At the last turning but one, the spectators again cheered their favorites. Cries and hurrahs broke forth from all sides.
"The little one will win," said Pitferge to me. "Look, he is not even panting, and his rival is breathless."
Wilmore indeed looked calm and pale, whilst O'Kelly was steaming like a damp hay-stack; he was "pumped out," to use a sportsman's slang expression, but both of them kept the same line. At last they passed the upper decks; the hatchway of the engine-rooms, the winning-post.
"Hurrah! hurrah! for Wilmore," cried some.
"Hurrah! for O'Kelly," chimed in others.
"Wilmore has won."
"No, they are together."
The truth was Wilmore had won, but by hardly half a head so the Honorable MacCarthy decided. However, the discussion continued, and even came to words. The partisans of the Irishman, and particularly Harry Drake, maintained that it was a "dead heat," and that they ought to go again.
But at this moment, urged on by an irresistible impulse, Fabian went up to Drake, and said to him in a cold tone, "You are wrong, sir, the winner was the Scotch sailor."
"What do you say?" he asked, in a threatening tone.
"I say you are wrong," answered Fabian quietly.
"Undoubtedly," retorted Drake, "because you bet on Wilmore."
"I was for O'Kelly, like yourself; I lost, and I have paid."
"Sir," cried Drake, "do you pretend to teach me———?"
But he did not finish his sentence, for Captain Corsican had interposed between him and Fabian, with the intention of taking up the quarrel. He treated Drake with supreme contempt, but evidently Drake would not pick a quarrel with him; so when Corsican had finished, he crossed his arms, and addressing himself to Fabian, "This gentleman," said he, with an evil smile, "this gentleman wants someone to fight his battles for him."
Fabian grew pale, he would have sprung at Drake, but I held him back, and the scoundrel's companions dragged him away; not, however, before he had cast a look of hatred at his enemy.
