“Fight? You Irish Chink! Which of us two do you want to fight?” asked the outraged Byng. “Come on in here! I'll fight you!”
But to Byng's amazement Hassan Ah pointed to Crothers, who was heavier by forty pounds or more and taller by at least half a head.
“Ah choose him!” he grinned; and Curley Crothers clenched both fists in absolute but quite unterrified amazement.
“Come on, then,” he answered. “Open the door.” Then, as an afterthought—“I'll fight you for the dog.”
“Ah don't want to kill that little man,” said Hassan Ah. “But Ah'll give you the dog, win or lose, if you'll fight me. You fight fair? You fight English?”
“Well, I'm damned!” said Crothers. “I fight Queensberry rules. That suit you?”
“Oh-ah, yes! Keensby rules, that's it. All right-o!”
Hassan Ah produced his key and turned it in the creaking lock. He was stripping himself even before the two sailors were out in the sun, and by the time that Crothers and Joe Byng had realized that there was an audience of something like a thousand, including children, he was standing posed like a gladiator, with the straight-down tropic sun streaming off his ebony hide. As Crothers, not quite sure even yet that the whole affair was not a joke, began to doff his blouse it dawned on him that if the thing were true it would not be a picnic.
“Do you mean this?” he asked.
“Ah shohly do. Are you afraid o' me?”