, as a matter of course,
the lone woman in the midst of a shipload of men; but I learned, now, that I had
never comprehended the deeper significance of such a situation - the thing the
writers harped upon and exploited so thoroughly. And here it was, now, and I was
face to face with it. That it should be as vital as possible, it required no
more than that the woman should be Maud Brewster, who now charmed me in person
as she had long charmed me through her work.
    No one more out of environment could be imagined. She was a delicate,
ethereal creature, swaying and willowy, light and graceful of movement. It never
seemed to me that she walked, or, at least, walked after the ordinary manner of
mortals. Hers was an extreme lithesomeness, and she moved with a certain
indefinable airiness, approaching one as down might float or as a bird on
noiseless wings.
    She was like a bit of Dresden china, and I was continually impressed with
what I may call her fragility. As at the time I caught her arm when helping her
below, so at any time I was quite prepared, should stress or rough handling
befall her, to see her crumble away. I have never seen body and spirit in such
perfect accord. Describe her verse, as the critics have described it, as
sublimated and spiritual, and you have described her body. It seemed to partake
of her soul, to have analogous attributes, and to link it to life with the
slenderest of chains. Indeed, she trod the earth lightly, and in her
constitution there was little of the robust clay.
    She was in striking contrast to Wolf Larsen. Each was nothing that the other
was, everything that the other was not. I noted them walking the deck together
one morning, and I likened them to the extreme ends of the human ladder of
evolution - the one the culmination of all savagery, the other the finished
product of the finest civilization. True, Wolf Larsen possessed intellect to an
unusual degree, but it was directed solely to the exercise of his savage
instincts and made him but the more formidable a savage. He was splendidly
muscled, a heavy man, and though he strode with the certitude and directness of
the physical man, there was nothing heavy about his stride. The jungle and the
wilderness lurked in the uplift and downput of his feet. He was cat-footed, and
lithe, and strong, always strong. I likened him to some great tiger, a beast of
prowess and prey. He looked it,