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Roy Glashan's Library
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Adventure, 1 October 1917, with "An Officer and a Gentleman"
SEVEN bells in the morning watch. The Texan, U.S. Battle-ship of the Line, was getting ready with swift, machine-like efficiency to begin the day's work. That would not commence, officially, for another hour and a half; but already, while landsmen slept, a host of lesser things had been accomplished which were regarded only as incidental preliminaries.
Hammocks had been lashed with the precise seven marlin hitches and a round turn of regulations and stowed in the nettings with equal intricacy; sweepers had been over the decks; hose-men had wet them down; clothes had been scrubbed; clothes-lines triced up; and now mess call had sounded, giving the men a breathing space. There was yet to come "gun and deck bright work," and "clear decks for quarters." Then "muster for morning inspection." After that the real day's work began.
First-class Seaman Hynes hurried over his breakfast with silent intentness. His mind was on a big, three-cornered rent in his blue jumper. The uniform for the day had been posted on the dress boards as "blue dress," and Hynes was much too smart a seaman to care to be put on the report for "non-regulation clothing," which is the official way of frowning upon torn sleeves.
He hoped to snatch a little time to mend it between breakfast and "turn to for bright work" while the men got into their uniforms. But it so happened that the senior petty officer of his division called him to explain some orders about the intermediary gun bases which needed attention, and the short respite was lost.
Hynes swore to himself with exasperation. However, he still had a chance, he told himself. He would steal a little time during the sweep-down before the assembly call for inspection. But Fate seemed to be vindictively against him that day; he must have rolled out of the wrong side of his hammock; or perhaps because he had committed the indiscretion of whistling during the night watch; or the wrong stars were on the ascendent, or something. He had just snatched his sewing kit, when—
"Hynes! Pass the word for Hynes!" sounded along the berth deck. "Loot'n't Lee to see Hynes!"
"Gol dash it!" snapped Hynes, and he thrust his sewing kit into his ditty box and hurried aft.
Junior Lieutenant Lee was the officer for the sixth division, to which Hynes belonged.
He was, incidentally, the officer in charge of the ship's athletics, and since Hynes was a husky middleweight and all-round champion of the ship, the lieutenant wanted to talk to him about the coming glove tournament.
The officer talked at provoking length and asked a long list of questions. Hynes fidgeted through many minutes, and finally made bold to turn the issue.
"Beg y' pardon, sir, I got to do a small job o' sewing before assembly. Officers' call's gone already."
The officer looked at him in a preoccupied way.
"Er, all right, Hynes, just a minute," he said absently, and turned again to his list.
Priceless minutes sped while Hynes shuffled uneasily from one foot to the other, and then—"Monkey in the Grass," the assembly call, rang clear throughout the ship.
Hynes raced off and fell in with his division on the double, feeling much like a schoolboy who knows that he is going to be caught with stolen apples in his pocket, and hoping against hope that he may get away with it. He sidled up to the man next to him, hugging inches closer than the regulation light touch of the elbows. But Fate was surely out for his scalp that bright morning.
Down the deck strode no less a personage than the commanding officer himself, followed by the officer of the division. Captain Peterson was something of a martinet in his way, a just man and a fine officer, but keen as a hawk on the little details of smartness and discipline which go to make for efficiency. It was a disquieting habit of his every now and then to make a personal inspection of a division or two without warning.
"Open ranks!" came the sharp order. "About, face. Right hand, salute!"
Hynes groaned inwardly and felt sick; he prided himself on his clean, sailor-like smartness. He attempted to hide his shame under a half-hearted, lubberly salute with a low-hanging elbow. His very clumsiness betrayed him. Commander Peterson's quick eye caught the gleam of white flesh through the sleeve.
"What's this, what's this? You, what's your name?—Ah, yes, Hynes. Hm! I'm ashamed of you, Hynes; a man of your record. Your service too. I never expected to see your name on the report."
