ning. I put the shovel away and calmly sat down on
the coal-box facing him. He favoured me with a vicious stare. Still
calmly, though my heart was going pitapat, I pulled out Louis's dirk and
began to whet it on the stone. I had looked for almost any sort of
explosion on the Cockney's part, but to my surprise he did not appear
aware of what I was doing. He went on whetting his knife. So did I.
And for two hours we sat there, face to face, whet, whet, whet, till the
news of it spread abroad and half the ship's company was crowding the
galley doors to see the sight.

Encouragement and advice were freely tendered, and Jock Horner, the
quiet, self-spoken hunter who looked as though he would not harm a mouse,
advised me to leave the ribs alone and to thrust upward for the abdomen,
at the same time giving what he called the "Spanish twist" to the blade.
Leach, his bandaged arm prominently to the fore, begged me to leave a few
remnants of the cook for him; and Wolf Larsen paused once or twice at the
break of the poop to glance curiously at what must have been to him a
stirring and crawling of the yeasty thing he knew as life.

And I make free to say that for the time being life assumed the same
sordid values to me. There was nothing pretty about it, nothing
divine--only two cowardly moving things that sat whetting steel upon
stone, and a group of other moving things, cowardly and otherwise, that
looked on. Half of them, I am sure, were anxious to see us shedding each
other's blood. It would have been entertainment. And I do not think
there was one who would have interfered had we closed in a
death-struggle.

On the other hand, the whole thing was laughable and childish. Whet,
whet, whet,--Humphrey Van Weyden sharpening his knife in a ship's galley
and trying its edge with his thumb! Of all situations this was the most
inconceivable. I know that my own kind could not have believed it
possible. I had not been called "Sissy" Van Weyden all my days without
reason, and that "Sissy" Van Weyden should be capable of doing this thing
was a revelation to Humphrey Van Weyden, who knew not whether to be
exultant or ashamed.

But nothing happened. At the end of two hours Thomas Mugridge put away
knife and stone and held out his hand.

"Wot's the good of mykin' a 'oly show of ourselves for them mugs?" he
demanded. "They don't love us, an' bloody well glad they'd be a-seein'
us cuttin' our throats. Yer not 'arf bad, 'Um