Boon Island - Kenneth Roberts [120]
"Well, I'm glad to hear it," Captain Dean said, "but there are two or three other little things that your consciences will have to consider before we admit you to our society. In the first place, you have to give us your word that you'll pick oakum for thatching the tent."
"You have my word," Langman said.
"Now I'll have to have White's word," the captain said, "and Mellen's."
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Both White and Mellen spoke up quickly. They'd pick oakum.
Captain Dean seemed pleased. "There are two other things," he said. "One is the matter of Sunday. It's of small moment to me what day of the week a man worships his God, but if he arbitrarily picks a Sunday that differs from the one we celebrate, he creates unrest, and we have all the unrest we need without creating more. Your Sunday, Langman, is an irritation. If you eat meat with the rest of us in spite of your yesterday's conscience, you can persuade your conscience to accept our Sunday, too."
"All right," Langman said. "But tomorrow's Sunday just the same."
"Then you won't want any meat," Captain Dean said.
"Just a minute," Langman said. "I didn't say I wouldn't worship on the day you do."
"For God's sake," Saver said. "Stop talking. Give us our meat!"
The captain looked as genial as a dirty, tired, whiskered man could look. "Now you know how we felt, Saver," he said, "when you and Graystock just lay there and let the rest of us do your work for you."
He turned back to Langman. "You had your chance yesterday. You were offered a fair share of all we had, and with no strings attached. But you made a show of yourself by refusing to take what we offered. You weren't honest about it. So if we give you meat now, you'll have to pay a penalty for past dishonesty: you'll have to be honest with usif you can regard that as a penalty, which I don't."
Langman was indignant. "I've always been honest! Didn't I divide that seagull with you?"
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"That's physical honesty," Captain Dean said. "Almost everyone is physically honest. I'm talking about mental honesty. Most of the men in this tent are both physically and mentally honest. I think even Mellen and White are mentally honest. They're just indebted to you, and so they accept the things you tell 'em as being true, which they aren't."
"I don't know what you're talking about," Langman said.
"If you don't, you're weak-minded," Captain Dean said, "and that's the last thing I'd accuse you of. You said repeatedly I ran the ship ashore purposely, and that's the stupidest, silliest piece of mental dishonesty I ever heard."
Langman widened his eyes at the captain. "If that's all that's bothering you," he said, "I'll trade my opinion for the same amount of meat that everyone else gets."
"That is to say," Captain Dean said, "you give me your word you won't repeat that outrageous lie, ever again."
"Why, of course," Langman said, all mealy-mouthed.
The captain pulled aside the tent-flap and went out into the snow.
Langman looked around at the rest of us with his lip lifted in that sardonic smile of his. I thought I knew the meaning of that offensive smile.
Unless I misjudged Langman, no promise of his was worth anything at all. No matter what he promised, he'd make a mental reservation that would free his twisted mind of the need to carry out his promise.
Even if he were somehow prevented from making a mental reservation, that devious brain would invent a loophole that would release him from his obligation.
Statesmen, often, are like that, and so are men of busi-
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nesswhich may explain why the English guard themselves so carefully against men of business as well as against some statesmenusually the wrong ones.
I think the captain, having brought Langman around to his way of thinking by a sort of justified blackmail, tried