The Sea-Wolf
He received the word as if it had a familiar ring, though he pondered it
thoughtfully. “Let me see, it means something about coöperation, doesn’t
it?”
“Well, in a way there has come to be a sort of connection,” I answered
unsurprised by this time at such gaps in his vocabulary, which, like his
knowledge, was the acquirement of a self-read, self-educated man, whom no
one had directed in his studies, and who had thought much and talked
little or not at all. “An altruistic act is an act performed for the
welfare of others. It is unselfish, as opposed to an act performed for
self, which is selfish.”
He nodded his head. “Oh, yes, I remember it now. I ran across it in
Spencer.”
“Spencer!” I cried. “Have you read him?”
“Not very much,” was his confession. “I understood quite a good deal of
_First Principles_, but his _Biology_ took the wind out of my sails, and
his _Psychology_ left me butting around in the doldrums for many a day.
I honestly could not understand what he was driving at. I put it down to
mental deficiency on my part, but since then I have decided that it was
for want of preparation. I had no proper basis. Only Spencer and myself
know how hard I hammered. But I did get something out of his _Data of
Ethics_. There’s where I ran across ‘altruism,’ and I remember now how
it was used.”
I wondered what this man could have got from such a work. Spencer I
remembered enough to know that altruism was imperative to his ideal of
highest conduct. Wolf Larsen, evidently, had sifted the great
philosopher’s teachings, rejecting and selecting according to his needs
and desires.
“What else did you run across?” I asked.
His brows drew in slightly with the mental effort of suitably phrasing
thoughts which he had never before put into speech. I felt an elation of
spirit. I was groping into his soul-stuff as he made a practice of
groping in the soul-stuff of others. I was exploring virgin territory.
A strange, a terribly strange, region was unrolling itself before my
eyes.
“In as few words as possible,” he began, “Spencer puts it something like
this: First, a man must act for his own benefit—to do this is to be moral
and good. Next, he must act for the benefit of his children. And third,
he must act for the benefit of his race.”
“And the highest, finest, right conduct,” I interjected, “is that act
which benefits at the same time the man, his children, and his race.”
“I wouldn’t stand for that,” he replied. “Couldn’t see the necessity for
it, nor the common sense. I cut out the race and the children. I would
sacrifice nothing for them. It’s just so much slush and sentiment, and
you must see it yourself, at least for one who does not believe in
eternal life. With immortality before me, altruism would be a paying
business proposition. I might elevate my soul to all kinds of altitudes.
But with nothing eternal before me but death, given for a brief spell
this yeasty crawling and squirming which is called life, why, it would be
immoral for me to perform any act that was a sacrifice. Any sacrifice
that makes me lose one crawl or squirm is foolish,—and not only foolish,
for it is a wrong against myself and a wicked thing. I must not lose one
crawl or squirm if I am to get the most out of the ferment. Nor will the
eternal movelessness that is coming to me be made easier or harder by the
sacrifices or selfishnesses of the time when I was yeasty and acrawl.”
“Then you are an individualist, a materialist, and, logically, a
hedonist.”
“Big words,” he smiled. “But what is a hedonist?”
He nodded agreement when I had given the definition. “And you are also,”
I continued, “a man one could not trust in the least thing where it was
possible for a selfish interest to intervene?”
“Now you’re beginning to understand,” he said, brightening.
“You are a man utterly without what the world calls morals?”
“That’s it.”
“A man of whom to be always afraid—”
“That’s the way to put it.”
“As one is afraid of a snake, or a tiger, or a shark?”
“Now you know me,” he said. “And you know me as I am generally known.
Other men call me ‘Wolf.’”
“You are a sort of monster,” I added audaciously, “a Caliban who has
pondered Setebos, and who acts as you act, in idle moments, by whim and
fancy.”
His brow clouded at the allusion. He did not understand, and I quickly
learned that he did not know the poem.
“I’m just reading Browning,” he confessed, “and it’s pretty tough. I
haven’t got very far along, and as it is I’ve about lost my bearings.”
Not to be tiresome, I shall say that I fetched the book from his
state-room and read “Caliban” aloud. He was delighted. It was a
primitive mode of reasoning and of looking at things that he understood
thoroughly. He interrupted again and again with comment and criticism.
When I finished, he had me read it over a second time, and a third. We
fell into discussion—philosophy, science, evolution, religion. He
betrayed the inaccuracies of the self-read man, and, it must be granted,
the sureness and directness of the primitive mind. The very simplicity
of his reasoning was its strength, and his materialism was far more
compelling than the subtly complex materialism of Charley Furuseth. Not
that I—a confirmed and, as Furuseth phrased it, a temperamental
idealist—was to be compelled; but that Wolf Larsen stormed the last
strongholds of my faith with a vigour that received respect, while not
accorded conviction.
Time passed. Supper was at hand and the table not laid. I became
restless and anxious, and when Thomas Mugridge glared down the
companion-way, sick and angry of countenance, I prepared to go about my
duties. But Wolf Larsen cried out to him:
“Cooky, you’ve got to hustle to-night. I’m busy with Hump, and you’ll do
the best you can without him.”
