er with
geometrical diagrams and calculations of some sort.

It was patent that this terrible man was no ignorant clod, such as one
would inevitably suppose him to be from his exhibitions of brutality. At
once he became an enigma. One side or the other of his nature was
perfectly comprehensible; but both sides together were bewildering. I
had already remarked that his language was excellent, marred with an
occasional slight inaccuracy. Of course, in common speech with the
sailors and hunters, it sometimes fairly bristled with errors, which was
due to the vernacular itself; but in the few words he had held with me it
had been clear and correct.

This glimpse I had caught of his other side must have emboldened me, for
I resolved to speak to him about the money I had lost.

"I have been robbed," I said to him, a little later, when I found him
pacing up and down the poop alone.

"Sir," he corrected, not harshly, but sternly.

"I have been robbed, sir," I amended.

"How did it happen?" he asked.

Then I told him the whole circumstance, how my clothes had been left to
dry in the galley, and how, later, I was nearly beaten by the cook when I
mentioned the matter.

He smiled at my recital. "Pickings," he concluded; "Cooky's pickings.
And don't you think your miserable life worth the price? Besides,
consider it a lesson. You'll learn in time how to take care of your
money for yourself. I suppose, up to now, your lawyer has done it for
you, or your business agent."

I could feel the quiet sneer through his words, but demanded, "How can I
get it back again?"

"That's your look-out. You haven't any lawyer or business agent now, so
you'll have to depend on yourself. When you get a dollar, hang on to it.
A man who leaves his money lying around, the way you did, deserves to
lose it. Besides, you have sinned. You have no right to put temptation
in the way of your fellow-creatures. You tempted Cooky, and he fell.
You have placed his immortal soul in jeopardy. By the way, do you
believe in the immortal soul?"

His lids lifted lazily as he asked the question, and it seemed that the
deeps were opening to me and that I was gazing into his soul. But it was
an illusion. Far as it might have seemed, no man has ever seen very far
into Wolf Larsen's soul, or seen it at all,--of this I am convinced. It
was a very lonely soul, I was to learn, that never unmasked, though at
rare moments it played at doing so.

"I re