meself and the stanchion there,
this Wolf Larsen is a regular devil, an' the _Ghost'll_ be a hell-ship
like she's always ben since he had hold iv her. Don't I know? Don't I
know? Don't I remember him in Hakodate two years gone, when he had a row
an' shot four iv his men? Wasn't I a-layin' on the _Emma L._, not three
hundred yards away? An' there was a man the same year he killed with a
blow iv his fist. Yes, sir, killed 'im dead-oh. His head must iv
smashed like an eggshell. An' wasn't there the Governor of Kura Island,
an' the Chief iv Police, Japanese gentlemen, sir, an' didn't they come
aboard the _Ghost_ as his guests, a-bringin' their wives along--wee an'
pretty little bits of things like you see 'em painted on fans. An' as he
was a-gettin' under way, didn't the fond husbands get left astern-like in
their sampan, as it might be by accident? An' wasn't it a week later
that the poor little ladies was put ashore on the other side of the
island, with nothin' before 'em but to walk home acrost the mountains on
their weeny-teeny little straw sandals which wouldn't hang together a
mile? Don't I know? 'Tis the beast he is, this Wolf Larsen--the great
big beast mentioned iv in Revelation; an' no good end will he ever come
to. But I've said nothin' to ye, mind ye. I've whispered never a word;
for old fat Louis'll live the voyage out if the last mother's son of yez
go to the fishes."

"Wolf Larsen!" he snorted a moment later. "Listen to the word, will ye!
Wolf--'tis what he is. He's not black-hearted like some men. 'Tis no
heart he has at all. Wolf, just wolf, 'tis what he is. D'ye wonder he's
well named?"

"But if he is so well-known for what he is," I queried, "how is it that
he can get men to ship with him?"

"An' how is it ye can get men to do anything on God's earth an' sea?"
Louis demanded with Celtic fire. "How d'ye find me aboard if 'twasn't
that I was drunk as a pig when I put me name down? There's them that
can't sail with better men, like the hunters, and them that don't know,
like the poor devils of wind-jammers for'ard there. But they'll come to
it, they'll come to it, an' be sorry the day they was born. I could weep
for the poor creatures, did I but forget poor old fat Louis and the
troubles before him. But 'tis not a whisper I've dropped, mind ye, not a
whisper."

"Them hunters is the wicked boys," he broke forth again, for he suffered
from a constitutional plethora of speech. "But