It has dawned upon me that I have never placed a proper valuation uponwomankind. For that matter, though not amative to any considerabledegree so far as I have discovered, I was never outside the atmosphere ofwomen until now. My mother and sisters were always about me, and I wasalways trying to escape them; for they worried me to distraction withtheir solicitude for my health and with their periodic inroads on my den,when my orderly confusion, upon which I prided myself, was turned intoworse confusion and less order, though it looked neat enough to the eye.I never could find anything when they had departed. But now, alas, howwelcome would have been the feel of their presence, the frou-frou andswish-swish of their skirts which I had so cordially detested! I amsure, if I ever get home, that I shall never be irritable with themagain. They may dose me and doctor me morning, noon, and night, and dustand sweep and put my den to rights every minute of the day, and I shallonly lean back and survey it all and be thankful in that I am possessedof a mother and some several sisters.

All of which has set me wondering. Where are the mothers of these twentyand odd men on the _Ghost_? It strikes me as unnatural and unhealthfulthat men should be totally separated from women and herd through theworld by themselves. Coarseness and savagery are the inevitable results.These men about me should have wives, and sisters, and daughters; thenwould they be capable of softness, and tenderness, and sympathy. As itis, not one of them is married. In years and years not one of them hasbeen in contact with a good woman, or within the influence, orredemption, which irresistibly radiates from such a creature. There isno balance in their lives. Their masculinity, which in itself is of thebrute, has been over-developed. The other and spiritual side of theirnatures has been dwarfed—atrophied, in fact.

They are a company of celibates, grinding harshly against one another andgrowing daily more calloused from the grinding. It seems to meimpossible sometimes that they ever had mothers. It would appear thatthey are a half-brute, half-human species, a race apart, wherein there isno such thing as sex; that they are hatched out by the sun like turtleeggs, or receive life in some similar and sordid fashion; and that alltheir days they fester in brutality and viciousness, and in the end dieas unlovely as they have lived.

Rendered curious by this new direction of ideas, I talked with Johansenlast night—the first superfluous words with which he has favoured mesince the voyage began. He left Sweden when he was eighteen, is nowthirty-eight, and in all the intervening time has not been home once. Hehad met a townsman, a couple of years before, in some sailorboarding-house in Chile, so that he knew his mother to be still alive.

“She must be a pretty old woman now,” he said, staring meditatively intothe binnacle and then jerking a sharp glance at Harrison, who wassteering a point off the course.

“When did you last write to her?”

He performed his mental arithmetic aloud. “Eighty-one; no—eighty-two,eh? no—eighty-three? Yes, eighty-three. Ten years ago. From somelittle port in Madagascar. I was trading.

“You see,” he went on, as though addressing his neglected mother acrosshalf the girth of the earth, “each year I was going home. So what wasthe good to write? It was only a year. And each year somethinghappened, and I did not go. But I am mate, now, and when I pay off at’Frisco, maybe with five hundred dollars, I will ship myself on awindjammer round the Horn to Liverpool, which will give me more money;and then I will pay my passage from there home. Then she will not do anymore work.”

“But does she work? now? How old is she?”

“About seventy,” he answered. And then, boastingly, “We work from thetime we are born until we die, in my country. That’s why we live solong. I will live to a hundred.”

I shall never forget this conversation. The words were the last I everheard him utter. Perhaps they were the last he did utter, too. For,going down into the cabin to turn in, I decided that it was too stuffy tosleep below. It was a calm night. We were out of the Trades, and the_Ghost_ was forging ahead barely a knot an hour. So I tucked a blanketand pillow under my arm and went up on deck.

As I passed between Harrison and the binnacle, which was built into thetop of the cabin, I noticed that he was this time fully three points off.Thinking that he was asleep, and wishing him to escape reprimand orworse, I spoke to him. But he was not asleep. His eyes were wide andstaring. He seemed greatly perturbed, unable to reply to me.

“What’s the matter?” I asked. “Are you sick?”

He shook his head, and with a deep sign as of awakening, caught hisbreath.

“You’d better get on your course, then,” I chided.

He put a few spokes over, and I watched the compass-card swing slowly toN.N.W. and steady itself with slight oscillations.

I took a fresh hold on my bedclothes and was preparing to start on, whensome movement caught my eye and I looked astern to the rail. A sinewyhand, dripping with water, was clutching the rail. A second hand tookform in the darkness beside it. I watched, fascinated. What visitantfrom the gloom of the deep was I to behold? Whatever it was, I knew thatit was climbing aboard by the log-line. I saw a head, the hair wet andstraight, shape itself, and then the unmistakable eyes and face of WolfLarsen. His right cheek was red with blood, which flowed from some woundin the head.

