So he talked that day and the next until, from thoughts of the loss of the Lascar, we had drifted far into wider and more perilous speculations. The American held to his canon. War was often better than peace, and open massacre than corrupt tranquillity. We wanted some of the robust spirit of the Middle Ages in these our piping days. The talk turned on the persecution of the Jews in Russia. The American defended it--a stern people was purging itself of an alien element which, like an interminate tapeworm, had been preying on its vitals. The remedy was drastic but necessary; life was lost, but also life was saved. Then coming to closer quarters we talked of murder. The American held to the doctrine of Sterne. It was a hard case that the laws of the modern world should not have made any manner of difference between murdering an honest man and only executing a scoundrel. These things should always be rated ad valorem. As for blood spilled in self-defense, it was folly to talk of it as crime. Even the laws of my own effeminate land justified the man who struck down the arm that was raised to kill him; and the mind that reckoned such an act as an offense was morbid and diseased. Such opinions were repugnant to me, and I tried to resist them. There was a sanctity about human life which no man should dare to outrage. God gave it, and only God should take it away. As for the government of the world, let it be for better or for worse, it was in God's hands, and God required the help of no man. My resistance was useless. The American held to his doctrine; it was good to take life in a good cause, and if it was good for the nation, it was good for the individual man. The end was all. I fenced these statements with what force I could command, and I knew not how strongly my adversary had assailed me. Now, I know too well that his opinions sank deep into my soul. Only too well I know it now--now that-- We arrived at Gibraltar the following morning, and going up on deck in the empty void of air that follows on the sudden stopping of a ship's engines, I found the American, amid a group of swarthy Gibraltarians, bargaining for a boat to take him to the Mole. It turned out that he was going to Morocco also, and we hired a boat together. The morning was clear and cold; the great broad rock looked whiter and starker and more like a gigantic oyster-shell than ever against the blue of the sky. There would be no steamer for Tangier until the following day, and we were to put up at the Spanish hotel called the Calpe.