would
like to discuss this paper with you."

He came and we read it together, fluttering as I had seen it flutter in
his fingers as he read it for'ard to the engineer and to the deck-hand.
George, meanwhile, was lying oblivious to the rhetoric with which it was
plentifully garnished, not to speak of the Latin quotations, taking that
cure of bleeding, which was the fashionable cure of a not-unintelligent
century. It began:--

"THINK HOW MANY WE ARE!--THINK WHAT WE COULD DO! _It isn't either that
we haven't intelligence--if only we were to use it. We don't lack
leaders--we don't lack courage--we don't lack martyrs; All are ready--_"

I stopped reading.

"Why don't you start then?" I asked.

"We have a considerable organisation," he answered.

"You have?" I said. "Why don't you use it then?"

"We're waiting for Jamaica," he answered; "she's almost ready."

"It sounds a pretty good idea to me," I remarked, "from your point of
view. 'From your point of view,' remember, I said; but you mustn't think
that yours is mine--not for one moment--O dear no! On the contrary, my
point of view is that of the Governor of Nassau, or his representative,
quite near by, at Harbour Island, isn't it?"

My pock-marked friend grew a trifle green as I said this.

"We have sails still, remember," I resumed. "George and the lost
gasolene are not everything. Five hours, with anything of a wind, would
bring us to Harbour Island, and--with this paper in my hand it would
be--what do you think yourself?--the gallows?"

My friend grew grave at that, and seemed to be thinking hard inside,
making resolutions the full force of which I didn't understand till
later, but the immediate result of which was a graciousness of manner
which did not entirely deceive me.

"O" he said, "I don't think you quite mean that. You're impulsive--as
when you hit that poor boy down there--"

"Well," I observed, "I'm willing to treat you better than you deserve.
At the same time, you must admit that your manifesto, as I suppose you
would call it, is justified neither by conditions nor by your own best
sense. You yourself are far more English than you are anything else--you
know it; you know how hard it is for white men to live with black men,
and--to tell the truth--all they do for them. The mere smell of negroes
is no more pleasant to you than it is to many other white men.
Englishmen have exiled themselves, for absurdly small salaries, to try
to make life finer