He drew himself inboard with a quick effort, and arose to his feet,glancing swiftly, as he did so, at the man at the wheel, as though toassure himself of his identity and that there was nothing to fear fromhim. The sea-water was streaming from him. It made little audiblegurgles which distracted me. As he stepped toward me I shrank backinstinctively, for I saw that in his eyes which spelled death.

“All right, Hump,” he said in a low voice. “Where’s the mate?”

I shook my head.

“Johansen!” he called softly. “Johansen!”

“Where is he?” he demanded of Harrison.

The young fellow seemed to have recovered his composure, for he answeredsteadily enough, “I don’t know, sir. I saw him go for’ard a little whileago.”

“So did I go for’ard. But you will observe that I didn’t come back theway I went. Can you explain it?”

“You must have been overboard, sir.”

“Shall I look for him in the steerage, sir?” I asked.

Wolf Larsen shook his head. “You wouldn’t find him, Hump. But you’lldo. Come on. Never mind your bedding. Leave it where it is.”

I followed at his heels. There was nothing stirring amidships.

“Those cursed hunters,” was his comment. “Too damned fat and lazy tostand a four-hour watch.”

But on the forecastle-head we found three sailors asleep. He turned themover and looked at their faces. They composed the watch on deck, and itwas the ship’s custom, in good weather, to let the watch sleep with theexception of the officer, the helmsman, and the look-out.

“Who’s look-out?” he demanded.

“Me, sir,” answered Holyoak, one of the deep-water sailors, a slighttremor in his voice. “I winked off just this very minute, sir. I’msorry, sir. It won’t happen again.”

“Did you hear or see anything on deck?”

“No, sir, I—”

But Wolf Larsen had turned away with a snort of disgust, leaving thesailor rubbing his eyes with surprise at having been let of so easily.

“Softly, now,” Wolf Larsen warned me in a whisper, as he doubled his bodyinto the forecastle scuttle and prepared to descend.

I followed with a quaking heart. What was to happen I knew no more thandid I know what had happened. But blood had been shed, and it wasthrough no whim of Wolf Larsen that he had gone over the side with hisscalp laid open. Besides, Johansen was missing.

It was my first descent into the forecastle, and I shall not soon forgetmy impression of it, caught as I stood on my feet at the bottom of theladder. Built directly in the eyes of the schooner, it was of the shapeof a triangle, along the three sides of which stood the bunks, indouble-tier, twelve of them. It was no larger than a hall bedroom inGrub Street, and yet twelve men were herded into it to eat and sleep andcarry on all the functions of living. My bedroom at home was not large,yet it could have contained a dozen similar forecastles, and taking intoconsideration the height of the ceiling, a score at least.

It smelled sour and musty, and by the dim light of the swinging sea-lampI saw every bit of available wall-space hung deep with sea-boots,oilskins, and garments, clean and dirty, of various sorts. These swungback and forth with every roll of the vessel, giving rise to a brushingsound, as of trees against a roof or wall. Somewhere a boot thumpedloudly and at irregular intervals against the wall; and, though it was amild night on the sea, there was a continual chorus of the creakingtimbers and bulkheads and of abysmal noises beneath the flooring.

The sleepers did not mind. There were eight of them,—the two watchesbelow,—and the air was thick with the warmth and odour of theirbreathing, and the ear was filled with the noise of their snoring and oftheir sighs and half-groans, tokens plain of the rest of the animal-man.But were they sleeping? all of them? Or had they been sleeping? Thiswas evidently Wolf Larsen’s quest—to find the men who appeared to beasleep and who were not asleep or who had not been asleep very recently.And he went about it in a way that reminded me of a story out ofBoccaccio.

He took the sea-lamp from its swinging frame and handed it to me. Hebegan at the first bunks forward on the star-board side. In the top onelay Oofty-Oofty, a Kanaka and splendid seaman, so named by his mates. Hewas asleep on his back and breathing as placidly as a woman. One arm wasunder his head, the other lay on top of the blankets. Wolf Larsen putthumb and forefinger to the wrist and counted the pulse. In the midst ofit the Kanaka roused. He awoke as gently as he slept. There was nomovement of the body whatever. The eyes, only, moved. They flashed wideopen, big and black, and stared, unblinking, into our faces. Wolf Larsenput his finger to his lips as a sign for silence, and the eyes closedagain.

In the lower bunk lay Louis, grossly fat and warm and sweaty, asleepunfeignedly and sleeping laboriously. While Wolf Larsen held his wristhe stirred uneasily, bowing his body so that for a moment it rested onshoulders and heels. His lips moved, and he gave voice to this enigmaticutterance:

“A shilling’s worth a quarter; but keep your lamps out forthruppenny-bits, or the publicans ’ll shove ’em on you for sixpence.”

