But my first night in the hunters’ steerage was also my last. Next dayJohansen, the new mate, was routed from the cabin by Wolf Larsen, andsent into the steerage to sleep thereafter, while I took possession ofthe tiny cabin state-room, which, on the first day of the voyage, hadalready had two occupants. The reason for this change was quicklylearned by the hunters, and became the cause of a deal of grumbling ontheir part. It seemed that Johansen, in his sleep, lived over each nightthe events of the day. His incessant talking and shouting and bellowingof orders had been too much for Wolf Larsen, who had accordingly foistedthe nuisance upon his hunters.

After a sleepless night, I arose weak and in agony, to hobble through mysecond day on the _Ghost_. Thomas Mugridge routed me out at half-pastfive, much in the fashion that Bill Sykes must have routed out his dog;but Mr. Mugridge’s brutality to me was paid back in kind and withinterest. The unnecessary noise he made (I had lain wide-eyed the wholenight) must have awakened one of the hunters; for a heavy shoe whizzedthrough the semi-darkness, and Mr. Mugridge, with a sharp howl of pain,humbly begged everybody’s pardon. Later on, in the galley, I noticedthat his ear was bruised and swollen. It never went entirely back to itsnormal shape, and was called a “cauliflower ear” by the sailors.

The day was filled with miserable variety. I had taken my dried clothesdown from the galley the night before, and the first thing I did was toexchange the cook’s garments for them. I looked for my purse. Inaddition to some small change (and I have a good memory for such things),it had contained one hundred and eighty-five dollars in gold and paper.The purse I found, but its contents, with the exception of the smallsilver, had been abstracted. I spoke to the cook about it, when I wenton deck to take up my duties in the galley, and though I had lookedforward to a surly answer, I had not expected the belligerent haranguethat I received.

“Look ’ere, ’Ump,” he began, a malicious light in his eyes and a snarl inhis throat; “d’ye want yer nose punched? If you think I’m a thief, justkeep it to yerself, or you’ll find ’ow bloody well mistyken you are.Strike me blind if this ayn’t gratitude for yer! ’Ere you come, a poremis’rable specimen of ’uman scum, an’ I tykes yer into my galley an’treats yer ’ansom, an’ this is wot I get for it. Nex’ time you can go to’ell, say I, an’ I’ve a good mind to give you what-for anyw’y.”

So saying, he put up his fists and started for me. To my shame be it, Icowered away from the blow and ran out the galley door. What else was Ito do? Force, nothing but force, obtained on this brute-ship. Moralsuasion was a thing unknown. Picture it to yourself: a man of ordinarystature, slender of build, and with weak, undeveloped muscles, who haslived a peaceful, placid life, and is unused to violence of any sort—whatcould such a man possibly do? There was no more reason that I shouldstand and face these human beasts than that I should stand and face aninfuriated bull.

So I thought it out at the time, feeling the need for vindication anddesiring to be at peace with my conscience. But this vindication did notsatisfy. Nor, to this day can I permit my manhood to look back uponthose events and feel entirely exonerated. The situation was somethingthat really exceeded rational formulas for conduct and demanded more thanthe cold conclusions of reason. When viewed in the light of formallogic, there is not one thing of which to be ashamed; but nevertheless ashame rises within me at the recollection, and in the pride of my manhoodI feel that my manhood has in unaccountable ways been smirched andsullied.

All of which is neither here nor there. The speed with which I ran fromthe galley caused excruciating pain in my knee, and I sank downhelplessly at the break of the poop. But the Cockney had not pursued me.

“Look at ’im run! Look at ’im run!” I could hear him crying. “An’ witha gyme leg at that! Come on back, you pore little mamma’s darling. Iwon’t ’it yer; no, I won’t.”

I came back and went on with my work; and here the episode ended for thetime, though further developments were yet to take place. I set thebreakfast-table in the cabin, and at seven o’clock waited on the huntersand officers. The storm had evidently broken during the night, though ahuge sea was still running and a stiff wind blowing. Sail had been madein the early watches, so that the _Ghost_ was racing along undereverything except the two topsails and the flying jib. These threesails, I gathered from the conversation, were to be set immediately afterbreakfast. I learned, also, that Wolf Larsen was anxious to make themost of the storm, which was driving him to the south-west into thatportion of the sea where he expected to pick up with the north-easttrades. It was before this steady wind that he hoped to make the majorportion of the run to Japan, curving south into the tropics and northagain as he approached the coast of Asia.

