Gordon Young

“ Why people think it is only a gun that commands the respect of uplifted hands, I do not know. A sober man would have had better sense than Swanson. Thrope, drunk as he was, raised his hands. But Swanson attempted to pull a gun—my gun—from the holster he had fastened on his hip.
He was slow as though untying a knot. I leaned forward to strike—but a streak of steel z-zz-zzzipped past my head. The thirsty point of that flexible blade went into Swanson's throat and pierced through his neck; whence the thin wrists of Yang Li got such driving power I do not know. ”

“ Curwen, rather than let such stigma cling to him had made arrangements for putting him into the world as a foundling.
I did not understand this at all. But it was not my business to understand. I could not see why, since she called herself a Mrs. and acknowledged Helen as a daughter, this brilliant son had not been given a home and name.
But people work out their own lives in their own way, and some of them do not make such mistakes as some of us, catching only furtive and half-revealed glances, think.
For another thing, in our compromise, Thrope agreed to hold no grudge against Whibley. ”

“ Swanson went over backward, his hands clawing at the knife. His head, in falling, struck the bulkhead, and he scarcely moved.
Thrope gasped something about it being me—again.
I told him that neither jails nor Davy Jones' locker seemed able to hold me.
"They hang men for aiding a mutiny," I told him. "The Federal Government—not the tenderloin judges." ”