remaining ninety per cent, of the slaves that toil for us are brunettes.
They will not perish. According to Woodruff, they will inherit the
earth, not because of their capacity for mastery and government, but
because of their skin-pigmentation which enables their tissues to resist
the ravages of the sun.

And I look at the four of us at table--Captain West, his daughter, Mr.
Pike, and myself--all fair-skinned, blue-eyed, and perishing, yet
mastering and commanding, like our fathers before us, to the end of our
type on the earth. Ah, well, ours is a lordly history, and though we may
be doomed to pass, in our time we shall have trod on the faces of all
peoples, disciplined them to obedience, taught them government, and dwelt
in the palaces we have compelled them by the weight of our own right arms
to build for us.

The _Elsinore_ depicts this in miniature. The best of the food and all
spacious and beautiful accommodation is ours. For'ard is a pig-sty and a
slave-pen.

As a king, Captain West sits above all. As a captain of soldiers, Mr.
Pike enforces his king's will. Miss West is a princess of the royal
house. And I? Am I not an honourable, noble-lineaged pensioner on the
deeds and achievements of my father, who, in his day, compelled thousands
of the lesser types to the building of the fortune I enjoy?

CHAPTER XXIII

The north-west trade carried us almost into the south-east trade, and
then left us for several days to roll and swelter in the doldrums.

During this time I have discovered that I have a genius for
rifle-shooting. Mr. Pike swore I must have had long practice; and I
confess I was myself startled by the ease of the thing. Of course, it's
the knack; but one must be so made, I suppose, in order to be able to
acquire the knack.

By the end of half an hour, standing on the heaving deck and shooting at
bottles floating on the rolling swell, I found that I broke each bottle
at the first shot. The supply of empty bottles giving out, Mr. Pike was
so interested that he had the carpenter saw me a lot of small square
blocks of hard wood. These were more satisfactory. A well-aimed shot
threw them out of the water and spinning into the air, and I could use a
single block until it had drifted out of range. In an hour's time I
could, shooting quickly and at short range, empty my magazine at a block
and hit it nine times, and, on occasion, ten times, out of eleven.

I might not have judged my