on the poop without orders
and dragged Johnson forward, where he set about dressing his wounds as
well as he could and making him comfortable. Johnson, as Johnson, was
unrecognizable; and not only that, for his features, as human features at
all, were unrecognizable, so discoloured and swollen had they become in
the few minutes which had elapsed between the beginning of the beating
and the dragging forward of the body.

But of Leach's behaviour--By the time I had finished cleansing the cabin
he had taken care of Johnson. I had come up on deck for a breath of
fresh air and to try to get some repose for my overwrought nerves. Wolf
Larsen was smoking a cigar and examining the patent log which the _Ghost_
usually towed astern, but which had been hauled in for some purpose.
Suddenly Leach's voice came to my ears. It was tense and hoarse with an
overmastering rage. I turned and saw him standing just beneath the break
of the poop on the port side of the galley. His face was convulsed and
white, his eyes were flashing, his clenched fists raised overhead.

"May God damn your soul to hell, Wolf Larsen, only hell's too good for
you, you coward, you murderer, you pig!" was his opening salutation.

I was thunderstruck. I looked for his instant annihilation. But it was
not Wolf Larsen's whim to annihilate him. He sauntered slowly forward to
the break of the poop, and, leaning his elbow on the corner of the cabin,
gazed down thoughtfully and curiously at the excited boy.

And the boy indicted Wolf Larsen as he had never been indicted before.
The sailors assembled in a fearful group just outside the forecastle
scuttle and watched and listened. The hunters piled pell-mell out of the
steerage, but as Leach's tirade continued I saw that there was no levity
in their faces. Even they were frightened, not at the boy's terrible
words, but at his terrible audacity. It did not seem possible that any
living creature could thus beard Wolf Larsen in his teeth. I know for
myself that I was shocked into admiration of the boy, and I saw in him
the splendid invincibleness of immortality rising above the flesh and the
fears of the flesh, as in the prophets of old, to condemn
unrighteousness.

And such condemnation! He haled forth Wolf Larsen's soul naked to the
scorn of men. He rained upon it curses from God and High Heaven, and
withered it with a heat of invective that savoured of a mediaeval
excommunication of the Catholic Church.