Captain Clarke studied Sherm’s hand for a minute, then his gaze shifted to his own.
“I doubt if my hand was ever as good looking as Sherm’s,” he said easily. “You have a hand that denotes unusual strength and will power, according to ‘palmology.’ You will have to live up to it.”
But Katy was persistent. “It’s almost exactly like yours, Captain Clarke, only yours isn’t so smooth and has more lines. Don’t you see it’s a square hand with unusually long fingers. The thumbs are shaped just the same, too.”
“You should be an artist, Katy, you are such a close observer,” replied the Captain.
They settled down comfortably for the story. Chicken Little noticed Sherm regarding his own hand rather critically and glancing from it to the Captain’s, who used frequent gestures as he warmed with his talk.
Gertie could not take her eyes from the cruel steel blade of the cutlass. “I wish there were no awful things to kill people with. I don’t believe 189God meant people to kill each other in battle any more than to kill each other when they get mad.”
Captain Clarke smiled at her disturbed look. “That is one of the most terrible questions human beings have ever had to answer, little girl. I thought as you do once, Gertie, before the Civil War broke out. I loathed the histories and pictures of fighting. My schoolmates used to dub me a sissy because I hated the sight of blood. But when President Lincoln called for volunteers to save our country, when I realized that it was a choice between having one great free country with liberty in it for both blacks and whites, or letting our own race and kin leave us in hatred to continue the wickedness of human slavery right at our doors, it didn’t take me long to decide. War and all unnecessary suffering inflicted by human beings upon each other, are hideous. But have you ever thought how much more of such suffering there would be if parents didn’t inflict suffering upon their children to make them control their ugly passions? If our courts didn’t punish people for being cruel to other people? And when it isn’t a child or one or two grown men or women who try to be cruel or unjust, but a whole nation, what then? Surely other nations should come to the rescue of the right, even if it means war. You wouldn’t let a big dog kill a little one without trying to save it, would you, Gertie?”
190Gertie mutely shook her head.
“Neither should Christian nations allow weaker peoples nor any part of their own people to be unjustly treated, when it is in their power to prevent it. ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ will some day be a question every nation must answer as well as every individual.”
“But most of the world’s wars have been to take other nations’ rights away from them, not to protect them,” objected Ernest.