I knew that Claud felt himself to be tricked, and I was curious to see
what he would do about it, because, in spite of his effeminacy, my
instinct told me that he was not weak. The whiskey was set upon the
table. Lentz helped himself; I did likewise, and as I did so I heard
Claud’s feet scuffle a trifle on the rug, and knew that his impulse was
to arise and leave the table. I knew that he was staring indignantly at
Deshay; there was a reflection of this look in the lurking gleam of
contempt in Deshay’s dark eyes and the sardonic lines at the corners of
his mouth, and when he spoke, in the pleasantest voice which one can
conceive, the words and the expression which accompanied them was the
drop in excess needed to crystallize the solution of my dislike and
distrust of Deshay.
“‘Oh, come, Dillingham,’ said he, lightly, ‘we all know that you’re on a
swear-off, but just a glass for _bon voyage_ will do you no harm. Once
we’re under way you can settle down to a life of undiluted virtue—say
_when_.’
“He reached across the table, decanter in hand, and began to pour the
liquor slowly into Claud’s glass, while I with difficulty repressed an
inclination to knock the vessel out of his hand—not that I laid much
importance on Claud’s breaking his resolution, but because he was in
danger of breaking it not through his _own will_, and I knew that if he
sagged at this moment he would have an up-hill fight to get back his own
while aboard that schooner, and the agonizing part of it all to me was
that Deshay was _not_ a strong character; he was a pine post painted to
look like granite, and Claud had not enough knowledge of men to
recognize the paint.
“‘No, thank you, Captain,’ said Claud, in a voice of such weak
determination that it positively brought the blood to my face. ‘I’m off
for good,’ he said, and threw the inflection on the wrong words, as a
man will when trying to show a determination which is lacking in him.
“‘Of course you are,’ said Deshay, in a big, good-humored voice which
seemed to jar the glasses, ‘but the swear-off starts with the voyage,
and a voyage out of ‘Frisco is not begun until you get through the
Golden Gate. Come, now, matey, just one to bring us fair winds.’ One
cannot describe the large persuasion of his tone.
“‘Really, I’d rather not,’ replied Claud, with a school-boy squirm. It
was a beastly spectacle, Doctor—an immoral spectacle; had Deshay been
overcoming the scruples of a woman it would have been less offensive,
because such an act is prompted by animal impulse, whereas this was
purely Satanic—the violation of an unproved entity. I was strongly
tempted to interfere, but many years of contact with all sorts of people
have so confirmed me in the habit of minding my own business that very
often I do not interfere when perhaps I should.
“‘Oh, nonsense,’ said Deshay, and there was in his full voice the
slightest hint of the imperative, and his eyes, as they fixed themselves
on Claud, were insolently authoritative. If he had looked at me in that
way I should have planted my fist in his face; with Claud I think that
it was less lack of will than the obedience of a hyper-sensitive mind to
a dominant suggestion. At any rate, Deshay poured out some Scotch and
added some water, and Claud raised the glass, drained it, then sprang
suddenly to his feet and left the saloon, nor did I see him again until
dinner-time, and, Doctor, I knew that from that moment this brute
Deshay, whom I correctly estimated as a creature of animal cunning,
utter lack of principle and an amazing effrontery substituting strength,
had one of his coarse, clumsy paws on the gold bags of Claud Dillingham,
senior, and, barring accident, would squeeze out many a yellow coin
before he allowed the son to escape from his clutches. Do not
misunderstand me, Doctor; this free-booter was simply after gold.
“The following morning I happened to be talking with Deshay, for at sea
dislike of a shipmate is no reason for not getting what entertainment
there is in him, and while we were talking Claud came up and requested a
few words with him.
“‘Anything personal?’ I asked. Claud hesitated for a moment, apparently
embarrassed.
“‘Oh, no,’ said he, and went on, stammering like a school-boy who had
forgotten his recitation. ‘You see, Doctor Leyden,’ said he, ‘when I
engaged my passage I was afraid that I might be seasick, so I made an
arrangement with Captain Deshay by which he was to drop me at Honolulu
if I wished it. He—he—told me that there were to be no other
passengers.’”
“‘But you are not seasick, are you?’ said I.
“‘No,’ he answered, ‘but I am—I am—I am _home_sick.’ Upon my word, he
gulped like a little girl the first day in school and his blue eyes
filled with tears; he could not have been under twenty years of age.
“‘I do not think that you have dealt quite fairly with me, Captain,’
said he, in a voice which he tried to make cold and assertive, but would
have been only contemptible if one had not been sorry for him—and then
as he looked at our faces and saw scant sympathy in either, he crumbled.
