CHAPTER XXXVIII “I think my left side is going,” Wolf Larsen wrote, the morning after his attempt to fire the ship. “The numbness is growing. I can hardly move my hand. You will have to speak louder. The last lines are going down.” “Are you in pain?” I asked. I was compelled to repeat my question loudly before he answered: “Not all the time.” The left hand stumbled slowly and painfully across the paper, and it was with extreme difficulty that we deciphered the scrawl. It was like a “spirit message,” such as are delivered at séances of spiritualists for a dollar admission. “But I am still here, all here,” the hand scrawled more slowly and painfully than ever. The pencil dropped, and we had to replace it in the hand. “When there is no pain I have perfect peace and quiet. I have

