“‘The other sailor agreed with Deshay, who pulled out his knife and sidled toward the hound. If my strength had been equal to it I would have opposed him, but a touch of fever on top of other hardships had left me as weak as a kitten. However, it was unnecessary.
“And then, Doctor, there began a strange and savage spectacle. Dixie was by this time a hide-wrapped skeleton, yet his strength seemed in no way impaired. He was asleep by his master’s side, but at the stealthy approach of Deshay he seemed to slide away—as one drags a rug across a floor. Deshay continued to approach—at an angle—craftily, and still the hound slid away in that peculiar manner, his lustrous brown eyes fastened on the man in an agony of doubt and dread, which seemed to partly paralyze his movements. Deshay began to wheedle, to whine, to talk ‘baby-talk’ of the ‘nice-doggy’ type, and he actually hid the knife as he might if about to murder a man instead of a dog! Such a spectacle, my friend! this gaunt, savage, bloodshot, hairy, human animal, far more of a beast in all effect than the sad-eyed dog who had for days prolonged his worthless life—this bloodthirsty, literally bloodthirsty human hyena, crazed at feeling his wretched life slipping through his weakening grip, slinking along that beach in the bright, dewy morning, talking baby talk to the hound—making a disgusting exhibition of his craven soul, when he might have been waiting for death with the dignity of a gentleman!
“Still he slunk—and the dog slunk before him, his hair bristling less in fear than disgust, certainly not in anger, for of this emotion there was no trace in the quiver of a lip, the echo of a growl, nor in the gleam of the beautiful, lustrous eyes. Rather it was a sense of deepest shame—a shame for his master’s race!
“And then the brute in the man tore through the thin envelope; he screamed like a cat and threw himself at the dog, only to sprawl his length on the sand. He sprang to his feet and ran braying at the animal, who fled down the beach as silently and with the even interval of the man’s own sinister shadow, until Deshay, his strength utterly gone, fell face downward on the sand, screaming obscenities. Ach! never have I seen a thing more disgusting.
“‘Dixie will take care of himself,’ said I to Claud. ‘He will not be caught napping.’
“From that time, Doctor, there began a series of psychological phenomena of which I was more appreciative afterwards. Up to the moment of this shocking outburst of Deshay, Claud had been in all ways subservient, but as he looked upon the contour of this man’s naked soul and saw its hideously dwarfed deformity I observed a peculiar expression on his face. I think that he was feeling Deshay’s shame as if it had been his own—not through any charity, but through sympathy, which is such an entirely different thing. You see, Doctor, Claud was one of those hyper-sensitized natures which reflects an emotion as a still lake reflects its bank: you know the type—that which will listen to a poorly given address with a sense of deepest personal responsibility toward the speaker, or will see some person in a conspicuous place make a fool of himself and fairly writhe with shame—as Dixie had done. And do you know, I think that for the time the sentiments of master and dog toward Deshay were identical; the natures of the two were very similar; and I can say no better thing of Claud than this. They were two gentlemen, Doctor, gentlemen by birth and breed and associations, and they possessed the natural instincts which result from generations of these things.
“Left to himself at just that moment, Claud would, I believe, have attempted to condone Deshay’s behavior and to go to the rescue of his strangled decency, but it seemed to me that the psychological moment had arrived for placing matters in their due proportion. You see, Doctor, I had about concluded that we were all going to die, and I disliked the idea of letting Claud die without the opportunity of redeeming such manhood as he might possess, and with this in mind I reached out and dragged the veil rather roughly from his eyes.
“‘And to think,’ said I, ‘that yonder object should be your master—you, a gentleman and a white man!’
“Claud leaped as if I had lashed him across the face.
“‘What!’ he cried. ‘What—what—what’s that you say?’