Sensing this drift I opened the hour of reminiscence and told some of my experiences in the jungle of southern Mexico.  Copple immediately topped my stories by more wonderful and hair-raising ones about his own adventures in northern Mexico.  These stirred Nielsen to talk about the Seri Indians, and their cannibalistic traits; and from these he drifted to the Yuma Indians.  Speaking of their remarkable stature and strength he finally got to the subject of giants of brawn and bone in Norway.

One young Norwegian was eight feet tall and broad in proportion.  His employer was a captain of a fishing boat.  One time, on the way to their home port, a quarrel arose about money due the young giant, and in his anger he heaved the anchor overboard.  That of course halted the boat, and it stayed halted, because the captain and crew could not heave the heavy anchor without the help of their brawny comrade.  Finally the money matter was adjusted, and the young giant heaved the anchor without assistance.  Nielsen went on to tell that this fisherman of such mighty frame had a beautiful young wife whom he adored.  She was not by any means a small or frail girl—­rather the contrary—­but she appeared diminutive beside her giant husband.  One day he returned from a long absence on the sea.  When his wife, in her joy, ran into his arms, he gave her such a tremendous hug that he crushed her chest, and she died.  In his grief the young husband went insane and did not survive her long.

Next Nielsen told a story about Norwegians sailing to the Arctic on a scientific expedition.  Just before the long polar night of darkness set in there arose a necessity for the ship and crew to return to Norway.  Two men must be left in the Arctic to care for the supplies until the ship came back.  The captain called for volunteers.  There were two young men in the crew, and from childhood they had been playmates, schoolmates, closer than brothers, and inseparable even in manhood.  One of these young men said to his friend:  “I’ll stay if you will.”  And the other quickly agreed.  After the ship sailed, and the land of the midnight sun had become icy and black, one of these comrades fell ill, and soon died.  The living one placed the body in the room with the ship supplies, where it froze stiff; and during all the long polar night of solitude and ghastly gloom he lived next to this sepulchre that contained his dead friend.  When the ship returned the crew found the living comrade an old man with hair as white as snow, and never in his life afterward was he seen to smile.

These stories stirred my emotions like Doyle’s tale about Jones’ Ranch.  How wonderful, beautiful, terrible and tragical is human life!  Again I heard the still, sad music of humanity, the eternal beat and moan of the waves upon a lonely shingle shore.  Who would not be a teller of tales?

Copple followed Nielsen with a story about a prodigious feat of his own—­a story of incredible strength and endurance, which at first I took to be a satire on Nielsen’s remarkable narrative.  But Copple seemed deadly serious, and I began to see that he possessed a strange simplicity of exaggeration.  The boys thought Copple stretched the truth a little, but I thought that he believed what he told.