“‘To tell the truth, Captain,’ he continued, with a rather nervous
laugh, ‘I’m afraid that I’ve lost my nerve; I’m sick of the voyage
already and want to get back home. Of course, I’ll defray any additional
expense due to taking you out of your course,’ he concluded, with a sort
of shy eagerness.
“‘Oh, come, old fellow,’ said Deshay, coaxingly, and clapped him on the
shoulder. ‘The first twenty-four hours——’
“‘Look out for your dog!’ I cried suddenly, for as Deshay’s hand fell
upon Claud’s shoulder I had happened to glance at Dixie. The dog was
standing quietly enough at his master’s heel, and at Deshay’s action had
made none of the usual canine expressions of displeasure, and it was
this absence which made him so alarming, for as I glanced at his great,
dark, intelligent eye it seemed filled with such a smouldering,
slumbering intensity of hate that it gave me a positive start. The fine,
silky hair was not even ruffled, there was not the slightest twitch to
the velvet lips, but I could see that every muscle of the beautifully
moulded body was tense as our weather shrouds and there was a fine
quiver to the strong flanks. Have you ever, Doctor, closely watched a
woman who is married to a man she hates, loathes, despises, as her
husband enters the room? Perhaps he is a plausible brute who only shows
the cloven hoof after he has shot the bolt of her bedroom door; no one
else may guess it unless one watches the wife. The dilatation of the
pupil, the faintest quiver of the nostrils, the little shiver—Dixie had
all of these, but, as Claud had said, he was too self-contained, too
much of a gentleman, to further reveal his emotions.
“I could see Claud shrivel at Deshay’s familiarity. One guessed that he
longed to throw off the man’s hand, which still clutched his shoulder
good-humoredly, but he was too sensitive, too fearful of giving offense,
not through any liking for the man, but because it seemed _gauche_,
boorish, and would fill the air with a sort of rough impulse, shocking
to his fine sensitiveness. No doubt he had suffered at times from
rebuffs to his own timid advances, and had not enough knowledge of the
world and men to keep from putting a coarse, thick-skinned brute like
Deshay in his own class of emotions.
“His class—_ach!_ the nervous sensibilities of those two were about as
similar as those of a Kentucky thoroughbred and a Galapagos turtle!
There are some men who can never get it through their heads that the
only way to hurt another man’s feelings is with a club.
“When I spoke, Claud glanced down at Dixie, and he saw the danger in the
animal’s eyes, to which Deshay was quite blind.
“‘Dixie!’ said Claud, reprovingly; that was all, but Dixie understood
and his beautiful head dropped contritely.
“‘Oh, Dixie’s all right,’ said Deshay, carelessly, and, will you believe
it, he swung down and took the dog’s two forepaws, raised him up on his
hind legs, while he pulled his ears playfully, and, taking the sensitive
muzzle in his coarse hand, shook it back and forth! _Ach!_ I have never
been so overcome with admiration for the self-control of any living
creature as I was for its amazing exhibition by that bloodhound! One saw
him shudder, half close his eyes, as if in a disgust too deep for any
expression. I really believe, Doctor, that the dog and master were at
the psychological instant of Deshay’s caress possessed of precisely the
same emotions. Do you know, I believe that the hound accepted the human
animal’s familiarity less through discipline than a high-minded sense of
courtesy which forbade his rejecting overtures which had the semblance
of good will, for at first Deshay actually liked Dixie, and was unable
to see that the dog had loathed him from the start.
“Deshay turned to Claud. ‘There’s a good chap,’ he said; ‘you don’t mind
sticking it out to Samoa, do you, now?’
“‘I’m sorry,’ began Claud.
“‘Oh, come,’ said Deshay, and again there was in his voice that
imperative note which had struck me so unpleasantly the day before. ‘You
can’t tell yet whether you’re going to like the cruise or not; you will
begin to enjoy it in a couple of days—you know you will.’ He fastened
his lustrous eyes fixedly on the seraphic blue ones of the boy. ‘You
know you will like it—don’t you, now?’ There was in his voice a
peremptory assertion.
“‘Perhaps you are right,’ said Claud, and looked over the rail.
“‘Of course I am right,’ said Deshay, loudly, and clapped him on the
shoulder again. ‘Now, let’s have a drink to show there’s no hard
feeling. Steward!’ he bellowed down the companionway.
“‘But, look here, Captain,’ said Claud, feebly, ‘you seem to forget that
I’ve given up drinking.’
