 Chapter 1 of The Seawolf This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Seawolf by Jack London. Chapter 1 I scarcely know where to begin, though I sometimes facetiously place the cause of it all to Charlie Furesset's credit. He kept a summer cottage in Mill Valley, under the shadow of Mount Tammel Pius, and never occupied it except when he left through the winter months and read Nietzsche and Schopenhauer to rest his brain. When summer came on, he elected to sweat out a hot and dusty existence in the city and to toil incessantly. Had it not been my custom to run up to see him every Saturday afternoon and to stop over till Monday morning, this particular January Monday morning would not have found me afloat on San Francisco Bay. Not but that I was afloat in the safe craft, for the Martinez was a new ferry steamer, making her fourth or fifth trip on the run between Sausalito and San Francisco. The danger lay in the heavy fog which blanketed the bay, and which, as a landsman, I had little apprehension. In fact, I remember the placid exultation with which I took up my position on the forward upper deck directly beneath the pilot house and allowed the mystery of the fog till a hold of my imagination. A fresh breeze was blowing, and for a time I was alone in the moist obscurity. Yet not alone, for I was dimly conscious of the presence of the pilot and of what I took to be the captain in the glass house above my head. I remember thinking how comfortable it was, this division of labor, which made it unnecessary for me to study fogs, winds, tides, and navigation in order to visit my friend who lived across an arm of the sea. It was good that men should be specialists, I'm used. The particular knowledge of the pilot and captain sufficed for many thousands of people who knew no more of the sea and navigation than I knew. On the other hand, instead of having to devote my energy to the learning of a multitude of things, I concentrated it upon a few particular things, such as, for example, the analysis of Poe's place in American literature, an essay of mine, by the way, in the current Atlantic. Covering the board, as I passed through the cabin, I had noticed with greedy eyes a stout gentleman reading the Atlantic, which was open to my very essay. And there it was again, the division of labor, the special knowledge of the pilot and captain which permitted the stout gentleman to read my special knowledge on Poe while they carried him safely from Salcelito to San Francisco. A red-faced man slamming the cabin door behind him and stumping out on the deck interrupted my reflections, though I made a mental note of the topic for use in a projected essay which I had thought of calling the necessity for freedom, a plea for the artist. The red-faced man shot a glance up at the pilot house, gazed around at the fog, stumped across the deck and back. He evidently had artificial legs and stood still by my side, legs wide apart and with an expression of keen enjoyment on his face. I was not wrong when I decided that his days had been spent on the sea. It's nasty weather like this here that turns heads gray before their time, he said with a nod toward pilot house. I had not thought there was any particular strain, I answered. It seems as simple as A-B-C. They know the direction by compass, the distance, and the speed. I should not call it anything more than a mathematical certainty. Strain, he snorted, simple as A-B-C, mathematical certainty. He seemed to brace himself up and lean backward against the air as he stared at me. How about this here tide that's rushing out through the Golden Gate, he demanded, or bellowed rather. How fast is she ebbin'? What's the drift? Listen to that, will you, a bell buoy, and we're atop of it. See him alder in the course. From out of the fog came the mournful tolling of a bell, and I could see the pilot turning the wheel with great rapidity. The bell, which had seemed straight ahead, was now sounding from the side. Our own whistle was blowing hoarsely, and from time to time the sound of the other whistles came to us from out of the fog. There was a ferry boat of some sort, the newcomer said, indicating a whistle off to the right. And there, do you hear that? Blown by mouth, some scowl schooner most likely. Better watch out, Mr. Schooner, man. Ah, I thought so. Now hell's the poppin' for somebody. The unseen ferry boat was blowing blast after blast, and the mouth-blown horn was tooting in terror-stricken fashion. And now they're payin' their respects to each other and tryin' to get clear the red-faced man went on as the hurried whistling ceased. His face was shining, his eyes flashing with excitement as he translated into articulate language the speech of the horns and sirens. That's a steam siren, a-goin' it over there to the left, and you hear that fellow with the frog in his throat, a steam schooner as near as I can judge, crawlin' in from the heads against the tide. A shrill little whistle, piping as if gone mad, came from directly ahead and from very near at hand. Gong sounded on the Martinez. Our paddle-wheels stopped, their pulsing beat died away, and then they started again. The shrill little whistle, like the chirping of a cricket amid the cries of great beasts, shot through the fog from more to the side and swiftly grew faint and fainter. I looked to my companion for enlightenment. One of them daredevil launchers, he said, I almost wish we'd sunk him, the little rip. They're the cause of more trouble. Then what good are they? Any jackass gets aboard one and runs it from hell to breakfast, blowin' his whistle to beat the band, and tellin' the rest of the world to look out for him because he's common and can't look out for himself. Because he's common. And you've got to look out, too, right away. Common decency. They don't know the meaning of it. I felt quite amused at his unwarranted collar, and while he stumped indignantly up and down, I felt a dwelling upon the romance of the fog. And romantic it certainly was. The fog, like the mere shadow of infinite mystery, brooding over the whirling speck of earth and men, mere motes of light and sparkle, cursed with an insane relish for work, writing their steeds of wood and steel through the heart of the mystery, groping their way blindly through the unseen, and clamoring and clanging in confident speech the while their hearts were heavy with insertitude and fear. The voice of my companion brought me back to myself with a laugh. I, too, had been groping and floundering the while I thought I rode clear-eyed through the mystery. Hello, someone's coming our way, he was saying, and do you hear that? He's coming fast, walking right along. Guess he don't hear us yet. Wind's in the wrong direction. The fresh breeze was blowing right down upon us, and I could hear the whistle plainly, off to one side and a little ahead. Ferry boat, I asked. He nodded, then added. Or he wouldn't be keeping up such a clip. He gave a short chuckle. They're getting anxious up there. I glanced up. The captain had thrust his head and shoulders out of the pilot house and was staring intently into the fog, as though through sheer force of will he could penetrate it. His face was anxious as was the face of my companion who had stumped over to the rail and was gazing with a like intentness in the direction of the invisible danger. Then everything happened and with inconceivable rapidity. The fog seemed to break away as though split by a wedge and the bow of a steamboat emerged trailing fog-rees on either side like seaweed on the snout of Levathon. I could see the pilot house and a white-bearded man leading partly out of it on his elbows. He was clad in a blue uniform and I remember noting how trim and quiet he was. His quietness under the circumstances was terrible. He accepted destiny, marched hand-in-hand with it, and coolly measured the stroke. As he leaned there, he ran a calm and speculative eye over us as though to determine the precise point of the collision and took no notice whatever when our pilot, white with rage, shouted, Now you've done it! On looking back I realized the remark was too obvious to make rejoiner necessary. Grab hold of something and hang on, the red-faced man said to me. All his bluster had gone and he seemed to have got the contagious of pre-natural calm and listened to the women scream. He said grimly, almost bitterly, I thought as though he had been through the experience before. The vessels came together before I could follow his advice. We must have been struck squarely amid ships, for I saw nothing, the strange steamboat having passed beyond my line of vision. The Martinez healed over, sharply, and there was a crashing and rending of timber. I was thrown flat on the wet deck and before I could scramble to my feet I heard the screams of the women. This was it, I am certain, the most indescribable of blood-curdling sounds that threw me into a panic. I remember the life preservers stored in the cabin, but was met at the door and swept backwards by a wild rush of men and women. What happened in the next few minutes I do not recollect, though I have a clear remembrance of pulling down life preservers and the red-faced men fastened them about the bodies of a hysterical group of women. This memory is as distinct and sharp as that of any picture I have seen. It is a picture, and I can see it now. The jagged edges are the hole in the side of the cabin through which the gray fog swirled and eddied. The empty, depolstered seats littered with all the evidence of sudden flight, such as packages, hand satchels, umbrellas, and wraps. Without gentlemen who had been reading my essay encased in cork and canvas, the magazine still on his hand and asking me with monotonous insistence if I thought there was any danger, the red-faced men stumping gallantly around on his artificial legs and buckling life preservers on all comers, and finally the screaming bedlam of women. This was it, the screaming of the women as they must have tried to the nerves of the red-faced men for I have another picture that will never fade from my mind. The stout gentleman stuffing