The remainder of the day passed uneventfully. The young slip of a gale,having wetted our gills, proceeded to moderate. The fourth engineer andthe three oilers, after a warm interview with Wolf Larsen, were furnishedwith outfits from the slop-chests, assigned places under the hunters inthe various boats and watches on the vessel, and bundled forward into theforecastle. They went protestingly, but their voices were not loud.They were awed by what they had already seen of Wolf Larsen’s character,while the tale of woe they speedily heard in the forecastle took the lastbit of rebellion out of them.

Miss Brewster—we had learned her name from the engineer—slept on and on.At supper I requested the hunters to lower their voices, so she was notdisturbed; and it was not till next morning that she made her appearance.It had been my intention to have her meals served apart, but Wolf Larsenput down his foot. Who was she that she should be too good for cabintable and cabin society? had been his demand.

But her coming to the table had something amusing in it. The huntersfell silent as clams. Jock Horner and Smoke alone were unabashed,stealing stealthy glances at her now and again, and even taking part inthe conversation. The other four men glued their eyes on their platesand chewed steadily and with thoughtful precision, their ears moving andwobbling, in time with their jaws, like the ears of so many animals.

Wolf Larsen had little to say at first, doing no more than reply when hewas addressed. Not that he was abashed. Far from it. This woman was anew type to him, a different breed from any he had ever known, and he wascurious. He studied her, his eyes rarely leaving her face unless tofollow the movements of her hands or shoulders. I studied her myself,and though it was I who maintained the conversation, I know that I was abit shy, not quite self-possessed. His was the perfect poise, thesupreme confidence in self, which nothing could shake; and he was no moretimid of a woman than he was of storm and battle.

“And when shall we arrive at Yokohama?” she asked, turning to him andlooking him squarely in the eyes.

There it was, the question flat. The jaws stopped working, the earsceased wobbling, and though eyes remained glued on plates, each manlistened greedily for the answer.

“In four months, possibly three if the season closes early,” Wolf Larsensaid.

She caught her breath and stammered, “I—I thought—I was given tounderstand that Yokohama was only a day’s sail away. It—” Here shepaused and looked about the table at the circle of unsympathetic facesstaring hard at the plates. “It is not right,” she concluded.

“That is a question you must settle with Mr. Van Weyden there,” hereplied, nodding to me with a mischievous twinkle. “Mr. Van Weyden iswhat you may call an authority on such things as rights. Now I, who amonly a sailor, would look upon the situation somewhat differently. Itmay possibly be your misfortune that you have to remain with us, but itis certainly our good fortune.”

He regarded her smilingly. Her eyes fell before his gaze, but she liftedthem again, and defiantly, to mine. I read the unspoken question there:was it right? But I had decided that the part I was to play must be aneutral one, so I did not answer.

“What do you think?” she demanded.

“That it is unfortunate, especially if you have any engagements fallingdue in the course of the next several months. But, since you say thatyou were voyaging to Japan for your health, I can assure you that it willimprove no better anywhere than aboard the _Ghost_.”

I saw her eyes flash with indignation, and this time it was I who droppedmine, while I felt my face flushing under her gaze. It was cowardly, butwhat else could I do?

“Mr. Van Weyden speaks with the voice of authority,” Wolf Larsen laughed.

I nodded my head, and she, having recovered herself, waited expectantly.

“Not that he is much to speak of now,” Wolf Larsen went on, “but he hasimproved wonderfully. You should have seen him when he came on board. Amore scrawny, pitiful specimen of humanity one could hardly conceive.Isn’t that so, Kerfoot?”

Kerfoot, thus directly addressed, was startled into dropping his knife onthe floor, though he managed to grunt affirmation.

“Developed himself by peeling potatoes and washing dishes. Eh, Kerfoot?”

Again that worthy grunted.

“Look at him now. True, he is not what you would term muscular, butstill he has muscles, which is more than he had when he came aboard.Also, he has legs to stand on. You would not think so to look at him,but he was quite unable to stand alone at first.”

The hunters were snickering, but she looked at me with a sympathy in hereyes which more than compensated for Wolf Larsen’s nastiness. In truth,it had been so long since I had received sympathy that I was softened,and I became then, and gladly, her willing slave. But I was angry withWolf Larsen. He was challenging my manhood with his slurs, challengingthe very legs he claimed to be instrumental in getting for me.

“I may have learned to stand on my own legs,” I retorted. “But I haveyet to stamp upon others with them.”

He looked at me insolently. “Your education is only half completed,then,” he said dryly, and turned to her.

