I told him.
"The interesting thing about the Uscoques," I added, "is that they were a Co-operative Pirate Society of the sixteenth century, in which priests and monks and greengrocers and women and children--the general public, in fact, of Senga--took shares and were paid dividends.

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.