left the discussion to the two antagonists. But they
were supremely interested, for every little while they ardently took
sides, and sometimes all were talking at once, till their voices surged
back and forth in waves of sound like mimic thunder-rolls in the confined
space. Childish and immaterial as the topic was, the quality of their
reasoning was still more childish and immaterial. In truth, there was
very little reasoning or none at all. Their method was one of assertion,
assumption, and denunciation. They proved that a seal pup could swim or
not swim at birth by stating the proposition very bellicosely and then
following it up with an attack on the opposing man's judgment, common
sense, nationality, or past history. Rebuttal was precisely similar. I
have related this in order to show the mental calibre of the men with
whom I was thrown in contact. Intellectually they were children,
inhabiting the physical forms of men.

And they smoked, incessantly smoked, using a coarse, cheap, and
offensive-smelling tobacco. The air was thick and murky with the smoke
of it; and this, combined with the violent movement of the ship as she
struggled through the storm, would surely have made me sea-sick had I
been a victim to that malady. As it was, it made me quite squeamish,
though this nausea might have been due to the pain of my leg and
exhaustion.

As I lay there thinking, I naturally dwelt upon myself and my situation.
It was unparalleled, undreamed-of, that I, Humphrey Van Weyden, a scholar
and a dilettante, if you please, in things artistic and literary, should
be lying here on a Bering Sea seal-hunting schooner. Cabin-boy! I had
never done any hard manual labour, or scullion labour, in my life. I had
lived a placid, uneventful, sedentary existence all my days--the life of
a scholar and a recluse on an assured and comfortable income. Violent
life and athletic sports had never appealed to me. I had always been a
book-worm; so my sisters and father had called me during my childhood. I
had gone camping but once in my life, and then I left the party almost at
its start and returned to the comforts and conveniences of a roof. And
here I was, with dreary and endless vistas before me of table-setting,
potato-peeling, and dish-washing. And I was not strong. The doctors had
always said that I had a remarkable constitution, but I had never
developed it or my body through exercise. My muscles were small and
soft, li