w down his hat, and in a moment was away up the nearer plank to
the ship's deck, followed by me. Meanwhile, however, the black, followed
by his pursuer, had reached the wharf, where the negro, stumbling and
still clinging to the rail, was seized by the man who had struck him. In
the short struggle which ensued the plank was pulled away from the
ship's side, and fell just as Wholesome was about to move down it. He
uttered an oath, caught at a loose rope which hung from a yard, tried it
to see if it was fast, went up it hand over hand a few feet, set a foot
on the bulwarks, and swung himself fiercely back across the ship, and
then, with the force thus gained, flew far in air above the wharf, and
dropping lightly on to a pile of hogs-heads, leapt without a word to the
ground, and struck out with easy power at the man he sought, who fell as
if a butcher's mallet had stunned him--fell, and lay as one dead. The
whole action would have been amazing in any man, but to see a Quaker
thus suddenly shed his false skin and come out the true man he was, was
altogether bewildering--the more so for the easy grace with which the
feat was done. Everybody ran forward, while Wholesome stood a strange
picture, his eyes wide open and his pupils dilated, his face flushed and
lips a little apart, showing his set white teeth while he awaited his
foe. Then, as the man rallied and sat up, staring widely, Wholesome ran
forward and looked at him, waving the crowd aside. In a moment, as the
man rose still bewildered, his gaze fell on Wholesome, and, growing
suddenly white, he sat down on a bundle of staves, saying faintly, "Take
him away! Don't let him come near!"

"Coward!" said I: "one might have guessed that."

"There is to him," said Schmidt at my elbow, "some great mortal fear;
the soul is struck."

"Yes," said Wholesome, "the soul is struck. Some one help him"--for the
man had fallen over in something like a fit--and so saying strode away,
thoughtful and disturbed in face, as one who had seen a ghost.

As he entered the counting-house through the group of dignified old
merchants, who had come out to see what it all meant, one of them said,
"Pretty well for a Quaker, friend Richard!"

Wholesome did not seem to hear him, but walked in, drank a glass of wine
which stood on a table, and sat down silently.

"Not the first feat of that kind he has done," said the elder of the
wine-tasters.

"No," said a sea-captain near by. "He boarded the Pe