the magazine into his overcoat pocket and looking uncuriously. A tangled mass of women with drawn white faces and open mouths is shrieking like a chorus of lost souls, and the red-faced man is faced now purplish with wrath and with arms extended overhead as in the act of hurling thunderbolts and shouting, shut up, oh shut up! I remember the scene impelled me to sudden laughter and in the next instant I realized I was becoming hysterical myself. For these were women of my own kind, like my mother and sisters, with the fear of death upon them unwilling to die. And I remember that the sounds they made reminded me of the squealing of pigs under the knife of the butcher, and I was struck with horror at the vividness of the inology. These women, capable of the most sublime emotions of the tenderest sympathies, were open-mouthed and screaming. They wanted to live, they were helpless like rats in a trap, and they screamed. The horror of it drove me out on deck. I was feeling sick and squeamish and sat down on the bench. In a hazy way I saw men rushing and shouting as they strove to lower the boats. It was just as I had read descriptions of such scenes and books. The tackles jammed. Nothing worked. One boat lowered away with the plugs out, filled with women and children and then with water and capsized. Another boat had been lowered by one end and still hung in the tackle by the other end where it had been abandoned. Nothing was to be seen by the strange steamboat which had caused the disaster, though I heard men saying she would undoubtedly send boats to our assistance. I descended to the lower deck. The Martinez was sinking fast for the water was very near. Numbers of the passengers were leaping overboard. Others in the water were clamoring to be taken aboard again. No one heeded them. A cry arose that we were sinking. We were in a subsequent panic and went over the side in a surge of bodies. How I went over I do not know, though I did know, and instantly why those in the water were so desirous of getting back on the steamer. The water was cold, so cold that it was painful. The pang, as I plunged into it, was as quick and sharp as that of fire. It bit to the marrow. It was like the grip of death. I gassed with the anguish in shock of it, filling my lungs before the life preserver popped me to the surface. The taste of the salt was strong in my mouth and I was strangling with the acrid stuff in my throat and lungs, but it was the cold that was most distressing. I felt I could survive but a few minutes. People were struggling and floundering in the water about me. I could hear them crying out to one another, and I heard also the sound of oars. Evidently the strange steamship had lowered its boats. As the time went by, I marveled that I was still alive. I had no sensation, whatever, in my lower limbs while a chilling numbness was rapping about my heart and creeping into it. Small waves with spiteful foaming crests continually broke over me and into my mouth, sending me into more strangling's proxisms. The noise grew indistinct, though I heard a final and despairing chorus of screams in the distance and knew that the Martinez had gone down. Later, how much later I have no knowledge, I came to myself with the start of fear. I was alone. I could hear no calls or cries, only the sound of the waves made wordly hollow and reverberant by the fog. A panic in a crowd which partakes of a sort of community of interest is not so terrible as a panic when one is by oneself, and such a panic I now suffered. Whither was I drifting? The red-faced man had said the tide was ebbing through the golden gate. Was I then being carried out to sea, and the life-preserver in which I floated? Was it not liable to go to pieces at any moment? I had heard of such things being made of paper and hollow rushes which quickly become saturated and lost all buoyancy. And I could not swim a stroke, and I was alone, floating, apparently, in the midst of a great primordial vastness. I confess that a madness seized me that I shrieked aloud as the women had shrieked and beat the water with my numb hands. How long this lasted I have no conception for a blankness intervened of which I remember no more than one remembers a painful sleep. When I aroused, it was as after centuries of time and I saw almost above me an emerging from the fog the bow of a vessel and three triangular sails each rudely lapping the other and filled with wind. Where the bow cut the water there was a great foaming and gurgling and I seemed directly in its path. I tried to cry out but was too exhausted. The sound just missing me and sending a swath of water clear over my head. Then the long black side of the vessel began slipping past so near that I could have touched it with my hands. I tried to reach it in a mad resolve to claw into the wood with my nails but my arms were heavy and lifeless. Again I strove to call out but made no sound. The stern of the vessel shot by between the waves and I caught a glimpse of a man standing at the wheel and of another man who seemed to be doing little else than smoke a cigar. I saw the smoke issuing from his lips as he slowly turned his head and glanced out over the water in my direction. It was a careless and premeditated glance. One of those haphazard things men do when they have no immediate call to do anything in particular and must do something. But life and death were in that glance. I could see the vessel being swallowed up in the fog. I saw the back of the man at the wheel and the head of the other man slowly turning as his gaze struck the water and casually lifted along it toward me. His face were an absent expression as of deep thought and I became afraid that if his eyes did light upon me he would nevertheless not see me but his eyes did light upon me and look squarely into mine and he did see me for he sprang to the wheel thrusting the other man aside and whirled it round and round hand over hand at the same time shouting orders of some sort. The vessel seemed to go off at attention to its former course and leapt almost instantly from view into the fog. I found myself slipping into unconsciousness and tried with all the power of my will to fight above the suffocating blankness and darkness that were rising around me. A little later I heard the stroke of oars growing nearer and nearer and the calls of a man. When he was very near I heard him crying in vexed fashion Why in hell don't you sing out? This meant me, I thought and then the blankness and darkness rose over me. End of chapter 1 Chapter 2 of The Seawolf This library box recording is in the public domain. The Seawolf by Jack London Chapter 2 I seemed swinging in a mighty rhythm through orbit vastness sparkling points of light sputtered and shot past me. They were stars I knew and flowering comets that peopled my flight among the suns. As I reached the limit of my swing and prepared to rush back a great gong struck and thundered. For an immeasurable period lapped in the rippling of placid centuries I enjoyed and pondered my tremendous flight. But a change came over the face of the dream for a dream I told myself it must be. My rhythm grew shorter and shorter. I was jerked from swing to counter swing with irritating haste. I could scarcely catch my breath so fiercely was I led through the heavens. The gong thundered more frequently and more furiously. I grew to await it with a nameless dread. Then it seemed as though I were being dragged over rasping sands, white and hot in the sun. This gave place to a sense of intolerable anguish. My skin was scorching in the torment of fire. The gong clanged and knelt. The sparkling points of light in an interminable stream as though the whole sidereal system were dropping into the void. I gassed, caught my breath painfully and opened my eyes. Two men were kneeling beside me working over me. My mighty rhythm was the lift and forward plunge of a ship on the sea. The terrific gong was a frying pan hanging on the wall that rattled and clattered with each lake by the ship. The rasping, scorching sands were a man's hard hands shaping my naked chest. I squirmed under the pain of it and half lifted my head. My chest was raw and red and I could see tiny blood globules starting through the torn and inflamed cuticle. That'll do, Jonson, one of the men said. Can't you see you've blooming well rubbed all this gent skin off? The man addressed as Jonson a man of heavy Scandinavian type ceased chafing me and rose awkwardly to his feet. The man who had spoken to him was clearly a cockney with the clean lines and weakly pretty, almost infeminent face of a man who has absorbed the sound of the bow bells with his mother's milk. A draggled Muslim cap on his head and a dirty gunny sack about his slim hips proclaimed him cook and decided to eat dirty ship's galley in which I found myself. And how you're feeling now, sir? He asked with a subservient smirk which comes only of generations of tip-seeking ancestors. For reply I twisted weakly into a sitting posture and was helped by Jonson to my feet. The rattle and bang of the frying pan was grating horribly on my nerves. I could not collect my thoughts. Clutching the woodwork of the galley for support and I confessed the grease with which it was come to put my teeth on edge, I reached across a hot cooking range to the offending utensil, unhooked it and wedged it securely into the coal box. They cooked, grinded at my exhibition of nerves and thrust into my hand a steaming mug with an air. This'll do your good. It was a nauseous mess, ship's coffee, but the heat of it was revivifying. Between gulps of the molten stuff I glanced down at my raw and blading chest and turned to the Scandinavian. Thank you, Mr. Jonson, I said, but don't you think your measures were rather heroic? It was because he understood the reproof of my action rather than of my words that he held his palm up for inspection. It was very blecalist. I passed my hand over the horny projections and my teeth went on edge once more from the horrible rasping sensation produced. My name was Jonson, not Jonson, he said in very good slow English with no