matter of routine, dropped a canvas bucket into the ocean at the
end of a rope, hauled it in hand under hand, and sluiced its
contents over the prostrate man.

Pacing back and forth the length of the hatchways and savagely
chewing the end of a cigar, was the man whose casual glance had
rescued me from the sea. His height was probably five feet ten
inches, or ten and a half; but my first impression, or feel of the
man, was not of this, but of his strength. And yet, while he was
of massive build, with broad shoulders and deep chest, I could not
characterize his strength as massive. It was what might be termed
a sinewy, knotty strength, of the kind we ascribe to lean and wiry
men, but which, in him, because of his heavy build, partook more of
the enlarged gorilla order. Not that in appearance he seemed in
the least gorilla-like. What I am striving to express is this
strength itself, more as a thing apart from his physical semblance.
It was a strength we are wont to associate with things primitive,
with wild animals, and the creatures we imagine our tree-dwelling
prototypes to have been--a strength savage, ferocious, alive in
itself, the essence of life in that it is the potency of motion,
the elemental stuff itself out of which the many forms of life have
been moulded; in short, that which writhes in the body of a snake
when the head is cut off, and the snake, as a snake, is dead, or
which lingers in the shapeless lump of turtle-meat and recoils and
quivers from the prod of a finger.

Such was the impression of strength I gathered from this man who
paced up and down. He was firmly planted on his legs; his feet
struck the deck squarely and with surety; every movement of a
muscle, from the heave of the shoulders to the tightening of the