except other sealing-schooners," Wolf
Larsen made answer.

"I have no clothes, nothing," she objected. "You hardly realize, sir,
that I am not a man, or that I am unaccustomed to the vagrant, careless
life which you and your men seem to lead."

"The sooner you get accustomed to it, the better," he said.

"I'll furnish you with cloth, needles, and thread," he added. "I hope it
will not be too dreadful a hardship for you to make yourself a dress or
two."

She made a wry pucker with her mouth, as though to advertise her
ignorance of dressmaking. That she was frightened and bewildered, and
that she was bravely striving to hide it, was quite plain to me.

"I suppose you're like Mr. Van Weyden there, accustomed to having things
done for you. Well, I think doing a few things for yourself will hardly
dislocate any joints. By the way, what do you do for a living?"

She regarded him with amazement unconcealed.

"I mean no offence, believe me. People eat, therefore they must procure
the wherewithal. These men here shoot seals in order to live; for the
same reason I sail this schooner; and Mr. Van Weyden, for the present at
any rate, earns his salty grub by assisting me. Now what do you do?"

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Do you feed yourself? Or does some one else feed you?"

"I'm afraid some one else has fed me most of my life," she laughed,
trying bravely to enter into the spirit of his quizzing, though I could
see a terror dawning and growing in her eyes as she watched Wolf Larsen.

"And I suppose some one else makes your bed for you?"

"I _have_ made beds," she replied.

"Very often?"

She shook her head with mock ruefulness.

"Do you know what they do to poor men in the States, who, like you, do
not work for their living?"

"I am very ignorant," she pleaded. "What do they do to the poor men who
are like me?"

"They send them to jail. The crime of not earning a living, in their
case, is called vagrancy. If I were Mr. Van Weyden, who harps eternally
on questions of right and wrong, I'd ask, by what right do you live when
you do nothing to deserve living?"

"But as you are not Mr. Van Weyden, I don't have to answer, do I?"

She beamed upon him through her terror-filled eyes, and the pathos of it
cut me to the heart. I must in some way break in and lead the
conversation into other channels.

"Have you ever earned a dollar by your own labour?" he demanded, certain
of her answer, a triumphant v