more than a shade of accent to it. There was mild protest in his pale blue eyes and with all the frankness and manliness that quite won me him. Thank you, Mr. Jonson, I corrected and reached out my hand for his. He hesitated, awkward and bashful, shifted his weight from one leg to the other, then blunderingly gripped my hand in a hearty shake. Have you any dry clothes I may put on? I asked the cook. Yes, sir, he answered with cheerful alacrity. I'll run down and tack a look over my kit if you've no objection, to wearing my things. He dived out the golly door or glided, rather, with the swiftness and smoothness of gate that struck me as being not so much cat-like as oily. In fact, this oiliness or greasiness as I was later to learn was probably the most salient expression of his personality. And where am I? I asked Jonson, whom I took and rightly, to be one of the best, what vessel is this and where is she bound? Off the feral lawns heading about south-west he answered slowly and methodically as though groping for his best English and rigidly observing the order of my queries. The schooner-ghost bound seal-hunting to Japan. And who is the captain? I must see him as soon as I am dressed. Jonson looked puzzled and embarrassed. He hesitated while he groped in his vocabulary and framed a complete answer. The captain is Wolf Larson, or so men call him. I never heard his other name. But you better speak soft with him. He is mad this morning. The mate. But he did not finish. The cook had glided in. Better swing your hook out of air, Jonson, he said. The old man will be wanting on deck, and this ain't no die to foul of him. Jonson turned obediently to the door at the same time over the cook's shoulder, favoring me with an amazingly solemn and portentious wink as though to emphasize his interrupted remark and the need for me to be soft-spoken with the captain. Hanging over the cook's arm was a loose and crumpled array of evil-looking and sour-smelling garments. They was put away wet, sir. He vowed safe to explanation. But you'll have to make them do till I dry yours out by the fire. Clinging to the woodwork, staggering with the roll of the ship and aided by the cook, I managed to slip into a rough, woolen undershirt. On the instant my flesh was creeping and crawling from the harsh contact. He noticed my involuntary twitching and grimacing and smirked. I only hope you don't ever have to get used to such as that in this life, because you've got a blooming soft skin that you have more like a lighties than any I know of. I was blooming well sure you was a gentleman as soon as I set eyes on you. I had taken a dislike to him at first, and as he helped me dress this dislike increased. There was something repulsive about his touch. I shrank from his hand. My flesh revolted. And between this and the smells arising from the various pots boiling and bubbling on the galley fire, I was in haste to get out into the fresh air. Further there was the need of seeing the captain about what arrangements could be made for getting me ashore. A cheap cotton shirt with frayed collar and a bosom discolored with what I took to be ancient bloodstain and apologetic fire of comment. A pair of workman's brogons encased my feet, and for trousers I was furnished with a pair of pale blue washed-out overalls, one leg of which was fully ten inch shorter than the other. The abbreviated leg looked as though the devil had clutched there for the cockney sole and missed the shadow for the substance. And whom have I to thank for this kindness, I asked when I stood completely arrayed, a tiny boy's cap on my head and for coat a dirty-striped cotton jacket which ended at the small of my back and the sleeves of which reached just below my elbows. The cook drew himself up in this smugly humble fashion, a depreciating smirk on his face. Out of my experience with stewards on the Atlantic liners at the end of the voyage I could have sworn he was waiting for my ship. From my fuller knowledge of the creature, I now know that the posture was unconscious. A hereditary civility, no doubt, was responsible. Mugridge, sir, he fond his effeminate features running into a greasy smile. Thomas Mugridge, sir, and at your service. All right, Thomas, I said, I shall not forget you when my clothes are dry. A soft scent of wine has blossomed as though somewhere in the depths of his being his ancestors had quickened and stirred with dim memories of tips received in former lives. Thank you, sir, he said very gratefully and very humbly indeed. Precisely in the way that the door swid back he swid aside and I stepped out on deck. I was still weak from my prolonged immersion. A puff of wind caught me in the corner of the cabin to which I clung for support. The schooner, healed over far out from the perpendicular, was bowing and plunging into the long Pacific roll. If she were heading southwest, as Johnson had said, the wind then, I calculated, was blowing nearly from the south. The fog was gone and in its place the sun sparkled crisply on the surface of the water. I turned to the California, must lie, but could see nothing save low-lying fog banks. The same fog that was that had brought about the disaster to the Martinez and placed me in my present situation. To the north and not far away, a group of naked rocks thrust above the sea, on one of which I could distinguish a lighthouse. In the southwest and almost in our course I saw the permeable loom of some vessel sails. Having completed my survey of the horizon, I turned to my more immediate surroundings. My first thought was that a man who had come through a collision and rubbed shoulders with death rendered more attention than I received. Beyond the sailor at the wheel, who stared curiously across the top of the cabin, I attracted no notice whatsoever. Everybody seemed interested in what was going on in the ships. There, on a hatch, a large man was lying on his back. He was fully clothed, though his shirt was ripped open in front. Nothing was to be seen of his chest, however, for it was covered with a mass of black hair and appearance like the furry coat of a dog. His head and neck were hidden beneath a black beard and a shot with gray, which would have been stiff and bushy had it not been. His eyes were closed and he was apparently unconscious but his mouth was wide open, his breast heaving as though from suffocation as he labored noisily for breath. A sailor from time to time and quite methodically, as a matter of routine, dropped a canvas bucket into the ocean at the end of a rope, hauled it in hand under hand, and slew stitched contents over the prostate man. Pacing back and forth the length of the hatchways and savagely chewing the end of a cigar was the man whose casual glance had rescued me from the sea. His height was probably five foot ten inches or ten and a half, but my first impression, or feel of the man, was not of this but of his strength. And yet, while he was of massive build with broad shoulders and deep chest, I could not characterize his life. It was what might be termed a sinewy, naughty strength of the kind that we ascribe to lean and wiry men but which in him, because it was heavy build, partook more of the enlarged guerrilla order. Not that in appearance he seemed the least guerrilla like. What I am striving to express is this strength itself, more as a thing apart from his physical semblance. It was a strength that we are one to associate with things primitive, with wild animals, and the creatures we imagine are tree-dwelling prototypes to have been. A strength savage, ferocious, alive in itself, the essence of life in that it is the potency of motion, the elemental stuff itself out of which the many forms of life have been molded, in short that which rise in the body of a snake when the head is a snake as a snake is dead or which lingers in the shapeless lump of turtle meat and recoils and quivers from the prod of a finger. Such was the impression of strength I gathered from this man who paced up and down. He was firmly planted on his legs, his feet struck the deck squarely and with surety every movement of a muscle from the heave of the shoulders to the tightening and seemed to come out of a strength that was excessive and overwhelming. In fact, though this strength pervaded every action of his, it seemed but the advertisement of a greater strength that lurked within, that lay dormant and no more than stirred from time to time but which might arouse at any moment terrible and compelling like the rage of a lion or the wrath of a storm. The cook stuck his head out of the hallway door and grinned encouragingly at me, at the same time jerking his thumb in the direction of the man who paced up and down by the hatchway. Thus I was given to understand that he was the captain, the old man in the cook's binocular, the individual whom I must interview and put to the trouble of somehow getting me ashore. I had half started forward to get over with what I was certain would be a stormy one. One of the more violent suffocating proxiesm seized the unfortunate person who was lying on his back. He wrenched and writhed about convulsively. The chin with the damp black beard pointed higher in the air as the back muscles stiffened and the chest swelled in an unconscious and instinctive effort to get more air. Under the whiskers and all unseen, I knew that the skin was taking on a purpleish hue. The captain, or Wolf Larson as men called him, ceased pacing and gazed down at the dying man. So fierce had this final struggle become that the sailor paused in the act of flinging more water over him and stared curiously. The canvas bucket partly tilted and dripping its contents to the deck. The dying man beat a tattoo on the hatch with his heels, straightened legs, and stiffened in one great tense effort and rolled his head from side to side. Then the muscles relaxed and the head stopped rolling and a sigh as a profound relief floated upward from his lips. The jaw dropped, the upper lifted and two rows of tobacco discolored teeth appeared. It seemed as though his features had frozen into a diabolical grin at the world he