“Blood hell! I dinna mean to be so daft.”
“He’s ticker-thinned…thicker-skinned, than you give him credit for,” Morty slurred sitting on the edge of the bed trying to get his feet into his trouser legs.
The wench wrapped her arms around her middle and shivered. “He’s scarred up bad, is he?”
Both men ignored her.
Before Morty finished dressing, a loud crash came from the taproom reverberating the floorboards. Morty and Hugh exchanged knowing glances.
“Thick-skinned, ye say?”
“It’ll do him good t’ blow off ssteam.”
“If he was my friend, I sure wouldn’t be up here jawin’ about it,” the wench said.
There was a second loud crash, but neither man seemed very concerned. “Our mate can take care of hisself,” Morty said as his head emerged through the neck-hole of his shirt then, belying his words, he staggered across the room and out the door.
When the woman looked at Hugh for conformation, Hugh nodded. “Oh Lassie, watching Charlie fight is a thing of beauty. He learned how from a real Japanese master who worked as cook fer a few years.”
Morty half-stumbled down the steps to the taproom below. The sight that greeted him was pretty much as he expected. The room was in disarray with two tables turned over and others no longer where they had been earlier. The floor was littered with the splintered remains of at least one chair. Of the dozen men in the taproom, three were involved in the fray with Charlie. Morty could see Charlie had his hands full.
A short man lay sprawled at the foot of an overturned table. He slowly regained his senses and struggled to rise. A second man, his nose bloodied, attempted to land a punch to the second mate’s face, but Charlie fended off the blow with all the skill their Japanese cook taught him.
Suddenly, the third man charged Charlie from behind. But before Morty could call out a warning, Charlie turned, his leg swinging high and wide, kicking the man across the face. He dropped like the dead at his feet.
It always amazed Morty how graceful his movements were and how efficient and powerful the younger man’s blows were.
Unfortunately, when Charlie was forced to turn his attention to the other man, the bloody-nosed man managed to land a glancing blow to Charlie’s jaw. Charlie staggered backwards nearly tripping on the unconscious body. It hadn’t looked like a substantial blow to Morty, but then Morty out-weighed Charlie by at least seventy-five pounds and the same blow would have been little more than a pinprick to him.
Charlie appeared slightly stunned, but when the jack-tar swung another fist, he blocked it with his lightning reflexes. Charlie threw one of his strange Japanese punches that started very close to his body with his fist palm up. His arm snaked out, twisting his fist palm down and made contact with the man’s mouth.
Morty could tell instinctively, the punch carried less than its normal force and he wondered if the man had hurt Charlie worse than he had initially thought. But as long as Charlie was holding his own Morty wouldn’t interfere—not that he’d be much help in his current condition.
Morty looked around the room to the other bystanders, carefully noting their reactions. Sinclair’s fluid movements and strange fighting style fascinated them. It was unlikely any had ever heard of karate much less seen it.
The barkeep’s sharp intake of breath brought Morty’s attention back to the fray. Charlie slowly backed into the corner. Bloody-nose drew a knife and the short man had finally regained his senses and approached with a chair leg grasped in his upraised hand.
Bloody-nose lunged. Charlie moved forward, stepping sideways to avoid the knife and grasped his wrist, twisting his arm and throwing his hip into the larger man’s hip. A moment later, Bloody-nose lay flat on his back, Charlie still holding the man’s wrist. Another twist of the man’s arm and the knife clattered to the floor. It all happened in one fluid motion lasting less than five seconds, but it gave the short man a long enough reprieve to move into striking distance. Before Charlie could turn, the man swung the chair leg catching him squarely across his shoulder blades sending him to his hands and knees, all the wind knocked out of his lungs.
Charlie’s instincts screamed for him to move before the man struck again, yet pain and the effort of pulling air back into his chest paralyzed him. His back tensed waiting to be smote to the ground with the wooden club.
Suddenly, the small man collapsed to the ground beside him and Charlie, his breath now ragged, looked over his shoulder to see Morty standing over him. A heavy pewter mug in hand.
Bloody-nose, halfway to his feet, dropped back to the rough-hewn floor. He looked from one man to the other, a look of defeat and resignation upon his face as he wiped his nose on his arm and hand.