By the following morning the storm had blown itself quite out and the_Ghost_ was rolling slightly on a calm sea without a breath of wind.Occasional light airs were felt, however, and Wolf Larsen patrolled thepoop constantly, his eyes ever searching the sea to the north-eastward,from which direction the great trade-wind must blow.

The men were all on deck and busy preparing their various boats for theseason’s hunting. There are seven boats aboard, the captain’s dingey,and the six which the hunters will use. Three, a hunter, a boat-puller,and a boat-steerer, compose a boat’s crew. On board the schooner theboat-pullers and steerers are the crew. The hunters, too, are supposedto be in command of the watches, subject, always, to the orders of WolfLarsen.

All this, and more, I have learned. The _Ghost_ is considered thefastest schooner in both the San Francisco and Victoria fleets. In fact,she was once a private yacht, and was built for speed. Her lines andfittings—though I know nothing about such things—speak for themselves.Johnson was telling me about her in a short chat I had with him duringyesterday’s second dog-watch. He spoke enthusiastically, with the lovefor a fine craft such as some men feel for horses. He is greatlydisgusted with the outlook, and I am given to understand that Wolf Larsenbears a very unsavoury reputation among the sealing captains. It was the_Ghost_ herself that lured Johnson into signing for the voyage, but he isalready beginning to repent.

As he told me, the _Ghost_ is an eighty-ton schooner of a remarkably finemodel. Her beam, or width, is twenty-three feet, and her length a littleover ninety feet. A lead keel of fabulous but unknown weight makes hervery stable, while she carries an immense spread of canvas. From thedeck to the truck of the maintopmast is something over a hundred feet,while the foremast with its topmast is eight or ten feet shorter. I amgiving these details so that the size of this little floating world whichholds twenty-two men may be appreciated. It is a very little world, amote, a speck, and I marvel that men should dare to venture the sea on acontrivance so small and fragile.

Wolf Larsen has, also, a reputation for reckless carrying on of sail. Ioverheard Henderson and another of the hunters, Standish, a Californian,talking about it. Two years ago he dismasted the _Ghost_ in a gale onBering Sea, whereupon the present masts were put in, which are strongerand heavier in every way. He is said to have remarked, when he put themin, that he preferred turning her over to losing the sticks.

Every man aboard, with the exception of Johansen, who is rather overcomeby his promotion, seems to have an excuse for having sailed on the_Ghost_. Half the men forward are deep-water sailors, and their excuseis that they did not know anything about her or her captain. And thosewho do know, whisper that the hunters, while excellent shots, were sonotorious for their quarrelsome and rascally proclivities that they couldnot sign on any decent schooner.

I have made the acquaintance of another one of the crew,—Louis he iscalled, a rotund and jovial-faced Nova Scotia Irishman, and a verysociable fellow, prone to talk as long as he can find a listener. In theafternoon, while the cook was below asleep and I was peeling theeverlasting potatoes, Louis dropped into the galley for a “yarn.” Hisexcuse for being aboard was that he was drunk when he signed. He assuredme again and again that it was the last thing in the world he would dreamof doing in a sober moment. It seems that he has been seal-huntingregularly each season for a dozen years, and is accounted one of the twoor three very best boat-steerers in both fleets.

“Ah, my boy,” he shook his head ominously at me, “’tis the worst schoonerye could iv selected, nor were ye drunk at the time as was I. ’Tissealin’ is the sailor’s paradise—on other ships than this. The mate wasthe first, but mark me words, there’ll be more dead men before the tripis done with. Hist, now, between you an’ meself and the stanchion there,this Wolf Larsen is a regular devil, an’ the _Ghost’ll_ be a hell-shiplike she’s always ben since he had hold iv her. Don’t I know? Don’t Iknow? Don’t I remember him in Hakodate two years gone, when he had a rowan’ shot four iv his men? Wasn’t I a-layin’ on the _Emma L._, not threehundred yards away? An’ there was a man the same year he killed with ablow iv his fist. Yes, sir, killed ’im dead-oh. His head must ivsmashed like an eggshell. An’ wasn’t there the Governor of Kura Island,an’ the Chief iv Police, Japanese gentlemen, sir, an’ didn’t they comeaboard the _Ghost_ as his guests, a-bringin’ their wives along—wee an’pretty little bits of things like you see ’em painted on fans. An’ as hewas a-gettin’ under way, didn’t the fond husbands get left astern-like intheir sampan, as it might be by accident? An’ wasn’t it a week laterthat the poor little ladies was put ashore on the other side of theisland, with nothin’ before ’em but to walk home acrost the mountains ontheir weeny-teeny little straw sandals which wouldn’t hang together amile? Don’t I know? ’Tis the beast he is, this Wolf Larsen—the greatbig beast mentioned iv in Revelation; an’ no good end will he ever cometo. But I’ve said nothin’ to ye, mind ye. I’ve whispered never a word;for old fat Louis’ll live the voyage out if the last mother’s son of yezgo to the fishes.”