had left and outwitted. Then a most surprising thing occurred. The captain broke loose upon the dead man like a thunder clap. O's rolled from his lips in a continuous stream. And they were not Nambi Pambios or mere expressions of indecency. Each word was a blasphemy and there were many words. They crisped and crackled like electric sparks. I had never heard anything like it in my life nor could I have conceived it possible. With a turn for literary expression myself, and a penchant for forcible figures and phrases, I appreciated as no other listener, I dare say, the particular vividness and strength and absolute blasphemy of his metaphors. The cause of it all, as near as I could make out, was that the man, who was mate, had yawn on a debauch before leaving San Francisco and then had the poor taste to die at the beginning of the voyage and leave Wolf Larson shorthanded. It should be unnecessary to state, at least to my friends, that I was shocked. O's and vile language of any sort had always been repellent to me. I felt a wilting sensation sinking at the heart and, I might just as well say, a giddiness. To me death had always been invested in humanity and dignity. It had been peaceful in its occurrence, sacred in its ceremonial. But death in its more sordid and terrible aspects was a thing with which I had been unacquainted till now. As I say, while I appreciated the power of the terrific denunciation that swept out of Wolf Larson's mouth, I was inexpressibly shocked. Discouraging torrent was enough to the face of the corpse. I should not have been surprised if the wet dark beard had fizzled and curled and flared up in smoke and flame. But the dead man was unconcerned. He continued to grin with a sardonic humor, with a cynical mockery and defiance. He was master of the situation. CHAPTER III Wolf Larson, swearing, as suddenly as he had begun. He related his cigar and glanced around. His eyes chanced upon the cook. Well, Cookie, he began with the swab-ness that was cold and of the temper of steel. The cook eagerly interpolated with appeasing and apologetic servility. Don't you think you've stretched that neck of yours just about enough? It's unhealthy, you know. The mate's gone, and I can't afford to lose you, too. You must be very, very careful of your health, Cookie. Understand his last word in striking contrast with the smoothness of his previous utterance snapped like the lash of a quail dunder it. Yes, sir, was the meek reply as the offending head disappeared into the galley. At this sweeping rebuke which the cook had only pointed, the rest of the crew became uninterested and fell to work at one task or another. A number of men, however, who were lounging about a companion way between the galley and hatch, and who did not seem to be sailors, continued talking in low tones here. These, I afterward learned, were the hunters, the men who shot the seals, and a very superior breed to common sailor folk. Johansson, Wolf Larson called out. A sailor stepped forward obediently. Get your palm and needle and sew the beggar up. You'll find some old canvas in the sail-locker. Make it do. What'll I put on his feet, sir? The man asked after my eye, sir. We'll see to that. Wolf Larson answered and elevated his voice in a call of cookie. Thomas Mugridge popped out of his galley like a jack-in-the-box. Go below and fill a sack with coal. Any of you fellows got a Bible or a prayer book? Was the captain's next demand? This time of the hunters lounging about the companion way. They shook their heads, and someone made a jocular remark which they did not catch, but which raised a general laugh. Wolf Larson made the same demand of the sailors. Bibles and prayer books seem scarce articles, but one of the men volunteered to pursue the quest amongst the watch below, returning in a minute with the information that there was none. The captain shrugged his shoulders. Then we'll drop him over without any pull-overing. Unless our clerical-looking employee has the burial service at sea by heart, by this time he had swung fully around and was facing me. You're a preacher, aren't you? he asked. The hunters, there were six of them, to a man turned and regarded me. I was painfully aware of my likeness to a scare crow. A laugh went up at my appearance. A laugh that was not lessened or softened by the dead man stretched and grinning before us. A laugh that was as rough and harsh and frank as the sea itself that arose out of coarse feelings and blunted sensibilities from natures that knew neither courtesy nor gentleness. Wolf Larson did not laugh, though his grey eyes lighted with a slight glint of amusement. And in that moment, having stepped forward quite close to him, I received my first impression of the man himself, of the man as apart from his body and from the torrent of blasphemy I had heard him spew forth. The face, with large features and strong lines of the square order, yet well filled out, was apparently massive at first sight. But again, as with the body, the massiveness seemed to vanish and a conviction to grow of a tremendous and excessive mental or spiritual strength that lay behind sleeping in the depths of his being. The jaw, the chin, the brow rising to a goodly height and swelling heavily above the eyes. These, while strong in themselves, unusually strong, seemed to speak an intense vigor or a virility of spirit that lay behind and beyond and out of sight. There was no sounding such a spirit, no measuring, no determining of meats and bounds, nor neatly classifying in some pigeonhole with others of similar type. The eyes, and it was my destiny to know them well, were large and handsome, wide apart as the true artists are wide, sheltering under a heavy brow and arched over by thick black eyebrows. The eyes themselves were of that baffling protean gray which is never twice the same, which runs through many shades and colorings like inner-shot silk and sunshine, which is gray darken light and greenish gray and sometimes of the clear azure of the deep sea. There were eyes that massed the soul with the thousand guises and that sometimes opened at rare moments and allowed it to rush up as though it were about to fare forth nakedly into the world on a wonderful adventure, eyes that could brood with the hopeless somberness of leaden skies that could snap and crackle points of light like those which sparkle from a whirling sword that could grow chill as an arctic landscape and yet again that could warm and soften and be all adanced with love-lights, intense and masculine, luring and compelling, which at the end of the day would resonate women till they surrender in a gladness of joy and of relief and sacrifice. But to return, I told him that unhappily for the burial service I was not a preacher when he sharply demanded, what do you do for a living? I confess I had never had such a question asked me before nor had I ever canvassed it. I am a gentleman, his lip curled in the swift sneer. I have worked, I do work, I cried impetuously as though he were my judge and I required vindication and at the same time very much aware of my idiocy in discussing the subject at all. For your living? There was something so imperative and masterful about him that I was quite sure of. Rattled, as Phu Rasseth would have termed it, like a quaking child before a stern school master. Who feeds you? was his next question. I have an income, I answered stoutly and could have bitten my tongue the next instant, all of which you will pardon my observing has nothing whatsoever to do with what I wish to see you about. You burned it, eh? I thought so, your father. You stand on dead men's legs. You've never had any of your own. You couldn't walk alone between two sunrises and hustle the meat for your belly for three meals. Let me see your hand. His tremendous dormant strength must have stirred swiftly and accurately, or I must have slept a moment, for before I knew it he had stepped two paces forward, and held it up for inspection. I tried to withdraw it, but his fingers tightened, without visible effort, till I thought mine would be crushed. It is hard to maintain one's dignity under such circumstances. I could not squirm or struggle like a schoolboy, nor could I attack such a creature who had but to twist my arm to break it. Nothing remained but to stand still and accept the indignity. I had time to realize that the pockets of the dead men had been emptied on the deck, and that his body and grin had been wrapped from view in canvas, the folds of which the sailor, Johansson, was sewing together with a coarse white twine, shoving the needle through with the leather contrive and spitted on the palm of his hand. Wolf Larson dropped my hand with a flirt of disdain. Dead men's hands have kept washing and sculling in work. I wished to be put ashore, I said firmly, for now I had myself in control. I shall pay you whatever you judge your delay in trouble to be worth. He looked at me curiously, mockery shown in his eyes. I have a counter proposition to make, and for the good of your soul, my mate's gone and there'll be a lot of promotion. A sailor comes aft to take the mate's place, to take the sailor's place, and you take the cabin boy's place. Sign the article for the cruise twenty dollars per month and found. Now what do you say? And mind you, it's for your own soul's sake. It will be the making of you. You might learn in time to stand on your own legs and perhaps to tattle along a bit. But I took no notice. The sails of the vessel I had seen off to the southwest were larger and planer. They were over the same schooner rig as the ghost. The hole itself, I could see, was smaller. She was a pretty sight, leaping and flying toward us and evidently bound to pass at close range. The wind had been momentarily increasing and the sun after a few angry gleams had disappeared. The sea had turned a dull, leaden gray and grown rougher and was passing, forming white caps to the sky. We were traveling faster and healed farther over. Once in a gust the rail dipped under the sea and the decks on that side were for the moment a wash with water that made a couple of the hunters