Hynes flushed with dull shame and looked at his division officer. He was not the man to make excuses when the proper authority was there to explain the circumstances. But Lieutenant Lee's face had the same faraway, absent look with an expression of worriment. It was clear that he neither saw nor heard; he was going through the routine mechanically while his mind was intent on some greater trouble. He said never a word, and the commanding officer passed on down the line fretting and clucking to himself with exasperation, as he always did when a good man fell from grace.
The dull flush on Hynes' rough carved face deepened to a redder one of angry indignation. Not only had he been made a monkey of before a lot of slobs whom he despised privately and who grinned covertly at him behind the chief's back, but he felt that he had been betrayed by his division officer, who should have spoken up and admitted that the fault was his.
DURING the daily routine of the setting-up exercises which followed the inspection, Hynes' fellows in the immediate vicinity took occasion to rub it in with all the diabolical ingenuity of healthy, overgrown, and entirely imp-ridden boys. Careless young devils, some of them, who had not yet been drilled into keeping pace with their commander's precise ideas, they took a gorgeous delight in ragging the immaculate who was a standing reproach to them.
"'At's the time he got'cha, Heinie," came a guarded whisper from behind. And, "Messy lubber, that fust-class seaman, ain't he?" grunted somebody else. And one, a genius, "Them sloppy rookies had oughta be broke in in th' slush gang."
Hynes reddened all the way round to the back of his neck and swore and fumed inwardly. If he could have got at his tormentors he would have punched somebody's head with effective precision, and the knowledge that his anger would have passed by the time he would be free to do so made him madder still.
LATER, during the dinner-hour, "Floppy" Diss found him. Floppy was one of those ferret-eyed, mean-souled individuals who can be found on every ship, always ready to express his own chronic disaffection through some bolder spirit than himself if he could find one whom he might stir up sufficiently to make a cat's-paw of.
"Yeah, that's the way with them gold-lace orf'cers," he fanned Hynes' smoldering indignation with solicitous sympathy. "Fat lot they cares for th' enlisted man. Sits in their holy ward-room, they does, with their cawfee an' seegars, an' figures how they can get their promotion by makin' a show o' disciplin' on us guys."
A man like that is a pestiferous canker in the heart of any ship's company. Hynes felt sore and aggrieved; but he was not ready to listen to sedition—yet.
"Aw, shut up," he growled with surly menace. He was just a plain man, no deep thinker into the psychology of emotions and their causes; he just felt in the mood to punch somebody's head; almost anybody's would do; the kind of man with medium intelligence who can be shaped into the best sailor in the world—with proper handling. Floppy moved hastily out of reach; but here was fruitful soil, he considered, too good an opportunity to be lost.
"'F he was a gentleman he'd a spoke up, 'at's what I say. But what does he care? 'F I was you, Heinie, with your strent', I'd—"
The cold look in Hynes eyes counseled caution. Floppy hurriedly turned on a safer tack.
"Well, I'll fix him for you, I'll tell you that. He gives me more trouble 'n all the rest o' th' bunch throwed together. I'll fix him, you watch me."
Floppy worked in the tailor's shop, and with the cunning of his kind, he thought he knew what was bringing that expression of worriment to Lieutenant Lee's face. He knew how to hit him hardest, he fancied. Nor was his crafty intuition far from right. Lieutenant Lee was worried, seriously; and the trouble was that age-old one in the history of both Services—finance.
A JUNIOR lieutenant's pay, while not exactly meager, as many hysterical orators of the anti-militarist nuisance would have us believe, is, on the other hand, by no means princely. There are expenses which the Government never takes into consideration. Additional mess bills, for instance, and uniforms—and here was where the connection with the tailor's shop came in.
Gold lace and braid, to be coaxed into a reasonable longevity, need much careful attention. And to add to the cup of this particular lieutenant's worry, he had just heard that morning by wireless that the small allowance which had been coming to him hitherto would have to be discontinued, temporarily at least, until the million and one necessities for keeping the rest of the family back home alive should have ceased to be negotiable stocks in Wall Street. There was excuse for Lieutenant Lee's absent-mindedness and for the lines of worry on his face.
