A Note and Brief Passage Highlighted Inside Jack London's "The Sea-Wolf"

A brief note in pencil found on the front paste down endpaper of Jack London's "The Sea-Wolf", a Grosset and Dunlap reprint edition published in 1904:

"September 7-43

I was operated on the 7th of September. My mother got me this book, she was with me while Doctor L.S. Nelson did the operation and so was Mr. Edward Gadiner.

High school started at 9:00 and I was on the operation table at 9:30. I sure was sick for three days but I pull out of it all right. I sure thought of Sgt. Howard Roach and also P.F.C. Gliminil G. Smith."

The young owner's name, Reginald Brown, is written on the following page. The only passage of the text he marked, which must have been of significant interest, is on page 235 and reads,

"I slept only cat-naps. The boat was leaping and pounding as it fell over the crests, I could hear the seas rushing past, and spray was continually being thrown aboard...Between us and the bottom of the sea was less than an inch of wood.

And yet, I aver it, and I aver it again, I was unafraid. The death which Wolf Larsen and even Thomas Mugridge had made me fear, I no longer feared. The coming of Maud Brewster into my life seemed to have transformed me. After all, I thought, it is better and finer to love than to be loved, if it makes something in life so worth while that one is not loath to die for it. I forget my own life in the love of another life; and yet, such is the paradox, I never wanted so much to live as right now when I place the least value upon my own life."