f jagged plank and twisted steel rods advertised
that the bridge was turning over and over. I wondered what men were
beneath it and what mauling they were receiving.

And yet these men did not count. I was aware of anxiety only for Mr.
Pike. He, in a way, socially, was of my caste and class. He and I
belonged aft in the high place; ate at the same table. I was acutely
desirous that he should not be hurt or killed. The rest did not matter.
They were not of my world. I imagine the old-time skippers, on the
middle passage, felt much the same toward their slave-cargoes in the
fetid 'tween decks.

The _Elsinore's_ bow tilted skyward while her stern fell into a foaming
valley. Not a man had gained his feet. Bridge and men swept back toward
me and fetched up against the mizzen-shrouds. And then that prodigious,
incredible old man appeared out of the water, on his two 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 reel