Part 28 (1/2)

”Lucky for ht,” Wolf Larsen said

”What if I should cry out loudly?” I queried in a whisper

”It would be all up,” he answered ”But have you thought upon ould immediately happen?”

Before I had time to express any desire to know, he had rip, and by a faint quiver of the ested to me the twist that would surely have brokenat the Macedonia's lights

”What if I should cry out?” Maud asked

”I like you too well to hurt you,” he said softly-nay, there was a tenderness and a caress in his voice that made me wince

”But don't do it, just the same, for I'd promptly break Mr Van Weyden's neck”

”Then she has my permission to cry out,” I said defiantly

”I hardly think you'll care to sacrifice the Dean of American Letters the Second,” he sneered

We spoke no h we had become too used to one another for the silence to be aard; and when the red light and the white had disappeared we returned to the cabin to finish the interrupted supper

Again they fell to quoting, and Maud gave Dowson's ”Impenitentia Ultima” She rendered it beautifully, but I watched not her, but Wolf Larsen I was fascinated by the fascinated look he bent upon Maud He was quite out of himself, and I noticed the unconscious movement of his lips as he shaped word for word as fast as she uttered theave the lines:

”And her eyes should be ht while the sun went out behind me, And the viols in her voice be the last sound in my ear”

”There are viols in your voice,” he said bluntly, and his eyes flashed their golden light

I could have shouted with joy at her control She finished the concluding stanza without faltering and then slowly guided the conversation into less perilous channels And all the while I sat in a half-daze, the drunken riot of the steerage breaking through the bulkhead, theon and on The table was not cleared The e's place had evidently joined his comrades in the forecastle

If ever Wolf Larsen attained the su, he attained it then Frohts to follow him, and I followed in amaze, mastered for the moment by his remarkable intellect, under the spell of his passion, for he was preaching the passion of revolt It was inevitable that Milton's Lucifer should be instanced, and the keenness hich Wolf Larsen analysed and depicted the character was a revelation of his stifled genius It reminded me of Taine, yet I knew the erous thinker

”He led a lost cause, and he was not afraid of God's thunderbolts,” Wolf Larsen was saying ”Hurled into hell, he was unbeaten A third of God's angels he had led with hiainst God, and gained for hienerations of man Why was he beaten out of heaven? Because he was less brave than God? less proud? less aspiring? No! A thousand times no! God was reater But Lucifer was a free spirit To serve was to suffocate He preferred suffering in freedom to all the happiness of a comfortable servility He did not care to serve God He cared to serve nothing He was no figure-head He stood on his own legs He was an individual”

”The first Anarchist,” Maud laughed, rising and preparing to withdraw to her state-rooood to be an anarchist!” he cried He, too, had risen, and he stood facing her, where she had paused at the door of her room, as he went on:

”'Here at least We shall be free; the Alhty hath not built Here for his envy; will not drive us hence; Here we n is worth an in hell than serve in heaven”

It was the defiant cry of awith his voice, as he stood there, swaying, his bronzed face shi+ning, his head up and doolden and masculine, intenselyupon Maud at the door

Again that unnamable and unmistakable terror was in her eyes, and she said, almost in a whisper, ”You are Lucifer”

The door closed and she was gone He stood staring after her for a minute, then returned to himself and to me