“‘Not a bit of it,’ said Deshay, ‘but there’s a big difference between a
man’s giving up drinking and a man’s never taking a drink. If you only
drink at my suggestion you’ll never come to any harm. Will you join us,
Leyden?’
“‘No, thanks,’ I answered.
“‘Oh, yes, you will,’ said Deshay, in his large way.
“I shrugged my shoulders and, turning on my heel, walked aft. To tell
the truth, Doctor, although I am a mild-mannered man who will make a
very great detour to avoid a quarrel, I think that just at that
moment——”
Eight bells were struck forward, and Leyden paused to hold the stump of
his cigar to the dial of the taffrail-log.
“A little more than ten,” he muttered; “that schooner did better for
days on end!” He drummed softly with his fingers until I grew irritated
at his abstraction, which emotion he perceived, for he flicked the stump
of his cigar into the wake and resumed.
“Doctor, have you ever witnessed the spectacle of a strong will and high
courage becoming completely and utterly dominated, less through lack of
strength than excess of imagination, by a creature of far inferior
qualities, but overwhelming impudence? These are the conditions which
often give the bully his amazing autocracy; his victims are
auto-hypnotized by the sheer impudence of his assertions, until some day
the bubble is pricked by an individual more practical and less
imaginative and the reign of terror is at an end. In a week’s time
Deshay had Claud, and Dixie, too, for that matter, as entirely cowed and
subjugated as if he had broken their spirits with a cat-o’-nine-tails,
and the harrowing part of it was that, in spite of their high degree of
sensitiveness, neither the dog nor the master were weak. I had studied
Claud and felt his underlying force; he was of that high-bred, nervous
type, vacillating in little things, but, deeper, of the resistance of
chilled steel; like the bulkheads in the ward-room of a battle-ship,
white and gold on the surface, but able to stand the pressure of
hundreds of tons. If the petty aggressions of Deshay had all been
combined into a solid weight, requiring a forceful resistance, he could
no more have held Claud than he could have held a handful of guncotton
detonated in his clenched fist; that is, he could not have done so at
first, and his animal cunning told him this, so that he began by
accustoming his victim to yield in minor matters until he had given him
the _yielding habit_; but as I watched the whole thing I was convinced
that Deshay was too crude a production and too lacking in finesse to
continue his course successfully, and I awaited the denouement with
interest. Deshay had already shown his lack of cleverness by not taking
the trouble to conceal the aversion that he had come to feel for Dixie,
and the silent hate of the dog for him was a thing as extraordinary to
contemplate as the animal’s marvellous dignity and self-control. Deshay
had come to openly maltreat him, but not as yet in Claud’s presence; he
maltreated him once in mine, and _only_ once, for I said a few words to
him, at which he stared into my eyes and first blustered and then
laughed and then went out with a sizzle—and we understood one another
perfectly. On this occasion he had kicked the dog across the deck
because the poor brute had placed both paws on the polished teak rail in
a longing effort to discover land, and the dog had neither yelped nor
growled nor become abject; he had simply walked away, albeit with a
slight limp, but without the drooping tail and other signs of canine
dejection. Perhaps you have seen a gentleman, Doctor, a fearless man,
avoid a quarrel thrust upon him by a low fellow, and avoid it quietly
and without loss of dignity. This was Dixie’s behavior.
“We were not a pleasant party on that schooner. I had come to detest
Deshay, and he knew it; Lentz would no longer speak to him; the old
fellow simply grunted when Deshay addressed him, as if he considered the
captain a swine and able to understand the language. Claud did not hate
him; he simply _loathed_ him, and yet was dominated by him, and the same
was true of Dixie. The air was heavily pregnant with possibilities, and,
Doctor, when the denouement finally arrived it was as funny as the grin
on the face of a corpse. Who do you suppose it was that pulled out the
boat-plug? Why, none other than that black-browed humorist of a mate,
who was, it seems, a murderer escaped from the Santa Clara county jail,
and who had paid Deshay a good price for his billet.
“We were down in the neighborhood of Christmas Island, when we cut in
close to some other little island; to this day I don’t know what it was.
Our course would trim it close, so at Deshay’s suggestion we hove to and
he and Lentz and Claud, Dixie and myself went in with two sailors to
pull the boat. Possibly it was his plan to get Lentz and me ashore and
leave us there, but he never had the chance, for no sooner had we struck
the beach than Mister Mate up with his headsails, up stick and away!
“I must have a bizarre sense of humor, for I will confess that I dropped
in a heap on the sand and laughed until the tears came. It was such a
tremendous joke on the lot of us—especially upon Deshay.
