get left astern-like in their sampan, as it might be by accident?
An' wasn't it a week later that the poor little ladies was put
ashore on the other side of the island, with nothin' before 'em but
to walk home acrost the mountains on their weeny-teeny little straw
sandals which wouldn't hang together a mile? Don't I know? 'Tis
the beast he is, this Wolf Larsen--the great big beast mentioned iv
in Revelation; an' no good end will he ever come to. But I've said
nothin' to ye, mind ye. I've whispered never a word; for old fat
Louis'll live the voyage out if the last mother's son of yez go to
the fishes."

"Wolf Larsen!" he snorted a moment later. "Listen to the word,
will ye! Wolf--'tis what he is. He's not black-hearted like some
men. 'Tis no heart he has at all. Wolf, just wolf, 'tis what he
is. D'ye wonder he's well named?"

"But if he is so well-known for what he is," I queried, "how is it
that he can get men to ship with him?"

"An' how is it ye can get men to do anything on God's earth an'
sea?" Louis demanded with Celtic fire. "How d'ye find me aboard if
'twasn't that I was drunk as a pig when I put me name down?
There's them that can't sail with better men, like the hunters, and
them that don't know, like the poor devils of wind-jammers for'ard
there. But they'll come to it, they'll come to it, an' be sorry
the day they was born. I could weep for the poor creatures, did I
but forget poor old fat Louis and the troubles before him. But
'tis not a whisper I've dropped, mind ye, not a whisper."

"Them hunters is the wicked boys," he broke forth again, for he