What Michael did know was that Del Mar had no pedigree and was a scrub as compared with thoroughbreds such as Steward, Captain Kellar, and Mister Haggin of Meringe.  And he learned it swiftly and simply.  In the day-time, fetched by a steward, Michael would be brought on deck to Del Mar, who was always surrounded by effusive young ladies and matrons who lavished caresses and endearments upon Michael.  This he stood, although much bored; but what irked him almost beyond standing were the feigned caresses and endearments Del Mar lavished on him.  He knew the cold-blooded insincerity of them, for, at night, when he was brought to Del Mar’s room, he heard only the cold brittle tones, sensed only the threat and the menace of the other’s personality, felt, when touched by the other’s hand, only a stiffness and sharpness of contact that was like to so much steel or wood in so far as all subtle tenderness of heart and spirit was absent.

This man was two-faced, two-mannered.  No thoroughbred was anything but single-faced and single-mannered.  A thoroughbred, hot-blooded as it might be, was always sincere.  But in this scrub was no sincerity, only a positive insincerity.  A thoroughbred had passion, because of its hot blood; but this scrub had no passion.  Its blood was cold as its deliberateness, and it did nothing save deliberately.  These things he did not think.  He merely realized them, as any creature realizes itself in liking and in not liking.

To cap it all, the last night on board, Michael lost his thoroughbred temper with this man who had no temper.  It came to a fight.  And Michael had no chance.  He raged royally and fought royally, leaping to the attack, after being knocked over twice by open-handed blows under his ear.  Quick as Michael was, slashing South Sea niggers by virtue of his quickness and cleverness, he could not touch his teeth to the flesh of this man, who had been trained for six years with animals by Harris Collins.  So that, when he leaped, open-mouthed, for the bite, Del Mar’s right hand shot out, gripped his under-jaw as he was in the air, and flipped him over in a somersaulting fall to the floor on his back.  Once again he leapt open-mouthed to the attack, and was filliped to the floor so hard that almost the last particle of breath was knocked out of him.  The next leap was nearly his last.  He was clutched by the throat.  Two thumbs pressed into his neck on either side of the windpipe directly on the carotid arteries, shutting off the blood to his brain and giving him most exquisite agony, at the same time rendering him unconscious far more swiftly than the swiftest anaesthetic.  Darkness thrust itself upon him; and, quivering on the floor, glimmeringly he came back to the light of the room and to the man who was casually touching a match to a cigarette and cautiously keeping an observant eye on him.

“Come on,” Del Mar challenged.  “I know your kind.  You can’t get my goat, and maybe I can’t get yours entirely, but I can keep you under my thumb to work for me.  Come on, you!”