At Aboukir and Acre

"Condor shook hands without saying a word, and then slipped away. I have seen many a fight since I first took to the sea, but never such a fight as this before. It were just a ma.s.sacre of the innercents, and I don't think a fellow was ever more thoroughly sucked in than Master Condor when he undertook the job."

Condor had to go on the sick-list half an hour after the fight was over.

His eyes were almost closed, his face was enormously swollen, and he had lost three teeth--the effect of the blow that had brought the conflict to a close.

"Did you know how it was going to be, Wilkinson?" one of the other seniors said as they went up on the deck again.

"I guessed pretty well, from what Blagrove was telling Sir Sidney when he dined with him, that Condor would meet his match, but I did not think that it was going to be a hollow thing like that."

"What do you mean, sir, by skulking below?" the second lieutenant angrily asked one of the midshipmen of his watch as he returned on deck.

"I just slipped below for a few minutes, sir," the lad said.

"Well, you had better be careful, or you will find yourself at the mast-head," the lieutenant said sharply.

"I fancy there has been a fight," the first lieutenant said as Mr.

Knight pa.s.sed him, grumbling to himself. "I noticed just now that there were only two midshipmen on deck. Do you see, they are coming up the hatchway, one by one, looking as innocent as a cat that has been at the cream-jug. They seem to be pretty nearly all here now, but I don't see any signs in any of their faces that they have been in trouble.

"Well, well, midshipmen are only boys, and boys will quarrel. I expect we both had our share of it before we got our epaulettes."

The other laughed. "I suppose so," he said; "and after all it does them no harm, and it is much better, if two boys do quarrel, that they should fight it out and have done with it, instead of always wrangling."

"I thought it might have been Blagrove," the first lieutenant said. "A new hand generally has a fight before he has been on board a fortnight.

After that he finds his level. However, it is not him, for there he is, looking as cool as a cuc.u.mber. It must have been some sort of meeting to discuss some fancied grievance. I daresay we shall hear something about it sooner or later."

Half an hour afterwards the doctor came on deck. There was a smile on his face as he went up to the first lieutenant.

"One of your officers is on the sick list, Mr. Canes."

"What is the matter with him?"

"I should say that it would come under the head of contusions."

The lieutenant laughed.

"Bad contusions?"

"Rather more serious than is usual in these cases. Face greatly swelled, eyes closed, very great enlargement of the nose, lips puffed and badly cut, three front teeth missing."

"By Jove, that is severe punishment! Who is it?"

"Master's mate Condor."

"Why, who has he been fighting with?"

The doctor laughed. "I could hardly believe it when I heard. I waylaid young Jocelyn, who was executing a war-dance of delight, and questioned him. It is your last acquisition, Blagrove."

"Impossible, Doctor! There is the lad himself, without the slightest sign of having been engaged in a fight. I have been looking at them all rather closely, for they nearly all disappeared about half an hour ago, and one knows what that generally means. Mr. Knight was very angry about it, so when they came back again I glanced at them; and as none of them were marked in any way, or showed any signs of their having been engaged in a bout of fisticuffs, I came to the conclusion that there had been no fight. And you mean to say that Blagrove punished Condor in that fashion without receiving a mark himself? Condor is a powerful fellow, and must be nearly three years older than the lad. It seems well-nigh impossible!"

"I was astonished myself, but, if you remember, he told us the other evening at the captain's table that he had earned the good-will of those Arabs by rescuing the sheik's son from an attack by two European ruffians. He certainly told it in a very modest tone; but that a lad could thrash two men armed with knives seemed to me to border on romancing. Young Jocelyn said that the fight did not last more than five minutes, and that Blagrove did not receive a scratch. His delight was excessive, and I fancy Condor is rather a bully. You see there is n.o.body else in the mess anywhere near his weight and age, and he took advantage of it accordingly. The boy said that after it was over and they shook hands, Blagrove told Condor that there should be no bullying in the mess in future.

