"
And then I got a sample of Mulligan Jacobs. The venom of hatred I
had already seen in his face was as nothing compared with what now
was manifested. I had a feeling that, like stroking a cat in cold
weather, did I touch his face it would crackle electric sparks.
"Aw, go to hell, you old stiff," said Mulligan Jacobs.
If ever I had seen murder in a man s eyes, I saw it then in the
mate's. He lunged into the room, his arm tensed to strike, the hand
not open but clenched. One stroke of that bear's paw and Mulligan
Jacobs and all the poisonous flame of him would have been quenched in
the everlasting darkness. But he was unafraid. Like a cornered rat,
like a rattlesnake on the trail, unflinching, sneering, snarling, he
faced the irate giant. More than that. He even thrust his face
forward on its twisted neck to meet the blow.
It was too much for Mr. Pike; it was too impossible to strike that
frail, crippled, repulsive thing.
"It's me that can call you the stiff," said Mulligan Jacobs. "I
ain't no Larry. G'wan an' hit me.
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