By the World Forgot: A Double Romance of the East and West

by Cyrus Townsend Brady

"I have."

"Say, 'sir,'" cried the mate.

He had a piece of rattan in his hand, and he struck Beekman a blow on the arm. The hardest word he ever ejaculated in his life was that "sir" which he threw out between his teeth.

"That's well," said Woywod. "Now, you assaulted me; you've been technically guilty of mutiny, but I'll forgit that. You turn to an' do your work like a man, an' you'll have nothin' to fear from me, but if I catch you sojerin', I'll cut your heart out."

Beekman couldn't trust himself to speak. He stood rooted to his place on the deck until Woywod turned away. It was singular how the environment of a ship turned a fairly decent man ashore into a wolf, a pitiless brute, at sea. Woywod knew no other way to command men. The men with whom he had been thrown knew no other way to be commanded. The mate had completely forgotten his friend's instructions to treat Beekman with unusual consideration. As a matter of fact, Woywod was harder on Beekman in his own heart and in his intentions than on any other man for several reasons.

Beekman had faced him. He had refused to be cowed. He was not even cowed now. Beekman had struck him and almost knocked him down. Beekman was a gentleman. In every look, in every movement, he showed his superiority over, and his contempt for, Woywod. Harnash had arrived at the same social degree as Beekman, but he was careful, because of his old affection, to treat Woywod exactly as he had treated him in days gone by. Woywod knew--he was not without shrewdness--that he was not on Harnash's social level, or even upon an intellectual parity with him, but Harnash never allowed the slightest suggestion of inequality to appear in their intercourse, because he really liked the man. When a man of inferior temper, quality, and character is placed in irresponsible charge of a man who surpasses him in everything, the tendency to tyrannize is almost irresistible. In Woywod's mind, he himself was, somehow, identified with justice and right. He was engaged in serving a woman who, to his perverted apprehension, was to be forced into a marriage with a man she hated, and that man was before him, in his power.

Woywod was not all bad. He was the last exponent of a certain kind of officer; a very bad kind, it must be admitted, but an efficient kind, as well. There were certain rudimentary principles of justice and fair dealing in him, and some of those whom he abused worst realized that, and stood for more from him than they would otherwise; but in the case of Beekman, both justice and fair play were in abeyance for the reasons mentioned. Woywod was determined to break his spirit, and to ride him down, and Beekman sensed that. It was to be a fight between him and the mate from New York to Vladivostok, with every advantage on earth on the side of the mate.

Beekman had as quick a temper as any man living. He had never been forced to control it much. The world had given free passage everywhere to him, backed as he had been by those things before which men bow down. Whether he could control himself, whether he could submit to the end, he did not dare to say. He did not hope that he could, but at least he would give it a fair trial. In his secret heart he prayed that he might control himself, for, if he did not, he was sure he would kill the mate by fair means or foul. He wanted very much to live, if for no other thing than to justify himself in the eyes of Stephanie Maynard, whose present opinion of him he could well imagine.

He had not been the most ardent of lovers. He was not the most ardent of lovers now. It was pride rather than passion that made him crave that opportunity for justifying himself, although he deluded himself with the idea that his heart was fairly breaking on account of her. Indeed, a simple reflection might have convinced him of the falsity of that proposition, because the predominant emotions that mastered him were hatred of Woywod and longing for revenge.

What would have been those emotions if he had known that Woywod was but an instrument in the hands of another, and that other a rival for the affections of his promised wife, and one who had passed as his best friend?