Alexis Paulvitch could easily have passed for eighty. Inscrutable
Nature had demanded of the accomplice a greater penalty than his
principal had paid.

In the mind of Alexis Paulvitch there lingered no thoughts
of revenge--only a dull hatred of the man whom he and Rokoff had
tried to break, and failed. There was hatred, too, of the memory
of Rokoff, for Rokoff had led him into the horrors he had undergone.
There was hatred of the police of a score of cities from which he
had had to flee. There was hatred of law, hatred of order, hatred
of everything. Every moment of the man's waking life was filled
with morbid thought of hatred--he had become mentally as he
was physically in outward appearance, the personification of the
blighting emotion of Hate. He had little or nothing to do with the
men who had rescued him. He was too weak to work and too morose
for company, and so they quickly left him alone to his own devices.

The Marjorie W. had been chartered by a syndicate of wealthy manufacturers,
equipped with a laboratory and a staff of scientists, and sent out
to search for some natural product which the manufacturers who footed
the bills had been importing from South America at an enormous cost.
What the product was none on board the Marjorie W. knew except the
scientists, nor is it of any moment to us, other than that it led
the ship to a certain island off the coast of Africa after Alexis
Paulvitch had been taken aboard.

The ship lay at anchor off the coast for several weeks. The
monotony of life aboard her became trying for the crew. They went
often ashore, and finally Paulvitch asked to accompany them--he too
was tiring of the blighting sameness of existence upon the ship.