For three days I did my own work and Thomas Mugridge’s too; and I flattermyself that I did his work well. I know that it won Wolf Larsen’sapproval, while the sailors beamed with satisfaction during the brieftime my _régime_ lasted.

“The first clean bite since I come aboard,” Harrison said to me at thegalley door, as he returned the dinner pots and pans from the forecastle.“Somehow Tommy’s grub always tastes of grease, stale grease, and I reckonhe ain’t changed his shirt since he left ’Frisco.”

“I know he hasn’t,” I answered.

“And I’ll bet he sleeps in it,” Harrison added.

“And you won’t lose,” I agreed. “The same shirt, and he hasn’t had itoff once in all this time.”

But three days was all Wolf Larsen allowed him in which to recover fromthe effects of the beating. On the fourth day, lame and sore, scarcelyable to see, so closed were his eyes, he was haled from his bunk by thenape of the neck and set to his duty. He sniffled and wept, but WolfLarsen was pitiless.

“And see that you serve no more slops,” was his parting injunction. “Nomore grease and dirt, mind, and a clean shirt occasionally, or you’ll geta tow over the side. Understand?”

Thomas Mugridge crawled weakly across the galley floor, and a short lurchof the _Ghost_ sent him staggering. In attempting to recover himself, hereached for the iron railing which surrounded the stove and kept the potsfrom sliding off; but he missed the railing, and his hand, with hisweight behind it, landed squarely on the hot surface. There was a sizzleand odour of burning flesh, and a sharp cry of pain.

“Oh, Gawd, Gawd, wot ’ave I done?” he wailed; sitting down in thecoal-box and nursing his new hurt by rocking back and forth. “W’y ’asall this come on me? It mykes me fair sick, it does, an’ I try so ’ardto go through life ’armless an’ ’urtin’ nobody.”

The tears were running down his puffed and discoloured cheeks, and hisface was drawn with pain. A savage expression flitted across it.

“Oh, ’ow I ’ate ’im! ’Ow I ’ate ’im!” he gritted out.

“Whom?” I asked; but the poor wretch was weeping again over hismisfortunes. Less difficult it was to guess whom he hated than whom hedid not hate. For I had come to see a malignant devil in him whichimpelled him to hate all the world. I sometimes thought that he hatedeven himself, so grotesquely had life dealt with him, and so monstrously.At such moments a great sympathy welled up within me, and I felt shamethat I had ever joyed in his discomfiture or pain. Life had been unfairto him. It had played him a scurvy trick when it fashioned him into thething he was, and it had played him scurvy tricks ever since. Whatchance had he to be anything else than he was? And as though answeringmy unspoken thought, he wailed:

“I never ’ad no chance, not ’arf a chance! ’Oo was there to send me toschool, or put tommy in my ’ungry belly, or wipe my bloody nose for me,w’en I was a kiddy? ’Oo ever did anything for me, heh? ’Oo, I s’y?”

“Never mind, Tommy,” I said, placing a soothing hand on his shoulder.“Cheer up. It’ll all come right in the end. You’ve long years beforeyou, and you can make anything you please of yourself.”

“It’s a lie! a bloody lie!” he shouted in my face, flinging off the hand.“It’s a lie, and you know it. I’m already myde, an’ myde out of leavin’san’ scraps. It’s all right for you, ’Ump. You was born a gentleman.You never knew wot it was to go ’ungry, to cry yerself asleep with yerlittle belly gnawin’ an’ gnawin’, like a rat inside yer. It carn’t comeright. If I was President of the United Stytes to-morrer, ’ow would itfill my belly for one time w’en I was a kiddy and it went empty?

“’Ow could it, I s’y? I was born to sufferin’ and sorrer. I’ve had morecruel sufferin’ than any ten men, I ’ave. I’ve been in orspital arf mybleedin’ life. I’ve ’ad the fever in Aspinwall, in ’Avana, in NewOrleans. I near died of the scurvy and was rotten with it six months inBarbadoes. Smallpox in ’Onolulu, two broken legs in Shanghai, pnuemoniain Unalaska, three busted ribs an’ my insides all twisted in ’Frisco.An’ ’ere I am now. Look at me! Look at me! My ribs kicked loose frommy back again. I’ll be coughin’ blood before eyght bells. ’Ow can it bemyde up to me, I arsk? ’Oo’s goin’ to do it? Gawd? ’Ow Gawd must ’ave’ated me w’en ’e signed me on for a voyage in this bloomin’ world of’is!”

