little reasoning or none at all. Their method was one of
assertion, assumption, and denunciation. They proved that a seal
pup could swim or not swim at birth by stating the proposition very
bellicosely and then following it up with an attack on the opposing
man's judgment, common sense, nationality, or past history.
Rebuttal was precisely similar. I have related this in order to
show the mental calibre of the men with whom I was thrown in
contact. Intellectually they were children, inhabiting the
physical forms of men.

And they smoked, incessantly smoked, using a coarse, cheap, and
offensive-smelling tobacco. The air was thick and murky with the
smoke of it; and this, combined with the violent movement of the
ship as she struggled through the storm, would surely have made me
sea-sick had I been a victim to that malady. As it was, it made me
quite squeamish, though this nausea might have been due to the pain
of my leg and exhaustion.

As I lay there thinking, I naturally dwelt upon myself and my
situation. It was unparalleled, undreamed-of, that I, Humphrey Van
Weyden, a scholar and a dilettante, if you please, in things
artistic and literary, should be lying here on a Bering Sea seal-
hunting schooner. Cabin-boy! I had never done any hard manual
labour, or scullion labour, in my life. I had lived a placid,
uneventful, sedentary existence all my days--the life of a scholar
and a recluse on an assured and comfortable income. Violent life
and athletic sports had never appealed to me. I had always been a
book-worm; so my sisters and father had called me during my
childhood. I had gone camping but once in my life, and then I left
the party almost at its start and returned to the comforts and