will inherit the earth, not because of their capacity for mastery and
government, but because of their skin-pigmentation which enables
their tissues to resist the ravages of the sun.

And I look at the four of us at table--Captain West, his daughter,
Mr. Pike, and myself--all fair-skinned, blue-eyed, and perishing, yet
mastering and commanding, like our fathers before us, to the end of
our type on the earth. Ah, well, ours is a lordly history, and
though we may be doomed to pass, in our time we shall have trod on
the faces of all peoples, disciplined them to obedience, taught them
government, and dwelt in the palaces we have compelled them by the
weight of our own right arms to build for us.

The Elsinore depicts this in miniature. The best of the food and all
spacious and beautiful accommodation is ours. For'ard is a pig-sty
and a slave-pen.

As a king, Captain West sits above all. As a captain of soldiers,
Mr. Pike enforces his king's will. Miss West is a princess of the
royal house. And I? Am I not an honourable, noble-lineaged
pensioner on the deeds and achievements of my father, who, in his
day, compelled thousands of the lesser types to the building of the
fortune I enjoy?



CHAPTER XXIII