snarled was Larry, evidently on the main
deck beneath him. Not until Wada brought me breakfast did I learn what
had occurred.

Larry, with his funny pug nose, his curiously flat and twisted face, and
his querulous, plaintive chimpanzee eyes, had been moved by some unlucky
whim to venture an insolent remark under the cover of darkness on the
main deck. But Mr. Pike, from above, at the break of the poop, had
picked the offender unerringly. This was when the explosion occurred.
Then the unfortunate Larry, truly half-devil and all child, had waxed
sullen and retorted still more insolently; and the next he knew, the
mate, descending upon him like a hurricane, had handcuffed him to the
mizzen fife-rail.

Imagine, on Mr. Pike's part, that this was one for Larry and at least ten
for Kid Twist, Nosey Murphy, and Bert Rhine. I'll not be so absurd as to
say that the mate is afraid of those gangsters. I doubt if he has ever
experienced fear. It is not in him. On the other hand, I am confident
that he apprehends trouble from these men, and that it was for their
benefit he made this example of Larry.

Larry could stand no more than an hour in irons, at which time his stupid
brutishness overcame any fear he might have possessed, because he
bellowed out to the poop to come down and loose him for a fair fight.
Promptly Mr. Pike was there with the key to the handcuffs. As if Larry
had the shred of a chance against that redoubtable aged man! Wada
reported that Larry, amongst other things, had lost a couple of front
teeth and was laid up in his bunk for the day. When I met Mr. Pike on
deck after eight o'clock I glanced at his knuckles. They verified Wada's
tale.

I cannot help being amused by the keen interest I take in little events
like the foregoing. Not only has time ceased, but the world has ceased.
Strange it is, when I come to think of it, in all these weeks I have
received no letter, no telephone call, no telegram, no visitor. I have
not been to the play. I have not read a newspaper. So far as I am
concerned, there are no plays nor newspapers. All such things have
vanished with the vanished world. All that exists is the _Elsinore_,
with her queer human freightage and her cargo of coal, cleaving a rotund
of ocean of which the skyline is a dozen miles away.

I am reminded of Captain Scott, frozen on his south-polar venture, who
for ten months after his death was believed by the world to be alive. Not
until the