and more diversified faces, with
hard lines and the marks of the free play of passions. Strange to say,
and I noted it all once, Wolf Larsen's features showed no such evil
stamp. There seemed nothing vicious in them. True, there were lines,
but they were the lines of decision and firmness. It seemed, rather, a
frank and open countenance, which frankness or openness was enhanced by
the fact that he was smooth-shaven. I could hardly believe--until the
next incident occurred--that it was the face of a man who could behave as
he had behaved to the cabin-boy.

At this moment, as he opened his mouth to speak, puff after puff struck
the schooner and pressed her side under. The wind shrieked a wild song
through the rigging. Some of the hunters glanced anxiously aloft. The
lee rail, where the dead man lay, was buried in the sea, and as the
schooner lifted and righted the water swept across the deck wetting us
above our shoe-tops. A shower of rain drove down upon us, each drop
stinging like a hailstone. As it passed, Wolf Larsen began to speak, the
bare-headed men swaying in unison, to the heave and lunge of the deck.

"I only remember one part of the service," he said, "and that is, 'And
the body shall be cast into the sea.' So cast it in."

He ceased speaking. The men holding the hatch-cover seemed perplexed,
puzzled no doubt by the briefness of the ceremony. He burst upon them in
a fury.

"Lift up that end there, damn you! What the hell's the matter with you?"

They elevated the end of the hatch-cover with pitiful haste, and, like a
dog flung overside, the dead man slid feet first into the sea. The coal
at his feet dragged him down. He was gone.

"Johansen," Wolf Larsen said briskly to the new mate, "keep all hands on
deck now they're here. Get in the topsails and jibs and make a good job
of it. We're in for a sou'-easter. Better reef the jib and mainsail
too, while you're about it."

In a moment the decks were in commotion, Johansen bellowing orders and
the men pulling or letting go ropes of various sorts--all naturally
confusing to a landsman such as myself. But it was the heartlessness of
it that especially struck me. The dead man was an episode that was past,
an incident that was dropped, in a canvas covering with a sack of coal,
while the ship sped along and her work went on. Nobody had been
affected. The hunters were laughing at a fresh story of Smoke's; the men
pulling and hauling, and two