Here Doctor Bainbridge ceased to speak. Doctor Castleton had entered the
room two or three minutes before, and, keeping silent, had heard the
last three or four hundred words, which described the close of that
brief but terrible combat.




The FIFTEENTH Chapter


"Well," said Doctor Castleton, as Bainbridge closed. "Peters could, when
he was fifty years younger, have done that very thing to any living man
weighing not more than a hundred and eighty or a hundred and ninety
pounds. I myself have seen him throw to the ground a powerful horse, and
the little giant must have been older than sixty at the time. Then
again, he possesses that wonderful instinct of certainty in action which
belongs to purely animal life. It is said that the tiger when it strikes
never misses its aim; and that our American panther makes the most
unusual leaps without ever making an attempt beyond its powers. I have
many times observed that even our comparatively degenerate domestic cat
very rarely indeed, if ever, fails to accomplish the purpose of a
stroke. Peters possesses, or did possess, that instinct."

"Yes," said Bainbridge, "you are right. Peters says that on almost every
vessel he ever shipped on he was called 'the baboon'--because of his
great physical power and agility, he says; but as we know, rather
because of his extremely short stature, his large mouth--in fact, his
resemblance in many striking ways to the gorilla, or the orang-outang;