I cannot but marvel at Andy Fay and Mulligan Jacobs. Old and fragile
as they are, it seems impossible that they can endure what they do.
For that matter, I cannot understand why they work at all. I cannot
understand why any of them toil on and obey an order in this freezing
hell of the Horn. Is it because of fear of death that they do not
cease work and bring death to all of us? Or is it because they are
slave-beasts, with a slave-psychology, so used all their lives to
being driven by their masters that it is beyond their mental power to
refuse to obey?
And yet most of them, in a week after we reach Seattle, will be on
board other ships outward bound for the Horn. Margaret says the
reason for this is that sailors forget. Mr. Pike agrees. He says
give them a week in the south-east trades as we run up the Pacific
and they will have forgotten that they have ever been around the
Horn. I wonder. Can they be as stupid as this? Does pain leave no
record with them? Do they fear only the immediate thing? Have they
no horizons wider than a day? Then indeed do they belong where they
are.
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