MY INTIMACY¹ WITH Wolf Larsen increased, if by intimacy may be denoted those relations which exist between master and man, or, better yet, between king and jester. I was to him no more than a toy, and he valued me no more than a child values a toy. My function was to amuse, and so long as I amused all went well; but let him become bored, or let him have one of his black moods come upon him, and at once I was relegated² from cabin table to galley³, while, at the same time, I was fortunate to escape with my life and a whole body.

 The loneliness of the man was slowly being borne in upon me. There was not a man aboard but hated or feared him, nor was there a man whom he did not despise. He seemed consuming with the tremendous power that was in him and that seemed never to have found adequate expression in works. He was as Lucifer would be, were that proud spirit banished⁴ to a society of soulless, Tomlinsonian ghosts.

 This loneliness was bad enough in itself, but, to make it worse, he was oppressed by the primal⁵ melancholy⁶ of the race. Knowing him, I reviewed the old Scandinavian myths with clearer understanding. The white-skinned, fair-haired savages⁸ who created that terrible pantheon were of the same fiber⁹ as he. The frivolity¹⁰ of the laughter-loving Latins was no part of him. When he laughed it was from a humor that was nothing else than ferocious¹¹. But he laughed rarely; he was too often sad. And it was a sadness as deep-reaching as the roots of the race. It was the race heritage, the sadness which had made the race sober-minded, clean-lived, and fanatically moral.

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