It was our duty to sail the _Ghost_ well to leeward of the last lee boat, so that all the boats should have fair wind to run for us in case of squalls or threatening weather.
It is no slight matter for two men, particularly when a stiff wind has sprung up, to handle a vessel like the _Ghost_, steering, keeping look-out for the boats, and setting or taking in sail; so it devolved upon me to learn, and learn quickly.

Steering I picked up easily, but running aloft to the crosstrees and swinging my whole weight by my arms when I left the ratlines and climbed still higher, was more difficult.
This, too, I learned, and quickly, for I felt somehow a wild desire to vindicate myself in Wolf Larsen's eyes, to prove my right to live in ways other than of the mind.

Nay, the time came when I took joy in the run of the masthead and in the clinging on by my legs at that precarious height while I swept the sea with glasses in search of the boats.
I remember one beautiful day, when the boats left early and the reports of the hunters' guns grew dim and distant and died away as they scattered far and wide over the sea.

There was just the faintest wind from the westward; but it breathed its last by the time we managed to get to leeward of the last lee boat.

One by one--I was at the masthead and saw--the six boats disappeared over the bulge of the earth as they followed the seal into the west.