His shirt had been ripped entirely from him in the struggle, and blood from a gash in the cheek was flowing down his naked chest, marking a red path across his white thigh and dripping to the floor.
"Because he is the devil, as I told you before," was Leach's answer; and thereat he was on his feet and raging his disappointment with tears in his eyes.
"And not one of you to get a knife!" was his unceasing lament.
But the rest of the hands had a lively fear of consequences to come and gave no heed to him.
"How'll he know which was which ?" Kelly asked, and as he went on he looked murderously about him--"unless one of us peaches." "He'll know as soon as ever he claps eyes on us," Parsons replied.

"One look at you'd be enough." "Tell him the deck flopped up and gouged yer teeth out iv yer jaw," Louis grinned.

He was the only man who was not out of his bunk, and he was jubilant in that he possessed no bruises to advertise that he had had a hand in the night's work.

"Just wait till he gets a glimpse iv yer mugs to-morrow, the gang iv ye," he chuckled.
"We'll say we thought it was the mate," said one.

And another, "I know what I'll say--that I heered a row, jumped out of my bunk, got a jolly good crack on the jaw for my pains, and sailed in myself.