Van Weyden, sir."

"First name?"

"Humphrey, sir; Humphrey Van Weyden."

"Age?"

"Thirty-five, sir."

"That'll do. Go to the cook and learn your duties."

And thus it was that I passed into a state of involuntary servitude to
Wolf Larsen. He was stronger than I, that was all. But it was very
unreal at the time. It is no less unreal now that I look back upon it.
It will always be to me a monstrous, inconceivable thing, a horrible
nightmare.

"Hold on, don't go yet."

I stopped obediently in my walk toward the galley.

"Johansen, call all hands. Now that we've everything cleaned up, we'll
have the funeral and get the decks cleared of useless lumber."

While Johansen was summoning the watch below, a couple of sailors, under
the captain's direction, laid the canvas-swathed corpse upon a
hatch-cover. On either side the deck, against the rail and bottoms up,
were lashed a number of small boats. Several men picked up the
hatch-cover with its ghastly freight, carried it to the lee side, and
rested it on the boats, the feet pointing overboard. To the feet was
attached the sack of coal which the cook had fetched.

I had always conceived a burial at sea to be a very solemn and
awe-inspiring event, but I was quickly disillusioned, by this burial at
any rate. One of the hunters, a little dark-eyed man whom his mates
called "Smoke," was telling stories, liberally intersprinkled with oaths
and obscenities; and every minute or so the group of hunters gave mouth
to a laughter that sounded to me like a wolf-chorus or the barking of
hell-hounds. The sailors trooped noisily aft, some of the watch below
rubbing the sleep from their eyes, and talked in low tones together.
There was an ominous and worried expression on their faces. It was
evident that they did not like the outlook of a voyage under such a
captain and begun so inauspiciously. From time to time they stole
glances at Wolf Larsen, and I could see that they were apprehensive of
the man.

He stepped up to the hatch-cover, and all caps came off. I ran my eyes
over them--twenty men all told; twenty-two including the man at the wheel
and myself. I was pardonably curious in my survey, for it appeared my
fate to be pent up with them on this miniature floating world for I knew
not how many weeks or months. The sailors, in the main, were English and
Scandinavian, and their faces seemed of the heavy, stolid order. The
hunters, on the other hand, had stronger