'What excuse can he
give for such a piece of wanton cruelty?'
'I assure you his skin and oil are very valuable.'
'Pish!--Was he thinking of skin and oil when he pulled the trigger?
or merely obeying the fleshly lust of destructiveness--the puppet of
two bumps on the back of his head?'
'My dear Claude, man is the microcosm; and as the highest animal, the
ideal type of the mammalia, he, like all true types, comprises in
himself the attributes of all lower species. Therefore he must have
a tiger-vein in him, my dear Claude, as well as a beaver-vein and a
spider-vein; and no more shame to him. You are a butterfly; that
good fellow a beast of prey; both may have their own work to do in
this age just as they had in the old ones; and if you do not like
that explanation, all I can say is, I can sympathise with you and
with him too. Homo sum--humani nihil a me alienum puto. Trim the
boat, lads, or the seal will swamp us, and, like Samson, slay more in
his death than ever he slew in his life.'
We slipped on homeward. The cliff-wall of Lundy stood out blacker
and blacker every moment against the gay western sky; greens, greys,
and purples, dyeing together into one deep rich monotone, for which
our narrow colour-vocabulary has no word; and threw a long cold
shadow towards us across the golden sea; suddenly above its dark
ridge a wild wreath of low rack caught the rays of the setting sun,
and flamed up like a volcano towards the dun and purple canopy of
upper clouds.
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