Now in my many desperate affrays with my fellow-slaves (those two-legged beasts) I had learned that it is the first blow that tells; wherefore groping for the latch I stealthily opened the door and, or ever the red-headed fellow was aware, I was upon him from behind and, giving him no chance for defence, I smote him a buffet under the ear that tumbled him against the bulkhead whence he sank to hands and knees. Then while, half-dazed, he strove to rise, I kicked him down again, and setting my foot upon his chest, caught up the rope's-end he had dropped and beat him therewith until he roared, until he groaned and lay writhing, face hid beneath his crossed arms. Then, whipping out my knife, I fronted his two mates, the one a doleful, bony man with a squint, the other a small, mean, black-eyed fellow in a striped shirt who, closing one bright eye, leered at them with the other; all at once he nodded, and pointing from the knife in my fist to the fellow groaning beneath my foot, drew a long thumb across his own stringy throat, and nodded again. Hereupon I stooped above my captive and set the flat of my blade to his forehead just below his thick, red hair.
"Look'ee, dog!" I panted, while he glared up at me beneath his bruised arms, "Set so much as a finger on yon pitiful brat again and I'll cut a mark in your gallows-face shall last your life out."
"His throat, cully--quick's the word!" breathed a voice in my ear. But now as I turned and the little black-eyed fellow leapt nimbly back, was a creaking and groaning of the ladder that led to the main-deck above, and down comes a pair of prodigious stout legs, and after these a round body, and last of all a great, flat face small of mouth, small of nose, and with a pair of little, quick eyes that winked and blinked betwixt hairless lids.
The fat fellow having got him down the ladder (and with wondrous ease for one of his bulk) stood winking and blinking at me the while he patted one of his plump cheeks with plump fingers.
"Love my limbs!" says he in soft, high-pitched voice. "Perish and plague me, but who's the friend as be a rope's-ending o' ye, Andy lad--you as be cock o' the ship?" Here the fellow beneath my foot essays to curse, but groans instead. "Bless my guts!" says the fat man, blinking harder than ever, "So bad as that, Andy lad? Wot then, hath this fine, upstanding cock o' cocks thrashed all the hell-fire spirit out o' ye, Andy lad? Love my innards--I thought no man aboard could do as much, Andy."