from a humour that is nothing else than ferocious. But he laughs
rarely; he is too often sad. And it is a sadness as deep-reaching
as the roots of the race. It is the race heritage, the sadness
which has made the race sober-minded, clean-lived and fanatically
moral, and which, in this latter connection, has culminated among
the English in the Reformed Church and Mrs. Grundy.

In point of fact, the chief vent to this primal melancholy has been
religion in its more agonizing forms. But the compensations of
such religion are denied Wolf Larsen. His brutal materialism will
not permit it. So, when his blue moods come on, nothing remains
for him, but to be devilish. Were he not so terrible a man, I
could sometimes feel sorry for him, as instance three mornings ago,
when I went into his stateroom to fill his water-bottle and came
unexpectedly upon him. He did not see me. His head was buried in
his hands, and his shoulders were heaving convulsively as with
sobs. He seemed torn by some mighty grief. As I softly withdrew I
could hear him groaning, "God! God! God!" Not that he was
calling upon God; it was a mere expletive, but it came from his
soul.

At dinner he asked the hunters for a remedy for headache, and by
evening, strong man that he was, he was half-blind and reeling
about the cabin.

"I've never been sick in my life, Hump," he said, as I guided him
to his room. "Nor did I ever have a headache except the time my
head was healing after having been laid open for six inches by a
capstan-bar."