He Did His Duty.

Feilding Star, Volume XVIII, Issue 137, 9 December 1896, Page 2

He Did His Duty.

Eli Hooper, a blue jacket on H.M.S Katoomba, engaged the combined force of one Frenchman, two Turks, and i nondescript gathering of all native rep resentatives at the Philadelphia Hotel Port Melbourne. The Age says tha with vigorous voice he had shouted th< first verse of the " Death of Nelson,' when he observed a sneer on the fact of a man in a corner of the bar. Hi promptly inquired, " What do you thinl of Nelson ?" The man in the cornel expressed admiration of England's nava hero, but, alas ! delivered himself it Anglo-French, and this circumstance raised the blue jacket's prejudices anc induced a copious flow of " language.' The two Turks put in a word for tut Gaul, and were supported iv pigeor English by the nondescripts. The belli' cose tar promptly proceeded to active hostilities and soon had the floor strewn with tangled heaps of alien's bodies. Picking up the vangnished one by one he was proceeding to knock them down again wbpn a well-aimed lemonade bottle struck his bead' and daaed him. A policeman sauntered in, but as the sailor positively refused to budge unless assured that the officer was a "true blood," the constable waited for reinforcements, which arrived shortly in the person of Constable Hourigan, to whom the sailor extended the hand of friendship, recognising a fellow nationalist, and west to thn police station. When before the court Hooper remarked, " Well see is was like this -I did my duty. There they was a Frenchy and Turkeys, and what all, aud I couldn'G help sailing in. It was my duty »nd the scrapo be<»an. I knocked tbfl stuffing out of iheuu and slun^ 'em all over the floor. I'd a done my duty better, bin some traitor levelled me nnha lemonade bottle. Of course yon all know I did my duty, now didn't I?" Then a petty oflicer from the Katoomba gave the umn a "good character. Accused himself offered to pay ;3.s for a boltlo of whiskey he had knocked down, and tbe Bench, enthusiastic in the cause of doty, let him off with a tine of §j.