life of him. But there was no hope for it now, so I walked up the path beside him, as meek as a new-born lamb, till we came to an open patch at the base of a small waterfall.
'This should suit our purpose, I think,' he said, taking off his helmet and coat and placing them beneath a tree. 'If you're quite ready, let us get to business.'
'Hold on,' I cried, 'this won't do. I've changed my mind, and I'm not going to fight you after all! Missionary or no missionary, you're a man, and a proper sort of man too; and what's more, you shall waltz every nigger on this island backwards and forwards in and out of Purgatory as often as you please, for all I'll say you nay.'