I flung myself to my feet, full of fury ... then something went in my brain like the click of a camera-shutter ... I had an hallucination of Uncle Landon, coming at me with a club....
I plumped into a corner, crouching. "Don't hit me any more ... please don't, Uncle Lan!"
"He's gone crazy!"
"Naw, he's only a bloody, bleedin' coward," returned another voice, in surprise and disgust.
Someone spat on me. I was let up at last.... I staggered forward to my bunk. My book had been handed back to me. It's a wonder I didn't throw myself into the sea, in disgust over the queer fit that had come over me. I lay half the night, puzzling ... was I a coward?
Not unless an unparalleled change had occurred in me. I had fought with other children, when a boy ... had whipped two lads at once, when working in the Composite factory, that time they spit into my book.
One day a fishing-junk hove into sight, just as if it had sailed out of a Maxfield Parrish illustration,—swinging there in the mouth of a blood-red sunset ... then, like magic, appeared another and another and another....
"Fishing-junks," ejaculated the mate, "—pretty far out, too, but a Chink'll risk his life for a few bleedin' cash ... and yet he won't fight at all ... an' if you do him an injury he's like as not likely to up an' commit suicide at your door, to get even!"
"That's a bally orful way to get even with a henemy!" exclaimed a stoker, who sat on the edge of the forward hatch.