I could feel its little heart palpitating against mine as it rested safe within the breast of my jacket, nestling close to my flannel shirt! "Why, you've caught it yourself after all, you mean sneak!" he cried; and thinking he was more of a match for me than he was for Tom Jerrold, and could bully me easily, he made a dash at my jacket collar to tear it open, exclaiming at the same time, "I will have it, I tell you.

There!" He made a wrong calculation, however, for, holding my right arm across my chest so as to keep my jacket closed and protect the poor bird that had sought my succour, I threw out my left hand; and so, as he rushed towards me, my outstretched fist caught him clean between the eyes, tumbling him backwards, as if he had been shot, on to the deck, where he rolled over into a lot of water that had accumulated in the scuppers to leeward--the pool in the scuppers washing forwards and then aft as the ship rose and fell and heeled over to port on the wind freshening with the approach of night..