nced the expedition.

The captain was a fishy-eyed Norwegian who somehow had fallen into
possession of a complete Shakespeare, which he never read, and Martin had
washed his clothes for him and in return been permitted access to the
precious volumes. For a time, so steeped was he in the plays and in the
many favorite passages that impressed themselves almost without effort on
his brain, that all the world seemed to shape itself into forms of
Elizabethan tragedy or comedy and his very thoughts were in blank verse.
It trained his ear and gave him a fine appreciation for noble English;
withal it introduced into his mind much that was archaic and obsolete.

The eight months had been well spent, and, in addition to what he had
learned of right speaking and high thinking, he had learned much of
himself. Along with his humbleness because he knew so little, there
arose a conviction of power. He felt a sharp gradation between himself
and his shipmates, and was wise enough to realize that the difference lay
in potentiality rather than achievement. What he could do,--they could
do; but within him he felt a confused ferment working that told him there
was more in him than he had done. He was tortured by the exquisite
beauty of the world, and wished that Ruth were there to share it with
him. He decided that he would describe to her many of the bits of South
Sea beauty. The creative spirit in him flamed up at the thought and
urged that he recreate this beauty for a wider audience than Ruth. And
then, in splendor and glory, came the great idea. He would write. He
would be one of the eyes through which the world saw, one of the ears
through which it heard, one of the hearts through which it felt. He
would write--everything--poetry and prose, fiction and description, and
plays like Shakespeare. There was career and the way to win to Ruth. The
men of literature were the world's giants, and he conceived them to be
far finer than the Mr. Butlers who earned thirty thousand a year and
could be Supreme Court justices if they wanted to.

Once the idea had germinated, it mastered him, and the return voyage to
San Francisco was like a dream. He was drunken with unguessed power and
felt that he could do anything. In the midst of the great and lonely sea
he gained perspective. Clearly, and for the first lime, he saw Ruth and
her world. It was all visualized in his mind as a concrete thing which
he could take up in his two hands a