hastily lift their feet. That vessel will soon be passing, as I said after a moment's pause. As she is going in the opposite direction she is very probably in San Francisco. Very probably was Wolf Larson's answer as he turned away from me and cried out, Cookie, oh Cookie, the cockney popped out of the galley. Where's that boy? Tell him I want him. Yes, sir, and Thomas Mugridge fled swiftly aft and disappeared down another companion way near the wheel. A moment later he emerged, a heavy-set young fellow of eighteen or nineteen with a glowering, villainous countenance trailing at his heel. Here he is, sir, the cook said. But Wolf Larson ignored that were they turned it at once to the cabin boy. What's your name, boy? George Leach, sir, came the sullen answer, and the boys' bearing showed clearly that he devined the reason for which he had been summoned. Not an Irish name, the captain snapped sharply. O'Toole McCurthy would suit your mug a damn sight better, and less very likely there's an Irishman in your mother's woodpile. I saw the young fellow's hands clench at the insult, and the blood-crawled scarlet up his neck. But let that go, Wolf Larson continued. You may have very good reasons for forgetting your name, and I'll like you nonetheless for it as long as you tow the mark. Telegraph Hill, of course, is your point of entry. It sticks out all over your mug. Tough as they make them, and twice as nasty. I know the kind. Well, you can make up your mind to have a taking out of you on this craft. Understand? Who shipped you, anyway? McCurthy and Swanson. Sir! Wolf Larson thundered. McCurthy and Swanson, sir, the boy corrected, his eyes burning with a bitter light. Who got the advance money? They did, sir. I thought as much, and damned glad you were to let them have it. Couldn't make yourself scarce too quick with several gentlemen you may have heard of looking for you. The boy metamorphized into a savage on the instant. His body bunched together as though for a spring, and his face became as an infuriated beast as he snarled. It's a—what? Wolf Larson asked a particular softness in his voice, as though he were overwhelmingly curious to hear the unspoken word. The boy hesitated, then mastered his temper. Nothing, sir. I take it back. And you have shown me I was right. This with a gratified smile. How old are you? Just turn sixteen, sir. A lie. You'll never see 18 again. Big for your age at that and with muscles like a horse. Pack up your kit and go forward into the fork-sole. You're a boat-puller now. You're promoted, see? Without waiting for the boy's acceptance the captain turned to the sailor who had just finished the gruesome task of sewing up the corpse. Johansson, do you know anything about navigation? No, sir. Well, never mind your mate just the same. Get your traps aft into the mate's berth. Aye aye, sir, was the cheery as Johansson started forward. In the meantime the erstwhile cabin-boy had not moved. What are you waiting for, Wolf-Larsson demanded. I didn't sign for boat-puller, sir, was the reply. I signed for cabin-boy, and I don't want no boat-pulling in mine. Pack up and go forward. This time Wolf-Larsson's command was thrillingly imperative. The boy glowered sullenly but refused to move. Then came another stirring of Wolf-Larsson's tremendous strength. It was utterly unexpected and it was over and done with between the dicks of two seconds. He had sprung fully six feet across the deck and driven his fist into the other's stomach. At the same moment as though I had been struck myself, I felt a sickening shock in the pit of my stomach. I instanced this to show the sensitivity of my nervous organization at the time and how unused I was to spectacles of brutality. The cabin-boy, and he weighed 165 at the very least, crumpled up. His body wrapped limply about the fist like a wet rag about his stick. He lifted into the air, described a short curve, and struck the deck alongside the corpse with his head and shoulders where he lay and writhed about in agony. Wolf-Larsson asked of me, have you made up your mind? I hid glanced occasionally at the approaching schooner and it was now almost abreast of us and not more than a couple of hundred yards away. It was a very trim and neat little craft. I could see a large black number on one of its sails and I had seen pictures of pilot boats. What vessel is that? I asked. The pilot boat Lady Mine, Wolf-Larsson and his family got rid of her pilots and running into San Francisco. She'll be there in five or six hours with this wind. Will you please signal it then that I may be put ashore? Sorry, but I've lost the signal book overboard, he remarked, and the group of hunters grinned. I debated a moment looking him square in the eyes. I had seen the frightful treatment of the cabin-boy and knew that I should very probably go if not worse. As I say, I debated with myself and then I did what I consider the bravest act of my life. I ran to the side waving my arms and shouting, Lady Mine Ahoy, take me ashore. A thousand dollars if you take me ashore. I waited, watching two men who stood by the wheel one of them stirring. The other was lifting a megaphone to his lips. I did not turn but though I expected every moment a killing blow from the human brute behind me. At last, after what seemed centuries, unable longer to stand the strain, I looked around. He had not moved. He was standing in the same position, swaying easily to the roll of the ship and lighting a fresh cigar. What is the matter? Anything wrong? This cry was from the Lady Mine. Yes, I shouted at the top of my lungs. Life or death? $1,000 if you take me ashore. Too much frisco-tangle foot for the health of my crew, Wolf Larson shouted after. This one, indicating me with his thumb, fancy sea serpents and monkeys just now. The man on the Lady Mine left back through the megaphone. The pilot boat plunged past. Give him hell for me, and the two men waved their arms in farewell. I leaned despairingly over the rail, watching the trim little schooner swiftly increasing the bleak sweep of ocean between us. And she would probably be in San Francisco in five or six hours. My head seemed bursting. There was an ache in my throat as though my heart were up in it. A curling wave struck the side and splashed salt spray on my lips. The wind puffed strongly, and the ghost healed far over, burying her lee rail. I could hear the water rushing down upon the deck. When I turned around a moment later, I saw the cabin boy staggering to his feet. His face was ghastly white, twitching with suppressed pain. He looked very sick. Well, Leech, are you going forward? Wolf Larson asked. Yes, sir, came the answer at cowed. And you, I was asked. I'll give you a thousand, I began, but was interrupted. Stow that. Are you going to take up your duties as cabin boy, or do I have to take you in hand? What was I to do? To be brutally beaten, to be killed perhaps would not help my case. I looked steadily into the cruel gray eyes. They might have been granted for all the white and warmth of a human soul they contained. One may see the soul stir in some men's eyes that his were bleak and cold, and gray is the sea itself. Well, yes, I said. Say, yes, sir. Yes, sir, I corrected. What is your name? Van Wyden, sir. First name? Humphrey, sir. Humphrey Van Wyden. Thirty-five, sir. That'll do. Go to the cook and learn your duties. And thus it was that I passed into a state of involuntary servitude to Wolf Larson. He was stronger than I, that was all. But it was very unreal at the time. It is no less unreal now that I look back upon it. It will always be to me a monstrous inconceivable thing, a horrible nightmare. Van, don't go yet. I stopped obediently in my walk toward the galley. Johansson, call all hands. Now that we've got everything cleaned up, we'll have the funeral and get the decks cleared of useless lumber. While Johansson was summoning the watch below, a couple of sailors under the captain's direction laid the canvas swath corpse upon a hatch cover. On either side of the deck the rail and bottoms up were lashed a number of small boats. Several men picked up the hatch cover with this ghastly freight, carried it to the leeside and rested it on the boat's feet pointing overboard. To the feet was attached the sack of coal which the cook had fetched. I had always conceived a burial at sea to be a very solemn and awe-inspiring event, but I was quickly disillusioned by this burial at any rate. One of the hunters, a little dark-eyed man whom his mates called Smoke, was telling stories, liberally inter sprinkled with oaths and obscenities, and every minute or so the group of hunters gave mouth to a laughter that sounded to me like a wolf chorus or the barking of hellhounds. The sailors troop noisily aft some of the watch below rubbing the sleep from their eyes and talked in low tones together. There was an ominous and worried expression on their faces. It was evident that they did not like the yell-look of a voyage under such a captain and began so inauspiciously. From time to time they stole glances at Wolf Larson, and I could see that they were apprehensive of the man. He stepped up to the hatch cover and all caps came off. I ran my eyes over them, twenty men all told, twenty-two including the man at the wheel and myself. I was pardonably curious in my survey, for it appeared my fate to be pen up with them on this miniature floating world for I knew not how many weeks or months. The sailors in the main were English and Scandinavian, and their faces seemed of the heavy stallard order. The hunters, on the other hand, had faces with hard lines in the marks of the free play of passions. Strange to say, and I noted it all once, Wolf Larson's feature showed no such evil stamp. There seemed nothing vicious in them. True, they were lines, but they were the lines of decision and firmness. It seemed, rather, of frank and open continents which frankness or openness was enhanced by the fact that it was chaven. I could hardly believe, until the next incident occurred, that it was the face of the man who could behave as he had behaved to the cabin boy. At this