“Heard you breathing, of course. I say, Hump’s improving, don’t you think so?”

“I don’t know,” she answered, smiling at me. “I have never seen him otherwise.”

“You should have seen him before, then.”

“Wolf Larsen, in large doses,” I murmured, “before and after taking.”

“I want to tell you again, Hump,” he said threateningly, “that you’d better leave things alone.”

“But don’t you care to escape as well as we?” I asked incredulously.

“No,” was his answer. “I intend dying here.”

“Well, we don’t,” I concluded defiantly, beginning again my knocking and hammering.