ing, and Seattle
suddenly seems quite near.

All the ship's company, with the exception of Margaret, is better
spirited. She is quiet, and a little down, though she is anything but
prone to the wastage of grief. In her robust, vital philosophy God's
always in heaven. I may describe her as being merely subdued, and
gentle, and tender. And she is very wistful to receive gentle
consideration and tenderness from me. She is, after all, the genuine
woman. She wants the strength that man has to give, and I flatter myself
that I am ten times a stronger man than I was when the voyage began,
because I am a thousand times a more human man since I told the books to
go hang and began to revel in the human maleness of the man that loves a
woman and is loved.

Returning to the ship's company. The rounding of the Horn, the better
weather that is continually growing better, the easement of hardship and
toil and danger, with the promise of the tropics and of the balmy south-
east trades before them--all these factors contribute to pick up our men
again. The temperature has already so moderated that the men are
beginning to shed their surplusage of clothing, and they no longer wrap
sacking about their sea-boots. Last evening, in the second dog-watch, I
heard a man actually singing.

The steward has discarded the huge, hacking knife and relaxed to the
extent of engaging in an occasional sober romp with Possum. Wada's face
is no longer solemnly long, and Louis' Oxford accent is more mellifluous
than ever. Mulligan Jacobs and Andy Fay are the same venomous scorpions
they have always been. The three gangsters, with the clique they lead,
have again asserted their tyrrany and thrashed all the weaklings and
feeblings in the forecastle. Charles Davis resolutely refuses to die,
though how he survived that wet and freezing room of iron through all the
weeks off the Horn has elicited wonder even from Mr. Pike, who has a most
accurate knowledge of what men can stand and what they cannot stand.

How Nietzsche, with his eternal slogan of "Be hard! Be hard!" would have
delighted in Mr. Pike!

And--oh!--Larry has had a tooth removed. For some days distressed with a
jumping toothache, he came aft to the mate for relief. Mr. Pike refused
to "monkey" with the "fangled" forceps in the medicine-chest. He used a
tenpenny nail and a hammer in the good old way to which he was brought
up. I vouch for this. I saw it done. One blow of the h