This tirade against destiny went on for an hour or more, and then hebuckled to his work, limping and groaning, and in his eyes a great hatredfor all created things. His diagnosis was correct, however, for he wasseized with occasional sicknesses, during which he vomited blood andsuffered great pain. And as he said, it seemed God hated him too much tolet him die, for he ultimately grew better and waxed more malignant thanever.

Several days more passed before Johnson crawled on deck and went abouthis work in a half-hearted way. He was still a sick man, and I more thanonce observed him creeping painfully aloft to a topsail, or droopingwearily as he stood at the wheel. But, still worse, it seemed that hisspirit was broken. He was abject before Wolf Larsen and almost grovelledto Johansen. Not so was the conduct of Leach. He went about the decklike a tiger cub, glaring his hatred openly at Wolf Larsen and Johansen.

“I’ll do for you yet, you slab-footed Swede,” I heard him say to Johansenone night on deck.

The mate cursed him in the darkness, and the next moment some missilestruck the galley a sharp rap. There was more cursing, and a mockinglaugh, and when all was quiet I stole outside and found a heavy knifeimbedded over an inch in the solid wood. A few minutes later the matecame fumbling about in search of it, but I returned it privily to Leachnext day. He grinned when I handed it over, yet it was a grin thatcontained more sincere thanks than a multitude of the verbosities ofspeech common to the members of my own class.

Unlike any one else in the ship’s company, I now found myself with noquarrels on my hands and in the good graces of all. The hunters possiblyno more than tolerated me, though none of them disliked me; while Smokeand Henderson, convalescent under a deck awning and swinging day andnight in their hammocks, assured me that I was better than any hospitalnurse, and that they would not forget me at the end of the voyage whenthey were paid off. (As though I stood in need of their money! I, whocould have bought them out, bag and baggage, and the schooner and itsequipment, a score of times over!) But upon me had devolved the task oftending their wounds, and pulling them through, and I did my best bythem.

Wolf Larsen underwent another bad attack of headache which lasted twodays. He must have suffered severely, for he called me in and obeyed mycommands like a sick child. But nothing I could do seemed to relievehim. At my suggestion, however, he gave up smoking and drinking; thoughwhy such a magnificent animal as he should have headaches at all puzzlesme.

“’Tis the hand of God, I’m tellin’ you,” is the way Louis sees it. “’Tisa visitation for his black-hearted deeds, and there’s more behind andcomin’, or else—”

“Or else,” I prompted.

“God is noddin’ and not doin’ his duty, though it’s me as shouldn’t sayit.”

I was mistaken when I said that I was in the good graces of all. Notonly does Thomas Mugridge continue to hate me, but he has discovered anew reason for hating me. It took me no little while to puzzle it out,but I finally discovered that it was because I was more luckily born thanhe—“gentleman born,” he put it.

“And still no more dead men,” I twitted Louis, when Smoke and Henderson,side by side, in friendly conversation, took their first exercise ondeck.

Louis surveyed me with his shrewd grey eyes, and shook his headportentously. “She’s a-comin’, I tell you, and it’ll be sheets andhalyards, stand by all hands, when she begins to howl. I’ve had the feeliv it this long time, and I can feel it now as plainly as I feel therigging iv a dark night. She’s close, she’s close.”

“Who goes first?” I queried.

“Not fat old Louis, I promise you,” he laughed. “For ’tis in the bonesiv me I know that come this time next year I’ll be gazin’ in the oldmother’s eyes, weary with watchin’ iv the sea for the five sons she gaveto it.”

“Wot’s ’e been s’yin’ to yer?” Thomas Mugridge demanded a moment later.

“That he’s going home some day to see his mother,” I answereddiplomatically.

“I never ’ad none,” was the Cockney’s comment, as he gazed withlustreless, hopeless eyes into mine.