Came a morning when those lines crisscrossed into a sudden realization of calamity coupled with a snarl of sharp-drawn profanity, the same swift, murderous emotion which has come to most of us at some time or other when going over the laundry. Lieutenant Lee, in getting into his newly-pressed uniform, put his foot squarely through what should have been stout blue cloth!
"——!" he swore, and snatched his foot back as though bitten by a snake; but the damage, of course, was done.
Examination showed that the goods had been burnt, not charred so as to be visible, but scorched with an iron just sufficiently hot to take all the life out of it. Of course, it was an accident down in the tailor's shop, Lieutenant Lee said; but accidents do not defray the cost of the best broadcloth. As an officer on board ship, not even the redress which a landsman may sometimes obtain on account of a torn shirt was open to him, yet the cause of annoyance was infinitely greater.
Lieutenant Lee donned another uniform and stepped out on deck fuming with impotent resentment against something intangible. There, that same vindictive Fate which was weaving such a complicated web through the delicate fabric of relations between officer and enlisted man overtook him with vicious and appalling swiftness. The deck force was engaged in washing down. It was that mid-ship portion of the gun-deck where the galley stores are taken aboard, and therefore a particularly excoriating mixture of lye and sand was being used.
There was the usual rough-and-ready skylarking on, which is a universal sign of health and high spirits in every navy when the supposedly stern eye of immediate authority is absent. As the officer approached, the men were constrained to a respectful silence; but as he passed aft the sly horseplay broke out again behind his back. Just well-fed, overgrown kids, they were, with all the kid's careless lack of forethought.
Somebody inserted a bare great-toe under a man who squatted in an irresistibly tempting position. The man lurched forward and cut the legs from under another who staggered, reeled, and subsided with a crash over a rope-handled wooden-bucket, right in the wake of the officer!
There was a deluging fountain of dirty-gray, corrosive liquid—and the officer was in the middle of it. It was the last drop which filled his cup of worry to overflowing. Coming, as it did, on top of his already overstrained financial troubles, and on the very heels of his annoyance at the irreparable ruin of another uniform, it blasted his overwrought nerves to a sudden white-heat of exasperation which would have snatched the self-control from any man.
For a seething moment Lieutenant Lee forgot training, forgot discipline, forgot everything. From part of a system he reverted to just a plain overwrought human. He turned and struck at the man, a foolish, blow, wild, blind, swinging back-handed with the turn, a blow with no possible hurt to it; but the fact remained that he, an officer, struck, and that the blow fell on an enlisted man!
And that man was First-Class Seaman Hynes!
Hynes, who had sprawled over the bucket, sprang to his feet with the lightning swiftness of a wildcat. The bristle brush dropped from his hand. The red surged into his face till it was livid; his eyes blazed from under his heavy brows, and he crouched with his hands in two white-knuckled fists with the big shoulder muscles tense, balancing evenly on both feet.
For an instant he stood like that, an embodiment of retaliative rage. For just an instant; and then, the iron discipline of years hit him like a shell. His breath choked with almost a hiccough and he straightened up, slowly, as if it hurt, and came to a salute.
THE whole thing had come and was over in two seconds, and within that time his sudden madness had passed from Lieutenant Lee—before it, in fact. With the falling of the blow his senses came back to him and he realized the enormity of what he had done. His hand dropped to his side. He flushed up redder even than Hynes. For a moment he stared with big, half-understanding eyes, and then he whirled on his heel and walked swiftly away, biting his Hp, with his brain in a chaos.
"Whe-e-w!"
A long whistle broke from the men who had seen the thing.
"That breaks him. That lets him out for keeps. Orf'cer's court-martial an' disgrace. I seen it all, Heinie."
