e Pacific, it was travelling
north on its annual migration to the rookeries of Bering Sea. And north
we travelled with it, ravaging and destroying, flinging the naked
carcasses to the shark and salting down the skins so that they might
later adorn the fair shoulders of the women of the cities.

It was wanton slaughter, and all for woman's sake. No man ate of the
seal meat or the oil. After a good day's killing I have seen our decks
covered with hides and bodies, slippery with fat and blood, the scuppers
running red; masts, ropes, and rails spattered with the sanguinary
colour; and the men, like butchers plying their trade, naked and red of
arm and hand, hard at work with ripping and flensing-knives, removing the
skins from the pretty sea-creatures they had killed.

It was my task to tally the pelts as they came aboard from the boats, to
oversee the skinning and afterward the cleansing of the decks and
bringing things ship-shape again. It was not pleasant work. My soul and
my stomach revolted at it; and yet, in a way, this handling and directing
of many men was good for me. It developed what little executive ability
I possessed, and I was aware of a toughening or hardening which I was
undergoing and which could not be anything but wholesome for "Sissy" Van
Weyden.

One thing I was beginning to feel, and that was that I could never again
be quite the same man I had been. While my hope and faith in human life
still survived Wolf Larsen's destructive criticism, he had nevertheless
been a cause of change in minor matters. He had opened up for me the
world of the real, of which I had known practically nothing and from
which I had always shrunk. I had learned to look more closely at life as
it was lived, to recognize that there were such things as facts in the
world, to emerge from the realm of mind and idea and to place certain
values on the concrete and objective phases of existence.

I saw more of Wolf Larsen than ever when we had gained the grounds. For
when the weather was fair and we were in the midst of the herd, all hands
were away in the boats, and left on board were only he and I, and Thomas
Mugridge, who did not count. But there was no play about it. The six
boats, spreading out fan-wise from the schooner until the first weather
boat and the last lee boat were anywhere from ten to twenty miles apart,
cruised along a straight course over the sea till nightfall or bad
weather drove them in. It was our