Hook trod the deck in thought. O man unfathomable. It was his hour of
triumph. Peter had been removed for ever from his path, and all the
other boys were in the brig, about to walk the plank. It was his
grimmest deed since the days when he had brought Barbecue to heel; and
knowing as we do how vain a tabernacle is man, could we be surprised
had he now paced the deck unsteadily, bellied out by the winds of his
success?
But there was no elation in his gait, which kept pace with the action
of his sombre mind. Hook was profoundly dejected.
He was often thus when communing with himself on board ship in the
quietude of the night. It was because he was so terribly alone. This
inscrutable man never felt more alone than when surrounded by his dogs.
They were socially inferior to him.
Hook was not his true name. To reveal who he really was would even at
this date set the country in a blaze; but as those who read between the
lines must already have guessed, he had been at a famous public school;
and its traditions still clung to him like garments, with which indeed
they are largely concerned. Thus it was offensive to him even now to
board a ship in the same dress in which he grappled her, and he still
adhered in his walk to the school s distinguished slouch. But above all
he retained the passion for good form.
Good form! However much he may have degenerated, he still knew that
this is all that really matters.
From far within him he heard a creaking as of rusty portals, and
through them came a stern tap-tap-tap, like hammering in the night when
one cannot sleep. Have you been good form to-day? was their eternal
question.
Fame, fame, that glittering bauble, it is mine, he cried.
Is it quite good form to be distinguished at anything? the tap-tap
from his school replied.
I am the only man whom Barbecue feared, he urged, and Flint feared
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