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For a long time before the last championship race the sporting keelmen put by money every week to back the Tynesider, and the melancholy result of the race desolated Sandgate. Perhaps it was well that the Englishman was beaten; for in the event of any athletic success the whole Tyneside population become very arrogant, and the keelmen insufferable.
We had met first, twenty odd years ago, at the Indian mess of the Tyneside Tail-twisters. Our last meeting, I remembered, had been at the Mount Nelson Hotel, which was by no means India, and there we had talked half the night. Boy Bayley had gone up that week to the front, where I think he stayed a long, long time. But now he had come back. "Are you still a Tynesider?" I asked.
They are talking in gruff, North- country voices, which are never harsh. A man comes in, after a moment's awkward pause at the open door, and seeks a secluded seat where the gas overhead hardly affords illumination. He is a broad-built man a Tynesider; not so very big for South Shields; a matter of six feet one, perhaps.
He didn't say grace at meals, he smoked a pipe, drank whisky and brandy with Otway and Robertson, told rattling good stories, and displayed an immediate interest when the skipper mentioned that the second mate was a "bit of a bruiser," and that there were gloves on board; and the second mate, a nuggety little Tynesider, at once consented to a friendly mill as soon as he was off duty.
'Then peg out the next, continued Mike. 'It should be quite as good a spec as this if your friend's on anything like a gutter. 'Ay, ay, lad! responded the Tynesider, who had a mouse on his cheek as big as his thumb, and he set cheerfully to work to peg out two men's ground further on.
Robertson groaned and looked at the mate. "It is God's will, sir," said the old Scotsman quietly. Robertson nodded. "Tell Allen and the others to come here," he said. The Tynesider, followed by Captain Burr, Otway, and the carpenter, came. "Mr. Allen," said the captain, "you are the best man in such an emergency as this. You handle a boat better than any man I know.
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