There was a deal of cursing and groaning as the men at the bottom of theladder crawled to their feet.

“Somebody strike a light, my thumb’s out of joint,” said one of the men,Parsons, a swarthy, saturnine man, boat-steerer in Standish’s boat, inwhich Harrison was puller.

“You’ll find it knockin’ about by the bitts,” Leach said, sitting down onthe edge of the bunk in which I was concealed.

There was a fumbling and a scratching of matches, and the sea-lamp flaredup, dim and smoky, and in its weird light bare-legged men moved aboutnursing their bruises and caring for their hurts. Oofty-Oofty laid holdof Parsons’s thumb, pulling it out stoutly and snapping it back intoplace. I noticed at the same time that the Kanaka’s knuckles were laidopen clear across and to the bone. He exhibited them, exposing beautifulwhite teeth in a grin as he did so, and explaining that the wounds hadcome from striking Wolf Larsen in the mouth.

“So it was you, was it, you black beggar?” belligerently demanded oneKelly, an Irish-American and a longshoreman, making his first trip tosea, and boat-puller for Kerfoot.

As he made the demand he spat out a mouthful of blood and teeth andshoved his pugnacious face close to Oofty-Oofty. The Kanaka leapedbackward to his bunk, to return with a second leap, flourishing a longknife.

“Aw, go lay down, you make me tired,” Leach interfered. He wasevidently, for all of his youth and inexperience, cock of the forecastle.“G’wan, you Kelly. You leave Oofty alone. How in hell did he know itwas you in the dark?”

Kelly subsided with some muttering, and the Kanaka flashed his whiteteeth in a grateful smile. He was a beautiful creature, almost femininein the pleasing lines of his figure, and there was a softness anddreaminess in his large eyes which seemed to contradict his well-earnedreputation for strife and action.

“How did he get away?” Johnson asked.

He was sitting on the side of his bunk, the whole pose of his figureindicating utter dejection and hopelessness. He was still breathingheavily from the exertion he had made. His shirt had been rippedentirely from him in the struggle, and blood from a gash in the cheek wasflowing down his naked chest, marking a red path across his white thighand dripping to the floor.

“Because he is the devil, as I told you before,” was Leach’s answer; andthereat he was on his feet and raging his disappointment with tears inhis eyes.

“And not one of you to get a knife!” was his unceasing lament.

But the rest of the hands had a lively fear of consequences to come andgave no heed to him.

“How’ll he know which was which?” Kelly asked, and as he went on helooked murderously about him—“unless one of us peaches.”

“He’ll know as soon as ever he claps eyes on us,” Parsons replied. “Onelook at you’d be enough.”

“Tell him the deck flopped up and gouged yer teeth out iv yer jaw,” Louisgrinned. He was the only man who was not out of his bunk, and he wasjubilant in that he possessed no bruises to advertise that he had had ahand in the night’s work. “Just wait till he gets a glimpse iv yer mugsto-morrow, the gang iv ye,” he chuckled.

“We’ll say we thought it was the mate,” said one. And another, “I knowwhat I’ll say—that I heered a row, jumped out of my bunk, got a jollygood crack on the jaw for my pains, and sailed in myself. Couldn’t tellwho or what it was in the dark and just hit out.”

“An’ ’twas me you hit, of course,” Kelly seconded, his face brighteningfor the moment.

Leach and Johnson took no part in the discussion, and it was plain to seethat their mates looked upon them as men for whom the worst wasinevitable, who were beyond hope and already dead. Leach stood theirfears and reproaches for some time. Then he broke out:

“You make me tired! A nice lot of gazabas you are! If you talked lesswith yer mouth and did something with yer hands, he’d a-ben done with bynow. Why couldn’t one of you, just one of you, get me a knife when Isung out? You make me sick! A-beefin’ and bellerin’ ’round, as thoughhe’d kill you when he gets you! You know damn well he wont. Can’tafford to. No shipping masters or beach-combers over here, and he wantsyer in his business, and he wants yer bad. Who’s to pull or steer orsail ship if he loses yer? It’s me and Johnson have to face the music.Get into yer bunks, now, and shut yer faces; I want to get some sleep.”

“That’s all right all right,” Parsons spoke up. “Mebbe he won’t do forus, but mark my words, hell ’ll be an ice-box to this ship from now on.”

All the while I had been apprehensive concerning my own predicament.What would happen to me when these men discovered my presence? I couldnever fight my way out as Wolf Larsen had done. And at this momentLatimer called down the scuttles:

“Hump! The old man wants you!”

“He ain’t down here!” Parsons called back.

“Yes, he is,” I said, sliding out of the bunk and striving my hardest tokeep my voice steady and bold.

The sailors looked at me in consternation. Fear was strong in theirfaces, and the devilishness which comes of fear.

“I’m coming!” I shouted up to Latimer.

“No you don’t!” Kelly cried, stepping between me and the ladder, hisright hand shaped into a veritable strangler’s clutch. “You damn littlesneak! I’ll shut yer mouth!”

“Let him go,” Leach commanded.

“Not on yer life,” was the angry retort.

Leach never changed his position on the edge of the bunk. “Let him go, Isay,” he repeated; but this time his voice was gritty and metallic.

