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“Saxtorph waited a while to make sure, and then came down on deck. He and I were all that were left of the DUCHESS’S complement, and I was pretty well to the bad, while he was helpless now that the shooting was over. Under my direction he washed out my scalp wounds and sewed them up. A big drink of whiskey braced me to make an effort to get out. There was nothing else to do. All the rest were dead. We tried to get up sail, Saxtorph hoisting and I holding the turn. He was once more the stupid lubber. He couldn’t hoist worth a cent, and when I fell in a faint, it looked all up with us.

“When I came to, Saxtorph was sitting helplessly on the rail, waiting to ask me what he should do. I told him to overhaul the wounded and see if there were any able to crawl. He gathered together six. One, I remember, had a broken leg; but Saxtorph said his arms were all right. I lay in the shade, brushing the flies off and directing operations, while Saxtorph bossed his hospital gang. I’ll be blessed if he didn’t make those poor niggers heave at every rope on the pin-rails before he found the halyards. One of them let go the rope in the midst of the hoisting and slipped down to the deck dead; but Saxtorph hammered the others and made them stick by the job. When the fore and main were up, I told him to knock the shackle out of the anchor chain and let her go. I had had myself helped aft to the wheel, where I was going to make a shift at steering. I can’t guess how he did it, but instead of knocking the shackle out, down went the second anchor, and there we were doubly moored.

“In the end he managed to knock both shackles out and raise the staysail and jib, and the Duchess filled away for the entrance. Our decks were a spectacle. Dead and dying niggers were everywhere. They were wedged away some of them in the most inconceivable places. The cabin was full of them where they had crawled off the deck and cashed in. I put Saxtorph and his graveyard gang to work heaving them overside, and over they went, the living and the dead. The sharks had fat pickings that day. Of course our four murdered sailors went the same way. Their heads, however, we put in a sack with weights, so that by no chance should they drift on the beach and fall into the hands of the niggers.

“Our five prisoners I decided to use as crew, but they decided otherwise. They watched their opportunity and went over the side. Saxtorph got two in mid-air with his revolver, and would have shot the other three in the water if I hadn’t stopped him. I was sick of the slaughter, you see, and besides, they’d helped work the schooner out. But it was mercy thrown away, for the sharks got the three of them.

“I had brain fever or something after we got clear of the land. Anyway, the DUCHESS lay hove to for three weeks, when I pulled myself together and we jogged on with her to Sydney. Anyway those niggers of Malu learned the everlasting lesson that it is not good to monkey with a white man. In their case, Saxtorph was certainly inevitable.”

Charley Roberts emitted a long whistle and said:

“Well I should say so. But whatever became of Saxtorph?”

“He drifted into seal hunting and became a crackerjack. For six years he was high line of both the Victoria and San Francisco fleets. The seventh year his schooner was seized in Bering Sea by a Russian cruiser, and all hands, so the talk went, were slammed into the Siberian salt mines. At least I’ve never heard of him since.”

“Farming the world,” Roberts muttered. “Farming the world. Well here’s to them. Somebody’s got to do it–farm the world, I mean.”

Captain Woodward rubbed the criss-crosses on his bald head.

“I’ve done my share of it,” he said. “Forty years now. This will be my last trip. Then I’m going home to stay.”

“I’ll wager the wine you don’t,” Roberts challenged. “You’ll die in the harness, not at home.”

Captain Woodward promptly accepted the bet, but personally I think Charley Roberts has the best of it.

THE END.
The Inevitable White Man, a short story by Jack London