e
thought flashed through my mind: was I, too, becoming tainted by the
brutality of my environment?--I, who even in the most flagrant crimes had
denied the justice and righteousness of capital punishment?

Fully half-an-hour went by, and then I saw Johnson and Louis in some sort
of altercation. It ended with Johnson flinging off Louis's detaining arm
and starting forward. He crossed the deck, sprang into the fore rigging,
and began to climb. But the quick eye of Wolf Larsen caught him.

"Here, you, what are you up to?" he cried.

Johnson's ascent was arrested. He looked his captain in the eyes and
replied slowly:

"I am going to get that boy down."

"You'll get down out of that rigging, and damn lively about it! D'ye
hear? Get down!"

Johnson hesitated, but the long years of obedience to the masters of
ships overpowered him, and he dropped sullenly to the deck and went on
forward.

At half after five I went below to set the cabin table, but I hardly knew
what I did, for my eyes and my brain were filled with the vision of a
man, white-faced and trembling, comically like a bug, clinging to the
thrashing gaff. At six o'clock, when I served supper, going on deck to
get the food from the galley, I saw Harrison, still in the same position.
The conversation at the table was of other things. Nobody seemed
interested in the wantonly imperilled life. But making an extra trip to
the galley a little later, I was gladdened by the sight of Harrison
staggering weakly from the rigging to the forecastle scuttle. He had
finally summoned the courage to descend.

Before closing this incident, I must give a scrap of conversation I had
with Wolf Larsen in the cabin, while I was washing the dishes.

"You were looking squeamish this afternoon," he began. "What was the
matter?"

I could see that he knew what had made me possibly as sick as Harrison,
that he was trying to draw me, and I answered, "It was because of the
brutal treatment of that boy."

He gave a short laugh. "Like sea-sickness, I suppose. Some men are
subject to it, and others are not."

"Not so," I objected.

"Just so," he went on. "The earth is as full of brutality as the sea is
full of motion. And some men are made sick by the one, and some by the
other. That's the only reason."

"But you, who make a mock of human life, don't you place any value upon
it whatever?" I demanded.

"Value? What value?" He looked at me, and though his eyes were s