“Wolf Larsen!” he snorted a moment later. “Listen to the word, will ye!Wolf—’tis what he is. He’s not black-hearted like some men. ’Tis noheart he has at all. Wolf, just wolf, ’tis what he is. D’ye wonder he’swell named?”

“But if he is so well-known for what he is,” I queried, “how is it thathe can get men to ship with him?”

“An’ how is it ye can get men to do anything on God’s earth an’ sea?”Louis demanded with Celtic fire. “How d’ye find me aboard if ’twasn’tthat I was drunk as a pig when I put me name down? There’s them thatcan’t sail with better men, like the hunters, and them that don’t know,like the poor devils of wind-jammers for’ard there. But they’ll come toit, they’ll come to it, an’ be sorry the day they was born. I could weepfor the poor creatures, did I but forget poor old fat Louis and thetroubles before him. But ’tis not a whisper I’ve dropped, mind ye, not awhisper.”

“Them hunters is the wicked boys,” he broke forth again, for he sufferedfrom a constitutional plethora of speech. “But wait till they get tocutting up iv jinks and rowin’ ’round. He’s the boy’ll fix ’em. ’Tishim that’ll put the fear of God in their rotten black hearts. Look atthat hunter iv mine, Horner. ‘Jock’ Horner they call him, so quiet-likean’ easy-goin’, soft-spoken as a girl, till ye’d think butter wouldn’tmelt in the mouth iv him. Didn’t he kill his boat-steerer last year?’Twas called a sad accident, but I met the boat-puller in Yokohama an’the straight iv it was given me. An’ there’s Smoke, the black littledevil—didn’t the Roosians have him for three years in the salt mines ofSiberia, for poachin’ on Copper Island, which is a Roosian preserve?Shackled he was, hand an’ foot, with his mate. An’ didn’t they havewords or a ruction of some kind?—for ’twas the other fellow Smoke sent upin the buckets to the top of the mine; an’ a piece at a time he went up,a leg to-day, an’ to-morrow an arm, the next day the head, an’ so on.”

“But you can’t mean it!” I cried out, overcome with the horror of it.

“Mean what!” he demanded, quick as a flash. “’Tis nothin’ I’ve said.Deef I am, and dumb, as ye should be for the sake iv your mother; an’never once have I opened me lips but to say fine things iv them an’ him,God curse his soul, an’ may he rot in purgatory ten thousand years, andthen go down to the last an’ deepest hell iv all!”

Johnson, the man who had chafed me raw when I first came aboard, seemedthe least equivocal of the men forward or aft. In fact, there wasnothing equivocal about him. One was struck at once by hisstraightforwardness and manliness, which, in turn, were tempered by amodesty which might be mistaken for timidity. But timid he was not. Heseemed, rather, to have the courage of his convictions, the certainty ofhis manhood. It was this that made him protest, at the commencement ofour acquaintance, against being called Yonson. And upon this, and him,Louis passed judgment and prophecy.

