re it is,--we want to live and move, though
we have no reason to, because it happens that it is the nature of life to
live and move, to want to live and move. If it were not for this, life
would be dead. It is because of this life that is in you that you dream
of your immortality. The life that is in you is alive and wants to go on
being alive for ever. Bah! An eternity of piggishness!"

He abruptly turned on his heel and started forward. He stopped at the
break of the poop and called me to him.

"By the way, how much was it that Cooky got away with?" he asked.

"One hundred and eighty-five dollars, sir," I answered.

He nodded his head. A moment later, as I started down the companion
stairs to lay the table for dinner, I heard him loudly cursing some men
amidships.

CHAPTER VI

By the following morning the storm had blown itself quite out and the
_Ghost_ was rolling slightly on a calm sea without a breath of wind.
Occasional light airs were felt, however, and Wolf Larsen patrolled the
poop constantly, his eyes ever searching the sea to the north-eastward,
from which direction the great trade-wind must blow.

The men were all on deck and busy preparing their various boats for the
season's hunting. There are seven boats aboard, the captain's dingey,
and the six which the hunters will use. Three, a hunter, a boat-puller,
and a boat-steerer, compose a boat's crew. On board the schooner the
boat-pullers and steerers are the crew. The hunters, too, are supposed
to be in command of the watches, subject, always, to the orders of Wolf
Larsen.

All this, and more, I have learned. The _Ghost_ is considered the
fastest schooner in both the San Francisco and Victoria fleets. In fact,
she was once a private yacht, and was built for speed. Her lines and
fittings--though I know nothing about such things--speak for themselves.
Johnson was telling me about her in a short chat I had with him during
yesterday's second dog-watch. He spoke enthusiastically, with the love
for a fine craft such as some men feel for horses. He is greatly
disgusted with the outlook, and I am given to understand that Wolf Larsen
bears a very unsavoury reputation among the sealing captains. It was the
_Ghost_ herself that lured Johnson into signing for the voyage, but he is
already beginning to repent.

As he told me, the _Ghost_ is an eighty-ton schooner of a remarkably fine
model. Her beam, or width, is twenty-three feet, and