The Irishman wavered. I made to step by him, and he stood aside. When Ihad gained the ladder, I turned to the circle of brutal and malignantfaces peering at me through the semi-darkness. A sudden and deepsympathy welled up in me. I remembered the Cockney’s way of putting it.How God must have hated them that they should be tortured so!

“I have seen and heard nothing, believe me,” I said quietly.

“I tell yer, he’s all right,” I could hear Leach saying as I went up theladder. “He don’t like the old man no more nor you or me.”

I found Wolf Larsen in the cabin, stripped and bloody, waiting for me.He greeted me with one of his whimsical smiles.

“Come, get to work, Doctor. The signs are favourable for an extensivepractice this voyage. I don’t know what the _Ghost_ would have beenwithout you, and if I could only cherish such noble sentiments I wouldtell you her master is deeply grateful.”

I knew the run of the simple medicine-chest the _Ghost_ carried, andwhile I was heating water on the cabin stove and getting the things readyfor dressing his wounds, he moved about, laughing and chatting, andexamining his hurts with a calculating eye. I had never before seen himstripped, and the sight of his body quite took my breath away. It hasnever been my weakness to exalt the flesh—far from it; but there isenough of the artist in me to appreciate its wonder.

I must say that I was fascinated by the perfect lines of Wolf Larsen’sfigure, and by what I may term the terrible beauty of it. I had notedthe men in the forecastle. Powerfully muscled though some of them were,there had been something wrong with all of them, an insufficientdevelopment here, an undue development there, a twist or a crook thatdestroyed symmetry, legs too short or too long, or too much sinew or boneexposed, or too little. Oofty-Oofty had been the only one whose lineswere at all pleasing, while, in so far as they pleased, that far had theybeen what I should call feminine.

But Wolf Larsen was the man-type, the masculine, and almost a god in hisperfectness. As he moved about or raised his arms the great musclesleapt and moved under the satiny skin. I have forgotten to say that thebronze ended with his face. His body, thanks to his Scandinavian stock,was fair as the fairest woman’s. I remember his putting his hand up tofeel of the wound on his head, and my watching the biceps move like aliving thing under its white sheath. It was the biceps that had nearlycrushed out my life once, that I had seen strike so many killing blows.I could not take my eyes from him. I stood motionless, a roll ofantiseptic cotton in my hand unwinding and spilling itself down to thefloor.

He noticed me, and I became conscious that I was staring at him.

“God made you well,” I said.

“Did he?” he answered. “I have often thought so myself, and wonderedwhy.”

“Purpose—” I began.

“Utility,” he interrupted. “This body was made for use. These muscleswere made to grip, and tear, and destroy living things that get betweenme and life. But have you thought of the other living things? They,too, have muscles, of one kind and another, made to grip, and tear, anddestroy; and when they come between me and life, I out-grip them,out-tear them, out-destroy them. Purpose does not explain that. Utilitydoes.”

“It is not beautiful,” I protested.

“Life isn’t, you mean,” he smiled. “Yet you say I was made well. Do yousee this?”

He braced his legs and feet, pressing the cabin floor with his toes in aclutching sort of way. Knots and ridges and mounds of muscles writhedand bunched under the skin.

“Feel them,” he commanded.

They were hard as iron. And I observed, also, that his whole body hadunconsciously drawn itself together, tense and alert; that muscles weresoftly crawling and shaping about the hips, along the back, and acrossthe shoulders; that the arms were slightly lifted, their musclescontracting, the fingers crooking till the hands were like talons; andthat even the eyes had changed expression and into them were comingwatchfulness and measurement and a light none other than of battle.

“Stability, equilibrium,” he said, relaxing on the instant and sinkinghis body back into repose. “Feet with which to clutch the ground, legsto stand on and to help withstand, while with arms and hands, teeth andnails, I struggle to kill and to be not killed. Purpose? Utility is thebetter word.”

I did not argue. I had seen the mechanism of the primitive fightingbeast, and I was as strongly impressed as if I had seen the engines of agreat battleship or Atlantic liner.

I was surprised, considering the fierce struggle in the forecastle, atthe superficiality of his hurts, and I pride myself that I dressed themdexterously. With the exception of several bad wounds, the rest weremerely severe bruises and lacerations. The blow which he had receivedbefore going overboard had laid his scalp open several inches. This,under his direction, I cleansed and sewed together, having first shavedthe edges of the wound. Then the calf of his leg was badly lacerated andlooked as though it had been mangled by a bulldog. Some sailor, he toldme, had laid hold of it by his teeth, at the beginning of the fight, andhung on and been dragged to the top of the forecastle ladder, when he waskicked loose.

“By the way, Hump, as I have remarked, you are a handy man,” Wolf Larsenbegan, when my work was done. “As you know, we’re short a mate.Hereafter you shall stand watches, receive seventy-five dollars permonth, and be addressed fore and aft as Mr. Van Weyden.”

“I—I don’t understand navigation, you know,” I gasped.

“Not necessary at all.”

“I really do not care to sit in the high places,” I objected. “I findlife precarious enough in my present humble situation. I have noexperience. Mediocrity, you see, has its compensations.”

He smiled as though it were all settled.

“I won’t be mate on this hell-ship!” I cried defiantly.

I saw his face grow hard and the merciless glitter come into his eyes.He walked to the door of his room, saying:

“And now, Mr. Van Weyden, good-night.”

“Good-night, Mr. Larsen,” I answered weakly.