As I have said, in the masculine sense his was a beautiful face.Smooth-shaven, every line was distinct, and it was cut as clear and sharp as a cameo;while sea and sun had tanned the naturally fair skin to a dark bronze which bespoke struggle and battle and added both to his savagery and his beauty.
The lips were full, yet possessed of the firmness, almost harshness, which is characteristic of thin lips.The set of his mouth, his chin, his jaw, was likewise firm or harsh, with all the fierceness and indomitableness of the male -- the nose also.It was the nose of a being born to conquer and command.It just hinted of the eagle beak.It might have been Grecian, it might have been Roman, only it was a shade too massive for the one, a shade too delicate for the other.And while the whole face was the incarnation of fierceness and strength, the primal melancholy from which he suffered seemed to greaten the lines of mouth and eye and brow, seemed to give a largeness and completeness which otherwise the face would have lacked.
And so I caught myself standing idly and studying him.cannot say how greatly the man had come to interest me.Who was he? What was he? How had he happened to be? All powers seemed his, all potentialities, -- why, then, was he no more than the obscure master of a seal-hunting schooner with a reputation for frightful brutality amongst the men who hunted seals?
My curiosity burst from me in a flood of speech.
"Why is it that you have not done great things in this world? With the power that is yours you might have risen to any height.Unpossessed of conscience or moral instinct, you might have mastered the world, broken it to your hand.And yet here you are, at the top of your life, where diminishing and dying begin, living an obscure and sordid existence, hunting sea animals for the satisfaction of woman's vanity and love of decoration, revelling in a piggishness, to use your own words, which is anything and everything except splendid.Why, with all that wonderful strength, have you not done something? There was nothing to stop you, nothing that could stop you.
What was wrong? Did you lack ambition? Did you fall under temptation? What was the matter? What was the matter?"He had lifted his eyes to me at the commencement of my outburst, and followed me complacently until I had done and stood before him breathless and dismayed.He waited a moment, as though seeking where to begin, and then said:
"Hump, do you know the parable of the sower who went forth to sow? If you will remember, some of the seed fell upon stony places, where there was not much earth, and forthwith they sprung up because they had no deepness of earth.And when the sun was up they were scorched, and because they had no root they withered away.And some fell among thorns, and the thorns sprung up and choked them.""Well?" I said.
"Well?" he queried, half petulantly."It was not well.I was one of those seeds."He dropped his head to the scale and resumed the copying.finished my work and had opened the door to leave, when he spoke to me.