The last twenty-four hours have witnessed a carnival of brutality.
From cabin to forecastle it seems to have broken out like a
contagion. I scarcely know where to begin. Wolf Larsen was really
the cause of it. The relations among the men, strained and made
tense by feuds, quarrels and grudges, were in a state of unstable
equilibrium, and evil passions flared up in flame like prairie-
grass.

Thomas Mugridge is a sneak, a spy, an informer. He has been
attempting to curry favour and reinstate himself in the good graces
of the captain by carrying tales of the men forward. He it was, I
know, that carried some of Johnson's hasty talk to Wolf Larsen.
Johnson, it seems, bought a suit of oilskins from the slop-chest
and found them to be of greatly inferior quality. Nor was he slow
in advertising the fact. The slop-chest is a sort of miniature
dry-goods store which is carried by all sealing schooners and which
is stocked with articles peculiar to the needs of the sailors.
Whatever a sailor purchases is taken from his subsequent earnings
on the sealing grounds; for, as it is with the hunters so it is
with the boat-pullers and steerers--in the place of wages they
receive a "lay," a rate of so much per skin for every skin captured
in their particular boat.

But of Johnson's grumbling at the slop-chest I knew nothing, so
that what I witnessed came with a shock of sudden surprise. I had
just finished sweeping the cabin, and had been inveigled by Wolf
Larsen into a discussion of Hamlet, his favourite Shakespearian
character, when Johansen descended the companion stairs followed by
Johnson. The latter's cap came off after the custom of the sea,
and he stood respectfully in the centre of the cabin, swaying