duty to sail the _Ghost_ well to
leeward of the last lee boat, so that all the boats should have fair wind
to run for us in case of squalls or threatening weather.

It is no slight matter for two men, particularly when a stiff wind has
sprung up, to handle a vessel like the _Ghost_, steering, keeping
look-out for the boats, and setting or taking in sail; so it devolved
upon me to learn, and learn quickly. Steering I picked up easily, but
running aloft to the crosstrees and swinging my whole weight by my arms
when I left the ratlines and climbed still higher, was more difficult.
This, too, I learned, and quickly, for I felt somehow a wild desire to
vindicate myself in Wolf Larsen's eyes, to prove my right to live in ways
other than of the mind. Nay, the time came when I took joy in the run of
the masthead and in the clinging on by my legs at that precarious height
while I swept the sea with glasses in search of the boats.

I remember one beautiful day, when the boats left early and the reports
of the hunters' guns grew dim and distant and died away as they scattered
far and wide over the sea. There was just the faintest wind from the
westward; but it breathed its last by the time we managed to get to
leeward of the last lee boat. One by one--I was at the masthead and
saw--the six boats disappeared over the bulge of the earth as they
followed the seal into the west. We lay, scarcely rolling on the placid
sea, unable to follow. Wolf Larsen was apprehensive. The barometer was
down, and the sky to the east did not please him. He studied it with
unceasing vigilance.

"If she comes out of there," he said, "hard and snappy, putting us to
windward of the boats, it's likely there'll be empty bunks in steerage
and fo'c'sle."

By eleven o'clock the sea had become glass. By midday, though we were
well up in the northerly latitudes, the heat was sickening. There was no
freshness in the air. It was sultry and oppressive, reminding me of what
the old Californians term "earthquake weather." There was something
ominous about it, and in intangible ways one was made to feel that the
worst was about to come. Slowly the whole eastern sky filled with clouds
that over-towered us like some black sierra of the infernal regions. So
clearly could one see canon, gorge, and precipice, and the shadows that
lie therein, that one looked unconsciously for the white surf-line and
bellowing caverns where the sea charges on the land. And