“So far am I from deciding to place myself in their power that I am resolved to outwit them. I suppose from what we have heard that one of my friends has already become a victim of their cruelty. The other I am resolved to rescue, if he be still living. After that, I hope to find some means of concealment and sustenance on the surface, to which I shall return, until the time come when I shall be able to rejoin the civilisation that you deride, but which offers a peace and security which I am never likely to find among the barbarous cruelties which you esteem so lightly.”
My companion closed her mind from me when I had finished, but only for a short time, and then answered quietly. “I think I understand something of the feeling from which your thoughts had their origin, and at the injustice to myself and to my nation which you have implied I am not angered at all, but I think that our minds have never been so far apart since first I met you.
“There was not a single thought which you showed me which was not either false or foolish, and it is easy to believe that you come of a species which devour each other, though there are few created things so base as to do this, in all the seas that I have known until I came in contact with you.”
I was startled by the unexpectedness of this rebuke, the justice of which I did not easily realise, but my mind was cooled by contact with one which declined to rise to its temperature, and I replied in a somewhat different mood, “I should be sorry to be unfair to your nation, and especially to yourself, from whom I have had nothing but a loyal comradeship which I have done little to merit. I know that my mind was troubled and indignant, though it still seems to me that I had cause for such feelings. But if you think differently, can you not show me in what I have deserved your censure?”
“Yes,” she replied, “I think I can do that very easily, but it is the more interesting to me to observe how entirely the use of your reason ceases when you are moved by anger or fear, or, perhaps, by other feelings, for I can see that the thought that we were about to part was among the disturbances that suspended your capacity to think to any useful purpose.
“First, it is by no means clear that I can return in safety, or at all. How do you know that I have not invaded the Sacred Places, or even that we are not now within them? I think we may be.
“Second, there would, in any case, be no occasion for us to part immediately, should we remain undiscovered. The third sunset is still distant.
“Third, my people have done nothing to cause you to fall into the hands of the Dwellers, which you are still free to avoid if you are able. They have been careful to make a treaty which gives you a measure of protection which you could not otherwise have secured should you be captured. We have explained already that you could not come with us, being physically unfit to endure existence in the only territory we control, or in the waters to which we are native, were we willing to have you, and were we able to remove you from the place that you have chosen to enter.
“Fourth, you are unjust to the Dwellers, and forgetful of things which you have told me of your own kind.
“You have told me that your own race will destroy other creatures without shame, not only for their own food, or safety (in which you would not yourself say that they are wrong) but merely for the pleasure which they derive from inflicting misery upon those who have done them no injury, or for the gratification of curiosity, or in the hope of some material advantage resulting to themselves or their fellows.
“More than this, with an unnatural baseness, they will even accept service from, or make such professions of friendship as will gain the confidence of, other creatures, which they will not then hesitate to betray and murder, as caprice or self-interest may incline them. You have told me that you habitually destroy creatures whose affection and loyalty you have gained, when they become old and infirm, or are injured by accident, readily persuading yourselves that you do these things out of kindness, although you do not desire that you should be dealt with in a similar manner when your own body shall show evidence that its vigour is decreasing.
“You have shown me that you justify these things in your own minds by arguing that you are of such superior nature that the welfare, or existence of all other creatures is of comparative triviality.
“But even though such conduct could be condoned by a demonstration of superiority, or would be consistent therewith, it is difficult to understand by what arguments this asserted superiority could be maintained.
“Is it by your power to cause the deaths of others? Then a disease-germ (as you have yourself admitted) may be greater than you.
“Is it by conduct? But you have shown me that you work violence, fraud, and cruelty among yourselves, and against the creatures around you.
“Is it wisdom? Have you discovered a way of life which is more safe, more leisured, more healthy, more in harmony with your surrounding conditions, than that of the creatures which you despise and destroy? Are their conditions more abject than are those of the disordered and disastrous lives of which you have told me, where you crowd together in disease and dirt, inexplicably separated from the land which supplies you with the food