“’Tis a fine chap, that squarehead Johnson we’ve for’ard with us,” hesaid. “The best sailorman in the fo’c’sle. He’s my boat-puller. Butit’s to trouble he’ll come with Wolf Larsen, as the sparks fly upward.It’s meself that knows. I can see it brewin’ an’ comin’ up like a stormin the sky. I’ve talked to him like a brother, but it’s little he seesin takin’ in his lights or flyin’ false signals. He grumbles out whenthings don’t go to suit him, and there’ll be always some tell-talecarryin’ word iv it aft to the Wolf. The Wolf is strong, and it’s theway of a wolf to hate strength, an’ strength it is he’ll see inJohnson—no knucklin’ under, and a ‘Yes, sir, thank ye kindly, sir,’ for acurse or a blow. Oh, she’s a-comin’! She’s a-comin’! An’ God knowswhere I’ll get another boat-puller! What does the fool up an’ say, whenthe old man calls him Yonson, but ‘Me name is Johnson, sir,’ an’ thenspells it out, letter for letter. Ye should iv seen the old man’s face!I thought he’d let drive at him on the spot. He didn’t, but he will, an’he’ll break that squarehead’s heart, or it’s little I know iv the ways ivmen on the ships iv the sea.”

Thomas Mugridge is becoming unendurable. I am compelled to Mister himand to Sir him with every speech. One reason for this is that WolfLarsen seems to have taken a fancy to him. It is an unprecedented thing,I take it, for a captain to be chummy with the cook; but this iscertainly what Wolf Larsen is doing. Two or three times he put his headinto the galley and chaffed Mugridge good-naturedly, and once, thisafternoon, he stood by the break of the poop and chatted with him forfully fifteen minutes. When it was over, and Mugridge was back in thegalley, he became greasily radiant, and went about his work, hummingcoster songs in a nerve-racking and discordant falsetto.

“I always get along with the officers,” he remarked to me in aconfidential tone. “I know the w’y, I do, to myke myself uppreci-yted.There was my last skipper—w’y I thought nothin’ of droppin’ down in thecabin for a little chat and a friendly glass. ‘Mugridge,’ sez ’e to me,‘Mugridge,’ sez ’e, ‘you’ve missed yer vokytion.’ ‘An’ ’ow’s that?’ sezI. ‘Yer should ’a been born a gentleman, an’ never ’ad to work for yerlivin’.’ God strike me dead, ’Ump, if that ayn’t wot ’e sez, an’ mea-sittin’ there in ’is own cabin, jolly-like an’ comfortable, a-smokin’’is cigars an’ drinkin’ ’is rum.”

This chitter-chatter drove me to distraction. I never heard a voice Ihated so. His oily, insinuating tones, his greasy smile and hismonstrous self-conceit grated on my nerves till sometimes I was all in atremble. Positively, he was the most disgusting and loathsome person Ihave ever met. The filth of his cooking was indescribable; and, as hecooked everything that was eaten aboard, I was compelled to select what Iate with great circumspection, choosing from the least dirty of hisconcoctions.

My hands bothered me a great deal, unused as they were to work. Thenails were discoloured and black, while the skin was already grained withdirt which even a scrubbing-brush could not remove. Then blisters came,in a painful and never-ending procession, and I had a great burn on myforearm, acquired by losing my balance in a roll of the ship and pitchingagainst the galley stove. Nor was my knee any better. The swelling hadnot gone down, and the cap was still up on edge. Hobbling about on itfrom morning till night was not helping it any. What I needed was rest,if it were ever to get well.

Rest! I never before knew the meaning of the word. I had been restingall my life and did not know it. But now, could I sit still for onehalf-hour and do nothing, not even think, it would be the mostpleasurable thing in the world. But it is a revelation, on the otherhand. I shall be able to appreciate the lives of the working peoplehereafter. I did not dream that work was so terrible a thing. Fromhalf-past five in the morning till ten o’clock at night I am everybody’sslave, with not one moment to myself, except such as I can steal near theend of the second dog-watch. Let me pause for a minute to look out overthe sea sparkling in the sun, or to gaze at a sailor going aloft to thegaff-topsails, or running out the bowsprit, and I am sure to hear thehateful voice, “’Ere, you, ’Ump, no sodgerin’. I’ve got my peepers onyer.”

There are signs of rampant bad temper in the steerage, and the gossip isgoing around that Smoke and Henderson have had a fight. Henderson seemsthe best of the hunters, a slow-going fellow, and hard to rouse; butroused he must have been, for Smoke had a bruised and discoloured eye,and looked particularly vicious when he came into the cabin for supper.

