That night in the forec\'s\'le Tom was telling them how he got the word of the Jeffries-Johnson fight.

"I sights her smoke to the west\'ard, the sun just risin\'. But it came to me that mebbe a great steamer like her wouldn\'t like it to be held up by a couple o\' Grand Bank trawlers in a dory, an\' I mentions that to Jack there, but Jack says: \'You know how they all want to know aboard the vessel, \'specially the cook.\'"

The cook looked up to say dejectedly: "I\'d ha\' forgiven you."

"Jack handed me his oil jacket for a signal o\' distress, an\' I lashes it to the blade of an oar an\' lashes th\' oar to a for\'ard thwart an\' sits down an\' waits.

"Along she comes, an\' she cert\'nly was the grand sight comin\'. The len\'th an\' height of her, and a wave to her bow an\' stern would swamp a dory! An\' her bridge! Miles away \'twas high as some flyin\' thing. On she comes a-roarin\'—twenty-six knots, no less. An\' almost atop of us she stops. An\' I looks up at her, an\' a gold-braided lad in blue he leans over the side rail o\' th\' bridge an\' he says: \'What\'s wrong with you chaps?\'

"An\' I looks up an\' says: \'Who won?\'

"An\' he says: \'What d\'y\'mean—who won?\'

"An\' I says: \'God, man! where you been the last few days ashore? Who won th\' fight?\'

"A couple other gold-braided lads \'d joined the first, an\' behind them four or five rail-polishers was bobbin\' up an\' down. An\' then came a fat-whiskered lad an\' bustles all the others out o\' his way, an\' one o\' the others hands him a little megaphone, an\' he leans over the rail an\' he says: \'You Yankee beggars, do I understand that you\'re holdin\' up a ship of our class, and we, bearin\' the roy\'l mails, to ask who won a bloody prize-fight?\'

"An\' I says: \'Ferget y\'ur class an\' y\'ur roy\'l mails—who won th\' fight?\'

"There was a couple o\' hundred o\' passengers mebbe by this time along the top rail—men an\' women, in night-dresses an\' bath-robes the women, the men in Chinese trousers they looked like to me. An\' a lad in a blue one of \'em he sings out: \'There\'s sporting blood for you!\' an\' he grabs another lad in a pink one an\' says: \'Look—those two down there want to know who won the fight\'; an\' then sings out to us: \'Say, you\'re all right, you two?\' An\' just then the whiskered one on the bridge, he sings out—what was it he said, Jack?"

Jack quoted: "\'Will the first-cabin passengers understand that I am thoroughly capable of carrying on all the necessary conversation with these people in regard to this matter?\'"

"An\' I was gettin\' mad, an\' I says: \'To blazes with y\'ur nessary conversation, you pot-bellied loafer—who won th\' fight?\' An\' at that the passenger that\'d first butted in he makes a megaphone of his hands an\' he sings out: \'Johnson!\'

"\'Johnson?\' I says—\'Johnson?\' an\' reaches back to find somethin\' t\' heave at him. I was goin\' to heave a cod at him, but Jack says: \'Don\'t waste that on him,\' an\' digs me out an old gray hake, an\' I holds it by the tail an\' I says: \'Say, you, you in the blue Chinese trousers, who\'d you say won?\' an\' he says: \'Why, Johnson.\'

"\'You glue-eyed squid!\' I says, an\' scales th\' old hake up at him, an\' he dodges, but his chum in pink he didn\'t have time an\' it ketches him fair, an\' \'What in thunder\'s that thing!\' he yells, an\' takes to hoppin\' up an\' down an\' wipin\' the hake scales off his chin.

"An\' the lad in blue sings out: \'Say, you, you oughter be in a big league with that arm o\' yours,\' an\' he rushes inside the house an\' comes out with a bunch of papers twisted together an\' throws \'em over the side, an\' Jack an\' me we picks \'em up an\' smooths \'em out on a thwart, an\' there \'twas in letters six inches high—black letters, too—\'JOHNSON WINS!\' an\' that\'s them the cook\'s readin\' to himself now."

Tom stopped, and he who was called Professor said: "No doubt you would have wagered all you possessed if you had been home instead of out here."

"I wouldn\'t \'a\' minded that. But Jeffries licked by a nigger! What\'s the white race comin\' to? Say—say, but I wisht good old John L. in his prime\'d been there to Reno—or Dan Magee."

