“It was well.  He brought the warship in, instead of leaving it outside or—­as any wise man would have done—­wrecking it on the outer reef, where it could have been plundered at discretion.  Let him send the sailors back again and bear the consequences!”

And within a minute of the pilot’s arrival at the window of the jail (through which he peered for two minutes before speaking) the whole of Adra’s council, followed by the city’s children in a noisy horde, proceeded in a cluster after him and took up position, each as he saw fit, at different vantage points.

Then Hassan Ah shook a loose bar of the window until it rattled, and so called attention to himself.  Crothers and Joe Byng raced for the window neck and neck, and reached it simultaneously.

“You two men want you-ah dog?” asked Hassan Ah, and the chained dog leaped up at the window as both men swore at once.

“You pass him in here!  Come on, you black-faced cornerman!  There’ll be a cutter’s crew ashore pretty soon to rescue us, and if you don’t hand that dog over before they get here you’ll get the worst whipping you ever had in all your black life!”

“They’ll feed you to the dog when they’re through with you!” vowed Byng.

“Come on, MacHassan!” ordered Crothers.  “Get the key and pass the dog in.  That’ll settle your account.  T hen you’s free.  You needn’t be ’fraid.”

“Ah’m English,” said the pilot of the day before, with an enormous grin that showed a pound or two of yellow ivory.  “Ah’m not afraid; Ah can lick you; Ah can fight same as you men.  Ah’m English!”

“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.