And again the unprecedented was established. That night I sat at table
with the captain and the hunters, while Thomas Mugridge waited on us and
washed the dishes afterward—a whim, a Caliban-mood of Wolf Larsen’s, and
one I foresaw would bring me trouble. In the meantime we talked and
talked, much to the disgust of the hunters, who could not understand a
word.
CHAPTER IX
Three days of rest, three blessed days of rest, are what I had with Wolf
Larsen, eating at the cabin table and doing nothing but discuss life,
literature, and the universe, the while Thomas Mugridge fumed and raged
and did my work as well as his own.
“Watch out for squalls, is all I can say to you,” was Louis’s warning,
given during a spare half-hour on deck while Wolf Larsen was engaged in
straightening out a row among the hunters.
“Ye can’t tell what’ll be happenin’,” Louis went on, in response to my
query for more definite information. “The man’s as contrary as air
currents or water currents. You can never guess the ways iv him. ’Tis
just as you’re thinkin’ you know him and are makin’ a favourable slant
along him, that he whirls around, dead ahead and comes howlin’ down upon
you and a-rippin’ all iv your fine-weather sails to rags.”
So I was not altogether surprised when the squall foretold by Louis smote
me. We had been having a heated discussion,—upon life, of course,—and,
grown over-bold, I was passing stiff strictures upon Wolf Larsen and the
life of Wolf Larsen. In fact, I was vivisecting him and turning over his
soul-stuff as keenly and thoroughly as it was his custom to do it to
others. It may be a weakness of mine that I have an incisive way of
speech; but I threw all restraint to the winds and cut and slashed until
the whole man of him was snarling. The dark sun-bronze of his face went
black with wrath, his eyes were ablaze. There was no clearness or sanity
in them—nothing but the terrific rage of a madman. It was the wolf in
him that I saw, and a mad wolf at that.
He sprang for me with a half-roar, gripping my arm. I had steeled myself
to brazen it out, though I was trembling inwardly; but the enormous
strength of the man was too much for my fortitude. He had gripped me by
the biceps with his single hand, and when that grip tightened I wilted
and shrieked aloud. My feet went out from under me. I simply could not
stand upright and endure the agony. The muscles refused their duty. The
pain was too great. My biceps was being crushed to a pulp.
He seemed to recover himself, for a lucid gleam came into his eyes, and
he relaxed his hold with a short laugh that was more like a growl. I
fell to the floor, feeling very faint, while he sat down, lighted a
cigar, and watched me as a cat watches a mouse. As I writhed about I
could see in his eyes that curiosity I had so often noted, that wonder
and perplexity, that questing, that everlasting query of his as to what
it was all about.
I finally crawled to my feet and ascended the companion stairs. Fair
weather was over, and there was nothing left but to return to the galley.
My left arm was numb, as though paralysed, and days passed before I could
use it, while weeks went by before the last stiffness and pain went out
of it. And he had done nothing but put his hand upon my arm and squeeze.
There had been no wrenching or jerking. He had just closed his hand with
a steady pressure. What he might have done I did not fully realize till
next day, when he put his head into the galley, and, as a sign of renewed
friendliness, asked me how my arm was getting on.
“It might have been worse,” he smiled.
I was peeling potatoes. He picked one up from the pan. It was
fair-sized, firm, and unpeeled. He closed his hand upon it, squeezed,
and the potato squirted out between his fingers in mushy streams. The
pulpy remnant he dropped back into the pan and turned away, and I had a
sharp vision of how it might have fared with me had the monster put his
real strength upon me.
But the three days’ rest was good in spite of it all, for it had given my
knee the very chance it needed. It felt much better, the swelling had
materially decreased, and the cap seemed descending into its proper
place. Also, the three days’ rest brought the trouble I had foreseen.
It was plainly Thomas Mugridge’s intention to make me pay for those three
days. He treated me vilely, cursed me continually, and heaped his own
work upon me. He even ventured to raise his fist to me, but I was
becoming animal-like myself, and I snarled in his face so terribly that
it must have frightened him back. It is no pleasant picture I can
conjure up of myself, Humphrey Van Weyden, in that noisome ship’s galley,
crouched in a corner over my task, my face raised to the face of the
creature about to strike me, my lips lifted and snarling like a dog’s, my
eyes gleaming with fear and helplessness and the courage that comes of
fear and helplessness. I do not like the picture. It reminds me too
strongly of a rat in a trap. I do not care to think of it; but it was
effective, for the threatened blow did not descend.
Thomas Mugridge backed away, glaring as hatefully and viciously as I
glared. A pair of beasts is what we were, penned together and showing
our teeth. He was a coward, afraid to strike me because I had not
quailed sufficiently in advance; so he chose a new way to intimidate me.
There was only one galley knife that, as a knife, amounted to anything.
This, through many years of service and wear, had acquired a long, lean
blade. It was unusually cruel-looking, and at first I had shuddered
every time I used it. The cook borrowed a stone from Johansen and
proceeded to sharpen the knife. He did it with great ostentation,
glancing significantly at me the while. He whetted it up and down all
day long. Every odd moment he could find he had the knife and stone out
and was whetting away. The steel acquired a razor edge. He tried it