A cruel thing happened just before supper, indicative of the callousnessand brutishness of these men. There is one green hand in the crew,Harrison by name, a clumsy-looking country boy, mastered, I imagine, bythe spirit of adventure, and making his first voyage. In the lightbaffling airs the schooner had been tacking about a great deal, at whichtimes the sails pass from one side to the other and a man is sent aloftto shift over the fore-gaff-topsail. In some way, when Harrison wasaloft, the sheet jammed in the block through which it runs at the end ofthe gaff. As I understood it, there were two ways of getting itcleared,—first, by lowering the foresail, which was comparatively easyand without danger; and second, by climbing out the peak-halyards to theend of the gaff itself, an exceedingly hazardous performance.

Johansen called out to Harrison to go out the halyards. It was patent toeverybody that the boy was afraid. And well he might be, eighty feetabove the deck, to trust himself on those thin and jerking ropes. Hadthere been a steady breeze it would not have been so bad, but the _Ghost_was rolling emptily in a long sea, and with each roll the canvas flappedand boomed and the halyards slacked and jerked taut. They were capableof snapping a man off like a fly from a whip-lash.

Harrison heard the order and understood what was demanded of him, buthesitated. It was probably the first time he had been aloft in his life.Johansen, who had caught the contagion of Wolf Larsen’s masterfulness,burst out with a volley of abuse and curses.

“That’ll do, Johansen,” Wolf Larsen said brusquely. “I’ll have you knowthat I do the swearing on this ship. If I need your assistance, I’llcall you in.”

“Yes, sir,” the mate acknowledged submissively.

In the meantime Harrison had started out on the halyards. I was lookingup from the galley door, and I could see him trembling, as if with ague,in every limb. He proceeded very slowly and cautiously, an inch at atime. Outlined against the clear blue of the sky, he had the appearanceof an enormous spider crawling along the tracery of its web.

It was a slight uphill climb, for the foresail peaked high; and thehalyards, running through various blocks on the gaff and mast, gave himseparate holds for hands and feet. But the trouble lay in that the windwas not strong enough nor steady enough to keep the sail full. When hewas half-way out, the _Ghost_ took a long roll to windward and back againinto the hollow between two seas. Harrison ceased his progress and heldon tightly. Eighty feet beneath, I could see the agonized strain of hismuscles as he gripped for very life. The sail emptied and the gaff swungamid-ships. The halyards slackened, and, though it all happened veryquickly, I could see them sag beneath the weight of his body. Then thegag swung to the side with an abrupt swiftness, the great sail boomedlike a cannon, and the three rows of reef-points slatted against thecanvas like a volley of rifles. Harrison, clinging on, made the giddyrush through the air. This rush ceased abruptly. The halyards becameinstantly taut. It was the snap of the whip. His clutch was broken.One hand was torn loose from its hold. The other lingered desperatelyfor a moment, and followed. His body pitched out and down, but in someway he managed to save himself with his legs. He was hanging by them,head downward. A quick effort brought his hands up to the halyardsagain; but he was a long time regaining his former position, where hehung, a pitiable object.

“I’ll bet he has no appetite for supper,” I heard Wolf Larsen’s voice,which came to me from around the corner of the galley. “Stand fromunder, you, Johansen! Watch out! Here she comes!”

In truth, Harrison was very sick, as a person is sea-sick; and for a longtime he clung to his precarious perch without attempting to move.Johansen, however, continued violently to urge him on to the completionof his task.

“It is a shame,” I heard Johnson growling in painfully slow and correctEnglish. He was standing by the main rigging, a few feet away from me.“The boy is willing enough. He will learn if he has a chance. But thisis—” He paused awhile, for the word “murder” was his final judgment.

“Hist, will ye!” Louis whispered to him, “For the love iv your motherhold your mouth!”

But Johnson, looking on, still continued his grumbling.

“Look here,” the hunter Standish spoke to Wolf Larsen, “that’s myboat-puller, and I don’t want to lose him.”

“That’s all right, Standish,” was the reply. “He’s your boat-puller whenyou’ve got him in the boat; but he’s my sailor when I have him aboard,and I’ll do what I damn well please with him.”

“But that’s no reason—” Standish began in a torrent of speech.