“Deshay was like a crazy man; he tore up and down the beach and shook
his fists and raved until his face was blue. He was an edifying sight,
and we white people sat in a little row in our proscenium box and
admired the exhibition. You see, he was three-quarters white, and that
gave him imagination; but the other quarter, which should have been
self-control, was Kanaka, and that knocked up the pawls and let his line
run off the reel, so to speak.
“We were really badly off, Doctor; the island was very small and offered
no food that we could see. There was a small cluster of dwarfed palms,
and they bore a few immature nuts; aside from these trees there was no
shelter. We had not even a boat-sail. Fortunately there was water on
this island—brackish, but potable.
“Deshay pulled himself together after a while, but he was savage and
morose. I managed to get out of him the pleasing news that the next
island was over one hundred miles distant, and probably no better than
the one which we were on. Fancy our condition, Doctor!—our utter lack of
everything but bad feeling. All of us, including the two sailors who had
pulled the boat, hated Deshay; Deshay returned the sentiment; the two
sailors, with their mates, had from the first been insolent to Claud, of
whom they said rough things owing to his subjugation by Deshay; and on
this, as well as from personal causes, both Lentz and I had more than
once fallen foul of them. Within the last fortnight the tedium of the
voyage had begun to tell upon Lentz, and the old fellow had grown
peevish and sulky; both of us had incurred Deshay’s dislike by having
very little to say to him. Conceive, then, the delights of the first few
days of hardship with such a company.
“It was, I believe, the morning of the third day that I was awakened by
hearing Deshay cry out: ‘Where’s that cursed dog?’ I rolled over and saw
that he held in his hand one of the heavy oak stretchers of the boat and
was looking savagely about him. Near by sat Claud, his face in his
hands.
“Deshay snarled out: ‘Where’s that dog, you droolin’ baby?’
“Claud mumbled something, without looking up, and then I heard him say:
‘We haven’t come to that—_yet_,’ and he said it with a groan, and I
could see his face working painfully.
‘Deshay walked toward him, talking as he went. He said: ‘You’ll see if
we haven’t when I find the cur, you chicken-livered little milksop!’ and
at that moment there came from up the beach a musical bay which tolled
out like a church-bell and died lingeringly away, to be drowned in the
crash of the breakers; again this mournful note welled forth, rising
like the voice of a bell-buoy above the roar of the surf, and this time
it ended in a series of short, excited barks—such a bark as a hound
gives when he has ‘treed.’
“Claud sprang to his feet. ‘He’s found something!’ he cried, and began
to run down the beach. Deshay and I followed, and soon we came upon
Dixie, who was very carefully uncovering a nest of new-laid turtle’s
eggs.
“Deshay was for eating his fill then and there, but this I would not
permit, so we gathered them up and carried them back to the others,
where we proceeded to divide them.
“‘Give Dixie his share,’ said I to Deshay, who had undertaken the
division.
“‘Give Dixie nothin’,’ he snarled back at me. And then he added: ‘Why,
you Dutch fat-head, d’ye think I’m goin’ to give good food to a dog?’
“He had carelessly dropped the boat-stretcher beside him, and before he
could lay down the eggs it was in my hand. There is an etiquette,
Doctor, to be observed even upon a desert island, and if Lentz had not
grasped the other end of the stick I fancy that Dixie could have had
Deshay’s share.
“‘Ve must not qvarrel,’ said Lentz; ‘ve haf troobles enough alretty. Der
hound found der eggs; gif him von or two.’
“Deshay growled, but I had frightened him, and he did as he was told,
giving Dixie two of the eggs. The dog ate one of them, the other he
carried to Claud; I saw Claud give it to Deshay.
“For ten days this thing went on. Every day or two Dixie would find a
nest of eggs, but at the end of that time he could find no more, and
after two days of hunger Deshay, backed by one of the sailors, demanded
that he be killed. We were all fairly weak by this time, Deshay being
perhaps the strongest, because Claud had shared his own and the hound’s
food with him in the hope of prolonging the dog’s life. In spite of this
the lad held up wonderfully, sustained by his marvellous nervous
vitality.
“‘It seems to me that Dixie has earned his right to live,’ said Claud,
the tears streaming from his eyes. ‘He has already fed us for ten days;
but if you all demand that he—be killed—I will not oppose it!’ He buried
his face in his hands.
“‘Guess you won’t!’ growled Deshay. ‘We _do_ demand it——’
“‘Speak for yourself, you mongrel swine!’ said I, and added that I would
starve before I would kill the hound or eat him, either. You see,
Doctor, to my way of thinking Dixie had purchased the human right to die
decently, like the brave, unselfish gentleman he was. Besides, he had
the cleanest soul of any, save, perhaps, his master. What right had we
to prolong our lives at the cost of his? Lentz felt this.