The men were terribly correct in their swift diagnosis. Just as instant arrest and a long prison sentence is the least of punishments for an enlisted man striking an officer, so in justice is it one of the most serious offenses an officer can commit to strike an enlisted man. Discipline takes no cognizance of overwrought emotions.
There are no excuses for the officer, and very surely are there no excuses for the man. Whatever the provocation, they must both remain more than human and content themselves with reporting to the proper authorities. With many years of discipline—more years than Lieutenant Lee had endured—this miracle may be accomplished.
"Jeez!" breathedfthe men. "D' ja see him swing on'm? What you goin' to do, Heinie?"
Hynes turned on them with sudden fierceness.
"I'm goin' to knock the blasted head off of any one who opens his face to me about it. An' you guys that seen it, you keep your heads shut b'low decks, all the five o' you; else I'll let you know why. 'S my business an' no one else."
The threat of dire vengeance was well-enough meant; but one might as well have expected a village sewing circle to keep so cogent a secret. Below decks men whispered and looked sideways at Hynes, and he knew very well that they were talking about his misadventure. He swore viciously to himself and went about his business with sullen aloofness.
He was one of those sturdy souls who wanted neither advice nor sympathy about his private troubles; but what was he to do, he could not fight the whole ship? It was too absorbing a page in shipboard life to keep entirely closed; his nearer friends ventured to a guarded discussion. Floppy Diss, of course, contrived to insert the poison of his presence.
"Ain'tcha goin' to report him, Heinie? S'help me Gawd, I'd get them gold bars took off him in a minute, I would."
Hynes turned slowly on him with smoldering scorn.
"Yeah, you would, I know it. You're just the kind that'd get a whole heap o' satisfaction out o' that sort o' thing."
FIRST-CLASS SEAMAN HYNES was a strong, self-reliant man, not over-educated out of all primitive impulses. He had always entertained the deepest disgust for the type of citizen who would get into conflict and then rush bleating to a court of law to avenge his honor. Himself, he had always been accustomed to attend to his private quarrels with his own two very capable hands. What satisfaction would it be to him, then, to have a pompous court of officers sit in judgment over one of their own kind when he might not even be present?
Floppy understood something of this, though to his mean soul the full import of the thing could never be apparent.
"Well, for pity's sakes, you ain't gonna let'm get clear away with it, are you? Them flossy 'gentlemen' needs to be shown sometimes. 'F I had your strent', I'd lay for'm ashore the fust night I had a chanst an' beat'm up so he'd know it. You can't expec' no justice from a norf'cer."
"Aw, you shut up," growled Hynes.
But there was not the conviction in his tone which had been there on the first occasion when Floppy had tried to incite him against this same officer. That was what bit deepest, that he should have suffered twice at the same hands without chance of retaliation. He was no psychologist to analyse out original impulses; he only knew that he had been wronged. There really seemed to be something in Floppy's contention about the impossibility of justice.
Hynes drew apart from his fellows and took to moping morbidly by himself. The more he turned the matter over in his mind, the more did the idea of premeditated assault and battery ashore appeal to him; that was the only satisfaction he had ever known for personal affront. Of course he would have to desert after that; but the Service had become a thing of gall and wormwood to him anyway. First-Class Seaman Hynes was in a bad way.
But if he, the aggrieved, felt bad about it, Junior Lieutenant Lee was in far worse state. On the instant that his foolish, wavering blow fell his madness passed away from him, and before he had walked the length of the deck the full import of the thing came home to him with glaring, pitiless clearness. Each resulting detail separated itself from the rest and stood up alone to torture him. The inevitable court-martial. The equally inevitable sentence. The disgrace. The folks at home, whose hero he had been. His mother....
Lieutenant Lee covered his eyes with his hand. That picture was more than he could bear to look at. He went down and hid himself in his stateroom and sent word to the executive officer that he was sick. And he was; sick with the knowledge of the ghastly fizzle that he had made of his whole career, all in one fleeting, uncontrolled little second. His stateroom gave an impression of privacy, the only place where a hundred eyes did not glare at him with cold hostile scorn.