moment, as he opened his mouth to speak, puff after puff struck the schooner and pressed her side under. The wind shrieked wild song through the rigging. Some of the hunters glanced anxiously aloft. The lee rail where the dead man lay was buried in the sea, and as the schooner lifted and rided, the water swept across the deck, wetting us above our shoe tops. A shower of rain drove down upon us, each drop stinging like a hailstone. As it passed, Wolf Larson began to speak. The bare-headed men swain in unison to the heave and lunge of the deck. I only remember one part of the service, he said, and that is, and the body shall be cast into the sea. So cast it in. He ceased speaking. The men holding the hatch cover seemed perplexed, puzzled no doubt by the briefness of the ceremony. He burst upon them in a fury. Lift that end up there, damn you! What the hell's the matter with you? They elevated the end of the hatch cover with pitiful haste, and like a dog flung over side, the dead man slid feet first into the sea. All at his feet dragged him down. He was gone. Johansson, Wolf Larson said briskly to the new mate, keep all hands on deck now, they're here. Get in the top sails and jibs and make a good job of it. We're in for a southeaster. Better reef the jib in the mainsail, too, while you're about it. In a moment the decks were in commotion, Johansson bellowing orders and the men pulling or letting go ropes of various sorts. All naturally confusing to a landsman such as myself. But it was the heartlessness of it that especially struck me. The dead man was an episode that was passed, an incident that was dropped, and a can was covering with a sack of coal while the ship sped along and her work went on. No one had been affected. The hunters were laughing at a fresh story of smokes, the men pulling and hauling, and them climbing aloft. Wolf Larson was studying the clouding sky to windward and the dead men dying obscenely, buried solidly and sinking down, down. Then it was that the cruelty of the sea, its relentlessness and awfulness rushed upon me. Life had become cheap and tawdry, a beastly and inarticulate thing, a soulless stirring of the ooze and slime. I held on to the weather rail close by the shrouds and gazed out across the desolate foaming waves to the lowline fog banks that hid San Francisco and the California coast. Range squalls were driving in between and I could scarcely see the fog. And this strange vessel, its terrible men pressed under by wind and sea and ever leaping up and out way to the southwest into the great and lonely Pacific expanse. CHAPTER IV What happened to me next on the ceiling schooner ghost as I strove to fit into my new environment are matters of humiliation and pain. The cook, who is called the doctor by the crew, Tommy by the hunters, and Cookie by Wolf Larson was a changed person. The difference worked in my status brought about a corresponding difference in treatment from him. Servile and fawning as he had been before he was now as domineering and bellicose. In truth I was no longer the fine gentleman with the soft skin as a lighties but only ordinary and very worthless cabin boy. He absurdly insisted upon my addressing him as Mr. Mugridge and his behavior and courage were inseparable as he showed me my duties. Besides my work in the cabin with its four small state rooms I was supposed to be his assistant in the galley and my colossal ignorance concerning such things as peeling potatoes or washing greasy pots was a source of unending and sarcastic wonder to him. He refused to take into consideration what I was or rather what my life and the things I was accustomed to had been. This was part of the attitude he chose to adopt toward me and I confess or the day was done that I hated him with more lively feeling than I had ever hated anyone in my life before. This first day was made more difficult for me from the fact that the ghost under close Reeves, terms such as these I did not learn till later, was plunging through what Mr. Mugridge called a Alley in Southeaster. At half past five under his directions I set the table in the cabin with rough weather trays in place and then carried the tea and cook food down from the galley. In this connection I cannot bear relating my first experience with the boarding-sea. Look sharper, you'll get doused, was Mr. Mugridge's parting and junction, as I left the galley with a big teapot in one hand and in the hollow of the other arms several loaves of fresh-baked bread. One of the hunters, a tall loose-jointed chap named Henderson, was going aft at the time from the steerage. The name the hunters facetiously gave their ships leaping quarters to the cabin. Wolf Larson was on the poop, smoking his everlasting cigar. Here she comes, sling your hook, the cook cried. I stopped for I did not know what was coming and saw the galley door slide shut with a bang. Then I saw Henderson leaping like a madman for the main rigging up which he shot on the inside till he was many feet higher than my head. And so I saw a great wave, curling and foaming, posed far above the rail. I was directly under it. My mind did not work quickly, everything was so new and strange. I grasped that I was in danger, but that was all. I stood still in trepidation. Then Wolf Larson shouted from the poop, grab hold something, you hump, but it was too late. I sprang toward the rigging to which I might have clung and was met by the descending wall of water. What happened after that was very confusing. I was beneath the water suffocating and drowning. My feet were out from under me and I was turning over and over and being swept along I knew not where. Several times I collided against hard objects once striking my right knee a terrible blow. Then the flood seemed suddenly to subside and I was breathing the good air again. I had been swept against the galley and around the steerage companionway from the weather side into the Lee's cuppers. The pain from my hurt knee was agonizing. I could not put my weight on it or at least I thought I could not put my weight on it and I felt sure the leg was broken. But the cook was after me shouting through the Lee galley door, air you, don't think all night about it. Where's the pot? Lost overboard? So are you bloody well right if your neck was broke? I managed to struggle to my feet. The great teapot was still in my hand. I limped to the galley and handed it to him. But he was consumed with indignation, real or feigned. God blind me if you aren't a slob. What are you good for anyway? I'd like to know. Yeah? What are you good for anyway? Can't even carry a bit of T.F. without losing it. Now I'll have to boil some more. And what are you sniffling about? He burst out at me with renewed rage. Because you've hurt your poor little leg, poor little mama's darling. I was not sniffling, though my face may well have been drawn and twitching from the pain. But I called up all my resolution, set my teeth back and forth from galley to cabin, and cabin to galley without further mishap. Two things I had acquired by my accident. An injured kneecap that went undressed and from which I suffered for weary months, and a name of hump, which Wolf Larson had called me from the poop. Thereafter, foreign aft, I was known by no other name until the term became a part of my thought processes and I identified it with myself, thought of myself as hump as though hump were I and had always been I. It was no easy task waiting on the cabin table where sat Wolf Larson, Johansson, and the six hunters. The cabin was small to begin with, and to move around as I was compelled to was not made easier by the schooner's violent pitching and wallowing. But what struck me most forcibly was the total lack of sympathy on the part of the men whom I served. I could feel my knee through my clothes swelling and swelling and I was sick and faint from the pain of it. I could catch glimpses of my face white and ghastly and distorted the pain in the cabin mirror. All the men must have seen my condition, but no one spoke or took notice of me till I was almost grateful that Wolf Larson later on was washing the dishes when he said, Don't let a little thing like that bother you. You'll get used to such things in time. It may cripple you some, but all the same you'll be learning to walk. That's what you call a paradox, isn't it? he added. He seemed pleased when I nodded my head with a customary yes, sir. I suppose you know a bit about literary things, eh? Good. I'll have some talks with you sometime. And then, taking no further account of me, he turned his back and went up on deck. That night, when I had finished an endless amount of work, I was sent to sleep in the steerage where I made up a spare bunk. I was glad to get out of the detestable presence of the cook and to be off my feet. To my surprise, my clothes had dried on me and there seemed no indication or from the prolonged soaking from the floundering of the martinas. Under ordinary circumstances, after all that I had undergone, I should have been fit for bed in a trained nurse. But my knee was bothering me terribly. As well as I could make out, the kneecap seemed turned up on edge in the midst of the swelling. As I sat on my bunk examining it, the six hunters were all in the steerage, smoking and talking in loud voices. Henderson took a passing glance at it. Looks nasty, he commented. Tie a rag around it and it'll be all right. That was all. And on the land I would have been lying on the broad of my back with a surgeon attending me and with strict injunctions to do nothing but rest. But I must do these men justice. Callous as they were to my suffering, they were equally callous to their own when anything befell them. And this was due, I believe, first to habit and second to the fact that they were less sensitively organized. I really believe that a finely organized, high-strung man would suffer twice and thrice as much as they did from a like injury. Tired as I was, exhausted in fact. I was prevented from sleeping by the pain in my knee. It was all I could do to keep from groaning aloud. At home I should undoubtedly have given vent to my