And I make free to say that for the time being life assumed the
same sordid values to me. There was nothing pretty about it,
nothing divine--only two cowardly moving things that sat whetting
steel upon stone, and a group of other moving things, cowardly and
otherwise, that looked on. Half of them, I am sure, were anxious
to see us shedding each other's blood. It would have been
entertainment. And I do not think there was one who would have
interfered had we closed in a death-struggle.

On the other hand, the whole thing was laughable and childish.
Whet, whet, whet,--Humphrey Van Weyden sharpening his knife in a
ship's galley and trying its edge with his thumb! Of all
situations this was the most inconceivable. I know that my own
kind could not have believed it possible. I had not been called
"Sissy" Van Weyden all my days without reason, and that "Sissy" Van
Weyden should be capable of doing this thing was a revelation to
Humphrey Van Weyden, who knew not whether to be exultant or
ashamed.

But nothing happened. At the end of two hours Thomas Mugridge put
away knife and stone and held out his hand.

"Wot's the good of mykin' a 'oly show of ourselves for them mugs?"
he demanded. "They don't love us, an' bloody well glad they'd be
a-seein' us cuttin' our throats. Yer not 'arf bad, 'Ump! You've
got spunk, as you Yanks s'y, an' I like yer in a w'y. So come on
an' shyke."

Coward that I might be, I was less a coward than he. It was a