"Here, here, that won't do," cried Burke, all the maudlin softness out of his face, as he marched upon the group. "Get up, you hound!" he thundered, kicking the nearest man. "Get up, there! And you, too," he added, cuffing another. "Get up and take care of the kid!"
He laid about him furiously for a moment, then his rage oozed out of him and he stood silent and at loss. For the resistance offered him was unlike any he had ever met. The men did not budge; they took the blows like blocks of wood, remaining as they were, without a tremor, their eyes glowing sullenly at the deck between their knees; and the passiveness of that resistance was so monstrously powerful that Burke felt his throat tighten in a rageful, childish impulse to break out weeping.
On a box, a little apart from the crowd, there sat a fat, sleek, pale-yellow personage. He observed the scene through his narrow eyes with the arrogantly skeptical air of the Chino mestizo. His falsetto voice now broke the silence.
"Porque no Usted?" he said, suavely, while his eyes narrowed to a line with a gleam in it. "Why not you?"
Burke opened his mouth, left it open for a good second, then shut it again with a grinding of teeth.
"By God, I'll do it," he muttered, as he turned away.
He went to the boy, made a movement as if to pick him up, hesitated, stood irresolute for a moment, then, with a blinding flash of resolution, such as in the past had carried him off into postures of which others said resounding things and of which he himself was vaguely ashamed, he stooped quickly and whisked up the little body into his arms. He crossed the deck, and as he passed his old army blanket, lying still open on the floor, he picked it up and wrapped it about the boy; then he laid the whole burden down in a sheltered spot against the cabin. A sudden, springy alertness had seized his body, and beneath the pussy alcoholic flesh of his face had sprung tight ropy lines not yet corroded. He tore off the light camisa and pantaloons and began rubbing the stiffened limbs. He rubbed with an energy almost savage, and he felt under his fingers the stark flesh loosen and warm up and live again. The glazed eyes softened, the lids closed slowly, and they reopened with the light of life beneath them.