you and the mate there are going to do to me, sir."

"Look at him, Hump," Wolf Larsen said to me, "look at this bit of
animated dust, this aggregation of matter that moves and breathes and
defies me and thoroughly believes itself to be compounded of something
good; that is impressed with certain human fictions such as righteousness
and honesty, and that will live up to them in spite of all personal
discomforts and menaces. What do you think of him, Hump? What do you
think of him?"

"I think that he is a better man than you are," I answered, impelled,
somehow, with a desire to draw upon myself a portion of the wrath I felt
was about to break upon his head. "His human fictions, as you choose to
call them, make for nobility and manhood. You have no fictions, no
dreams, no ideals. You are a pauper."

He nodded his head with a savage pleasantness. "Quite true, Hump, quite
true. I have no fictions that make for nobility and manhood. A living
dog is better than a dead lion, say I with the Preacher. My only
doctrine is the doctrine of expediency, and it makes for surviving. This
bit of the ferment we call 'Johnson,' when he is no longer a bit of the
ferment, only dust and ashes, will have no more nobility than any dust
and ashes, while I shall still be alive and roaring."

"Do you know what I am going to do?" he questioned.

I shook my head.

"Well, I am going to exercise my prerogative of roaring and show you how
fares nobility. Watch me."

Three yards away from Johnson he was, and sitting down. Nine feet! And
yet he left the chair in full leap, without first gaining a standing
position. He left the chair, just as he sat in it, squarely, springing
from the sitting posture like a wild animal, a tiger, and like a tiger
covered the intervening space. It was an avalanche of fury that Johnson
strove vainly to fend off. He threw one arm down to protect the stomach,
the other arm up to protect the head; but Wolf Larsen's fist drove midway
between, on the chest, with a crushing, resounding impact. Johnson's
breath, suddenly expelled, shot from his mouth and as suddenly checked,
with the forced, audible expiration of a man wielding an axe. He almost
fell backward, and swayed from side to side in an effort to recover his
balance.

I cannot give the further particulars of the horrible scene that
followed. It was too revolting. It turns me sick even now when I think
of it. Johnson fought bravely enough, but