There were two, both of course new to the vessel, who before this night had never heard of Dan Magee. One being from Fortune Bay, Tom was expecting no better of him; but the other (and he called Professor because of his book learning), and living in Boston, in Boston where they used to nourish champion fighters!

"But there is no record of a Dan Magee who was a heavyweight champion," argued Professor.

"A good thing for a lot of \'em there ain\'t," snapped Tom. "JOHNSON!!—Johnson!—Johnson——"

"I bet twenty to fifteen on Jeffries before we left Gloucester." This was from the cook, who, having read all about the fight, was now mixing a pan of bread, with his sad eyes directed to a deck beam. "Yes, twenty to— C?sar Zippicus!" he brought his fist down bff! in the lump of dough. "And I left ten more—I just remember—with Billy Mills to bet for me at the same odds."

Professor, lying in a lower bunk, took the trouble to roll over and say: "And why did you do that?"

"Why? Why?" The cook glared at the lower bunk. "You people— Caesar Zippicus!" and, raising the bread pan high above his head, he brought it down smash atop of the galley-locker. Whang!

The cook looked ashamed. "I just remember I left another twenty with Jerry McCarty to place on Jeffries, too," he explained.

"Never mind, cook," said Tom, "you wouldn\'t \'a\' lost nothing if it\'d been Dan Magee."

"To blazes with you and Dan Magee!" whooped the cook.

"And that\'s what I says, too, cook." This was from Fortune Bay. "I been hearin\' more o\' Dan Magee this night! It\'s Dan Magee this an\' Dan Magee that. And what did ever the man do?"

"Do?" Tom held a reverential hand high. "A book wouldn\'t tell th\' half Dan did. Where\'s Jack?"

"Gone for\'ard."

"Too bad—if Jack Ferris wasn\'t aft playin\' cribbage with the skipper in the cabin, you\'d hear a few things more of Dan Magee. But he\'ll be for\'ard by\'n\'by for his turnin\'-in mug-up, an\' then——"

And by and by Jack came. "They\'re castin\' doubt on Dan Magee," declared Tom to his dorymate. "Tell him about the time he licked th\' seven p\'licemen in Saint Johns or about that time in Soorey."

Jack glanced at the clock.

"There might be time for the Soorey fight. We were chasing mackerel," said Ferris, "on the Cape shore this time, and a lively southeaster coming on one day, the skipper said he guessed he\'d run into Soorey to let it blow by. And as we\'d been up three nights owling, after we dropped anchor all hands turned in for a good sleep.

"Late in the afternoon somebody sings out, \'Supper!\' and I woke up. Looking across the cabin, I saw Dan awake, too, sitting on the locker, with his slipshods to one side and his rubber boots to the other. He was casting an eye now to one and now to the other, when he looks up and sees me. \'What d\'y\'say, Jackie boy?\' says Dan. \'Will we slide into our slipshods and go for\'ard for supper, or will we haul on our rubber boots and go ashore and eat like a pair of tourists and look the place over? What d\'y\'say?\'

"We hadn\'t much of a cook that summer. He\'d come off a yacht and was everlastingly making potted mackerel, which he could make good; but a pity nobody\'d ever told him fishermen don\'t go ketching fish to be always eating \'em. And so I said: \'Me for ashore.\'

"So we got into our rubber boots, hoist a dory over the side, and we\'re shoving off when the skipper, who we thought we\'d left asleep, sticks his head up the cabin companionway and sings out: \'Where you two bound?\'

"\'We thought,\' says Dan, \'we\'d be rowing a few miles out to sea and back by way of limbering up our slack muscles.\'

"\'There\'s some people I expect\'d bust wide open if they wasn\'t allowed to be smart,\' says Captain John. \'I don\' know but what I\'ll go ashore with you,\' and he threw a mug of coffee into himself and jumps in and we start off.

"Suddenly Dan stops rowing. \'Isn\'t this September?\' says Dan, and the skipper says yes. \'And a Monday?\' asks Dan, and the skipper stops and thinks for a moment and says yes it was. \'And the first Monday?\' asks Dan. \'Yes,\' says the skipper, \'but what in tarnation of it?\' \'Nothing,\' says Dan, \'only that if we were home it would be Labor Day.\' And the skipper says: \'Well, what o\' that?\' \'Nothing,\' says Dan, \'only it\'d be a holiday and all hands celebrating if we were to anchor in some port ashore.\'

"\'But Labor Day ain\'t no holiday in this country,\' says the skipper.

