After breakfast I had another unenviable experience.When had finished washing the dishes, I cleaned the cabin stove and carried the ashes up on deck to empty them.Wolf Larsen and Henderson were standing near the wheel, deep in conversation.The sailor, Johnson, was steering.As I started toward the weather side I saw him make a sudden motion with his head, which I mistook for a token of recognition and good morning.In reality, he was attempting to warn me to throw my ashes over the lee side.Unconscious of my blunder, I passed by Wolf Larsen and the hunter and flung the ashes over the side to windward.The wind drove them back, and not only over me, but over Henderson and Wolf Larsen.The next instant the latter kicked me, violently, as a cur is kicked.I had not realized there could be so much pain in a kick.reeled away from him and leaned against the cabin in a half-fainting condition.Everything was swimming before my eyes, and I turned sick.The nausea overpowered me, and I managed to crawl to the side of the vessel.But Wolf Larsen did not follow me up.Brushing the ashes from his clothes, he had resumed his conversation with Henderson.
Johansen, who had seen the affair from the break of the poop, sent a couple of sailors aft to clean up the mess.
Later in the morning I received a surprise of a totally different sort.
Following the cook's instructions, I had gone into Wolf Larsen's state-room to put it to rights and make the bed.Against the wall, near the head of the bunk, was a rack filled with books.glanced over them, noting with astonishment such names as Shakespeare, Tennyson, Poe, and De Quincey.
There were scientific works, too, among which were represented men such as Tyndall, Proctor, and Darwin.Astronomy and physics were represented, and I remarked Bulfinch's "Age of Fable," Shaw's "History of English and American Literature," and Johnson's "Natural History" in two large volumes.
Then there were a number of grammars, such as Metcalf's, and Reed and Kellogg's;and I smiled as I saw a copy of "The Dean's English."I could not reconcile these books with the man from what I had seen of him, and I wondered if he could possibly read them.But when came to make the bed I found, between the blankets, dropped apparently as he had sunk off to sleep, a complete Browning, the Cambridge Edition.It was open at "In a Balcony," and I noticed, here and there, passages underlined in pencil.Further, letting drop the volume during a lurch of the ship, a sheet of paper fell out.It was scrawled over with geometrical diagrams and calculations of some sort.
It was patent that this terrible man was no ignorant clod, such as one would inevitably suppose him to be from his exhibitions of brutality.At once he became an enigma.One side or the other of his nature was perfectly comprehensible; but both sides together were bewildering.I had already remarked that his language was excellent, marred with an occasional slight inaccuracy.Of course, in common speech with the sailors and hunters, it sometimes fairly bristled with errors, which was due to the vernacular itself; but in the few words he had held with me it had been clear and correct.
This glimpse I had caught of his other side must have emboldened me, for I resolved to speak to him about the money I had lost.
"I have been robbed," I said to him, a little later, when found him pacing up and down the poop alone.
"Sir," he corrected, not harshly, but sternly.
"I have been robbed, sir," I amended.
"How did it happen?" he asked.
Then I told him the whole circumstance, how my clothes had been left to dry in the galley, and how, later, I was nearly beaten by the cook when I mentioned the matter.
He smiled at my recital."Pickings," he concluded; "Cooky's pickings.
And don't you think your miserable life worth the price? Besides, consider it a lesson.You'll learn in time how to take care of your money for yourself.
I suppose, up to now, your lawyer has done it for you, or your business agent."I could feel the quiet sneer through his words, but demanded, "How can I get it back again?""That's your lookout.You haven't any lawyer or business agent now, so you'll have to depend on yourself.When you get a dollar, hang on to it.A man who leaves his money lying around, the way you did, deserves to lose it.Besides, you have sinned.You have no right to put temptation in the way of your fellow-creatures.You tempted Cooky, and he fell.You have placed his immortal soul in jeopardy.By the way, do you believe in the immortal soul?"His lids lifted lazily as he asked the question, and it seemed that the deeps were opening to me and that I was gazing into his soul.But it was an illusion.Far as it might have seemed, no man has ever seen very far into Wolf Larsen's soul, or seen it at all; of this am convinced.It was a very lonely soul, I was to learn, that never unmasked, though at rare moments it played at doing so.
"I read immortality in your eyes," I answered, dropping the "sir," --an experiment, for I thought the intimacy of the conversation warranted it.
