her length a little
over ninety feet. A lead keel of fabulous but unknown weight makes her
very stable, while she carries an immense spread of canvas. From the
deck to the truck of the maintopmast is something over a hundred feet,
while the foremast with its topmast is eight or ten feet shorter. I am
giving these details so that the size of this little floating world which
holds twenty-two men may be appreciated. It is a very little world, a
mote, a speck, and I marvel that men should dare to venture the sea on a
contrivance so small and fragile.

Wolf Larsen has, also, a reputation for reckless carrying on of sail. I
overheard Henderson and another of the hunters, Standish, a Californian,
talking about it. Two years ago he dismasted the _Ghost_ in a gale on
Bering Sea, whereupon the present masts were put in, which are stronger
and heavier in every way. He is said to have remarked, when he put them
in, that he preferred turning her over to losing the sticks.

Every man aboard, with the exception of Johansen, who is rather overcome
by his promotion, seems to have an excuse for having sailed on the
_Ghost_. Half the men forward are deep-water sailors, and their excuse
is that they did not know anything about her or her captain. And those
who do know, whisper that the hunters, while excellent shots, were so
notorious for their quarrelsome and rascally proclivities that they could
not sign on any decent schooner.

I have made the acquaintance of another one of the crew,--Louis he is
called, a rotund and jovial-faced Nova Scotia Irishman, and a very
sociable fellow, prone to talk as long as he can find a listener. In the
afternoon, while the cook was below asleep and I was peeling the
everlasting potatoes, Louis dropped into the galley for a "yarn." His
excuse for being aboard was that he was drunk when he signed. He assured
me again and again that it was the last thing in the world he would dream
of doing in a sober moment. It seems that he has been seal-hunting
regularly each season for a dozen years, and is accounted one of the two
or three very best boat-steerers in both fleets.

"Ah, my boy," he shook his head ominously at me, "'tis the worst schooner
ye could iv selected, nor were ye drunk at the time as was I. 'Tis
sealin' is the sailor's paradise--on other ships than this. The mate was
the first, but mark me words, there'll be more dead men before the trip
is done with. Hist, now, between you an'