his arms he could pummel me without giving me the least chance of
reprisal, and many's the day I crawled home after our encounters
bruised and sore, provoking indignant remonstrances from Mistress
Pennyquick. But I refused to let her coddle me, and as my appetite
never failed, and I throve amazingly, the good woman at last ceased
to lament, and, as I discovered, was wont behind my back to vaunt
my growing manliness.

By the time I was fifteen I was as tall as the captain himself, and
then my share of bruises ceased to be so disproportionate. In
skill, whether with the fists or the foils, he was always vastly my
superior; indeed, to this day I have never met his equal. But I had
youth on my side, and sometimes the old man at the end of a
particularly arduous bout would sigh, and wish he were younger by a
score of years.

No one could have been more generous in encouragement and praise.
It would have amused an onlooker, I am sure, to see him, when I had
had the good fortune to tap claret, mopping the injured feature and
all the time maintaining a flow of complimentary remarks.

"Capital, my lad!"--after fifty years I can hear him still--"on my
life, a neat one, Humphrey; I shall make something of you yet, my
boy."

And then we fall to it again, and, being somewhat overconfident,
perhaps, after my success, I fail a little in my guard, and the
captain sees his opportunity and lands me such a series of
staggerers that I see a thousand stars, and there am I dabbing my
nose while he cries again: "Capital, my lad! A Roland for an