? ? ? ? 'Hump,' he said,- 'I beg pardon, Mr. Van Weyden,- I congratulate you. I think you can now fire your father's legs back into the grave to him. You've discovered your own, and learned to stand on them. A little rope-work, sail-making, and experience with storms and such things, and by the end of the voyage you could ship on any coasting schooner.'
? ? ? ? It was during this period, between the death of Johansen and the arrival on the sealing-grounds, that I passed my pleasantest hours on the Ghost. Wolf Larsen was considerate, the sailors helped me, and I was no longer in irritating contact with Thomas Mugridge. And I make free to say, as the days went by, that I found I was taking a certain secret pride in myself. Fantastic as the situation was,- a landlubber second in command,- I was nevertheless carrying it off well; and during that brief time I was proud of myself, and I grew to love the heave and roll of the Ghost under my feet as she wallowed north and west through the tropic sea to the islet where we filled our water-casks.
? ? ? ? But my happiness was not unalloyed.
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