"Only yourself," Slim announced, laughing and jumping back quickly to avoid any belligerency his joke might inspire in the other.
But he took the joke as good-naturedly as he did the howls of delight from the crowd, and the two peeled off their coats and discarded their hats as a couple of youths marked off the starting and finishing line, while others "cleared the deck for action."
"This will be the tape," said a tall lean fellow, as he tied one end of a string to the rail, at a point just above the starting line. "After you have passed here the second time we'll stretch this out, and the first one to touch it will be the winner."
"Right," said the fat boys together, leaning over in true sprinter fashion so far as their stomachs would permit them to stoop.
One of the one-hundred-and-eighty-pound wrestlers winked to his comrades and hurried down into the lower part of the ship on some mysterious errand.
"One, two, three—Go!" shouted the self-constituted referee.
And Slim and Delicate went! True, neither of them got what sportsmen would call "a flying start," but they got away, nevertheless, and with all the grace and speed of—two loaded hay wagons.
"Whoopee!" yelled one in the crowd. "Look at 'em go! You can't see 'em for dust!"
"Two dollars on the knock-kneed guy," shouted another.
Slim turned his head for the fraction of a second to learn whether this insult had been directed at him, and his opponent gained a lead of a foot.