doctor, for the likes of you
and me. Haven't you never turned and asked yourself what the devil you
were doin' here? And that reminds me.... There was a line we used to
have drummed into us at school--it's often come back to me since.
COELUM, NON ANIMUM, MUTANT, QUI TRANS MARE CURRUNT. In our green days
we gabbled that off by rote; then, it seemed just one more o' the
eel-sleek phrases the classics are full of. Now, I take off my hat to
the man who wrote it. He knew what he was talkin' about--by the Lord
Harry, he did!"

The Latin had come out tentatively, with an odd, unused intonation.
Mahony's retort: "How on earth do you know what suits me and what
doesn't?" died on his lips. He was surprised into silence. There had
been nothing in the other's speech to show that he was a man of any
education--rather the reverse.

Meanwhile Tangye went on: "I grant you it's an antiquated point o'
view; but doesn't that go to prove what I've been sayin'; that you and
me are old-fashioned, too--out-o'-place here, out-o'-date? The modern
sort, the sort that gets on in this country, is a prime hand at cuttin'
his coat to suit his cloth; for all that the stop-at-homes, like the
writer o' that line and other ancients, prate about the Ethiopian's
hide or the leopard and his spots. They didn't buy their experience
dear, like we did; didn't guess that if a man DON'T learn to fit
himself in, when he gets set down in such a land as this, he's a goner;
any more'n they knew that most o' those who hold out here--all of 'em
at any rate who've climbed the ladder, nabbed the plunder--have found
no more difficulty in changin' their spots than they have their
trousers. Yes, doctor, there's only one breed that flourishes, and you
don't need me to tell you which it is. Here they lie"--and he nodded to
right and left of him--"dreamin' o' their money-bags, and their
dividends, and their profits, and how they'll diddle and swindle one
another afresh, soon as the sun gets up to-morrow. Harder 'n nails they
are, and sharp as needles. You ask me why I do my walkin' out in the
night-time? It's so's to avoid the sight o' their mean little eyes, and
their greedy, graspin' faces."

Mahony's murmured disclaimer fell on deaf ears. Like one who had been
bottled up for months, Tangye flowed on. "What a life! What a set! What
a place to end one's days in! Remember, if you can, the yarns that were
spun round it for our benefit, from twenty thousand safe miles away.