He was new to the sea, but he was not in the least green or raw in anything. You would have to stay up all night if you meant to get ahead of him. So much had he knocked about the world that he knew men and cities like the back of his hand, and he had the art of shaking down at once in any company. 

 All the same, in Sailor's opinion, he had odd ideas. For one thing, he set his face against the habit of carrying a knife in your shirt in case the dagoes got above themselves. 

 "It's not quite white, you know, old friend," said Klondyke. 

 "Dagoes ain't white," said Sailor. 

 "No; and that's why we've got to show 'em how white we are if we are going to keep top dog." 

 This reasoning was too deep for Sailor. 

 "Don't see it meself. Them dagoes is bigger'n me. If I could lick 'em, I'd lick 'em till they hollered when they started in to fool around. But they are real yaller; none on 'em will face a bit o' sheffle." 

 "No," said Klondyke, "and they'll not face a straight left with a punch in it either." 

 Klondyke then made a modest suggestion that Sailor should acquire this part of a white man's equipment. He was firmly convinced that with the rudiments of reading and writing and a straight left with a punch in it, you could go all over the world. 

 At first Sailor took by no means as kindly to the punching as he did to the other branches of knowledge. He wanted a bit of persuading to face Klondyke in "a little friendly scrapping practice" in the lee of the chart house when no one was by. Klondyke was as hard as a nail; his left was like a horse's kick; and when he stood in his birthday suit, which he did once a day to receive the bucket of water he got Sailor to dash over him—another of his odd ideas—he looked as fine a picture of make and muscle as you could wish to see. Sailor thought "the little friendly scrapping practice" was a very one-sided arrangement. His nose seemed to bleed very easily, his eyes began to swell so that he could hardly see out of them, and his lips and ears thickened with barely any provocation at all, whereas he never seemed to get within a yard of Klondyke's physiognomy unless that warrior put down his hands and allowed him to hit it. 

 By this time, however, Klondyke had laid such a hold on Henry Harper that he didn't like to turn it up. He'd never 

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