He shrank into it; he would get formal notice very shortly in any case, conveyed by a brother officer with the compliments of the captain, to consider himself in confinement there until such time as his case could be dealt with.
He waited for it with a hopeless attempt at resignation. The endless minutes passed and the notice did not come. The age-long hours passed, and still no senior officer appeared with formal politeness. The only person who came was the ship's surgeon. Lieutenant Lee was forced to explain that he felt very much better and would be able to take up his duties very shortly. And then, as the days dragged on, from leaden horror to nerve-racking doubt, and finally to the certainty that there was going to be no deadly polite summons from the captain, Lieutenant Lee's case was very much worse than that of First-Class Seaman Hynes.
He realized that the man whom he had wronged, and who was denied all other means of redress, was forbearing to make a report of the matter. His perception, of course, was infinitely clearer than that of Floppy Diss. Himself a man of clean upbringing, and with the healthy independence of a fine athlete and a man of action, he understood pretty accurately just how Hynes felt; he would have felt exactly the same way himself. He owed the man the satisfaction of one man to another—and right here be was up against a stone-wall, the impassable barrier between officer and enlisted man.
He could offer no satisfaction! He might apologize, yes; but an apology, by its very nature, may be accepted only in lieu of something else. Of what use would an apology be to a man who knew that he was bound to make a pretense of accepting it, who knew that there could be nothing else? Lieutenant Lee was under an obligation of honor which he could not pay. The worry of it bit a new series of lines into his face and completely drowned out the lesser worry of his financial troubles. Very much worse than Hynes' was his case.
But what were the private worries of two of its members to a great machine-running organization? The business of the ship had to go on as usual. Men ate, and drilled, and slept, and a dozen other minor troubles cropped up and passed again. The daily, routine continued with unbroken rhythm.
THE annual cycle of the boxing tournament swung along in due course, and those actively interested absorbed themselves in the details of preparation. A chief petty officer took down a list of contestants at the various weights. He came, of course, to Hynes; but Hynes stood sullenly aloof. He was the acknowledged champion of the ship and he didn't want to cut down entries by competing, he said.
"Ther's only one man aboard this ship I'd like to get a slam at," he growled. "An' ther' ain't a chanst o' meetin' him, so what's the use?"
"Yes, I know," said the C.P.O. with understanding. "But you'd ought to forget all about that, Hynes. You know darn well that officers can't compete against enlisted men; 's against the regulations, so what's the good o' harpin' on it? You want to come in on this for the sake of addin' interest for the whole ship."
"Aw, to — with the ship!" snapped Hynes. "Ther'11 be more interest if I stand by, so f'get it."
The list, with a note of Hynes' rather surprising decision, carefully expurgated, came in due course to Lieutenant Lee in his capacity of officer in charge of athletics. The lieutenant could go forward with the arrangements on his own responsibility, or, if he saw any reason for it, he might discuss the matter with the commanding officer.
Later, when the O.K.'d list of contestants was posted and the program was ready to go to the ship's printer, the C.P.O. came to Hynes again.
"Now this isn't an official order, of course, Hynes," he told him in preliminary explanation. "But I'm to tip you off that it'll be appreciated if you'll box a three-round exhibition during this tournament. The men want to see you in action, an' so does everybody else. Now come along, Heinie; you can't afford to get in bad with the quarterdeck by being disagreeable."
Hynes was surprised into asking:
"Who'll I have to meet?"
"Dunno yet," said the C.P.O. "But we'll find somebody. Come on now, it'll be the best card on the ship's program."
"To blazes with the ship's program," was what Hynes intended to growl; but what he did say was:
"Well, I ain't got time to do any special training for it."
