many lazy
young dogs.

Under the approaching smoke the hull and upper-works of a steamer were
growing larger. It was the _Macedonia_. I read her name through the
glasses as she passed by scarcely a mile to starboard. Wolf Larsen
looked savagely at the vessel, while Maud Brewster was curious.

"Where is the trouble you were so sure was breezing up, Captain Larsen?"
she asked gaily.

He glanced at her, a moment's amusement softening his features.

"What did you expect? That they'd come aboard and cut our throats?"

"Something like that," she confessed. "You understand, seal-hunters are
so new and strange to me that I am quite ready to expect anything."

He nodded his head. "Quite right, quite right. Your error is that you
failed to expect the worst."

"Why, what can be worse than cutting our throats?" she asked, with pretty
naive surprise.

"Cutting our purses," he answered. "Man is so made these days that his
capacity for living is determined by the money he possesses."

"'Who steals my purse steals trash,'" she quoted.

"Who steals my purse steals my right to live," was the reply, "old saws
to the contrary. For he steals my bread and meat and bed, and in so
doing imperils my life. There are not enough soup-kitchens and
bread-lines to go around, you know, and when men have nothing in their
purses they usually die, and die miserably--unless they are able to fill
their purses pretty speedily."

"But I fail to see that this steamer has any designs on your purse."

"Wait and you will see," he answered grimly.

We did not have long to wait. Having passed several miles beyond our
line of boats, the _Macedonia_ proceeded to lower her own. We knew she
carried fourteen boats to our five (we were one short through the
desertion of Wainwright), and she began dropping them far to leeward of
our last boat, continued dropping them athwart our course, and finished
dropping them far to windward of our first weather boat. The hunting,
for us, was spoiled. There were no seals behind us, and ahead of us the
line of fourteen boats, like a huge broom, swept the herd before it.

Our boats hunted across the two or three miles of water between them and
the point where the _Macedonia's_ had been dropped, and then headed for
home. The wind had fallen to a whisper, the ocean was growing calmer and
calmer, and this, coupled with the presence of the great herd, made a
perfect hunting day--one of the two or three days t