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After breakfast I had another unenviable experience. When I had finished washing the dishes, I cleaned the cabin stove and carried the ashes up on deck to empty them. Wolf Larsen and Henderson were standing near the wheel, deep in conversation. The sailor, Johnson, was steering.
But my eyes must have closed the instant my head touched the pillow, and in utter exhaustion I slept throughout the night, the while the Ghost, lonely and undirected, fought her way through the storm. The next day, while the storm was blowing itself out, Wolf Larsen and I crammed anatomy and surgery and set Mugridge's ribs.
Wolf Larsen barked a short laugh in my ear and strode away to the weather side of the poop. I expected him to give orders for the Ghost to heave to, but she kept on her course and he made no sign. Louis stood imperturbably at the wheel, but I noticed the grouped sailors forward turning troubled faces in our direction.
The source of the smoke must be very close to Wolf Larsen my mind was made up to this, and I went straight to his bunk. As I felt about among his blankets, something hot fell on the back of my hand. It burned me, and I jerked my hand away. Then I understood. Through the cracks in the bottom of the upper bunk he had set fire to the mattress.
"Down that flying jib, Mr. Van Weyden," Wolf Larsen commanded. "And stand by to back over the jibs." I ran forward and had the downhaul of the flying jib all in and fast as we slipped by the boat a hundred feet to leeward. The three men in it gazed at us suspiciously. They had been hogging the sea, and they knew Wolf Larsen, by reputation at any rate.
"Too much 'Frisco tanglefoot for the health of my crew!" Wolf Larsen shouted after. "This one" indicating me with his thumb "fancies sea-serpents and monkeys just now!" The man on the Lady Mine laughed back through the megaphone. The pilot-boat plunged past. "Give him hell for me!" came a final cry, and the two men waved their arms in farewell.
"Sven Larsen!" yelled Wentworth. "That half-wit! Why, he hasn't got sense enough to come in out of the rain!" "Maybe ye're right," admitted McNabb, "but that isn't what I hired him to do." With an oath, Wentworth pushed past Cameron and started for the door to find himself suddenly face to face with Sven Larsen. "Get out of my way, damn you!" he cried.
What was to happen I knew no more than did I know what had happened. But blood had been shed, and it was through no whim of Wolf Larsen that he had gone over the side with his scalp laid open. Besides, Johansen was missing. It was my first descent into the forecastle, and I shall not soon forget my impression of it, caught as I stood on my feet at the bottom of the ladder.
Wolf Larsen had separated from Latimer and was coming toward us. I was desperate. "Please, please understand me," I said hurriedly, lowering my voice. "All your experience of men and things is worthless here. You must begin over again. I know, I can see it you have, among other ways, been used to managing people with your eyes, letting your moral courage speak out through them, as it were.
You can sit on a chair." And, toy that I was of this monster, the discussion of Omar and the Preacher was resumed. And half the night we sat up over it. The last twenty-four hours have witnessed a carnival of brutality. From cabin to forecastle it seems to have broken out like a contagion. I scarcely know where to begin. Wolf Larsen was really the cause of it.
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