he came into the cabin for supper.

A cruel thing happened just before supper, indicative of the
callousness and brutishness of these men. There is one green hand
in the crew, Harrison by name, a clumsy-looking country boy,
mastered, I imagine, by the spirit of adventure, and making his
first voyage. In the light baffling airs the schooner had been
tacking about a great deal, at which times the sails pass from one
side to the other and a man is sent aloft to shift over the fore-
gaff-topsail. In some way, when Harrison was aloft, the sheet
jammed in the block through which it runs at the end of the gaff.
As I understood it, there were two ways of getting it cleared,--
first, by lowering the foresail, which was comparatively easy and
without danger; and second, by climbing out the peak-halyards to
the end of the gaff itself, an exceedingly hazardous performance.

Johansen called out to Harrison to go out the halyards. It was
patent to everybody that the boy was afraid. And well he might be,
eighty feet above the deck, to trust himself on those thin and
jerking ropes. Had there been a steady breeze it would not have
been so bad, but the Ghost was rolling emptily in a long sea, and
with each roll the canvas flapped and boomed and the halyards
slacked and jerked taut. They were capable of snapping a man off
like a fly from a whip-lash.

Harrison heard the order and understood what was demanded of him,
but hesitated. It was probably the first time he had been aloft in
his life. Johansen, who had caught the contagion of Wolf Larsen's
masterfulness, burst out with a volley of abuse and curses.