It was grudging and ungracious, but it was enough. The C.P.O. hurried off, jubilant in his success. Days passed again, and Hynes was constrained to ask once more:
"Say, who 'm I goin' to meet in this parlor bout?"
"You can search me," said the busy C.P.0. "Some o' the lads in the black gang in the stoke-hold shape like a surprise. The program's goin' to be printed: 'Scientific Exhibition by J. Hynes and A.N. Other.' Wish you'd trained some."
"Aw shucks!" said Hynes.
THE day of the competition arrived," and still the ship was wondering who was the artist selected to spar with the scientific Hynes. The afternoon was declared a holiday and the sacred precinct of the quarterdeck was given up temporarily as being the most suitable place for the ring.. After the dinner-hour, instead of the "turn to" call, the word was passed: "Lay aft the ship's comp'ny, 'cept the duty men; orderly now."
There followed a scramble—a very disorderly one, while the officer of the deck looked discreetly over the side—for places on the after double-decked twelve-inch gun turrets. The great guns had been slewed round athwartships, and soon they accommodated long lines of pushing scuffling men who contrived to sit somehow on the smooth barrels with dangling feet. Other points of vantage filled up in a few minutes, and then—
"Pipe down the noise, there!"
The officers appeared with studied decorum and took seats on the chairs placed on the opposite side of the ring.
Various elimination bouts were fought off with the usual varying interest, but with this immense difference from the insipid fare presented by many a sporting club: every man there was out to win; each contestant did his level best. There was less science, perhaps, but infinitely more blood, and the souls of Uncle Sam's boys in blue sang paeans of joy.
Then came an interval, and the C.P.O. who acted as announcer and all-round conductor of ceremonies called:
"Scientific exhibition by J. Hynes and the Mystery!"
He grinned in huge delight at his superior knowledge of the surprise packet.
Hynes climbed into the ring and stood looking very gnarled and rugged with a half grin on his face while his shipmates cheered him loudly. With the prospect of an interesting bout of the sport that he loved his grouch had temporarily disappeared.
The cheering died down to an expectant silence; everybody was curious to know who this mystery might be. Then a lithe, smooth-muscled figure ducked swiftly under the ropes and walked directly to his corner to have the gloves put on. The men looked at him twice. There was something familiar, and yet—then:
"Whe-e-w!—Jeez!—Goshamighty! Loot'n't Lee!—Say, whad'ja know!"
Hynes took longer to recognize his opponent, or rather, his partner in the exhibition. The thing was so far from his mind, so beyond the limits of the probable, that it took an appreciable time to impress itself on his consciousness. Then his grin faded and turned to a twisted bitter look of the uttermost depth of disgust. This was the last straw.
After all that had happened, after all that had passed between them, that he should now be compelled to dance through three rounds of glove-tapping with the one man on board whom he felt that he wanted to hammer with his fists! An exhibition spar—the one way in which an enlisted man could come in contact with an officer—and it would have to be a parlor play with all the grinning ship's company present to see that it went no further. "Butchered to make a Roman holiday." Hynes knew that he had touched the extreme bottom of life's bitterness.
But Lieutenant Lee had nothing of the appearance of a man who was taking the thing as a play. He stood looking very sober and grim as he adjusted his gloves. There was a light in his eyes as of a great resolve, the outcome of many an hour of anguished thought.
"Time!" the C.P.O. called; and the men advanced to the center, Hynes very bitterly schooling himself with all his practised boxer's control to hold back his natural anger and "play fight."
They shook hands, and instantly: Thud! Bang! Lieutenant Lee planted a stiff left and crossed over a heavy right flush on the nose. It stung badly. Hynes stepped back, blinking with the suddenness of it, and very nearly did he lose his temper and rush in to throw all consequences to the winds and annihilate his enemy. Was this officer-man so utterly shameless as to take advantage of his rank to make a goat out of him who had to spar gently?
