FIGHT ON A LINER.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 703, 30 December 1909, Page 4

FIGHT ON A LINER.

SCENE IN A SMOKINGROOM. Since a young Oxford!, undergraduate rose in the smokingroom of a White Star liner a year ago, and, by sheer force of pugilistic skill, thrashed and defeated three notorious card-sharpers who frequent the smoking rooms of steamers, there has never (states the New York correspondent of the Eondou Daily Telegraph) been such an exciting row on a transatlantic journey as that reported in New York to-day by the North German Eloyd liner Kronprinzessin Cecilie, from Bremen. Eieutenant Granville Fortescue, who is a cousin of Theodore Roosevelt, and was at one time an aide of the ex-president at the White House, was the hero of the episode. He detected a sharper cheating at dice, went after him in true Rooseveltian method, and wiped the smoking-room floor with him,. Henry Clews, the sou of a New York banker, and James de Wolf Cutting, an American society man, were involved in the affray, though not actually parties to the battle. .. The individual playing the role of villain was groomed with minute care, his military . moustache was waxed to a point, he bore himself with an air of supreme, distinction, and it was easy for him to drop into a dice game in the smoking- room on Sunday night. The game in progress is known as “sixes and double.’’ Only one die is used, and is thrown five times for the total of the flgures that turn up. The man had been winning for hali-an-hour, when Eieutenant Fortescue entered the smoking-room to watch his friends Cutting and Clews play chess. Eeaving their table, he strolled over to watch the dicethrowing, standing a little away behind the sharper, far enough back not to attract his attention. He had been looking on only a few minutes when he noticed that the man rarely threw lower than five or six. This fact increased his interest, and he bent over so as to get a better look at the player’s hand. In a flash he noticed that the man had an extra die, which he concealed in the crook of his little finger, dropping it by a prestidigitatory movement as swift and light as he apparently threw the dice from the box, and then catching and concealing the die from the box as it rolled out. Young Fortescue watched this proceeding tor several throws, and then made up his mind to act. Seeing the die again fast in the crook of the fellow’s finger, he reached forward and caught the hand, exclaiming as he did so “ You scoundrel! ” The man was on his feet with a snarl of rage. Bending every ounce of power in his body to shake off Fortescue’s grip, he struck out savagely with his free hand and then ensued as lively a bout of fisticuffs as you will see in a liner’s smoking-room in half a hundred voyages. When he was in the White House, Eieutenant Fortescue was called upon on more than one occasion to put on the gloves with Mr Theodore Roosevelt and the strenuous President’s boxing instructors. His adversary had the better of him in range and weight, and he fought savagely, but time and again Fortescue landed blows that for the moment stunned the sharper, and severely mauled him. The chess table was overturned, and Clews and Cutting went down in the scramble. The dice-players were too much astonished at the sensational interruption of their game to do more than look on in amazement. When they finally did rise to the situation, the sharper had broken Eieutenant Fortescue’s grip, and dodged out of the smoking-room. The captain was called in, and the fellow was for the remainder of the voyage debarred from the smoking-room. Nevertheless, with two black eyes, he continued to occupy his place in the diningsaloon, and before the voyage ended he actually had the effrontery to try to collect the dice debts which unsuspecting passengers thought they had lost and paid in I O U’s. In justice to the North German Elbyd and all other transatlantic liners, it should be mentioned that no effort is spared to discourage the playing ot games of chance by passengers with strangers, but, despite all warnings, whether by officers or official notices printed and posted aboard the ship, quite a number of Anglo-American card-sharpers manage to earn a handsome living during the season.