Brack smiled down upon him. And his smile was the same as he had bestowed upon me; Garvin, too, was a thing to play with.
“Well, I don’t know, Garvin,” he replied. “I promised Black Sam the same thing. I think I shall give him drink before you. He said he’d kill you if you got a drink before him.”
The pugilist stared stupidly while the significance of these words seeped into his sodden brain. A weird smile distorted one side of his face.
“He—” pointing to the negro—“said he’d do that to me?” Thumping his chest he roared: “Kill me! Bill Garvin? Sa-a-ay!”
He lurched over to where the negro stood. At first he seemed undecided what to do. Then he suddenly reached forward and caught the black’s head in chancery, and bent furiously over it. There came a horrible growl from Garvin’s throat, a piercing scream from the negro. Garvin had bitten deeply into the black’s ear.
I started back from the rail, every sense revolting, and found Brack studying me, the smile with which he favored me fixed on his lips.
“So? The stomach is not strong enough, Mr. Pitt? You feel a faintness. Yes; I have even seen delicate ladies lose consciousness under similar circumstances.”
“I do not lose consciousness,”’ I replied, drawing a chair up to the railing and seating myself, “but at the same time I fail to see what amusement a civilized man can find in this spectacle.”
“So? You can not see that, Mr. Pitt? If it would not be rude I would say that it is the truly civilized man, so highly civilized that he is not troubled by sentimentality or humanitarian motives, who can appreciate spectacles of this nature. The scientific type of mind is the ultimate product of civilization, is it not, Mr. Pitt? Well, it is only the scientist who can view properly the bare, crawling thing called Life.”
“Rot, rot, rot!” interrupted Chanler, each word punctuated with a rap of his cane on the deck. “Put on your show, Brack. Hope that wasn’t all you dragged me out here for?”