He sucked in his lower lip and bit it in red fury, the hotter because controlled. Lieutenant Lee slid in again, made a quick pass and deliberately fell into a clinch with his chin well over the other's shoulder. Hynes strained to throw him off with a feeling of loathing, and then he heard a quick low Voice in his ear.
"I owed you this, Hynes. You've got three rounds—better make the most of it, 'cos—believe me—I'm going to."
The clinging arms slipped away and the lieutenant stood before him again, swaying in alert balance.
Understanding came to Hynes slowly, and with it a vague sense of relief from the oppression of weeks. Slowly the bitter twist in his hard face faded into the grin of contentment. While he still wondered; bang! again. The lieutenant darted in with a clean straight left high on the cheek-bone and slipped out to safety.
"Whe-ee! Looka that foot-work," breathed somebody from a turret. "Some boy, that loot'n't."
Hynes advanced, still grinning. Quick as fight the lieutenant was in on him, hitting with both hands. There was a firework display of slashing, whirling arms, the thud, thud, thud of heavy blows, preceded by short grunts of furious exertion, then a gasp and Lieutenant Lee slipped down on one knee.
The boys on the turret whistled with amazement. This "scientific exhibition" looked more like a fight than anything they had seen yet. Some of the officers looked serious; but it was Lieutenant Lee's affair; doubtless he knew what he was doing.
The lieutenant was on his feet again in an instant. Without waiting he went in, slugging with all his strength. He drove Hynes right across the ring with the force of his attack, and on the ropes they stood and punched like professionals. Suddenly Hynes ducked prettily under a smashing swing and landed on the officer's solar plexus with a force that drove a gasping grunt from him.
The officer backed away smiling gamely but holding a low guard. Hynes rushed him all the way back across the ring and slugged him over the ropes with short drives to the body. The lieutenant began to sag at the knees.
"Aa-ah!" came a long gasp from the turrets and, bing! went the bell.
The scandalized C.P.O. rushed round to Lieutenant Lee's corner. This thing was past a joke.
"He's fightin' too rough, ain't he, sir? Better call it off—or will I go over an' caution him?"
Lee shook his head vigorously.
"Oh no, that's all right, Masters," he gasped. "You let him alone. We're enjoying ourselves."
The C.P.O. stood wondering, half undecided whether to go over and warn Hynes on his own account. Then the gong clanged again.
LIEUTENANT LEE sprang up for the second round with a smile that rivaled Hynes' cheerful grin. He was more cautious this time; he was getting on to the rugged seaman's way of fighting. Close work was what he ought to avoid. On the strength of this decision he stung the other twice in quick succession with a straight left and took no return. Hynes grinned in appreciation and circled. Smash! The officer caught him off his balance and rocked his head back between the shoulder-blades.
Hynes rushed and swung wickedly but the blow missed by a foot; the officer ducked beautifully and drove hard on his diaphragm. This time it was Hynes who grunted. The officer followed right after him, shooting over a lightning left and crossing a heavy right from time to time, never giving him a chance to recover. He drove him into a corner. Hynes extricated himself with beautiful foot-work, but as he ducked, the officer slammed down a short right chop on his neck. The blow, coupled with his own impetus, rolled him to the center of the ring, where he lay in a heap.
The turrets rose in a body and roared. Though there was a certain inevitable class feeling which made them stout partisans of their own man, they had to admire the supreme prettiness of the officer's work. "Some boy, that officer," as the critic on the turret had said; "he must have been beautifully taught." Being a "scientific exhibition," there was, of course, no referee and no count, but Hynes was up well within what would have been six.
He advanced looking rather sheepish; he was learning something too. He sidestepped cleverly to the expected straight left and smashed a counter on the officer's cheek. Lee staggered, but countered again like light, and the bell broke on a whirlwind of flashing arms and sheer toe-to-toe slugging which brought the boys to their feet howling and hugging themselves for joy. There was a thin smear of red on Lee's cheek. The C.P.O. hovered anxiously near, but the officer waved him away. The expression on his face was one of complete contentment. He was paying his debt, and paying it, if anything, with interest. The officers looked on, surprised but impassive.