“That’ll do, easy as she goes,” Wolf Larsen counselled back. “I’ve toldyou what’s what, and let it stop at that. The man’s mine, and I’ll makesoup of him and eat it if I want to.”

There was an angry gleam in the hunter’s eye, but he turned on his heeland entered the steerage companion-way, where he remained, lookingupward. All hands were on deck now, and all eyes were aloft, where ahuman life was at grapples with death. The callousness of these men, towhom industrial organization gave control of the lives of other men, wasappalling. I, who had lived out of the whirl of the world, had neverdreamed that its work was carried on in such fashion. Life had alwaysseemed a peculiarly sacred thing, but here it counted for nothing, was acipher in the arithmetic of commerce. I must say, however, that thesailors themselves were sympathetic, as instance the case of Johnson; butthe masters (the hunters and the captain) were heartlessly indifferent.Even the protest of Standish arose out of the fact that he did not wishto lose his boat-puller. Had it been some other hunter’s boat-puller,he, like them, would have been no more than amused.

But to return to Harrison. It took Johansen, insulting and reviling thepoor wretch, fully ten minutes to get him started again. A little laterhe made the end of the gaff, where, astride the spar itself, he had abetter chance for holding on. He cleared the sheet, and was free toreturn, slightly downhill now, along the halyards to the mast. But hehad lost his nerve. Unsafe as was his present position, he was loath toforsake it for the more unsafe position on the halyards.

He looked along the airy path he must traverse, and then down to thedeck. His eyes were wide and staring, and he was trembling violently. Ihad never seen fear so strongly stamped upon a human face. Johansencalled vainly for him to come down. At any moment he was liable to besnapped off the gaff, but he was helpless with fright. Wolf Larsen,walking up and down with Smoke and in conversation, took no more noticeof him, though he cried sharply, once, to the man at the wheel:

“You’re off your course, my man! Be careful, unless you’re looking fortrouble!”

“Ay, ay, sir,” the helmsman responded, putting a couple of spokes down.

He had been guilty of running the _Ghost_ several points off her coursein order that what little wind there was should fill the foresail andhold it steady. He had striven to help the unfortunate Harrison at therisk of incurring Wolf Larsen’s anger.

The time went by, and the suspense, to me, was terrible. ThomasMugridge, on the other hand, considered it a laughable affair, and wascontinually bobbing his head out the galley door to make jocose remarks.How I hated him! And how my hatred for him grew and grew, during thatfearful time, to cyclopean dimensions. For the first time in my life Iexperienced the desire to murder—“saw red,” as some of our picturesquewriters phrase it. Life in general might still be sacred, but life inthe particular case of Thomas Mugridge had become very profane indeed. Iwas frightened when I became conscious that I was seeing red, and thethought flashed through my mind: was I, too, becoming tainted by thebrutality of my environment?—I, who even in the most flagrant crimes haddenied the justice and righteousness of capital punishment?

Fully half-an-hour went by, and then I saw Johnson and Louis in some sortof altercation. It ended with Johnson flinging off Louis’s detaining armand starting forward. He crossed the deck, sprang into the fore rigging,and began to climb. But the quick eye of Wolf Larsen caught him.

“Here, you, what are you up to?” he cried.

Johnson’s ascent was arrested. He looked his captain in the eyes andreplied slowly:

“I am going to get that boy down.”

“You’ll get down out of that rigging, and damn lively about it! D’yehear? Get down!”

Johnson hesitated, but the long years of obedience to the masters ofships overpowered him, and he dropped sullenly to the deck and went onforward.

At half after five I went below to set the cabin table, but I hardly knewwhat I did, for my eyes and my brain were filled with the vision of aman, white-faced and trembling, comically like a bug, clinging to thethrashing gaff. At six o’clock, when I served supper, going on deck toget the food from the galley, I saw Harrison, still in the same position.The conversation at the table was of other things. Nobody seemedinterested in the wantonly imperilled life. But making an extra trip tothe galley a little later, I was gladdened by the sight of Harrisonstaggering weakly from the rigging to the forecastle scuttle. He hadfinally summoned the courage to descend.

Before closing this incident, I must give a scrap of conversation I hadwith Wolf Larsen in the cabin, while I was washing the dishes.

“You were looking squeamish this afternoon,” he began. “What was thematter?”

