"What d'you mean?" he asked vacantly. "Here's my knife."
He drew it and showed it to Slade, the flat blade displayed in his palm.
The white-haired seaman thrust his keen old face toward Conroy's, so that the other could see the flash of the white of his eyes.
"And he kicked you, didn't he?" said Slade tensely. "You fool!"
He struck the knife to the deck, where it rattled and slid toward the scupper.
"Eh?" Conroy gaped, not understanding. "I don't see what——"
"Pick it up!" said Slade, with a gesture toward the knife. He spoke, as though he strangled an impulse to brandish his fists and scream, in a nasal whisper. "It's safe to kick you," he said. "A woman could do it."
"But——" Conroy flustered vaguely.
Slade drove him off with a wave of his arm and turned away with the abruptness of a man disgusted beyond bearing.
Conroy stared after him and saw him pick up his broom where he had dropped it and join the others. His intelligence limped; his thrashing had stunned him, and he could not think—he could only feel, like fire in his mind, the passion of the feeble soul resenting injustice and pain which it cannot resist or avenge. He stooped to pick up his knife and went forward to the tub under the head-pump, to wash his cuts in cold sea-water, the cheap balm for so many wrongs of cheap humanity.