und up by a fight between
Johansen and the lean, Yankee-looking hunter, Latimer. It was caused by
remarks of Latimer's concerning the noises made by the mate in his sleep,
and though Johansen was whipped, he kept the steerage awake for the rest
of the night while he blissfully slumbered and fought the fight over and
over again.

As for myself, I was oppressed with nightmare. The day had been like
some horrible dream. Brutality had followed brutality, and flaming
passions and cold-blooded cruelty had driven men to seek one another's
lives, and to strive to hurt, and maim, and destroy. My nerves were
shocked. My mind itself was shocked. All my days had been passed in
comparative ignorance of the animality of man. In fact, I had known life
only in its intellectual phases. Brutality I had experienced, but it was
the brutality of the intellect--the cutting sarcasm of Charley Furuseth,
the cruel epigrams and occasional harsh witticisms of the fellows at the
Bibelot, and the nasty remarks of some of the professors during my
undergraduate days.

That was all. But that men should wreak their anger on others by the
bruising of the flesh and the letting of blood was something strangely
and fearfully new to me. Not for nothing had I been called "Sissy" Van
Weyden, I thought, as I tossed restlessly on my bunk between one
nightmare and another. And it seemed to me that my innocence of the
realities of life had been complete indeed. I laughed bitterly to
myself, and seemed to find in Wolf Larsen's forbidding philosophy a more
adequate explanation of life than I found in my own.

And I was frightened when I became conscious of the trend of my thought.
The continual brutality around me was degenerative in its effect. It bid
fair to destroy for me all that was best and brightest in life. My
reason dictated that the beating Thomas Mugridge had received was an ill
thing, and yet for the life of me I could not prevent my soul joying in
it. And even while I was oppressed by the enormity of my sin,--for sin
it was,--I chuckled with an insane delight. I was no longer Humphrey Van
Weyden. I was Hump, cabin-boy on the schooner _Ghost_. Wolf Larsen was
my captain, Thomas Mugridge and the rest were my companions, and I was
receiving repeated impresses from the die which had stamped them all.

CHAPTER XIII

For three days I did my own work and Thomas Mugridge's too; and I flatter
myself that I did his work well. I kn