THE LAST TWENTY-FOUR HOURS have witnessed a carnival of brutality. From cabin to forecastle it seems to have broken out like a contagion. I scarcely know where to begin. Wolf Larsen was really the cause of it. The relations among the men, strained and made tense by feuds, quarrels, and grudges, were in a state of unstable equilibrium. Wolf Larsen disturbed the equilibrium, and evil passions flared up like flame in prairie-grass.

 Thomas Mugridge was proving himself a sneak, a spy, an informer. He attempted to curry favor and reinstate himself in the good graces of the captain by carrying tales of the men forward. He it was, I know, that carried some of Johnson's hasty talk to Wolf Larsen. Johnson, it seems, had bought a suit of oilskins from the slop-chest and found them to be of greatly inferior quality. Nor was he slow in advertising the fact. The slop-chest is a sort of miniature dry-goods store which is carried by all sealing-schooners and which is stocked with articles peculiar to the needs of the sailors. Whatever a sailor purchases is taken from his subsequent earnings on the sealing-grounds; for, as it is with the hunters, so it is with the boat-pullers and steerers: in the place of wages, they receive a 'lay,' a rate of so much per skin for every skin captured in their particular boat.

 But of Johnson's grumbling at the slop-chest I knew nothing, so that what I witnessed came with the shock of sudden surprise. I had just finished sweeping the cabin, and had been inveigled by Wolf Larsen into a discussion of Hamlet, his favorite Shakespearean character, when Johansen descended the companion-stairs, followed by Johnson. The latter's cap came off, after the custom of the sea, and he stood respectfully in the middle of the cabin, swaying heavily and uneasily to the roll of the schooner, and facing the captain.

 'Shut the doors and draw the slide,' Wolf Larsen said to me.

 I noticed an anxious light in Johnson's eyes, but mistook it for the native shyness and embarrassment of the man. The mate, Johansen, stood away several feet to the side of him, and fully three yards in front of him sat Wolf Larsen on one of the revolving cabin chairs. An appreciable pause fell after I had closed the doors and drawn the slide- a pause that must have lasted fully a minute. It was broken by Wolf Larsen.

 'Yonson,' he began.

 'My name is Johnson, sir,' the sailor boldly corrected.

 'Well, Johnson, then,- you! Can you guess why I have sent for you?'

 'Yes, and no, sir,' was the slow reply. 'My work is done well. The mate knows that, and you know it, sir. So there cannot be any complaint.'

 'And is that all?' Wolf Larsen queried, his voice soft and low and purring.

 'I know you have it in for me,' Johnson continued with his unalterable and ponderous slowness. 'You do not like me. You- you-'

 'Go on,' Wolf Larsen prompted. 'Don't be afraid of my feelings.'

 'I am not afraid,' the sailor retorted, a slight angry flush rising through his sunburn. 'You do not like me because I am too much of a man, that is why, sir.'

 'You are too much of a man for ship discipline, if that is what you mean, and if you know what I mean,' was Wolf Larsen's retort.

 'I know English, and I know what you mean, sir,' Johnson answered, his flush deepening at the slur on his knowledge of the English language.

 'Johnson,' Wolf Larsen said, with an air of dismissing all that had gone before as introductory to the main business in hand, 'I understand you're not quite satisfied with those oilskins.'

 'No, I am not. They are no good, sir.'

 'And you've been shooting off your mouth about them.'

 'I say what I think, sir,' the sailor answered courageously, not failing at the same time in ship courtesy, which demanded that 'sir' be appended to each speech he made.

 It was at this moment that I chanced to glance at Johansen. His big fists were clenching and unclenching, and his face was positively fiendish, so malignantly did he look at Johnson. I noticed a black discoloration, still faintly visible, under Johansen's eye, a mark of the thrashing he had received a few nights before from the sailor. For the first time I began to divine that something terrible was about to be enacted- what, I could not imagine.

 'Do you know what happens to men who say what you've said about my slop-chest and me?' Wolf Larsen was demanding.

 'I know, sir,' was the answer.

 'What?' Wolf Larsen demanded sharply and imperatively.

 'What you and the mate there are going to do to me, sir.'

 At this Larsen sprang from the sitting posture like a wild animal, a tiger, and like a tiger covered the intervening space in an avalanche of fury that Johnson strove vainly to fend off. He threw one arm down to protect the stomach, the other arm up to protect the head; but Wolf Larsen's fist drove midway between, on the chest, with a crushing, resounding impact. Johnson's breath, suddenly expelled, shot from his mouth, and as suddenly checked, with the forced, audible expiration of a man wielding an ax. He almost fell backward, and swayed from side to side in an effort to recover his balance.

 Johnson fought bravely enough, but he was no match for Wolf Larsen, much less for Wolf Larsen and the mate. It was frightful. I had not imagined a human being could endure so much and still live and struggle on. And struggle on Johnson did. Of course there was no hope for him, not the slightest, and he knew it as well as I, but by the manhood that was in him he could not cease from fighting for that manhood.

 It was too much for me to witness. I felt that I should lose my mind, and I ran up the companion-stairs to open the doors and escape on deck. But Wolf Larsen, leaving his victim for the moment, and with one of his tremendous springs, gained my side, and flung me into the far corner of the cabin.

 'The phenomenon of life, Hump,' he girded at me. 'Stay and watch it. You may gather data on the immortality of the soul. Besides, you know, we can't hurt Johnson's soul. It's only the fleeting form we may demolish.'

 It seemed centuries, possibly it was no more than ten minutes, that the beating continued. And when Johnson could no longer rise, they still continued to beat and kick him where he lay.

 'Easy, Johansen; easy as she goes,' Wolf Larsen finally said.

 But the beast in the mate was up and rampant, and Wolf Larsen was compelled to brush him away with a back-handed sweep of the arm, ge............