“We are very hospitable upon the _Ghost_. Mr. Van Weyden has discoveredthat. We do everything to make our guests feel at home, eh, Mr. VanWeyden?”

“Even to the peeling of potatoes and the washing of dishes,” I answered,“to say nothing to wringing their necks out of very fellowship.”

“I beg of you not to receive false impressions of us from Mr. VanWeyden,” he interposed with mock anxiety. “You will observe, MissBrewster, that he carries a dirk in his belt, a—ahem—a most unusual thingfor a ship’s officer to do. While really very estimable, Mr. Van Weydenis sometimes—how shall I say?—er—quarrelsome, and harsh measures arenecessary. He is quite reasonable and fair in his calm moments, and ashe is calm now he will not deny that only yesterday he threatened mylife.”

I was well-nigh choking, and my eyes were certainly fiery. He drewattention to me.

“Look at him now. He can scarcely control himself in your presence. Heis not accustomed to the presence of ladies anyway. I shall have to armmyself before I dare go on deck with him.”

He shook his head sadly, murmuring, “Too bad, too bad,” while the huntersburst into guffaws of laughter.

The deep-sea voices of these men, rumbling and bellowing in the confinedspace, produced a wild effect. The whole setting was wild, and for thefirst time, regarding this strange woman and realizing how incongruousshe was in it, I was aware of how much a part of it I was myself. I knewthese men and their mental processes, was one of them myself, living theseal-hunting life, eating the seal-hunting fare, thinking, largely, theseal-hunting thoughts. There was for me no strangeness to it, to therough clothes, the coarse faces, the wild laughter, and the lurchingcabin walls and swaying sea-lamps.

As I buttered a piece of bread my eyes chanced to rest upon my hand. Theknuckles were skinned and inflamed clear across, the fingers swollen, thenails rimmed with black. I felt the mattress-like growth of beard on myneck, knew that the sleeve of my coat was ripped, that a button wasmissing from the throat of the blue shirt I wore. The dirk mentioned byWolf Larsen rested in its sheath on my hip. It was very natural that itshould be there,—how natural I had not imagined until now, when I lookedupon it with her eyes and knew how strange it and all that went with itmust appear to her.

But she divined the mockery in Wolf Larsen’s words, and again favoured mewith a sympathetic glance. But there was a look of bewilderment also inher eyes. That it was mockery made the situation more puzzling to her.

“I may be taken off by some passing vessel, perhaps,” she suggested.

“There will be no passing vessels, except other sealing-schooners,” WolfLarsen made answer.

“I have no clothes, nothing,” she objected. “You hardly realize, sir,that I am not a man, or that I am unaccustomed to the vagrant, carelesslife which you and your men seem to lead.”

“The sooner you get accustomed to it, the better,” he said.

“I’ll furnish you with cloth, needles, and thread,” he added. “I hope itwill not be too dreadful a hardship for you to make yourself a dress ortwo.”

She made a wry pucker with her mouth, as though to advertise herignorance of dressmaking. That she was frightened and bewildered, andthat she was bravely striving to hide it, was quite plain to me.

“I suppose you’re like Mr. Van Weyden there, accustomed to having thingsdone for you. Well, I think doing a few things for yourself will hardlydislocate any joints. By the way, what do you do for a living?”

She regarded him with amazement unconcealed.

“I mean no offence, believe me. People eat, therefore they must procurethe wherewithal. These men here shoot seals in order to live; for thesame reason I sail this schooner; and Mr. Van Weyden, for the present atany rate, earns his salty grub by assisting me. Now what do you do?”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“Do you feed yourself? Or does some one else feed you?”

“I’m afraid some one else has fed me most of my life,” she laughed,trying bravely to enter into the spirit of his quizzing, though I couldsee a terror dawning and growing in her eyes as she watched Wolf Larsen.

“And I suppose some one else makes your bed for you?”

“I _have_ made beds,” she replied.

“Very often?”

She shook her head with mock ruefulness.

“Do you know what they do to poor men in the States, who, like you, donot work for their living?”

“I am very ignorant,” she pleaded. “What do they do to the poor men whoare like me?”

“They send them to jail. The crime of not earning a living, in theircase, is called vagrancy. If I were Mr. Van Weyden, who harps eternallyon questions of right and wrong, I’d ask, by what right do you live whenyou do nothing to deserve living?”

“But as you are not Mr. Van Weyden, I don’t have to answer, do I?”

She beamed upon him through her terror-filled eyes, and the pathos of itcut me to the heart. I must in some way break in and lead theconversation into other channels.

“Have you ever earned a dollar by your own labour?” he demanded, certainof her answer, a triumphant vindictiveness in his voice.

