“‘It seems to me to be plain enough,’ said I. ‘Haven’t you kow-towed and groveled and beat your forehead before that thing, and broken your promise to stop drinking—to whomever you made that promise—for fear of that Kanaka thug out there?’
“Claud stared at me—stared like a baby—with his mouth and his big blue eyes wide open, and while he stared what little blood was left in his wasted body found its way up into his face; at last, it seemed to me, he was ashamed on his own account. While he was staring at me Deshay came up.
“‘Call your cur,’ he growled. I was vexed that he interfered just when he did, as Claud in his weakened state had not yet assimilated the pre-digested idea which I had fed him. I was scarcely normal at the time, Doctor; to my mind, the whole thing mattered very little; it was like one of those nightmares in which one is sub-consciously aware that it is really only a dream and acts with delightful disregard of consequences. I thought of dying as one thinks of waking up, and before waking up I wanted to see Claud kill Deshay. I knew that he could kill him if he wanted to, for all of us had passed the physical limits and were living upon our mentalities, and Claud’s being so much more virile than Deshay’s, he was just that much more alive; yet Deshay was too stupid to discover this, although I think that he must have felt it in a way.
“‘Call your cur!’ he repeated, but this time there was a change in his tone. It reminded me of the voice in which Claud had attempted to assert himself upon that first day aboard the schooner, but in Deshay’s case this irresolution was on his own account; subjective, you see—not objective, like Claud’s.
“I noticed this and began to laugh, and Deshay looked at me sheepishly. It was not a pleasant laugh; one feels sorry, Doctor, for a man who sacrifices his self-respect for the sake of some one else, but one laughs as I did at the man who does so for himself. This was the proportion between Claud and Deshay, and, although I found it amusing, I was nevertheless grievously disappointed when I saw that Deshay was subtle enough to feel his side of the see-saw go down—for, as I have said, I wanted to see Claud kill him before any of us died.
“As it was, Claud simply ignored his demands—and that was a little step toward preponderance. You see, Doctor, the two were dying men; we were all dying men. Deshay’s investment was ultra-physical, and consequently low; Claud’s was psychical, and although he might not last any longer, or as long, for that matter, he was all there as long as he did last; he was either alive or dead, not half-alive, like Deshay—and as the springs of our lives ran low Deshay’s grew muddy, while Claud’s was still clear and cold.
“The following morning Dixie again discovered a nest of eggs. I do not wish to tax your credulity, Doctor, and yet I will ask you to believe that so nearly approached the types of these two gentlemen that the sensibilities predominant in Claud obtained in Dixie to an extent where he, too, felt the fall of Deshay, and when he had found the eggs and we starving wretches shambled up to the cache, Dixie, the fine, thoroughbred, peace-loving aristocrat, stood over his find with bared fangs and flashing eyes and allowed all to approach but Deshay.
“Yet gentlemen do not press these things, these matters of authority, as do your ruffians who have cut a high card in the shuffle of Fate—they accept them as a matter of course—and so neither Claud nor Dixie emphasized this occult change of balance, and as the days passed Deshay, crass fool that he was, lost sight of the fact that he had been relegated with any other dejecta. He would thrust in with surliness rather than ugliness, according to the nature of the low-grade, overthrown bully; but Claud and Dixie ignored him, his two sailors grinned at him, old Lentz blinked at him, and I, the mean average of the lot, laughed at him and explained carefully to him in how very many different sorts of ways he was a fool, neglecting to help him out. This was quite safe, for, although my own mentality is of a fairly low grade, it was still in excess of Deshay’s, and this fact gave me the whip hand. I did not tell him too much, as I still cherished hopes of seeing him killed.
“There came another season of starvation in this epoch of famine and none of us had anything to eat, and it was at this time that Deshay began a systematic stalking of Dixie, who was still a peace-lover and preferred, when nothing of greater value than his own life was at stake, to get out of the way. The dog slept always at his master’s side, and, although the nights were cool to men starved and shelterless, Claud would never draw near the fire, because he wished to avoid the propinquity of Deshay. More than once I had awakened from my light, fitful, fever sleep to see this sneaking wretch creeping stealthily on hands and knees toward the sleeping animal, but with invariable result—Dixie would slip silently away and Deshay would return to the fire, cursing savagely. Often through the day one would see him slyly maneuvering to get within reach of his prey; and as our starvation proceeded, this desire fastened upon his famished brain with the force of an insistent idea, until I really believe that he was impelled less by his hunger than through a sort of dementia. At times he would awake with a sharp cry, spring to his feet and rush at Dixie, who would lope away before him, when Deshay would fall into a paroxysm of rage. At these times Claud would turn away with a shiver of disgust, Lentz would blink rapidly, the two sailors would lie upon their empty bellies and snigger, while I would laugh.
“Yet all of this time Deshay had been encroaching little by little upon Claud’s liberty, for, you see, Doctor, he was one of those unimaginative animals who require a clubbing at certain intervals as a sort of tonic treatment. Claud had utterly ignored him; he had rubbed against the rest of us in little ways and found himself of baser metal, but Claud, like Dixie, had only avoided him, and this avoidance he continued to misinterpret until his confidence returned.