What happened to me next on the sealing-schooner _Ghost_, as I strove tofit into my new environment, are matters of humiliation and pain. Thecook, who was called “the doctor” by the crew, “Tommy” by the hunters,and “Cooky” by Wolf Larsen, was a changed person. The difference workedin my status brought about a corresponding difference in treatment fromhim. Servile and fawning as he had been before, he was now asdomineering and bellicose. In truth, I was no longer the fine gentlemanwith a skin soft as a “lydy’s,” but only an ordinary and very worthlesscabin-boy.

He absurdly insisted upon my addressing him as Mr. Mugridge, and hisbehaviour and carriage were insufferable as he showed me my duties.Besides my work in the cabin, with its four small state-rooms, I wassupposed to be his assistant in the galley, and my colossal ignoranceconcerning such things as peeling potatoes or washing greasy pots was asource of unending and sarcastic wonder to him. He refused to take intoconsideration what I was, or, rather, what my life and the things I wasaccustomed to had been. This was part of the attitude he chose to adopttoward me; and I confess, ere the day was done, that I hated him withmore lively feelings than I had ever hated any one in my life before.

This first day was made more difficult for me from the fact that the_Ghost_, under close reefs (terms such as these I did not learn tilllater), was plunging through what Mr. Mugridge called an “’owlin’sou’-easter.” At half-past five, under his directions, I set the tablein the cabin, with rough-weather trays in place, and then carried the teaand cooked food down from the galley. In this connection I cannotforbear relating my first experience with a boarding sea.

“Look sharp or you’ll get doused,” was Mr. Mugridge’s parting injunction,as I left the galley with a big tea-pot in one hand, and in the hollow ofthe other arm several loaves of fresh-baked bread. One of the hunters, atall, loose-jointed chap named Henderson, was going aft at the time fromthe steerage (the name the hunters facetiously gave their midshipssleeping quarters) to the cabin. Wolf Larsen was on the poop, smokinghis everlasting cigar.

“’Ere she comes. Sling yer ’ook!” the cook cried.

I stopped, for I did not know what was coming, and saw the galley doorslide shut with a bang. Then I saw Henderson leaping like a madman forthe main rigging, up which he shot, on the inside, till he was many feethigher than my head. Also I saw a great wave, curling and foaming,poised far above the rail. I was directly under it. My mind did notwork quickly, everything was so new and strange. I grasped that I was indanger, but that was all. I stood still, in trepidation. Then WolfLarsen shouted from the poop:

“Grab hold something, you—you Hump!”

But it was too late. I sprang toward the rigging, to which I might haveclung, and was met by the descending wall of water. What happened afterthat was very confusing. I was beneath the water, suffocating anddrowning. My feet were out from under me, and I was turning over andover and being swept along I knew not where. Several times I collidedagainst hard objects, once striking my right knee a terrible blow. Thenthe flood seemed suddenly to subside and I was breathing the good airagain. I had been swept against the galley and around the steeragecompanion-way from the weather side into the lee scuppers. The pain frommy hurt knee was agonizing. I could not put my weight on it, or, atleast, I thought I could not put my weight on it; and I felt sure the legwas broken. But the cook was after me, shouting through the lee galleydoor:

“’Ere, you! Don’t tyke all night about it! Where’s the pot? Lostoverboard? Serve you bloody well right if yer neck was broke!”

I managed to struggle to my feet. The great tea-pot was still in myhand. I limped to the galley and handed it to him. But he was consumedwith indignation, real or feigned.

“Gawd blime me if you ayn’t a slob. Wot ’re you good for anyw’y, I’dlike to know? Eh? Wot ’re you good for any’wy? Cawn’t even carry a bitof tea aft without losin’ it. Now I’ll ’ave to boil some more.

“An’ wot ’re you snifflin’ about?” he burst out at me, with renewed rage.“’Cos you’ve ’urt yer pore little leg, pore little mamma’s darlin’.”