"I asked what the affair was about. Jocelyn did not know, but said that he heard that something had happened when Blagrove first came on board, and that they all knew that there was going to be a fight, but he thinks that it was put off until they left the Pireus for some reason or other."

"That young fellow must be a marvellously good boxer to be able to punish a fellow so superior in age and weight without showing a mark himself. The lesson is certainly likely to do Condor good. I have heard from Mr. Bonnor, who was in the same ship with him on his last commission, that the fellow had a bad name as a bully, but that, unlike most fellows of that sort, he had pluck, and could fight, which makes Blagrove's victory all the more surprising. However, of course we shall take no notice of it. I have merely your official report that Mr. Condor is on the sick-list suffering from severe contusions. I suppose it will be some days before he can show up?"

"I should say that it will be a week before he is fit to come on deck.

As to the loss of his teeth, it will be a serious disfigurement until he gets home again and can be fitted with some fresh ones. Well, at any rate this will give Blagrove a good standing among the others. It is always awkward for a lad who joins a good bit later than usual."

It was not only among the midshipmen that the defeat of Condor established Edgar as the most popular member of the mess. During the voyage out, Condor had already rendered himself obnoxious to the men by the roughness of his tone when speaking to them, and by his domineering manner whenever the officer of the watch was engaged elsewhere, and the report of the manner in which he had been punished excited great delight among them, and rendered Edgar a most popular personage. They had noticed his behaviour the first time that he had gone aloft, and had agreed that the new middy was a good sort and no greenhorn.

"He will make a first-rate officer," one old tar said. "You mark my words if he don't. New hand as he is, you will see that he will show up well on the first opportunity."

The fight, too, raised rather than lowered Condor in their opinion. The men who had seen it all agreed that, although he had not a shadow of chance from the first, he had fought with unflinching pluck, and struggled on most gamely until knocked out of time. Consequently, when he returned to duty he was treated with the same respect as before, and with none of the covert grins that he had expected to notice among them.

The young fellow was not a fool, and while in the sickbay had thought matters over a good deal. It was of course mortifying to have been thrashed by an antagonist he despised, but he was conscious that he had brought the punishment upon himself. Hitherto he had not, since he first joined the service, met with his match among those of his own age and standing, and had come to think himself an exceptional sort of fellow; but the discovery that he was but a child in the hands of a really good boxer, while it humiliated him, was extremely useful. A lesson of this kind is sure to have an effect, good or bad. Among some it sours the temper, produces an active hatred of the person who gave it, and renders a lad savage and morose. On the other hand, among more generous natures it has an opposite effect. Thinking matters over, a lad will feel that he has been going in the wrong direction, that he has been puffed up with an exaggerated idea of his own powers, and he will determine to get into a better groove, and to break himself of his faults.

Condor belonged to the latter cla.s.s. As he lay in bed he saw clearly that he had made a great mistake, that his successes had been won simply because those he licked were less skilled or strong than himself, and that, in point of fact, instead of being, as he believed, a good boxer, he knew next to nothing about it.

Edgar had, after the first day, gone in regularly to have a chat with him. He had been somewhat doubtful as to how his advances would be received, but had determined to do his best to become friends with Condor, whom he felt, rather remorsefully, he had punished terribly severely.

"I hope, Condor," he said the first time he entered, "that you will believe that I have come in because I am really sorry that you have been hurt so much, and not from any idea of triumphing over you. It was only natural that I should have got the best of it. I knew beforehand that I was sure to do so. I learned boxing for over two years from some of the best light-weight fighters in London. I worked very hard, and at the end of that time, except that I was of course their inferior in strength, I could hold my own very fairly with them. That was more than a year ago, and since then I have gained a lot in height, in length of reach, and in strength, so you really need not feel mortified that you were so easily beaten, because I consider that if you had been twice as strong as you are, and four or five years older, it would have come to the same thing. A man who can box only in what you may call a rough-and-ready way has practically no chance whatever with a really scientific pugilist, which I may say I am. I hope you bear me no malice, and that we shall be friends in future."

