They were also a religious people, and the
setting out of the pirate fleet at the festivals of Easter and
Christmas was attended by ecclesiastical ceremony. Then they
scoured the high seas, captured argosies, murdered the crews
--their only weapons were hatchets and daggers and arquebuses
--landed on undefended shores, ravaged villages and carried off
comely maidens to replenish their stock of womenkind at home.
They must have been a live lot of people."
"What a second-hand old brigand you are," cried Pasquale, who
during my speech had been examining the carpet by the side of his
chair.
I laughed. "Hasn't a phase of the duality of our nature ever
struck you? We have a primary or everyday nature--a thing of
habit, tradition, circumstance; and we also have a secondary
nature which clamours for various sensations and is quite
contented with vicarious gratification. There are delicately
fibred novelists who satisfy a sort of secondary Berserkism by
writing books whose pages reek with bloodshed. The most placid,
benevolent, gold-spectacled paterfamilias I know, a man who
thinks it cruel to eat live oysters, has a curious passion for
crime and gratifies it by turning his study into a _musee
maccabre_ of murderers' relics.
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