"
"This is a very serious matter, Small," said the detective. "If
you had helped justice, instead of thwarting it in this way, you
would have had a better chance at your trial."
"Justice!" snarled the ex-convict. "A pretty justice! Whose
loot is this, if it is not ours? Where is the justice that I
should give it up to those who have never earned it? Look how I
have earned it! Twenty long years in that fever-ridden swamp,
all day at work under the mangrove-tree, all night chained up in
the filthy convict-huts, bitten by mosquitoes, racked with ague,
bullied by every cursed black-faced policeman who loved to take
it out of a white man. That was how I earned the Agra treasure;
and you talk to me of justice because I cannot bear to feel that
I have paid this price only that another may enjoy it! I would
rather swing a score of times, or have one of Tonga's darts in my
hide, than live in a convict's cell and feel that another man is
at his ease in a palace with the money that should be mine."
Small had dropped his mask of stoicism, and all this came out in
a wild whirl of words, while his eyes blazed, and the handcuffs
clanked together with the impassioned movement of his hands.
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