I could see that he knew what had made me possibly as sick as Harrison,that he was trying to draw me, and I answered, “It was because of thebrutal treatment of that boy.”

He gave a short laugh. “Like sea-sickness, I suppose. Some men aresubject to it, and others are not.”

“Not so,” I objected.

“Just so,” he went on. “The earth is as full of brutality as the sea isfull of motion. And some men are made sick by the one, and some by theother. That’s the only reason.”

“But you, who make a mock of human life, don’t you place any value uponit whatever?” I demanded.

“Value? What value?” He looked at me, and though his eyes were steadyand motionless, there seemed a cynical smile in them. “What kind ofvalue? How do you measure it? Who values it?”

“I do,” I made answer.

“Then what is it worth to you? Another man’s life, I mean. Come now,what is it worth?”

The value of life? How could I put a tangible value upon it? Somehow,I, who have always had expression, lacked expression when with WolfLarsen. I have since determined that a part of it was due to the man’spersonality, but that the greater part was due to his totally differentoutlook. Unlike other materialists I had met and with whom I hadsomething in common to start on, I had nothing in common with him.Perhaps, also, it was the elemental simplicity of his mind that baffledme. He drove so directly to the core of the matter, divesting a questionalways of all superfluous details, and with such an air of finality, thatI seemed to find myself struggling in deep water, with no footing underme. Value of life? How could I answer the question on the spur of themoment? The sacredness of life I had accepted as axiomatic. That it wasintrinsically valuable was a truism I had never questioned. But when hechallenged the truism I was speechless.

“We were talking about this yesterday,” he said. “I held that life was aferment, a yeasty something which devoured life that it might live, andthat living was merely successful piggishness. Why, if there is anythingin supply and demand, life is the cheapest thing in the world. There isonly so much water, so much earth, so much air; but the life that isdemanding to be born is limitless. Nature is a spendthrift. Look at thefish and their millions of eggs. For that matter, look at you and me.In our loins are the possibilities of millions of lives. Could we butfind time and opportunity and utilize the last bit and every bit of theunborn life that is in us, we could become the fathers of nations andpopulate continents. Life? Bah! It has no value. Of cheap things itis the cheapest. Everywhere it goes begging. Nature spills it out witha lavish hand. Where there is room for one life, she sows a thousandlives, and it’s life eats life till the strongest and most piggish lifeis left.”

“You have read Darwin,” I said. “But you read him misunderstandinglywhen you conclude that the struggle for existence sanctions your wantondestruction of life.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “You know you only mean that in relation tohuman life, for of the flesh and the fowl and the fish you destroy asmuch as I or any other man. And human life is in no wise different,though you feel it is and think that you reason why it is. Why should Ibe parsimonious with this life which is cheap and without value? Thereare more sailors than there are ships on the sea for them, more workersthan there are factories or machines for them. Why, you who live on theland know that you house your poor people in the slums of cities andloose famine and pestilence upon them, and that there still remain morepoor people, dying for want of a crust of bread and a bit of meat (whichis life destroyed), than you know what to do with. Have you ever seenthe London dockers fighting like wild beasts for a chance to work?”

He started for the companion stairs, but turned his head for a finalword. “Do you know the only value life has is what life puts uponitself? And it is of course over-estimated since it is of necessityprejudiced in its own favour. Take that man I had aloft. He held on asif he were a precious thing, a treasure beyond diamonds or rubies. Toyou? No. To me? Not at all. To himself? Yes. But I do not accepthis estimate. He sadly overrates himself. There is plenty more lifedemanding to be born. Had he fallen and dripped his brains upon the decklike honey from the comb, there would have been no loss to the world. Hewas worth nothing to the world. The supply is too large. To himselfonly was he of value, and to show how fictitious even this value was,being dead he is unconscious that he has lost himself. He alone ratedhimself beyond diamonds and rubies. Diamonds and rubies are gone, spreadout on the deck to be washed away by a bucket of sea-water, and he doesnot even know that the diamonds and rubies are gone. He does not loseanything, for with the loss of himself he loses the knowledge of loss.Don’t you see? And what have you to say?”

“That you are at least consistent,” was all I could say, and I went onwashing the dishes.