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women. He was a bar-room brawler, and a saloon-corner loafer. He was all that

was dirty, and mean, and contemptible, and cowardly in the eyes of a brave man,

and yet, notwithstanding all this, Billy Byrne was no coward. He was what he was

because of training and environment. He knew no other methods; no other code.

Whatever the meager ethics of his kind he would have lived up to them to the

death. He never had squealed on a pal, and he never had left a wounded friend to

fall into the hands of the enemy--the police.

Nor had he ever let a man speak to him, as the mate had spoken, and get away

with it, and so, while he did not act as quickly as would have been his wont had

his brain been clear, he did act; but the interval of time had led the mate into an

erroneous conception of its cause, and into a further rash show of authority, and

had thrown him off his guard as well.

"What you need," said the mate, advancing toward Billy, "is a bash on the beezer.

It'll help you remember that you ain't nothin' but a dirty damn landlubber, an'

when your betters come around you'll--"

But what Billy would have done in the presence of his betters remained stillborn

in the mate's imagination in the face of what Billy really did do to his better as

that worthy swung a sudden, vicious blow at the mucker's face.

Billy Byrne had not been scrapping with third- and fourth-rate heavies, and

sparring with real, live ones for nothing. The mate's fist whistled through empty

air; the blear-eyed hunk of clay that had seemed such easy prey to him was

metamorphosed on the instant into an alert, catlike bundle of steel sinews, and

Billy Byrne swung that awful right with the pile-driver weight, that even The Big

Smoke himself had acknowledged respect for, straight to the short ribs of his

antagonist.

With a screech of surprise and pain the mate crumpled in the far corner of the

forecastle, rammed halfway beneath a bunk by the force of the terrific blow. Like

a tiger Billy Byrne was after him, and dragging the man out into the center of the

floor space he beat and mauled him until his victim's blood-curdling shrieks

echoed through the ship from stem to stern.

When the captain, followed by a half-dozen seamen rushed down the

companionway, he found Billy sitting astride the prostrate form of the mate. His

great fingers circled the man's throat, and with mighty blows he was dashing the

fellow's head against the hard floor. Another moment and murder would have

been complete.

"Avast there!" cried the captain, and as though to punctuate his remark he swung

the heavy stick he usually carried full upon the back of Billy's head. It was that

The Mucker