I was not sniffling, though my face might well have been drawn andtwitching from the pain. But I called up all my resolution, set myteeth, and hobbled back and forth from galley to cabin and cabin togalley without further mishap. Two things I had acquired by my accident:an injured knee-cap that went undressed and from which I suffered forweary months, and the name of “Hump,” which Wolf Larsen had called mefrom the poop. Thereafter, fore and aft, I was known by no other name,until the term became a part of my thought-processes and I identified itwith myself, thought of myself as Hump, as though Hump were I and hadalways been I.

It was no easy task, waiting on the cabin table, where sat Wolf Larsen,Johansen, and the six hunters. The cabin was small, to begin with, andto move around, as I was compelled to, was not made easier by theschooner’s violent pitching and wallowing. But what struck me mostforcibly was the total lack of sympathy on the part of the men whom Iserved. I could feel my knee through my clothes, swelling, and swelling,and I was sick and faint from the pain of it. I could catch glimpses ofmy face, white and ghastly, distorted with pain, in the cabin mirror.All the men must have seen my condition, but not one spoke or took noticeof me, till I was almost grateful to Wolf Larsen, later on (I was washingthe dishes), when he said:

“Don’t let a little thing like that bother you. You’ll get used to suchthings in time. It may cripple you some, but all the same you’ll belearning to walk.

“That’s what you call a paradox, isn’t it?” he added.

He seemed pleased when I nodded my head with the customary “Yes, sir.”

“I suppose you know a bit about literary things? Eh? Good. I’ll havesome talks with you some time.”

And then, taking no further account of me, he turned his back and went upon deck.

That night, when I had finished an endless amount of work, I was sent tosleep in the steerage, where I made up a spare bunk. I was glad to getout of the detestable presence of the cook and to be off my feet. To mysurprise, my clothes had dried on me and there seemed no indications ofcatching cold, either from the last soaking or from the prolonged soakingfrom the foundering of the _Martinez_. Under ordinary circumstances,after all that I had undergone, I should have been fit for bed and atrained nurse.

But my knee was bothering me terribly. As well as I could make out, thekneecap seemed turned up on edge in the midst of the swelling. As I satin my bunk examining it (the six hunters were all in the steerage,smoking and talking in loud voices), Henderson took a passing glance atit.

“Looks nasty,” he commented. “Tie a rag around it, and it’ll be allright.”

That was all; and on the land I would have been lying on the broad of myback, with a surgeon attending on me, and with strict injunctions to donothing but rest. But I must do these men justice. Callous as they wereto my suffering, they were equally callous to their own when anythingbefell them. And this was due, I believe, first, to habit; and second,to the fact that they were less sensitively organized. I really believethat a finely-organized, high-strung man would suffer twice and thrice asmuch as they from a like injury.

Tired as I was,—exhausted, in fact,—I was prevented from sleeping by thepain in my knee. It was all I could do to keep from groaning aloud. Athome I should undoubtedly have given vent to my anguish; but this new andelemental environment seemed to call for a savage repression. Like thesavage, the attitude of these men was stoical in great things, childishin little things. I remember, later in the voyage, seeing Kerfoot,another of the hunters, lose a finger by having it smashed to a jelly;and he did not even murmur or change the expression on his face. Yet Ihave seen the same man, time and again, fly into the most outrageouspassion over a trifle.

He was doing it now, vociferating, bellowing, waving his arms, andcursing like a fiend, and all because of a disagreement with anotherhunter as to whether a seal pup knew instinctively how to swim. He heldthat it did, that it could swim the moment it was born. The otherhunter, Latimer, a lean, Yankee-looking fellow with shrewd,narrow-slitted eyes, held otherwise, held that the seal pup was born onthe land for no other reason than that it could not swim, that its motherwas compelled to teach it to swim as birds were compelled to teach theirnestlings how to fly.