After breakfast I had another unenviable experience. When I had finishedwashing the dishes, I cleaned the cabin stove and carried the ashes up ondeck to empty them. Wolf Larsen and Henderson were standing near thewheel, deep in conversation. The sailor, Johnson, was steering. As Istarted toward the weather side I saw him make a sudden motion with hishead, which I mistook for a token of recognition and good-morning. Inreality, he was attempting to warn me to throw my ashes over the leeside. Unconscious of my blunder, I passed by Wolf Larsen and the hunterand flung the ashes over the side to windward. The wind drove them back,and not only over me, but over Henderson and Wolf Larsen. The nextinstant the latter kicked me, violently, as a cur is kicked. I had notrealized there could be so much pain in a kick. I reeled away from himand leaned against the cabin in a half-fainting condition. Everythingwas swimming before my eyes, and I turned sick. The nausea overpoweredme, and I managed to crawl to the side of the vessel. But Wolf Larsendid not follow me up. Brushing the ashes from his clothes, he hadresumed his conversation with Henderson. Johansen, who had seen theaffair from the break of the poop, sent a couple of sailors aft to cleanup the mess.

Later in the morning I received a surprise of a totally different sort.Following the cook’s instructions, I had gone into Wolf Larsen’sstate-room to put it to rights and make the bed. Against the wall, nearthe head of the bunk, was a rack filled with books. I glanced over them,noting with astonishment such names as Shakespeare, Tennyson, Poe, and DeQuincey. There were scientific works, too, among which were representedmen such as Tyndall, Proctor, and Darwin. Astronomy and physics wererepresented, and I remarked Bulfinch’s _Age of Fable_, Shaw’s _History ofEnglish and American Literature_, and Johnson’s _Natural History_ in twolarge volumes. Then there were a number of grammars, such as Metcalf’s,and Reed and Kellogg’s; and I smiled as I saw a copy of _The Dean’sEnglish_.

I could not reconcile these books with the man from what I had seen ofhim, and I wondered if he could possibly read them. But when I came tomake the bed I found, between the blankets, dropped apparently as he hadsunk off to sleep, a complete Browning, the Cambridge Edition. It wasopen at “In a Balcony,” and I noticed, here and there, passagesunderlined in pencil. Further, letting drop the volume during a lurch ofthe ship, a sheet of paper fell out. It was scrawled over withgeometrical diagrams and calculations of some sort.

It was patent that this terrible man was no ignorant clod, such as onewould inevitably suppose him to be from his exhibitions of brutality. Atonce he became an enigma. One side or the other of his nature wasperfectly comprehensible; but both sides together were bewildering. Ihad already remarked that his language was excellent, marred with anoccasional slight inaccuracy. Of course, in common speech with thesailors and hunters, it sometimes fairly bristled with errors, which wasdue to the vernacular itself; but in the few words he had held with me ithad been clear and correct.

This glimpse I had caught of his other side must have emboldened me, forI resolved to speak to him about the money I had lost.

“I have been robbed,” I said to him, a little later, when I found himpacing up and down the poop alone.

“Sir,” he corrected, not harshly, but sternly.

“I have been robbed, sir,” I amended.

“How did it happen?” he asked.

Then I told him the whole circumstance, how my clothes had been left todry in the galley, and how, later, I was nearly beaten by the cook when Imentioned the matter.

He smiled at my recital. “Pickings,” he concluded; “Cooky’s pickings.And don’t you think your miserable life worth the price? Besides,consider it a lesson. You’ll learn in time how to take care of yourmoney for yourself. I suppose, up to now, your lawyer has done it foryou, or your business agent.”

I could feel the quiet sneer through his words, but demanded, “How can Iget it back again?”

“That’s your look-out. You haven’t any lawyer or business agent now, soyou’ll have to depend on yourself. When you get a dollar, hang on to it.A man who leaves his money lying around, the way you did, deserves tolose it. Besides, you have sinned. You have no right to put temptationin the way of your fellow-creatures. You tempted Cooky, and he fell.You have placed his immortal soul in jeopardy. By the way, do youbelieve in the immortal soul?”

His lids lifted lazily as he asked the question, and it seemed that thedeeps were opening to me and that I was gazing into his soul. But it wasan illusion. Far as it might have seemed, no man has ever seen very farinto Wolf Larsen’s soul, or seen it at all,—of this I am convinced. Itwas a very lonely soul, I was to learn, that never unmasked, though atrare moments it played at doing so.

“I read immortality in your eyes,” I answered, dropping the “sir,”—anexperiment, for I thought the intimacy of the conversation warranted it.