“Yes, I have,” she answered slowly, and I could have laughed aloud at hiscrestfallen visage. “I remember my father giving me a dollar once, whenI was a little girl, for remaining absolutely quiet for five minutes.”

He smiled indulgently.

“But that was long ago,” she continued. “And you would scarcely demand alittle girl of nine to earn her own living.”

“At present, however,” she said, after another slight pause, “I earnabout eighteen hundred dollars a year.”

With one accord, all eyes left the plates and settled on her. A womanwho earned eighteen hundred dollars a year was worth looking at. WolfLarsen was undisguised in his admiration.

“Salary, or piece-work?” he asked.

“Piece-work,” she answered promptly.

“Eighteen hundred,” he calculated. “That’s a hundred and fifty dollars amonth. Well, Miss Brewster, there is nothing small about the _Ghost_.Consider yourself on salary during the time you remain with us.”

She made no acknowledgment. She was too unused as yet to the whims ofthe man to accept them with equanimity.

“I forgot to inquire,” he went on suavely, “as to the nature of youroccupation. What commodities do you turn out? What tools and materialsdo you require?”

“Paper and ink,” she laughed. “And, oh! also a typewriter.”

“You are Maud Brewster,” I said slowly and with certainty, almost asthough I were charging her with a crime.

Her eyes lifted curiously to mine. “How do you know?”

“Aren’t you?” I demanded.

She acknowledged her identity with a nod. It was Wolf Larsen’s turn tobe puzzled. The name and its magic signified nothing to him. I wasproud that it did mean something to me, and for the first time in a wearywhile I was convincingly conscious of a superiority over him.

“I remember writing a review of a thin little volume—” I had beguncarelessly, when she interrupted me.

“You!” she cried. “You are—”

She was now staring at me in wide-eyed wonder.

I nodded my identity, in turn.

“Humphrey Van Weyden,” she concluded; then added with a sigh of relief,and unaware that she had glanced that relief at Wolf Larsen, “I am soglad.”

“I remember the review,” she went on hastily, becoming aware of theawkwardness of her remark; “that too, too flattering review.”

“Not at all,” I denied valiantly. “You impeach my sober judgment andmake my canons of little worth. Besides, all my brother critics werewith me. Didn’t Lang include your ‘Kiss Endured’ among the four supremesonnets by women in the English language?”

“But you called me the American Mrs. Meynell!”

“Was it not true?” I demanded.

“No, not that,” she answered. “I was hurt.”

“We can measure the unknown only by the known,” I replied, in my finestacademic manner. “As a critic I was compelled to place you. You havenow become a yardstick yourself. Seven of your thin little volumes areon my shelves; and there are two thicker volumes, the essays, which, youwill pardon my saying, and I know not which is flattered more, fullyequal your verse. The time is not far distant when some unknown willarise in England and the critics will name her the English MaudBrewster.”

“You are very kind, I am sure,” she murmured; and the veryconventionality of her tones and words, with the host of associations itaroused of the old life on the other side of the world, gave me a quickthrill—rich with remembrance but stinging sharp with home-sickness.

“And you are Maud Brewster,” I said solemnly, gazing across at her.

“And you are Humphrey Van Weyden,” she said, gazing back at me with equalsolemnity and awe. “How unusual! I don’t understand. We surely are notto expect some wildly romantic sea-story from your sober pen.”

“No, I am not gathering material, I assure you,” was my answer. “I haveneither aptitude nor inclination for fiction.”

“Tell me, why have you always buried yourself in California?” she nextasked. “It has not been kind of you. We of the East have seen to verylittle of you—too little, indeed, of the Dean of American Letters, theSecond.”

I bowed to, and disclaimed, the compliment. “I nearly met you, once, inPhiladelphia, some Browning affair or other—you were to lecture, youknow. My train was four hours late.”

And then we quite forgot where we were, leaving Wolf Larsen stranded andsilent in the midst of our flood of gossip. The hunters left the tableand went on deck, and still we talked. Wolf Larsen alone remained.Suddenly I became aware of him, leaning back from the table and listeningcuriously to our alien speech of a world he did not know.

I broke short off in the middle of a sentence. The present, with all itsperils and anxieties, rushed upon me with stunning force. It smote MissBrewster likewise, a vague and nameless terror rushing into her eyes asshe regarded Wolf Larsen.

He rose to his feet and laughed awkwardly. The sound of it was metallic.

“Oh, don’t mind me,” he said, with a self-depreciatory wave of his hand.“I don’t count. Go on, go on, I pray you.”

But the gates of speech were closed, and we, too, rose from the table andlaughed awkwardly.