“The hot sun has addled your brain. For heaven’s sake, stop where you are. If it was me intention to make love to the girl and try to win her for myself, I would go straight to you. You would not have to come to me.”
“You are a liar and a sneak, and I think you are a coward unless you have your men at your back,” almost screamed Van Steen.
“Which I will take from no man,” returned O’Shea, and he swung from the shoulder and stretched the young man flat on the sand. Several seamen and Cubans beheld this episode and ran thither.
“Pick yourself up and keep your mouth shut,” exhorted O’Shea, “or ye will be draggin’ some one’s name into this after all.”
Van Steen was sobbing as he scrambled to his feet, let fly with his fists, and was again knocked down by a buffet on the side of the head. O’Shea turned to order the men back to camp, and then quizzically surveyed the dazed champion.
“You will fight a duel with me or I’ll shoot you,” cried Van Steen. “At daylight to-morrow—with revolvers—at the other end of the key.”
“I will not!” curtly replied O’Shea. “Ye might put a hole through me, and what good would that do? ’Tis my business to get these people away, and keep them alive in the meantime. As for shooting me informally, if I catch you with a gun I will clap ye in irons.”
“But you knocked me down twice,” protested Van Steen.
“And ye called me hard names. We are quits. Now run along and wash off your face.”
The misguided young man marched sadly up the beach to find solitude, and was seen no more until long after night. O’Shea stared at his retreating figure and sagaciously reflected: