A solitary passenger, passing at the time in his walk up and down, overhearing, smiled and nodded approval.
The Baleka was steering north by north-west, every eleven or eleven and a half knots that her nose managed to shove through the water that creamed back from her straight stem bringing her an hour nearer England. She was not a mail steamer, or even a regular passenger boat, being one of a private venture embarked in with the object of cheapening freight between England and the South African ports. But besides a full cargo she carried a limited complement of passengers and a quite unlimited ditto of cockroaches; otherwise she was an exceedingly comfortable boat, and combined good catering with a considerable reduction on current rates of passage money by the ordinary lines, all of which was a consideration with those to whom a few days more or less at sea mattered nothing.
The smoking-room amidships was a snug apartment with roomy chairs and well-cushioned lounges. In one corner three or four of the male passengers were hard at work capturing the Transvaal—a form of amusement widely prevailing at that time, although the war had not yet been started; rather should we have omitted the transition qualification, for they had already conquered and annexed the obnoxious republic, and that with surprisingly little loss or difficulty. Then the discussion waxed lively and warm, for the justifiability of the proposed annexation had come up; meanwhile others had dropped in.
“I maintain it would be utterly unjustifiable,” said one. “It’s all very well to urge that it would be for the good of civilisation and numbers, and all that sort of thing, but we can’t do evil that good may come of it. That’s a hard and fast rule.”
“There’s no such thing as a hard and fast rule, or oughtn’t to be,” retorted with some heat he who had borne the main part of the argument; “but if there is, why, ‘the greatest good for the greatest number’ is a fairly safe one. What do you think sir?” turning to a man who was seated in another corner reading, but who had paid no attention to the discussion at all.
“Think? Oh, I don’t know. I haven’t been in that part long enough to have formed an opinion,” was the answer.
“But you don’t agree with our friend there that there should be a hard and fast rule for everything? Surely you are of opinion that every question should be decided on its own merits?”
“Certainly,” replied the other politely, though inwardly bored at being dragged into a crude and threadbare discussion upon a subject in which he felt no interest whatever. “That’s a sound principle all the world over, and a safe one.”
“There you are,” cried the first speaker triumphantly, turning upon his antagonist. “What did I tell you? This gentleman agrees with me entirely, as any sensible man would on such a point as that.”
“We can’t do evil that good may come of it,” reiterated the said antagonist. “That’s a hard and fast rule.”