"\'No,\' says Dan, \'but we c\'n make a holiday of it.\'

"\'I don\' know about that,\' says the skipper. \'If it moderates at all, I cal\'late to be pullin\' out by daybreak.\'

"\'Sure, and we c\'n have a celebration that\'ll reverber-r-ate in history by then,\' says Dan.

"Now, Dan was a great reader. He\'d lie in his bunk of a night when he had no watch to stand and he\'d read the morning up sometimes, and now when he starts rowing again he starts talking about things he\'d read.

"\'I used to read about the holidays that some countries have,\' says Dan, \'but I never believed it till I was in a vessel running salt fish to Cadiz one time. And the ship-loads o\' salt fish they consume in that country, \'twould amaze you. But one night layin\' in Cadiz harbor a big whale of a steamer cut into us, and all the topside planking she left of us to starb\'d not even this new cook of ours—and God knows he\'s savin\' enough of the raw material!—he couldn\'t have started a galley fire with it. We had to run her up on the railway and calk her, and after that \'twas the carpenters—nine weeks in all—and \'twas great opportunities we had to study the customs of the country. And there was a country for you! Every once in a quick while a holiday. And the days they did work no one breaking his neck to get the work done. \'Twas proof to me they must be people o\' genius to get ahead at all. But then they do say the people that does the least work has the most genius, the most imagination; and imagination, they say, is the first qualification of genius, and too much work it kills the imagination. What d\'y\'think o\' that doctrine, skipper?\' says Dan.

"\'I don\'t know nothing about imagination,\' says the skipper, \'but I alwuz notices that them that does the least work c\'n get off the most hot air.\'

"Just then we bump into the dock, where the skipper, without even waiting to see the painter made fast, hurries up toward the street.

"\'There he goes,\' says Dan, \'lookin\' for—what they call \'em, now?—affinities. And if he only had a little taste in the matter! There\'s people, they say, that all vessels look alike to—sharp-built and round-bowed, light-sparred and heavy. And he\'s that way with women. One looks just like any other to him. The gray-headed old rat, he has sons as old as me or you at home, Jack, and there\'s the widow Simmons in Gloucester with two lodging-houses at the head o\' the harbor. He\'s courting her, too.\'

"\'From what I hear, Dan,\' says I, \'the widow is able for him.\'

"At the head of the dock was a lobster factory with a pile of cooked lobsters under a shed half as high as our masthead. \'Here\'s our supper, boy,\' says Dan, and we go up to a man and ask how much for lobsters, and he says: \'Help yourselves for fifty cents a dozen.\' And we help ourselves. I had one dozen and Dan two. \'And couldn\'t we get a little drop o\' something to follow after these red gentry?\' asks Dan, and the man calls a boy, and Dan gives the boy a five-dollar bill, and when the boy comes back with a dozen pint bottles of English ale, he tells him to keep the change, the ale looked so good to him.

"He had nine bottles and I had three, and \'That\'s what I call a decent little lunch,\' says Dan, \'and it begins to feel more like a holiday; and how is it with you, Jackie boy?\'

"I said I felt better, too, and we headed for the main street. By the time we got to the top of the hill—we\'d hove-to here and there along the way, of course, with a little sociable drink in each to leave a good name behind us—and by now Dan said he could feel his side-lights burning bright; and as he said it we came abreast of a place with a window all of red glass, to port, and another, all green glass, to starboard. And over the door, shining out from a square box of a lantern, was the sign \'Snug Harbor!\'

"Hard-a-lee!\' says Dan, and we tacked across the street and fetched up all-standing in front of the door. \'It\'s a great thing, isn\'t it, boy, to have a vessel that answers her helm?\' says Dan, and leads the way in.

"The first room had a bar running the length of it. Gay times were going on in back somewhere, but, of course, we had to stop and buy a drink or two here by way of showing our good intentions. There was one man behind the bar; but before we could order, another fellow leaves a group near the window and goes behind, too. \'What\'s your name, mate?\' says this one to Dan.

"\'I\'m Dan Magee o\' Skibbaree,\' says Dan, and leaps a yard into the air and knocks his heels together, and when he comes down pulls a bill from his roll and throws it on the bar.

"\'I t............