anguish. But this new and elemental environment seemed to call forth for a savage repression. Like a savage, the attitude of these men was stoical in great things, childish in little things. I remember, later in the voyage, seeing Kerfoot and other of the hunters lose a finger by having it smash to a jelly. He did not even murmur or change the expression on his face. Yet I have seen the same man time and again flying to the most outrageous passion over a trifle. He was doing it now, both separating, bellowing, waving his arms and cursing like a fiend, and all because of a disagreement with another hunter as to whether a seal pup knew instinctively how to swim. He held that it did, and could swim the moment it was born. The other hunter, Latimer, a lean, yanky-looking fellow with shrewd, narrow-splitted eyes held otherwise, held that the seal pup was born on the land for no other reason than it could not swim. That its mother was compelled to teach it to swim, as birds were compelled to teach their nestlings how to fly. For the most part, the remaining four hunters leaned on the table or lay in their bunks and left the discussion to the two antagonists. But they were supremely interested. For every little while they ardently took sides and sometimes all were talking at once, till their voices surged back and forth in waves of sound like mimic thunder rolls in the confined space. Childish and immaterial as the topic was, the quality of their reasoning was still more childish and immaterial. In truth there was very little reasoning or none at all. Their method was one of assertion, assumption, and denunciation. They proved that a seal pup could swim or not swim at birth by stating the proposition very bellicosely and then following it up with an attack on the imposing man's judgment, common sense, nationality, or past history. Rebuttal was precisely similar. I have related this in order to show the mental caliber of these men with whom I was thrown in contact. Intellectually they were children inhabiting the physical forms of men. And they smoked andcessantly smoked using coarse, cheap, and offensive smelling tobacco. The air was thick and murky with the smoke of it and this combined with the violent movement of the ship as she struggled through the storm would surely have made me seasick had I been a victim to that malady. As it was it made me quite squeamish though this nausea might have been due to the pain of my leg and exhaustion. As I lay there thinking I naturally dwelled upon myself in my situation. It was unparalleled, undreamed of that I, Humphrey Van Wyden a scholar and a dilettante if you please, in things artistic and literary should be lying here on a barren sea seal hunting schooner. Cabin boy. I had never done any hard manual labor or scullion labor in my life. I had lived a placid uneventful sedentary existence all my days the life of a scholar and a recluse on an assured and comfortable income. Violent life and athletic sports had never appealed to me. I had always been a bookworm so my sisters and father had called me during my childhood. I had gone camping but once in my life and then I left the party almost at its start and returned to the conference and convenience of a roof. And here I was with dreary and endless visas before me of table setting potato peeling and dishwashing and I was not strong. The doctors had always said a remarkable constitution but that I had never developed it or my body through exercise. My muscles were small and soft like a woman's or so the doctors had said time and again in the course of their attempts to persuade me to go in for physical culture fads. But I had preferred to use my head rather than my body and here I was in no fit condition for the rough life and prospect. These are merely a few of the things that went through my mind and are related for the sake of vindicating myself in advance and the weak and helpless role I was destined to play. But I thought also of my mother and sisters and pictured their grief. I was among the missing dead of the Martinez disaster and unrecovered body. I could see the headlines in the paper the fellows at the university club a lot shaking their heads and saying poor chap. And I could see Charlie Foo with Seth as I had said goodbye to him that morning, lounging in the dressing gown on the depillowed window couch and delivering himself of oracular and pessimistic epigrams. And all the while rolling, plunging climbing the moving mountains and falling and wallowing in the foaming valleys the schooner ghost was fighting her way farther and farther into the heart of the Pacific and I was on her. I could hear the wind above it came to my ears as a muffled roar now and again feet stamped overhead an endless creaking was going on all about me the woodwork in fitting groaning and squeaking and complaining and a thousand keys the hunters were still arguing and roaring like some semi-human amphibious breed the air was filled with oaths and indecent expressions I could see their faces flushed and angry the brutality distorted and emphasized by the sickly yellow of the sea lamps which rocked back and forth with the ship through the dim smoke haze the bunks looked like the sweeping dens of animals in a menagerie oil skins and sea boots were hanging from the walls I could hear in their rifles and shotguns rested securely in their racks it was a sea fitting for the buccaneers and pirates of bygone years my imagination ran riot and still I could not sleep and it was a long, long night weary and dreary and long End of Chapter 4 Chapter 5 of The Seawolf This library of ox recording is in the public domain The Seawolf by Jack London Chapter 5 But my first night in the hunter's steerage was also my last Next day Johansson, the new mate, was routed from the cabin by Wolfhorsen and sent into the steerage to sleep thereafter while I took possession of the tiny cabin state room which on the first day of the voyage had already had two occupants The reason for this change was to be learned by the hunters and became the cause of a deal of grumbling on their part It seemed that Johansson in his sleep lived over each night the events of the day His incessant talking and shouting and bellowing of orders had been too much for Wolfhorsen who had accordingly foisted the nuisance upon his hunters After a sleepless night I awoke weak and in agony I fell through my second day on the ghost Thomas Mugridge routed me out at half-past five much in the fashion that Bill Sykes must have routed out his dog but Mr. Mugridge's brutality to me was paid back in kind and with interest The unnecessary noise he made I had lain wide-eyed the whole night must have awakened one of the hunters for a heavy shoe whizzed and Mr. Mugridge with a sharp howl of pain humbly begged everybody's pardon Later on in the golly I noticed that his ear was bruised and swollen It never went entirely back to its normal shape and was called a cauliflower ear by the sailors The day was filled with miserable variety I had taken my dried clothes down from the golly the night before and the first thing I did was exchange the cook's garments for them I looked for my purse In addition to some small change and I have a good memory for such things it had contained $185 in gold and paper The purse I found but its contents with the exception of the small silver had been abstracted I spoke to the cook about it when I went on deck to take up my duties in the golly and though I had looked forward to a surly answer I had not expected the belligerent hurang that I received Look ear, ump, he began a malicious light in his eyes and a snarl in his throat Do you want your nose punched? If you think I'm a thief just keep it to yourself or you'll find how bloody well mistaken you are Strike me blind if this ain't gratitude for you Old specimen of oom and scum and I tikes your end of my golly and treats your ansom and this is what I get for it Next time you can go to L, say I and I have a good mind to give you what for anyway So saying he put up his fists and started for me To my shame be it I cowered away from the blow and ran out the golly door What else was I to do? Force, nothing but force was attained on this brute ship Moral Swazian was attained unknown Picture it to yourself a man of ordinary stature slender of build and with weak undeveloped muscles who has lived a peaceful placid life and is unused to violence of any kind What could such a man possibly do? There was no more reason that I should stand and face an infuriated ball So I thought it out at the time feeling the need for vindication and desiring to be at peace with my conscience but this vindication did not satisfy nor to this day can I permit my mad head to look back upon those events and feel entirely exonerated The situation was something that really exceeded rational formulas for conduct and demanded more than the cold conclusions of reason When viewed in the light of formal logic there is not one thing of which to be ashamed but nevertheless the shame rises within me at the recollection and in the pride of my manhood I feel that my manhood has in unaccountable ways been smirched and solid All of which is neither here nor there The speed with which I ran from the golly caused excruciating pain in my knee and I sank down helplessly at the break of the poop but the cockney had not pursued me Look at him run Look at him run I could hear him crying and with a guy in leg at that Come on back you poor little mom's darling I won't hit your No I won't I came back and went on with my work and here the episode ended for the time though further developments were yet to take place I set the breakfast table in the cabin and at seven o'clock waited on the hunters and officers The storm had evidently broken during the night though a huge sea was still running and a stiff wind blowing Sail had been made in the early watches so that the ghost was racing along under everything except the two top sails and the flying jeb These three sails I gathered from the conversation were to be set immediately after breakfast I learned also that Wolf Larson was