Then he rolled over on his side with a heavy, sobbing sigh, saying:

“A sixpence is a tanner, and a shilling a bob; but what a pony is I don’tknow.”

Satisfied with the honesty of his and the Kanaka’s sleep, Wolf Larsenpassed on to the next two bunks on the starboard side, occupied top andbottom, as we saw in the light of the sea-lamp, by Leach and Johnson.

As Wolf Larsen bent down to the lower bunk to take Johnson’s pulse, I,standing erect and holding the lamp, saw Leach’s head rise stealthily ashe peered over the side of his bunk to see what was going on. He musthave divined Wolf Larsen’s trick and the sureness of detection, for thelight was at once dashed from my hand and the forecastle was left indarkness. He must have leaped, also, at the same instant, straight downon Wolf Larsen.

The first sounds were those of a conflict between a bull and a wolf. Iheard a great infuriated bellow go up from Wolf Larsen, and from Leach asnarling that was desperate and blood-curdling. Johnson must have joinedhim immediately, so that his abject and grovelling conduct on deck forthe past few days had been no more than planned deception.

I was so terror-stricken by this fight in the dark that I leaned againstthe ladder, trembling and unable to ascend. And upon me was that oldsickness at the pit of the stomach, caused always by the spectacle ofphysical violence. In this instance I could not see, but I could hearthe impact of the blows—the soft crushing sound made by flesh strikingforcibly against flesh. Then there was the crashing about of theentwined bodies, the laboured breathing, the short quick gasps of suddenpain.

There must have been more men in the conspiracy to murder the captain andmate, for by the sounds I knew that Leach and Johnson had been quicklyreinforced by some of their mates.

“Get a knife somebody!” Leach was shouting.

“Pound him on the head! Mash his brains out!” was Johnson’s cry.

But after his first bellow, Wolf Larsen made no noise. He was fightinggrimly and silently for life. He was sore beset. Down at the veryfirst, he had been unable to gain his feet, and for all of his tremendousstrength I felt that there was no hope for him.

The force with which they struggled was vividly impressed on me; for Iwas knocked down by their surging bodies and badly bruised. But in theconfusion I managed to crawl into an empty lower bunk out of the way.

“All hands! We’ve got him! We’ve got him!” I could hear Leach crying.

“Who?” demanded those who had been really asleep, and who had wakened tothey knew not what.

“It’s the bloody mate!” was Leach’s crafty answer, strained from him in asmothered sort of way.

This was greeted with whoops of joy, and from then on Wolf Larsen hadseven strong men on top of him, Louis, I believe, taking no part in it.The forecastle was like an angry hive of bees aroused by some marauder.

“What ho! below there!” I heard Latimer shout down the scuttle, toocautious to descend into the inferno of passion he could hear ragingbeneath him in the darkness.

“Won’t somebody get a knife? Oh, won’t somebody get a knife?” Leachpleaded in the first interval of comparative silence.

The number of the assailants was a cause of confusion. They blockedtheir own efforts, while Wolf Larsen, with but a single purpose, achievedhis. This was to fight his way across the floor to the ladder. Thoughin total darkness, I followed his progress by its sound. No man lessthan a giant could have done what he did, once he had gained the foot ofthe ladder. Step by step, by the might of his arms, the whole pack ofmen striving to drag him back and down, he drew his body up from thefloor till he stood erect. And then, step by step, hand and foot, heslowly struggled up the ladder.

The very last of all, I saw. For Latimer, having finally gone for alantern, held it so that its light shone down the scuttle. Wolf Larsenwas nearly to the top, though I could not see him. All that was visiblewas the mass of men fastened upon him. It squirmed about, like some hugemany-legged spider, and swayed back and forth to the regular roll of thevessel. And still, step by step with long intervals between, the massascended. Once it tottered, about to fall back, but the broken hold wasregained and it still went up.

“Who is it?” Latimer cried.

In the rays of the lantern I could see his perplexed face peering down.

“Larsen,” I heard a muffled voice from within the mass.

Latimer reached down with his free hand. I saw a hand shoot up to clasphis. Latimer pulled, and the next couple of steps were made with a rush.Then Wolf Larsen’s other hand reached up and clutched the edge of thescuttle. The mass swung clear of the ladder, the men still clinging totheir escaping foe. They began to drop off, to be brushed off againstthe sharp edge of the scuttle, to be knocked off by the legs which werenow kicking powerfully. Leach was the last to go, falling sheer backfrom the top of the scuttle and striking on head and shoulders upon hissprawling mates beneath. Wolf Larsen and the lantern disappeared, and wewere left in darkness.