CHAPTER X



My intimacy with Wolf Larsen increases--if by intimacy may be
denoted those relations which exist between master and man, or,
better yet, between king and jester. I am to him no more than a
toy, and he values me no more than a child values a toy. My
function is to amuse, and so long as I amuse all goes well; but let
him become bored, or let him have one of his black moods come upon
him, and at once I am relegated from cabin table to galley, while,
at the same time, I am fortunate to escape with my life and a whole
body.

The loneliness of the man is slowly being borne in upon me. There
is not a man aboard but hates or fears him, nor is there a man whom
he does not despise. He seems consuming with the tremendous power
that is in him and that seems never to have found adequate
expression in works. He is as Lucifer would be, were that proud
spirit banished to a society of soulless, Tomlinsonian ghosts.

This loneliness is bad enough in itself, but, to make it worse, he
is oppressed by the primal melancholy of the race. Knowing him, I
review the old Scandinavian myths with clearer understanding. The
white-skinned, fair-haired savages who created that terrible
pantheon were of the same fibre as he. The frivolity of the
laughter-loving Latins is no part of him. When he laughs it is