On a visit one evening to Nathaniel Hawthorne and his wife, Herman Melville, MobyDick author, told them a story of a fight he had witnessed on an island in the South Seas, in which one of the Polynesian warriors had wreaked havoc among his foes with a heavy club. Striding about the room, Melville demonstrated the feats of bravery and the desperate drama of the battle. After he had gone, Mrs. Hawthorne thought she remembered that he had left empty-handed, and wondered, “Where is that club with which Mr. Melville was laying about him so?” Mr. Hawthorne maintained that he must have taken it with him, and indeed a search of the room revealed nothing. The next time they saw him, they asked him what had happened to the club. It turned out that there was no club; it had simply been a figment of their imagination, conjured up by the vividness of Melville’s narrative.
Question: Why did the writer use "him", instead of "himself"?
