The arms and torso of the pump-man, as he stood there naked to the waist, amazed Noyes.  It surprised them all.  He had seemed only a medium-sized man under the concealing dungarees.  Noyes saw now that he was a bigger man by fifteen or twenty pounds than he had had any idea of; and were he padded with twenty pounds more, he would still be in good condition.  Not a lump anywhere; not a trace of a bulging muscle, except that when he flexed his arm or worked his shoulders by way of loosening them up he started little ripples that ran like mice from neck to loins under the skin; and when, with this shoulder movement, he combined a rapid leg motion, Noyes fancied he could trace the play of muscle clear to his heels.  His skin, too, had the unspotted gleaming whiteness of high vitality.

“He’s a reg’lar race horse—­a tiger,” burst out from one admirer in the crowd.

The bosun, also stripped of his upper garments, looked all of his great size, and, moving about, showed himself not altogether lacking in agility.  Lively, indeed, he was for his immense bulk, although, compared to the pump-man in that, he was like a moose beside a panther.  “It ain’t goin’ to be so one-sided after all,” whispered some one loudly, and recalled the pump-man’s leaping across the hatch that very morning.  And now, as he ducked and turned, seeming never to lack breath for easy speech, there were others who were beginning to believe it would not be so one-sided either.

“Speaking of wind-jammers, I remember”—­the bosun had rushed past him like a charging elephant—­“hearing my old grandfather tell of seeing a three-decker manoeuvring once.  She’d come into stays about the middle of the morning watch, he said, and maybe toward three bells in the second dogwatch they’d have her on the other tack.  A ship of the old line she was, a terrible fighter, if only fighting was done from moorings; but there were little devils of frigates kept sailing ’round and ’round her.  What?  Why don’t I stand up?  Stand up, is it?  Why, man, I don’t see where I’ve been hove-down yet.  Hove-down, no, nor wet my rail yet.  And is it you or I is fighting this end of it?  Is it?”—­a subtle threat with his left, one cunning feint of his right, one whip-like inboring of the left hand, and up came the bosun all-standing.

“You’re easy luffed,” jeered Kieran.  “A moment ago you were drawing like a square-rigger before a quartering gale, and now you’re shaking in the wind—­yes, and likely to be aback, if you don’t watch out.”

The teeth locked in the bosun’s head—­so hard a jolt for so smoothly delivered a blow!  He gazed amazed.  Again a deceptive swing or two, a fiddling with one hand and the other, a moment of rapid foot-work, a quick side-step, and biff!  Kieran’s left went into the ribs—­crack! and Kieran’s right caught him on the cheek-bone and laid it open as if hit with a cleaver.

“Devil take it!” exploded Kieran, “I meant that for your jaw.  It’s this slippery tarpaulin.”  He slid his foot back and forth on the black-tarred canvas.  “The cook’s been dropping some of his slush on it, and you, bosun, didn’t see to it that it was cleaned.  You ought to look after those little things or the skipper’ll be having you up to the bridge.  But, come now, just once more”—­he curved his left forearm persuasively—­“once more and—­”