For the most part, the remaining four hunters leaned on the table or layin their bunks and left the discussion to the two antagonists. But theywere supremely interested, for every little while they ardently tooksides, and sometimes all were talking at once, till their voices surgedback and forth in waves of sound like mimic thunder-rolls in the confinedspace. Childish and immaterial as the topic was, the quality of theirreasoning was still more childish and immaterial. In truth, there wasvery little reasoning or none at all. Their method was one of assertion,assumption, and denunciation. They proved that a seal pup could swim ornot swim at birth by stating the proposition very bellicosely and thenfollowing it up with an attack on the opposing man’s judgment, commonsense, nationality, or past history. Rebuttal was precisely similar. Ihave related this in order to show the mental calibre of the men withwhom I was thrown in contact. Intellectually they were children,inhabiting the physical forms of men.

And they smoked, incessantly smoked, using a coarse, cheap, andoffensive-smelling tobacco. The air was thick and murky with the smokeof it; and this, combined with the violent movement of the ship as shestruggled through the storm, would surely have made me sea-sick had Ibeen a victim to that malady. As it was, it made me quite squeamish,though this nausea might have been due to the pain of my leg andexhaustion.

As I lay there thinking, I naturally dwelt upon myself and my situation.It was unparalleled, undreamed-of, that I, Humphrey Van Weyden, a scholarand a dilettante, if you please, in things artistic and literary, shouldbe lying here on a Bering Sea seal-hunting schooner. Cabin-boy! I hadnever done any hard manual labour, or scullion labour, in my life. I hadlived a placid, uneventful, sedentary existence all my days—the life of ascholar and a recluse on an assured and comfortable income. Violent lifeand athletic sports had never appealed to me. I had always been abook-worm; so my sisters and father had called me during my childhood. Ihad gone camping but once in my life, and then I left the party almost atits start and returned to the comforts and conveniences of a roof. Andhere I was, with dreary and endless vistas before me of table-setting,potato-peeling, and dish-washing. And I was not strong. The doctors hadalways said that I had a remarkable constitution, but I had neverdeveloped it or my body through exercise. My muscles were small andsoft, like a woman’s, or so the doctors had said time and again in thecourse of their attempts to persuade me to go in for physical-culturefads. But I had preferred to use my head rather than my body; and here Iwas, in no fit condition for the rough life in prospect.

These are merely a few of the things that went through my mind, and arerelated for the sake of vindicating myself in advance in the weak andhelpless _rôle_ I was destined to play. But I thought, also, of mymother and sisters, and pictured their grief. I was among the missingdead of the _Martinez_ disaster, an unrecovered body. I could see thehead-lines in the papers; the fellows at the University Club and theBibelot shaking their heads and saying, “Poor chap!” And I could seeCharley Furuseth, as I had said good-bye to him that morning, lounging ina dressing-gown on the be-pillowed window couch and delivering himself oforacular and pessimistic epigrams.

And all the while, rolling, plunging, climbing the moving mountains andfalling and wallowing in the foaming valleys, the schooner _Ghost_ wasfighting her way farther and farther into the heart of the Pacific—and Iwas on her. I could hear the wind above. It came to my ears as amuffled roar. Now and again feet stamped overhead. An endless creakingwas going on all about me, the woodwork and the fittings groaning andsqueaking and complaining in a thousand keys. The hunters were stillarguing and roaring like some semi-human amphibious breed. The air wasfilled with oaths and indecent expressions. I could see their faces,flushed and angry, the brutality distorted and emphasized by the sicklyyellow of the sea-lamps which rocked back and forth with the ship.Through the dim smoke-haze the bunks looked like the sleeping dens ofanimals in a menagerie. Oilskins and sea-boots were hanging from thewalls, and here and there rifles and shotguns rested securely in theracks. It was a sea-fitting for the buccaneers and pirates of by-goneyears. My imagination ran riot, and still I could not sleep. And it wasa long, long night, weary and dreary and long.