red fire struck, and it's over here now. Shifted about
thirty degrees. Then, I was that way about two hours.

"Where are those dogs? Do they come to you or do you go to them? That
depends. Now, say you had some friends that wanted to do you a good
turn; wanted to straighten you up and make a man of you. They had
ascertained the exact situation of a wonderful treasure buried in an
island of the Pacific. All right. They knew you had some of the
qualities useful for such an expedition--reckless dare-devil, afraid of
nothing--things like that. Understand, my friend? Well, all swore oaths
as long as your leg--as long as your--oh, my! Think of a shark having a
leg! Ha, ha, ha! Long as your leg! Oh, my! Pardon my levity, old man,
but I must laugh. Ha, ha, ha! Oh, my!

"All of you swore--you and the other sharks. No lying; no deceit; no
swindling. First shark that makes a slip is to call the skipper and be
sent adrift with one oar and nothing else. And all, my friend, after
you had pledged your honor to your mother, your God, yourself, and your
friends, to be a true and honorable shark. It isn't the hot sun
broiling you and covering you with bursting blisters, and changing the
marrow of your bones to melted iron and your blood to hissing lava--it
isn't the sun that hurts; and the hunger that gnaws your intestines to
rags, and the thirst that changes your throat into a funnel of hot
brass, and blinding bursts of red fire in your head, and lying dead in
the waist of the boat while the sun steals thirty degrees of time out
the sky, and a million fiery tadpoles darting through the air--none of
them hurts so much as something infinitely deeper and more cruel,--your
broken pledge of honor to your mother, your God, yourself, and your
friends. That is what hurts, my friend.

"It is late, old man, to begin life all over again while you are in the
article of death, and resolve to be good when it is no longer possible
to be bad. But that is our affair, yours and mine; and just at this
time we are not choosing to discuss the utility of goodness. But I
don't like that sneer in your glance. I have only one oar, and I will
cheerfully break it over your wretched head if you come a yard
nearer....

"Aha! Thought I was going over, eh? See; I can stand steady when I try.
But I don't like that sneer in your eyes. You don't believe in the
reformation of the dying, eh? You are a contemptible dog; a low, mean,
outcast dog. You sneer at the decla