His steel-hard eyes gave no hint of the Arcadia
they had inhabited so eagerly a short twenty-four hours before. The
intoxicating madness he had known was chained deep within him. Once more he
had a grip on himself; was sheathed in a cannonproof plate armor of
selfishness. No more magic nights of starshine, breathing fire and dew; no
more lifted moments of exaltation stinging him to a pulsating wonder at
life's wild delight. He was again the inexorable driver of men, with no
pity for their weaknesses any more than for his own.
The men whom he found waiting for him at his rooms were all young
Westerners picked out by him because he thought them courageous,
unscrupulous and loyal. Like him, they were privateers in the seas of
commerce, and sailed under no flag except the one of insurrection he had
floated. But all of them, though they were associated with him and hoped to
ride to fortune on the wave that carried him there, recognized themselves
as subordinates in the enterprises he undertook. They were merely heads of
departments, and they took orders like trusted clerks with whom the owner
sometimes unbends and advises.
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