anxious to make the most of the storm which was driving him to the southwest into that portion of the sea where he expected to pick up the northeast trades It was before this steady wind that he hoped to make the major portion of the run to Japan curving south into the tropics and north again as he approached the coast of Asia After breakfast I had another unenviable experience When I had finished washing the dishes I cleaned the cabin stove and carried the ashes up on deck to empty them Wolf Larson and Henderson were standing near the wheel deep in conversation The sailor Johnson was steering As I started towards the weather side I saw him make a sudden motion with his head for a token of recognition and good morning In reality he was attempting to warn me to throw my ashes over the lee side Unconscious of my blunder I passed by Wolf Larson and the hunter and flung the ashes over the side to windward The wind drove them back and not only over me but over Henderson and Wolf Larson The next instant the ladder kicked me violently as a cur has kicked I had not realized there could be so much pain in a kick I reeled away from him and leaned against the cabin in a half feigning condition Everything was swimming before my eyes and I turned sick The nausea overpowered me and I managed to crawl to the side of the vessel but Wolf Larson did not follow me up Rushing the ashes from his clothes he had resumed his conversation with Henderson Johansson, who had seen the affair from the break of the poops and a couple of sailors aft to clean up the mess Later in the morning I received a surprise of a totally different sort Following the cook's instructions I had gone into Wolf Larson's state room to put it to rights and make the bed Against the wall near the head of the bunk was a rack filled with books I glanced over them noting with astonishment such names as Shakespeare, Tennyson, Poe, and De Quincey There were scientific works, too among which were represented men such as Tindall, Proctor, and Darwin Astronomy and Physics were represented and I remarked Paul Finch's Age of Fable Shaw's History of English and American Literature and History in two large volumes Then there were a number of grammars such as Metcalf's and Readin' Cowog's and I smiled as I saw a copy of the Dean's English I could not reconcile these books with the man from what I had seen of him and I wondered if he could possibly read them But when I came to make the bed I found, beneath the blankets dropped apparently as he had sunk off to sleep a complete browning, the Cambridge edition It was open at Inna Balcony and I noticed here and there passages underlined in pencil Further, letting drop the volume during the lurch of the ship a sheet of paper fell out It was scrawled over with geometrical diagrams and calculations of some sort It was patent that this terrible man was no ignorant quad such as one would inevitably cause him to be from his exhibitions of brutality At once he became an enigma One side or the other of his nature was perfectly comprehensible but both sides together were bewildering I had already remarked that his language was excellent marred with an occasional slight inaccuracy Of course, in common speech with the sailors and hunters it sometimes fairly bristled due to the vernacular itself but in the few words he had held with me had it been clear and correct This glimpse I caught of his other side must have emboldened me for I resolved to speak to him about the money I had lost I have been robbed, I said to him a little later when I found him pacing up and down the pupil on Sir, he corrected, not harshly but sternly Sir, I amended How did it happen, he asked Then I told him the whole circumstances how my clothes had been left to dry in the galley and how later I was nearly beaten by the cook when I mentioned the matter He smiled at my recital Pickings, he concluded Cookies pickings And don't you think your miserable life worth the price? Besides, consider it a lesson time how to take care of your money for yourself I suppose, up to now, your lawyer has done it for you or your business agent I could feel the quiet sneer through his words but demanded How can I get it back again? That's your lookout You haven't any lawyer or business agent now so you'll have to depend on yourself When you get a dollar, hang on to it A man who leaves his money lying while you did deserves to lose it Besides, you have sinned You have no right to put temptation in the way of your fellow creatures You tempted Cookie and he fell You have placed his immortal soul in jeopardy Do you believe in the immortal soul? His leads lifted lazily as he asked the question and it seemed that the deeps were opening to me and that I was gazing into his soul and it was an illusion Far as it might have seen no man has seen very far into Wolf Larson's soul or seen it at all of this I am convinced It was a very lonely soul I was to learn that never unmasked though at rare moments it played at doing so I read immortality in your eyes I answered dropping the ser an experiment for I thought the intimacy of the conversation did it He took no notice By that I take it you see something that is alive but that necessarily does not have to live forever I read more than that I continued boldly Then you read consciousness You read the consciousness of life that is alive but still no further away no endlessness of life How clearly he thought and how well he expressed his thought From regarding me curiously he turned his head and glanced out over the leaden sea to windward A bleakness came into his eyes and the lines of his mouth grew severe and harsh He was evidently in a pessimistic mood Then to what end he demanded abruptly turning back to me If I am immortal why I hold it How could I explain my idealism to this man How could I put into speech a something felt a something like the strains of music heard in sleep a something that convinced yet transcended utterance What do you believe then I countered I believe that life is a mess he answered promptly It is like yeast a ferment a thing that moves and may move for a minute The big eat the little that they may continue to move the strong eat the weak that they may retain their strength The lucky eat the most and move the longest that is all What do you make of those things He swept his arm in an impatient gesture toward a number of sailors who were working on some kind of rope stuff amid ships They move so does a jellyfish move They move in order to eat in order that they may keep moving There you have it They live for their belly's sake and the belly is for their sake It's a circle you get nowhere Neither do they In the end they come to a stand still They move no more They are dead They have dreams I interrupted Radiant flashing dreams of grub he continued sententiously and of more grub and tight and more luck in satisfying it His voice sounded harsh There was no levity in it For look you they dream of making lucky voyages which will bring them more money of becoming the mates of ships of finding fortunes in short of being in a better position for praying on their fellows of having all night in good grub and somebody else to do the dirty work There is no difference except that we have eaten more and better I am eating them now and you too But in the past you have eaten more than I have You have slept in soft beds and worn fine clothes and eaten good meals Who made those beds and those clothes and those meals? Not you You never made anything in your own sweat You live on an income which your father earned like a frigate bird swooping down upon the boobies and robbing them of the fish they have caught You are one with a crowd of men who have made what they call government who are masters of all the other men and who eat the food the other men get and would like to eat themselves You wear the warm clothes They made the clothes but they shiver and rags and ask you the lawyer or business agent But that is besides the matter I cried, not at all He was speaking rapidly now and his eyes were flashing It is pigishness and it is life Of what use or sense is an immortality of pigishness What is the end? What is it all about? You have made no food yet the food you have eaten or wasted might have saved the lives of a score of wretches who made the food but did not eat it What mortal end did you serve? Or did they? Consider yourself and me What does your boasted immortality amount to when your life runs foul of mine? You would like to go back to the land which is a favorable place for your kind of pigishness It is a whim of mine to keep you aboard this ship where my pigishness flourishes and keep you I will I may make or break you You may die today, this week or next month I could kill you now with a blow of my fist for you or a miserable weakling But if we are immortal what is the reason for this? To be pigish as you and I have been all our lives does not seem to be just the thing for immortals to be doing Again, what is it all about? Why have I kept you here? Because you are stronger I managed to blurt out But why stronger he went on once with his perpetual queries Because I am a bigger bit of ferment than you Don't you see? Don't you see? But the hopelessness of it I protested I agree with you, he answered Then why move at all since moving is living? Without moving and being part of the yeast there would be no hopelessness But, and there it is we want to live and move though we have no reason to that it is the nature of life to live and move to want to live and move If it were not for this life would be dead and it is because of this life that is in you that you dream of your immortality The life that is in you is alive and wants to go on being alive forever Ba and eternity of pigishness He abruptly turned on his heel and started forward He stopped at the break of the poop and called to me By the way, how much was it that Cookie got away with? He asked $185, sir, I answered He nodded his head A moment later as I started down the companion stairs to lay the table for dinner I heard him loudly cursing some men amid ships End of chapter 5