potentialities--why, then, was he no more than the obscure master
of a seal-hunting schooner with a reputation for frightful
brutality amongst the men who hunted seals?

My curiosity burst from me in a flood of speech.

"Why is it that you have not done great things in this world? With
the power that is yours you might have risen to any height.
Unpossessed of conscience or moral instinct, you might have
mastered the world, broken it to your hand. And yet here you are,
at the top of your life, where diminishing and dying begin, living
an obscure and sordid existence, hunting sea animals for the
satisfaction of woman's vanity and love of decoration, revelling in
a piggishness, to use your own words, which is anything and
everything except splendid. Why, with all that wonderful strength,
have you not done something? There was nothing to stop you,
nothing that could stop you. What was wrong? Did you lack
ambition? Did you fall under temptation? What was the matter?
What was the matter?"

He had lifted his eyes to me at the commencement of my outburst,
and followed me complacently until I had done and stood before him
breathless and dismayed. He waited a moment, as though seeking
where to begin, and then said:

"Hump, do you know the parable of the sower who went forth to sow?
If you will remember, some of the seed fell upon stony places,
where there was not much earth, and forthwith they sprung up
because they had no deepness of earth. And when the sun was up
they were scorched, and because they had no root they withered