frankly states that the position he
takes is based on no moral grounds, that all the hunters could kill and
eat one another so far as he is concerned, were it not that he needs them
alive for the hunting. If they will only hold their hands until the
season is over, he promises them a royal carnival, when all grudges can
he settled and the survivors may toss the non-survivors overboard and
arrange a story as to how the missing men were lost at sea. I think even
the hunters are appalled at his cold-bloodedness. Wicked men though they
be, they are certainly very much afraid of him.

Thomas Mugridge is cur-like in his subjection to me, while I go about in
secret dread of him. His is the courage of fear,--a strange thing I know
well of myself,--and at any moment it may master the fear and impel him
to the taking of my life. My knee is much better, though it often aches
for long periods, and the stiffness is gradually leaving the arm which
Wolf Larsen squeezed. Otherwise I am in splendid condition, feel that I
am in splendid condition. My muscles are growing harder and increasing
in size. My hands, however, are a spectacle for grief. They have a
parboiled appearance, are afflicted with hang-nails, while the nails are
broken and discoloured, and the edges of the quick seem to be assuming a
fungoid sort of growth. Also, I am suffering from boils, due to the
diet, most likely, for I was never afflicted in this manner before.

I was amused, a couple of evenings back, by seeing Wolf Larsen reading
the Bible, a copy of which, after the futile search for one at the
beginning of the voyage, had been found in the dead mate's sea-chest. I
wondered what Wolf Larsen could get from it, and he read aloud to me from
Ecclesiastes. I could imagine he was speaking the thoughts of his own
mind as he read to me, and his voice, reverberating deeply and mournfully
in the confined cabin, charmed and held me. He may be uneducated, but he
certainly knows how to express the significance of the written word. I
can hear him now, as I shall always hear him, the primal melancholy
vibrant in his voice as he read:

"I gathered me also silver and gold, and the peculiar treasure of
kings and of the provinces; I gat me men singers and women singers,
and the delights of the sons of men, as musical instruments, and that
of all sorts.

"So I was great, and increased more than all that were before me in
Jerusalem; also my w