“‘I von’t eat him,’ he said; ‘he is vort more as me.’
“‘Ah, what’s the use o’ killin’ ’im?’ said one of the sailors, a hard
specimen whom Deshay had picked up on the ‘Barbary Coast.’ ‘Dawg ‘r no
dawg, we’re all goin’ up the flue. The quicker the sooner, say I.’
“‘The other sailor agreed with Deshay, who pulled out his knife and
sidled toward the hound. If my strength had been equal to it I would
have opposed him, but a touch of fever on top of other hardships had
left me as weak as a kitten. However, it was unnecessary.
“And then, Doctor, there began a strange and savage spectacle. Dixie was
by this time a hide-wrapped skeleton, yet his strength seemed in no way
impaired. He was asleep by his master’s side, but at the stealthy
approach of Deshay he seemed to slide away—as one drags a rug across a
floor. Deshay continued to approach—at an angle—craftily, and still the
hound slid away in that peculiar manner, his lustrous brown eyes
fastened on the man in an agony of doubt and dread, which seemed to
partly paralyze his movements. Deshay began to wheedle, to whine, to
talk ‘baby-talk’ of the ‘nice-doggy’ type, and he actually hid the knife
as he might if about to murder a man instead of a dog! Such a spectacle,
my friend! this gaunt, savage, bloodshot, hairy, human animal, far more
of a beast in all effect than the sad-eyed dog who had for days
prolonged his worthless life—this bloodthirsty, _literally_ bloodthirsty
human hyena, crazed at feeling his wretched life slipping through his
weakening grip, slinking along that beach in the bright, dewy morning,
talking baby talk to the hound—making a disgusting exhibition of his
craven soul, when he might have been waiting for death with the dignity
of a gentleman!
“Still he slunk—and the dog slunk before him, his hair bristling less in
fear than disgust, certainly not in anger, for of this emotion there was
no trace in the quiver of a lip, the echo of a growl, nor in the gleam
of the beautiful, lustrous eyes. Rather it was a sense of deepest
shame—a shame for his master’s race!
“And then the brute in the man tore through the thin envelope; he
screamed like a cat and threw himself at the dog, only to sprawl his
length on the sand. He sprang to his feet and ran braying at the animal,
who fled down the beach as silently and with the even interval of the
man’s own sinister shadow, until Deshay, his strength utterly gone, fell
face downward on the sand, screaming obscenities. _Ach!_ never have I
seen a thing more disgusting.
“‘Dixie will take care of himself,’ said I to Claud. ‘He will not be
caught napping.’
“From that time, Doctor, there began a series of psychological phenomena
of which I was more appreciative afterwards. Up to the moment of this
shocking outburst of Deshay, Claud had been in all ways subservient, but
as he looked upon the contour of this man’s naked soul and saw its
hideously dwarfed deformity I observed a peculiar expression on his
face. I think that he was feeling Deshay’s shame as if it had been his
own—not through any charity, but through sympathy, which is such an
entirely different thing. You see, Doctor, Claud was one of those
hyper-sensitized natures which reflects an emotion as a still lake
reflects its bank: you know the type—that which will listen to a poorly
given address with a sense of deepest personal responsibility toward the
speaker, or will see some person in a conspicuous place make a fool of
himself and fairly writhe with shame—as Dixie had done. And do you know,
I think that for the time the sentiments of master and dog toward Deshay
were identical; the natures of the two were very similar; and I can say
no better thing of Claud than this. They were two gentlemen, Doctor,
gentlemen by birth and breed and associations, and they possessed the
natural instincts which result from generations of these things.
“Left to himself at just that moment, Claud would, I believe, have
attempted to condone Deshay’s behavior and to go to the rescue of his
strangled decency, but it seemed to me that the psychological moment had
arrived for placing matters in their due proportion. You see, Doctor, I
had about concluded that we were all going to die, and I disliked the
idea of letting Claud die without the opportunity of redeeming such
manhood as he might possess, and with this in mind I reached out and
dragged the veil rather roughly from his eyes.
“‘And to think,’ said I, ‘that yonder object should be your master—you,
a gentleman and a white man!’
“Claud leaped as if I had lashed him across the face.
“‘What!’ he cried. ‘What—what—what’s that you say?’
“‘It seems to me to be plain enough,’ said I. ‘Haven’t you kow-towed and
groveled and beat your forehead before that thing, and broken your
promise to stop drinking—to whomever you made that promise—for fear of
that Kanaka thug out there?’