"I hope so too, Blagrove. I feel that I deserve what I have got, and it will be a lesson that I shall not forget. You have taken me down a great many pegs in my own estimation, and I shall try and make a fresh start when I am about again."

"I am very glad to hear it," Edgar said warmly. "I am sure it must be very much more pleasant to be liked by everyone than to be disliked; and one is just as easy as the other."

"I don't know that I ever thought of it before," Condor said, "but I suppose it must be. I will try the experiment when I get up. I shall feel very small among the others."

"I don't see why you should. You did all that you could, and no one could have done better who had not been taught as I have, and I am sure that no one will think the least degree the worse of you because you had no chance with me. Why, I thrashed a couple of ruffians in Alexandria, armed with knives, in a quarter of the time that it took me to beat you."

"At any rate I shall know better in future," Condor said, with a poor attempt to smile with his swollen lips. "I have learned not to judge from appearances. Who would have thought that a fellow brought up in Egypt would have been able to fight like a professional pugilist. You said that you had been a couple of years at school in England, but that didn't go for much. We have all been at school in England, and yet not many of us know much of boxing. How was it that you came to learn?"

"Well, you see that there is a very rough population in Alexandria--Greek, Maltese, and Italian, in fact the sc.u.m of the Mediterranean--and my father, who is a very sensible man, thought that the knowledge of how to use my fists well might be of much greater value to me than anything else I could learn in England, so he asked my uncle, with whom I lived when I was at school, to get me the best masters in boxing that he could find. I got to be very fond of it, and worked very hard. I had three lessons a week all the time I was at school, and the last year changed my master three times, and so got all their favourite hits. Of course I used to get knocked about, for some boxers can't help hitting hard, and to the end I used to get punished pretty heavily, because though I might hit them as often as they hit me, they were able to hit much harder than I was, but I fancy now that they would find it pretty hard work to knock me out of time. My father used to say that being really a good boxer kept a man or a boy out of trouble. A man who knows that he can fight well can afford to be good-tempered and put up with things that another man wouldn't, and if he is driven to use his fists gets off without being knocked about; and besides, as soon as it is known that he can fight, others don't care about quarrelling with him. I know that it was so with me. I had a fight or two at first, but I very quickly improved, and after that I never had a quarrel for the rest of the nearly three years I was at school."

"One thing is certain, Blagrove, you are not likely to have another quarrel as long as you remain on board the _Tigre_. You will come and see me again, won't you?"

"Certainly I will. I can see that it hurts you to talk now, but you will soon get over that, and then we can have some good chats."

During the voyage up to the Dardanelles, the _Tigre_ encountered changeable weather; the sails had often to be shifted. When he was on watch, Edgar always went aloft with his friend Wilkinson and took his place beside him, listened to the orders that he gave, and watched him at work. In a few days he was able to act independently and to do his duty regularly, and to aid in tying down a reef when a sudden squall came on.

They caught sight of many islands as they pa.s.sed through the Aegean.

Edgar was disappointed with the Dardanelles, but delighted with his first view of Constantinople. It was on the day that they cast anchor that Condor for the first time put in an appearance at mess. His face had resumed its normal appearance, save that there were greenish-yellow patches under the eyes. Wilkinson, who was by a week or two the senior midshipman, and had occupied the president's chair with reluctance, at once left it. They had not expected him until the next day, or he would not have taken it. Edgar had that morning particularly asked the others as a personal favour to give Condor a hearty welcome on his return.

"I think you will find him a much more pleasant fellow than he was before," he said. "At any rate he has been punished heavily, and I think that you ought to welcome him heartily."

Wilkinson and two or three of the older midshipmen had gone in several times to see Condor, and had been pleased at the friendly way in which he had spoken of Blagrove. There had, however, been little talk between them, for Condor had not seemed disposed for conversation. Condor walked to his accustomed seat at the head of the table.

"I hope things will go on better than they have done," he said gruffly.

"All I can say is, it sha'n't be my fault if they don't;" and without more words he proceeded to cut up the salt meat placed in front of him.