thers. It may be a weakness of mine that I have an incisive way of
speech; but I threw all restraint to the winds and cut and slashed until
the whole man of him was snarling. The dark sun-bronze of his face went
black with wrath, his eyes were ablaze. There was no clearness or sanity
in them--nothing but the terrific rage of a madman. It was the wolf in
him that I saw, and a mad wolf at that.

He sprang for me with a half-roar, gripping my arm. I had steeled myself
to brazen it out, though I was trembling inwardly; but the enormous
strength of the man was too much for my fortitude. He had gripped me by
the biceps with his single hand, and when that grip tightened I wilted
and shrieked aloud. My feet went out from under me. I simply could not
stand upright and endure the agony. The muscles refused their duty. The
pain was too great. My biceps was being crushed to a pulp.

He seemed to recover himself, for a lucid gleam came into his eyes, and
he relaxed his hold with a short laugh that was more like a growl. I
fell to the floor, feeling very faint, while he sat down, lighted a
cigar, and watched me as a cat watches a mouse. As I writhed about I
could see in his eyes that curiosity I had so often noted, that wonder
and perplexity, that questing, that everlasting query of his as to what
it was all about.

I finally crawled to my feet and ascended the companion stairs. Fair
weather was over, and there was nothing left but to return to the galley.
My left arm was numb, as though paralysed, and days passed before I could
use it, while weeks went by before the last stiffness and pain went out
of it. And he had done nothing but put his hand upon my arm and squeeze.
There had been no wrenching or jerking. He had just closed his hand with
a steady pressure. What he might have done I did not fully realize till
next day, when he put his head into the galley, and, as a sign of renewed
friendliness, asked me how my arm was getting on.

"It might have been worse," he smiled.

I was peeling potatoes. He picked one up from the pan. It was
fair-sized, firm, and unpeeled. He closed his hand upon it, squeezed,
and the potato squirted out between his fingers in mushy streams. The
pulpy remnant he dropped back into the pan and turned away, and I had a
sharp vision of how it might have fared with me had the monster put his
real strength upon me.

But the three days' rest was good in spite of it all, for it had given