"'Hang you and your Soorey Giants!' says Dan.
"'Alf! Alf! Did y' hear 'im?' hollers the bartender. And at that a man, a fair-sized man, too, jumps into the middle of the floor and says: 'Don't you ago botherin' wi' him, Alfie—I'll take care of 'im.' He has a red sweater, too, and a little cap at the top of his head, and he takes a couple of fancy steps and spars with his hands, and by and by steps in and gives Dan a poke. And Dan he squints down at this lad and says, 'What's ailing you, man?' and the boxing chap he dashes in and pokes Dan again, and everybody laughs. But before they were done laughing, Dan, who'd never had a boxing-glove on in his life, he slaps out with his left paw and ketches the fancy boxer one on the side of his chin, and he doesn't stop falling backward till he fetches up between our skipper and the Soorey Giant.
"'Alf!' he gasps, and the Soorey Giant looks around to see who did it, and he spots Dan. 'Ho, ho!' he says—'ho!' and they all push back their chairs and tables to give him room. And he keeps looking at Dan and then steps into the clear space and fiddles around and measures his distance and lets go, and it ketches Dan fair on the chest and sends him back half a dozen feet. And as he does that somebody hits me one behind the ear and down I go. And somebody else said, 'He's one of 'em, too,' and reaches for the skipper, and down he comes, too, and the pair of us stay over to the corner where they'd knocked us and look on.
"The big fellow dances away and shapes up for Dan again. He reaches for Dan and ketches him fair again on the chest, and back goes Dan and begins to look foolish, and they all laugh and cheer, the women too, and of the women the bar-maid loudest of all. And 'He's Dan Magee o' Skibbaree!' says our old friend the bartender, and you couldn't hear a word then for laughing. And at that Dan springs a yard into the air and lets a roar out of him. 'Yes,' says he, 'I'm Dan Magee o' Skibbaree!' and comes charging across the floor. The big fellow sets himself, and when he gets Dan right he lets go. It was like hitting the big bass drum in a parade when he lands on Dan's chest. But this time Dan was coming full tilt, and he keeps on coming and makes a swipe with his left paw, and down goes Mr. Soorey Giant. But he jumps up and comes on, bellowing, and he swings, and Dan lets him swing while he reaches out himself and grabs him and whirls him around, and keeps whirling and turning with him till the Soorey champion's feet leave the floor, and then Dan lets him go and he fetches up against the door leading into the dance-hall. 'Yes,' says Dan, 'I'm Dan Magee o' Skibbaree,' and leaps a yard into the air and knocks his heels together, and grabs the big-bellied stove near the bar. There was no fire in it, but it was busting with ashes. Five feet high it was, maybe, and three feet through the middle. 'Fair Helen,' says Dan, 'I'm thinking you'd better be fleeing the plains o' windy Troy,' and the barmaid ran screaming away, and in her place behind the bar Dan drops the stove. 'Hurroo!' yells Dan, and spying a barrel full of oyster-shells, he picks it up and capsizes it on the head of the man behind the counter, who'd been yelling, 'Knock his head off, Alf!' at the top of his voice a minute before. And then Dan wades into the eight or ten real tough ones who had got after the skipper and me in a corner and were pelting us good, and he pulls them off, two or three at a time, not trying to hurt anybody, but tossing 'em right and left ten or a dozen feet away, just as they happened to come to his hand. The air was full of flying people, when the bartender came hurrying back with a mob of what looked like brass-polishers and deck-swabs from the dance-hall. Dan sees him, and 'Oh, there you are?' he says, and upsets him and grabs him by his ankles, and starts to swinging him like he was a sixteen-pound hammer, and when he has him going good he lets him go altogether. Into the crowd he'd been leading from the dance-hall he went, and those that weren't knocked over flew back to where they'd come from.
"'Hurroo!' says Dan, and throws a few chairs and tables at the mirrors and glasses and bottled goods behind the bar. 'Hurroo!' he yells, and turns and grabs the nearest man to him, whirls him back-to, grips him under the arms, jumps through the swinging-doors, and makes for the street. But the street door was locked. He spots the window with the all-red glass. 'Hurroo!' yells Dan, 'here will soon be a ship with her port light carried away,' and throws his man through the red window and jumps through after him. 'Follow me!' yells Dan, and down the hill he went with seven-league strides. And the skipper and me after him, and not a slack till we made the dock and jumped into the dory.
"The skipper rolled into the stern of the dory, and there he lay. Dan rowed out to the vessel—I was too tired—and on the way out he half whispers: 'What d'y'think of him, Jackie, that would take up with a woman of that kind and a buxom creature like the widow Simmons, with two houses clear of all debt in Gloucester, witherin' away for love of him?'
"The skipper never let on he was alive until we were alongside the vessel, and then it was all hands on deck and weigh anchor and make sail and drive her. But never a word of what had happened until Soorey Harbor was many a mile behind. And then—the middle of the afternoon it was and the Tubal running off before a good breeze—the skipper sidles up to Dan and says: 'Dannie, you sure they ain't no incumbrances on the two houses o' the widder?' And Dan says: 'Isn't it my own sister's husband's nephew is her lawyer?'"
At this point Ferris came to a full pause.
"And what became of the marvellous Magee?" asked Professor.
"What becomes of most good men?"