“Ha! that wos cos o’ me bein’ sitch a strong, good-lookin’ feller,” replied Ali, with an air of self-satisfaction.
“Just so,” said Flaggan; “but it’s not common to hear of Moors bein’ taken aboard our men o’ war, d’ee see. It’s that as puzzles me.”
“Oh, that’s easy to ’splain,” returned Ali. “The fac’ is, I’d bin for sev’l year aboord a Maltese trader ’tween Meddrainean an’ Liverp’l, and got so like a English tar you coodn’t tell the one fro’ the oder. Spok English, too, like natif.”
“Ha!” exclaimed Ted, nodding his head gravely—“well?”
“Well, one night w’en we was all sleeperin’ in port, in a ’ouse on shore, the press-gang comes round an’ nabs the whole of us. We fight like lions. I knock seven men down, one before the tother, ’cause of bein’ very strong, an’ had learn to spar a littil. You know how to spar?”
“Well,” returned Ted, looking with a smile at his huge hands, “I can’t go for to say as I know much about the science of it, d’ee see; but I can use my fists after a fashion.”
“Good,” continued the Moor. “Well, then, we fights till all our eyes is black, an’ all our noses is red, an’ some of our teeths is out, but the sailirs wos too many for us. We wos ’bleeged to gif in, for wot kin courage do agin numbers? so we wos took aboord a friggit and ’zamined.”
“An’ what?” asked the seaman.
“’Zamined. Overhauled,” replied the Moor.
“Oh! examined, I see. Well?”