“Oh, I don’t blame them—not a bit!” said Henninger, suddenly. “It’s all a part of the game. We fellows are against the world at large; we don’t give much mercy and we don’t expect any. Only—well, I don’t know, but when I go up against these people who’ve always had plenty of money, who’ve lived all their lives in a warmed house, all their fat, stuffy lives, afraid of everything they don’t understand, and understanding damned little, and getting no nearer to life than a cabbage,—when I have to listen to those people talking honour and morality, sometimes it sends me off my head. What do they know of it? They haven’t blood enough for anything worse than a little respectable cheating and lying, and they thank God they’ve always had strength to resist temptation. They don’t know what temptation is. Let ’em get out on the ragged edge of things, and get some of the knocks that shuffle a man’s moralities up like a pack of cards. Something that they never tried is to come into a strange town on a rough night, stony broke, and see the lights shining in the windows, and not know any more than a stray dog where you’re going to fill your belly or get out of the rain.
“There are worse things than that, too, for when a man gets down to rock-bottom, he doesn’t have to keep up appearances, and he can drop his dignity temporarily and wait for better days. But when it comes to being broke in a town where you’re known, where you’re trying to put through some business, sleeping at ten-cent hotels and trying to make a square meal out of a banana, and sitting round good hotels for respectability’s sake, and cleaning your collar with a piece of bread,—that’s about as near hell as a man gets in this world, and he comes to feel that he wouldn’t stick at anything to get out of it.”
“I know,” said Elliott, retrospectively.
“Of course, that’s all part of the game, too. If we stuck to the beaten track, there wouldn’t be any of this trouble. But, great heavens! could I settle down at a desk in an office and hope for a raise of ten dollars a month if I was industrious and obliging! Or if I went home,—but I’d suffocate in about ten days. I’ve got caught in this sporting life, and it’s too late to get out of it, and I couldn’t live without it, anyway. But there’s nothing in it—nothing at all. You’ve got a good profession, Elliott, and I give it to you straight, you’ll be wise to go back and work at it, and let this chasing easy money alone. Hawke’s another case. It makes me sorry to see him. He’s bright; he’s got as cold a nerve as I ever saw, and he’s young enough to amount to something yet, but he’s fooling away his life. I expect he made some kind of a smash at home; I don’t know; he’s as dumb as a clam about his affairs,—and so am I generally. As for Sullivan, I don’t care; he’s a fellow that’ll never let anything carry him where he don’t want to go. But if it was any good talking to you and Hawke, I’d tell you to take a fool’s advice and let grafting alone.”
Elliott was at first amazed by this outburst, and then profoundly moved. It was the last thing to be expected from Henninger, but his equilibrium had been completely upset by the scene in the smoking-room, and he had not yet regained it.
“You’re forgetting the Clara McClay. You don’t propose that we give that up, do you?” Elliott remarked.
“I had forgotten it for a moment,” admitted Henninger. “No, we won’t give that up; and I’ll tell you plainly, Elliott, that we’re going to have that bullion if we have to cut throats for it. If this mate gets there first I’ll run him down alone, but I’ll have it. This thing seems like a sort of last chance. I’ve been playing in hard luck for a long time, and I’ve had about as much as I can stand, and this will be cash enough to retire on, if we can get it. Elliott, don’t you see,”—gripping his arm,—“that we’ve simply got to get to that wreck first?”
“We’re all just as keen as you are,” said Elliott. “You won’t find us hanging back.”
“Yes, I know. But you’re younger, and it don’t seem to matter so much as it does to me,” Henninger responded in a tone of some depression, and they made several more rounds of the deck without speaking. At last Henninger approached the companion stairs.
“I think I’ll go down to my bunk,” he said. “It strikes me that I’ve been talking a lot of gallery melodrama to-night, but that affair in the smoking-room rather got on my nerves. Don’t repeat any of all this to the other boys. I’ve given you a lot of better advice than I was ever able to use myself. Good night.”