He took no notice. “By that, I take it, you see something that is alive,but that necessarily does not have to live for ever.”

“I read more than that,” I continued boldly.

“Then you read consciousness. You read the consciousness of life that itis alive; but still no further away, no endlessness of life.”

How clearly he thought, and how well he expressed what he thought! Fromregarding me curiously, he turned his head and glanced out over theleaden sea to windward. A bleakness came into his eyes, and the lines ofhis mouth grew severe and harsh. He was evidently in a pessimistic mood.

“Then to what end?” he demanded abruptly, turning back to me. “If I amimmortal—why?”

I halted. How could I explain my idealism to this man? How could I putinto speech a something felt, a something like the strains of music heardin sleep, a something that convinced yet transcended utterance?

“What do you believe, then?” I countered.

“I believe that life is a mess,” he answered promptly. “It is likeyeast, a ferment, a thing that moves and may move for a minute, an hour,a year, or a hundred years, but that in the end will cease to move. Thebig eat the little that they may continue to move, the strong eat theweak that they may retain their strength. The lucky eat the most andmove the longest, that is all. What do you make of those things?”

He swept his arm in an impatient gesture toward a number of the sailorswho were working on some kind of rope stuff amidships.

“They move, so does the jelly-fish move. They move in order to eat inorder that they may keep moving. There you have it. They live for theirbelly’s sake, and the belly is for their sake. It’s a circle; you getnowhere. Neither do they. In the end they come to a standstill. Theymove no more. They are dead.”

“They have dreams,” I interrupted, “radiant, flashing dreams—”

“Of grub,” he concluded sententiously.

“And of more—”

“Grub. Of a larger appetite and more luck in satisfying it.” His voicesounded harsh. There was no levity in it. “For, look you, they dream ofmaking lucky voyages which will bring them more money, of becoming themates of ships, of finding fortunes—in short, of being in a betterposition for preying on their fellows, of having all night in, good gruband somebody else to do the dirty work. You and I are just like them.There is no difference, except that we have eaten more and better. I ameating them now, and you too. But in the past you have eaten more than Ihave. You have slept in soft beds, and worn fine clothes, and eaten goodmeals. Who made those beds? and those clothes? and those meals? Notyou. You never made anything in your own sweat. You live on an incomewhich your father earned. You are like a frigate bird swooping down uponthe boobies and robbing them of the fish they have caught. You are onewith a crowd of men who have made what they call a government, who aremasters of all the other men, and who eat the food the other men get andwould like to eat themselves. You wear the warm clothes. They made theclothes, but they shiver in rags and ask you, the lawyer, or businessagent who handles your money, for a job.”

“But that is beside the matter,” I cried.

“Not at all.” He was speaking rapidly now, and his eyes were flashing.“It is piggishness, and it is life. Of what use or sense is animmortality of piggishness? What is the end? What is it all about? Youhave made no food. Yet the food you have eaten or wasted might havesaved the lives of a score of wretches who made the food but did not eatit. What immortal end did you serve? or did they? Consider yourself andme. What does your boasted immortality amount to when your life runsfoul of mine? You would like to go back to the land, which is afavourable place for your kind of piggishness. It is a whim of mine tokeep you aboard this ship, where my piggishness flourishes. And keep youI will. I may make or break you. You may die to-day, this week, or nextmonth. I could kill you now, with a blow of my fist, for you are amiserable weakling. But if we are immortal, what is the reason for this?To be piggish as you and I have been all our lives does not seem to bejust the thing for immortals to be doing. Again, what’s it all about?Why have I kept you here?—”

“Because you are stronger,” I managed to blurt out.

“But why stronger?” he went on at once with his perpetual queries.“Because I am a bigger bit of the ferment than you? Don’t you see?Don’t you see?”

“But the hopelessness of it,” I protested.

“I agree with you,” he answered. “Then why move at all, since moving isliving? Without moving and being part of the yeast there would be nohopelessness. But,—and there it is,—we want to live and move, though wehave no reason to, because it happens that it is the nature of life tolive and move, to want to live and move. If it were not for this, lifewould be dead. It is because of this life that is in you that you dreamof your immortality. The life that is in you is alive and wants to go onbeing alive for ever. Bah! An eternity of piggishness!”

He abruptly turned on his heel and started forward. He stopped at thebreak of the poop and called me to him.

“By the way, how much was it that Cooky got away with?” he asked.

“One hundred and eighty-five dollars, sir,” I answered.

He nodded his head. A moment later, as I started down the companionstairs to lay the table for dinner, I heard him loudly cursing some menamidships.