"I won't. Who are you? Strike your own flag."

"I am Norman Wentworth. That's who I am, and if you don't take that flag
down I will take it down for you, you little nigger-driving rebel."

Gordon Keith was not a boy to neglect the amenities of the occasion.

"Come and try it then, will you, you nigger-stealing Yankees!" he
called. "I will fight both of you." And he settled himself for defence.

"Well, I will," cried his assailant. "Drop the tiller, Ferdy, and sit
tight. I will fight fair." Then to Gordon again: "I have given you fair
warning, and I will have that flag or sink you."

Gordon's answer was to drop one oar as useless, seize the other, and
steadying himself as well as he could, raise it aloft as a weapon.

"I will kill you if you try it," he said between clinched teeth.

However, the boy rowing the other boat was not to be frightened. He
gave a vigorous stroke of his oars that sent his boat straight into the
side of Gordon's boat.

The shock of the two boats coming together pitched Gordon to his knees,
and came near flinging him into the water; but he was up again in a
second, and raising his oar, dealt a vicious blow with it, not at the
boy in the boat, but at the flag in the bow of the boat. The
unsteadiness of his footing, however, caused him to miss his aim, and he
only splintered his oar into fragments.