ke a woman's, or so the doctors had said time and again in the
course of their attempts to persuade me to go in for physical-culture
fads. But I had preferred to use my head rather than my body; and here I
was, in no fit condition for the rough life in prospect.

These are merely a few of the things that went through my mind, and are
related for the sake of vindicating myself in advance in the weak and
helpless _role_ I was destined to play. But I thought, also, of my
mother and sisters, and pictured their grief. I was among the missing
dead of the _Martinez_ disaster, an unrecovered body. I could see the
head-lines in the papers; the fellows at the University Club and the
Bibelot shaking their heads and saying, "Poor chap!" And I could see
Charley Furuseth, as I had said good-bye to him that morning, lounging in
a dressing-gown on the be-pillowed window couch and delivering himself of
oracular and pessimistic epigrams.

And all the while, rolling, plunging, climbing the moving mountains and
falling and wallowing in the foaming valleys, the schooner _Ghost_ was
fighting her way farther and farther into the heart of the Pacific--and I
was on her. I could hear the wind above. It came to my ears as a
muffled roar. Now and again feet stamped overhead. An endless creaking
was going on all about me, the woodwork and the fittings groaning and
squeaking and complaining in a thousand keys. The hunters were still
arguing and roaring like some semi-human amphibious breed. The air was
filled with oaths and indecent expressions. I could see their faces,
flushed and angry, the brutality distorted and emphasized by the sickly
yellow of the sea-lamps which rocked back and forth with the ship.
Through the dim smoke-haze the bunks looked like the sleeping dens of
animals in a menagerie. Oilskins and sea-boots were hanging from the
walls, and here and there rifles and shotguns rested securely in the
racks. It was a sea-fitting for the buccaneers and pirates of by-gone
years. My imagination ran riot, and still I could not sleep. And it was
a long, long night, weary and dreary and long.

CHAPTER V

But my first night in the hunters' steerage was also my last. Next day
Johansen, the new mate, was routed from the cabin by Wolf Larsen, and
sent into the steerage to sleep thereafter, while I took possession of
the tiny cabin state-room, which, on the first day of the voyage, had
already had two occupants. The reason