l processes and examining their souls as though to see of what
soul-stuff is made.

I have seen him a score of times, at table, insulting this hunter or
that, with cool and level eyes and, withal, a certain air of interest,
pondering their actions or replies or petty rages with a curiosity almost
laughable to me who stood onlooker and who understood. Concerning his
own rages, I am convinced that they are not real, that they are sometimes
experiments, but that in the main they are the habits of a pose or
attitude he has seen fit to take toward his fellow-men. I know, with the
possible exception of the incident of the dead mate, that I have not seen
him really angry; nor do I wish ever to see him in a genuine rage, when
all the force of him is called into play.

While on the question of vagaries, I shall tell what befell Thomas
Mugridge in the cabin, and at the same time complete an incident upon
which I have already touched once or twice. The twelve o'clock dinner
was over, one day, and I had just finished putting the cabin in order,
when Wolf Larsen and Thomas Mugridge descended the companion stairs.
Though the cook had a cubby-hole of a state-room opening off from the
cabin, in the cabin itself he had never dared to linger or to be seen,
and he flitted to and fro, once or twice a day, a timid spectre.

"So you know how to play 'Nap,'" Wolf Larsen was saying in a pleased sort
of voice. "I might have guessed an Englishman would know. I learned it
myself in English ships."

Thomas Mugridge was beside himself, a blithering imbecile, so pleased was
he at chumming thus with the captain. The little airs he put on and the
painful striving to assume the easy carriage of a man born to a dignified
place in life would have been sickening had they not been ludicrous. He
quite ignored my presence, though I credited him with being simply unable
to see me. His pale, wishy-washy eyes were swimming like lazy summer
seas, though what blissful visions they beheld were beyond my
imagination.

"Get the cards, Hump," Wolf Larsen ordered, as they took seats at the
table. "And bring out the cigars and the whisky you'll find in my
berth."

I returned with the articles in time to hear the Cockney hinting broadly
that there was a mystery about him, that he might be a gentleman's son
gone wrong or something or other; also, that he was a remittance man and
was paid to keep away from England--"p'yed 'ansomely, sir," was the way
he pu