West Indian Seas with blood, piles his
decks with plunder; approves himself the expertest Seaman, the
daringest Seafighter: but he gains no lasting victory, lasting
victory is not possible for him. Not, had he fleets larger than
the combined British Navy all united with him in bucaniering.
He, once for all, cannot prosper in his duel. He strikes down
his man: yes; but his man, or his man's representative, has no
notion to lie struck down; neither, though slain ten times, will
he keep so lying;--nor has the Universe any notion to keep him so
lying! On the contrary, the Universe and he have, at all
moments, all manner of motives to start up again, and desperately
fight again. Your Napoleon is flung out, at last, to St. Helena;
the latter end of him sternly compensating the beginning. The
Bucanier strikes down a man, a hundred or a million men: but
what profits it? He has one enemy never to be struck down; nay
two enemies: Mankind and the Maker of Men. On the great scale
or on the small, in fighting of men or fighting of difficulties,
I will not embark my venture with Howel Davies: it is not the
Bucanier, it is the Hero only that can gain victory, that can do
more than seem to succeed. These things will deserve meditating;
for they apply to all battle and soldiership, all struggle and
effort whatsoever in this Fight of Life. It is a poor Gospel,
Cash-Gospel or whatever name it have, that does not, with clear
tone, uncontradictable, carrying conviction to all hearts,
forever keep men in mind of these things.

Unhappily, my indomitable friend Plugson of Undershot has, in a
great degree, forgotten them;--as, alas, all the world has; as,
alas, our very Dukes and Soul-Overseers have, whose special trade
it was to remember them! Hence these tears.--Plugson, who has
indomitably spun Cotton merely to gain thousands of pounds, I
have to call as yet a Bucanier and Chactaw; till there come
something better, still more indomitable from him. His hundred
Thousand-pound Notes, if there be nothing other, are to me but as
the hundred Scalps in a Chactaw wigwam. The blind Plugson: he
was a Captain of Industry, born member of the Ultimate genuine
Aristocracy of this Universe, could he have known it! These
thousand men that span and toiled round him, they were a regiment
whom he had enlisted, man by man; to make war on a very genuine
enemy: Bareness of back, and disobedient Cotton-fibre, which
will not, unless f