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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from A Footnote to History by Robert Louis Stevenson: so inglorious as the treachery once contemplated by Becker, the
acceptance of this ultimatum would have been still in the nature of
a disgrace. Brandeis's letter, written by a German, was hard to
swallow. It would have been hard to accept that solution which
Knappe had so recently and so peremptorily refused to his brother
consuls. And he was tempted, on the other hand, by recent changes.
There was no Pelly to support de Coetlogon, who might now be
disregarded. Mullan, Leary's successor, even if he were not
precisely a Hand, was at least no Leary; and even if Mullan should
show fight, Knappe had now three ships and could defy or sink him
without danger. Many small circumstances moved him in the same
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