"I never knew that Lee was such a bear," said the captain quietly.
"Oh yes, sir. Annapolis champion two years ago. Cleverest man in years, the coach said."
"Hm, is that so? Well, it looks like he needs to be. Never saw anything like this in my life."
Bing!
"Last round," called the C.P.0., having forgotten entirely that he was watching merely an exhibition.
Hynes came in grinning grimly. He was not getting quite so much out of his three rounds as he had thought he might. No slouch, this gold-lace officer. Smack! went that clean left full into his face, and he threw back his head and sniffed; he knew that the claret had been tapped that time. Smash! on the instant, hard into his Adam's apple. The scalding tears blinded him.
Bang! a heavy right over his ear, and a swish as a whirling yellow arc missed his jaw by a fractional inch. There was not a second's respite. He bored in with lowered head and lurched into a desperate clinch,
"Break!" shouted the C.P.O., as if he were refereeing a championship battle. "Break away therel" And they flung each other off.
"Go to it, Heinie," yelled an excited marine. "Now's yer time!" And Hynes rushed, hitting ferociously to get into short range. A hard drive reached his body. He grunted again and bored in for more. This time he would not be denied. The lieutenant, carried away by the exhilaration of combat, forgot his previous lesson and stood up to him and just slugged. Toe to toe for a full minute short jabs and hooks and grunting drives smashed and thudded against the heaving bodies while the spurting stream from Hynes' nostrils transformed them both into a gorgeous gory mess.
The turrets behaved like an East Side sporting club audience, and nobody called for order. Then a smashing right over the ear reminded Lee that distance was his forte. Instantly he was out of the whirl and loosed a tremendous straight lead at his following opponent. Hynes walked right into it. It shook his sturdy frame so that he fairly quivered with the impact. A lightning succession of the same medicine drove him into a corner where the lieutenant fairly climbed on to him and rocked him from one side to the other with short rights and lefts.
Hynes tried to duck out of the deadly angle. Lee was waiting for it. A swishing uppercut took him full on the chin and strightened him back with a jerk far over the post. Smash! Ugh! Bang! The relentless blows tattooed on his unprotected body. The yells of the men began to sound far away. He tried desperately to get back to a defensive position. And, Bing! the bell left him standing, holding on to the ropes.
It was minutes before the uproar subsided. The clamor was disgracefully undignified and hardly in keeping with discipline; but the captain's face, the barometer of shipboard life, showed no storm signal.
"My sacred honor," he was murmuring. "Best thing I've seen in years. Gentlemen, that was one fight!"
And nobody contradicted him.
The "exhibitors" came to the center and shook hands with each other.
"Wish it could have gone another three, Hynes," said Lee in a low voice.
Hynes grinned and shook his head.
"Not me, sir; I don't."
And so ended the best card on the ship's program ever.
LATER Floppy Diss came upon Hynes bathing an eye and breaking regulations by whistling cheerfully through his teeth. In view of his battered appearance the tempter thought he might venture to point a moral.
"Yeah, wha'd I tell you?" he jeered. "Y' can't expec' no justice from a norf'cer. Look what he done fust off, an' now he's made a monkey outa you before the whole ship's comp'ny. You'll never get square till you lay for 'm ashore with a bag o' shot."
Hynes snaked out a knotty arm and gripped the sedition-monger by the neck. Then with the greatest deliberation and scientific skill he proceeded to adminster to him a very proper beating.
"Lemme tell you this, Floppy me son," he panted between instalments. "Loot'n't Lee's a gentleman, somep'n what you'll never unnerstan'. 'N if he ever forgets hisself an' spits on you, you'll be cleaner'n you are now. Now get to blazes outa here y' rat, an' run an' report me for lickin' you. Beat it, y' poison toad!"
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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