legs, upright, dragging with him, a man in each hand, the helpless
forms of Nancy and the Faun. My heart leapt at beholding this mighty
figure of a man-killer and slave-driver, it is true, but who sprang
first into the teeth of danger so that his slaves might follow, and
who emerged with a half-drowned slave in either hand.

I knew augustness and pride as I gazed--pride that my eyes were blue,
like his; that my skin was blond, like his; that my place was aft
with him, and with the Samurai, in the high place of government and
command. I nearly wept with the chill of pride that was akin to awe
and that tingled and bristled along my spinal column and in my brain.
As for the rest--the weaklings and the rejected, and the dark-
pigmented things, the half-castes, the mongrel-bloods, and the dregs
of long-conquered races--how could they count? My heels were iron as
I gazed on them in their peril and weakness. Lord! Lord! For ten
thousand generations and centuries we had stamped upon their faces
and enslaved them to the toil of our will.

Again the Elsinore rolled to starboard and to port, while the spume
spouted to our lower-yards and a thousand tons of South Atlantic
surged across from rail to rail. And again all were down and under,
with jagged plank and twisted steel overriding them. And again that
amazing blond-skinned giant emerged, on his two legs upstanding, a
broken waif like a rat in either hand. He forced his way through
rushing, waist-high water, deposited his burdens with the carpenter
on the fife-rail, and returned to drag Larry reeling to his feet and
help him to the fife-rail. Out of the wash, Tony, the Greek, crawled
on hands and knees and sank down helplessly at the fife-rail. There
was nothing suicidal now in his mood. Struggle as he would, he could
not lift himself until the mate, gripping his oilskin at the collar,