d when a man's strength came to me, only the lines of my life were
cast at the time in other places. I did return, not long ago, but
unfortunately the skippers were dead, all but one, a mate in the old
days, a skipper when I met him, and when I left him a cripple who would
never walk again."

"But you who read Spencer and Darwin and have never seen the inside of a
school, how did you learn to read and write?" I queried.

"In the English merchant service. Cabin-boy at twelve, ship's boy at
fourteen, ordinary seamen at sixteen, able seaman at seventeen, and cock
of the fo'c'sle, infinite ambition and infinite loneliness, receiving
neither help nor sympathy, I did it all for myself--navigation,
mathematics, science, literature, and what not. And of what use has it
been? Master and owner of a ship at the top of my life, as you say, when
I am beginning to diminish and die. Paltry, isn't it? And when the sun
was up I was scorched, and because I had no root I withered away."

"But history tells of slaves who rose to the purple," I chided.

"And history tells of opportunities that came to the slaves who rose to
the purple," he answered grimly. "No man makes opportunity. All the
great men ever did was to know it when it came to them. The Corsican
knew. I have dreamed as greatly as the Corsican. I should have known
the opportunity, but it never came. The thorns sprung up and choked me.
And, Hump, I can tell you that you know more about me than any living
man, except my own brother."

"And what is he? And where is he?"

"Master of the steamship _Macedonia_, seal-hunter," was the answer. "We
will meet him most probably on the Japan coast. Men call him 'Death'
Larsen."

"Death Larsen!" I involuntarily cried. "Is he like you?"

"Hardly. He is a lump of an animal without any head. He has all
my--my--"

"Brutishness," I suggested.

"Yes,--thank you for the word,--all my brutishness, but he can scarcely
read or write."

"And he has never philosophized on life," I added.

"No," Wolf Larsen answered, with an indescribable air of sadness. "And
he is all the happier for leaving life alone. He is too busy living it
to think about it. My mistake was in ever opening the books."

CHAPTER XI

The _Ghost_ has attained the southernmost point of the arc she is
describing across the Pacific, and is already beginning to edge away to
the west and north toward some lone island, it is rumoured, where she
wi