wait till they get to
cutting up iv jinks and rowin' 'round. He's the boy'll fix 'em. 'Tis
him that'll put the fear of God in their rotten black hearts. Look at
that hunter iv mine, Horner. 'Jock' Horner they call him, so quiet-like
an' easy-goin', soft-spoken as a girl, till ye'd think butter wouldn't
melt in the mouth iv him. Didn't he kill his boat-steerer last year?
'Twas called a sad accident, but I met the boat-puller in Yokohama an'
the straight iv it was given me. An' there's Smoke, the black little
devil--didn't the Roosians have him for three years in the salt mines of
Siberia, for poachin' on Copper Island, which is a Roosian preserve?
Shackled he was, hand an' foot, with his mate. An' didn't they have
words or a ruction of some kind?--for 'twas the other fellow Smoke sent
up in the buckets to the top of the mine; an' a piece at a time he went
up, a leg to-day, an' to-morrow an arm, the next day the head, an' so
on."

"But you can't mean it!" I cried out, overcome with the horror of it.

"Mean what!" he demanded, quick as a flash. "'Tis nothin' I've said.
Deef I am, and dumb, as ye should be for the sake iv your mother; an'
never once have I opened me lips but to say fine things iv them an' him,
God curse his soul, an' may he rot in purgatory ten thousand years, and
then go down to the last an' deepest hell iv all!"

Johnson, the man who had chafed me raw when I first came aboard, seemed
the least equivocal of the men forward or aft. In fact, there was
nothing equivocal about him. One was struck at once by his
straightforwardness and manliness, which, in turn, were tempered by a
modesty which might be mistaken for timidity. But timid he was not. He
seemed, rather, to have the courage of his convictions, the certainty of
his manhood. It was this that made him protest, at the commencement of
our acquaintance, against being called Yonson. And upon this, and him,
Louis passed judgment and prophecy.

"'Tis a fine chap, that squarehead Johnson we've for'ard with us," he
said. "The best sailorman in the fo'c'sle. He's my boat-puller. But
it's to trouble he'll come with Wolf Larsen, as the sparks fly upward.
It's meself that knows. I can see it brewin' an' comin' up like a storm
in the sky. I've talked to him like a brother, but it's little he sees
in takin' in his lights or flyin' false signals. He grumbles out when
things don't go to suit him, and there'll be always some tell-tale
carryin'