An infuriated mob is not given to make nice distinctions, and so long as it has a scapegoat on which to wreak vengeance it does not wait to inquire too particularly into the question of the scapegoat’s innocence or guilt.
Let the object of its wrath be not forthcoming, and let some evil or foolish person raise the cry that this or that luckless passer-by is the offender’s relative or friend, or even that he has been seen coming from the offender’s house, or is of the same nationality, and in nine cases out of ten the mob will “go” for the luckless wight en masse.
I have made a study of that wild beast which we call “a mob”—the one wild beast which civilisation has given us in exchange for the many she has driven away—and knowing something of the creature and its habits, I must confess that I would rather fall into the jaws of the wild beast of the jungle, than into the clutches of the wilder beast of the city and the slum.
One day—one not very distant day—that wild beast will turn and rend its keepers, and when once the thing has tasted human blood it will not be beaten back into its lair with its thirst for blood unglutted.
To be mobbed or lynched in a noble cause and in support of a great principle is not without its compensations, but there is no glory in being subjected to physical violence and personal insult as a scoundrel and a knave.
Worse, however, than the possibility of being mobbed was the certainty of being held up in many quarters as an object for public odium and private scorn, and the more I thought about it the less inclined did I feel to face the consequences of confessing the part which I had played in the recent tragedy. It was upon my own responsibility, I argued, that I had entered upon the enterprise, and so long as I kept within the law it was to myself only that I was responsible for the way in which that enterprise was carried on. That I had failed meant nothing more than that what had happened to those whose business and whose duty it was to have succeeded, had happened also to me; and, after all, I left things no worse than they were when I took the matter up.
Had it been my intention to abandon my quest I should have no choice but to acquaint New Scotland Yard with what had come to my knowledge. But, as a matter of fact, I was more than ever set on bringing the miscreant, Captain Shannon, to justice—and this not merely for the sake of reward, or because of the craving for adventure which had first urged me to the enterprise, but because of the loathing which I entertained for the monster whom I had with my own eyes seen at his hellish work. Hence I was justified, I told myself, in keeping my information to myself, and the more so for the fact that, were I to say all I knew, the particulars would no doubt be made public, and in this way reach the ears of Captain Shannon, thus defeating the very end for which I had made my confession.
Into the questions whether the decision to which I came was right or wrong, and whether the arguments, with which I sought to square my decision with my conscience and my sense of duty, were founded on self-interest and inclination rather than on reason, I will not here enter.
When that decision was once made, I gave no further thought to the rights or wrongs of the matter, but dismissing every such consideration from my mind I concentrated all my energies upon the task of finding Captain Shannon.
And first, I decided to pay a visit to Southend to see if the little brown cutter was still there, and if not, to discover what had become of it.