The Sea-Wolf
with the ball of his thumb or across the nail. He shaved hairs from the
back of his hand, glanced along the edge with microscopic acuteness, and
found, or feigned that he found, always, a slight inequality in its edge
somewhere. Then he would put it on the stone again and whet, whet, whet,
till I could have laughed aloud, it was so very ludicrous.
It was also serious, for I learned that he was capable of using it, that
under all his cowardice there was a courage of cowardice, like mine, that
would impel him to do the very thing his whole nature protested against
doing and was afraid of doing. “Cooky’s sharpening his knife for Hump,”
was being whispered about among the sailors, and some of them twitted him
about it. This he took in good part, and was really pleased, nodding his
head with direful foreknowledge and mystery, until George Leach, the
erstwhile cabin-boy, ventured some rough pleasantry on the subject.
Now it happened that Leach was one of the sailors told off to douse
Mugridge after his game of cards with the captain. Leach had evidently
done his task with a thoroughness that Mugridge had not forgiven, for
words followed and evil names involving smirched ancestries. Mugridge
menaced with the knife he was sharpening for me. Leach laughed and
hurled more of his Telegraph Hill Billingsgate, and before either he or I
knew what had happened, his right arm had been ripped open from elbow to
wrist by a quick slash of the knife. The cook backed away, a fiendish
expression on his face, the knife held before him in a position of
defence. But Leach took it quite calmly, though blood was spouting upon
the deck as generously as water from a fountain.
“I’m goin’ to get you, Cooky,” he said, “and I’ll get you hard. And I
won’t be in no hurry about it. You’ll be without that knife when I come
for you.”
So saying, he turned and walked quietly forward. Mugridge’s face was
livid with fear at what he had done and at what he might expect sooner or
later from the man he had stabbed. But his demeanour toward me was more
ferocious than ever. In spite of his fear at the reckoning he must
expect to pay for what he had done, he could see that it had been an
object-lesson to me, and he became more domineering and exultant. Also
there was a lust in him, akin to madness, which had come with sight of
the blood he had drawn. He was beginning to see red in whatever
direction he looked. The psychology of it is sadly tangled, and yet I
could read the workings of his mind as clearly as though it were a
printed book.
Several days went by, the _Ghost_ still foaming down the trades, and I
could swear I saw madness growing in Thomas Mugridge’s eyes. And I
confess that I became afraid, very much afraid. Whet, whet, whet, it
went all day long. The look in his eyes as he felt the keen edge and
glared at me was positively carnivorous. I was afraid to turn my
shoulder to him, and when I left the galley I went out backwards—to the
amusement of the sailors and hunters, who made a point of gathering in
groups to witness my exit. The strain was too great. I sometimes
thought my mind would give way under it—a meet thing on this ship of
madmen and brutes. Every hour, every minute of my existence was in
jeopardy. I was a human soul in distress, and yet no soul, fore or aft,
betrayed sufficient sympathy to come to my aid. At times I thought of
throwing myself on the mercy of Wolf Larsen, but the vision of the
mocking devil in his eyes that questioned life and sneered at it would
come strong upon me and compel me to refrain. At other times I seriously
contemplated suicide, and the whole force of my hopeful philosophy was
required to keep me from going over the side in the darkness of night.
Several times Wolf Larsen tried to inveigle me into discussion, but I
gave him short answers and eluded him. Finally, he commanded me to
resume my seat at the cabin table for a time and let the cook do my work.
Then I spoke frankly, telling him what I was enduring from Thomas
Mugridge because of the three days of favouritism which had been shown
me. Wolf Larsen regarded me with smiling eyes.
“So you’re afraid, eh?” he sneered.
“Yes,” I said defiantly and honestly, “I am afraid.”
“That’s the way with you fellows,” he cried, half angrily,
“sentimentalizing about your immortal souls and afraid to die. At sight
of a sharp knife and a cowardly Cockney the clinging of life to life
overcomes all your fond foolishness. Why, my dear fellow, you will live
for ever. You are a god, and God cannot be killed. Cooky cannot hurt
you. You are sure of your resurrection. What’s there to be afraid of?
“You have eternal life before you. You are a millionaire in immortality,
and a millionaire whose fortune cannot be lost, whose fortune is less
perishable than the stars and as lasting as space or time. It is
impossible for you to diminish your principal. Immortality is a thing
without beginning or end. Eternity is eternity, and though you die here
and now you will go on living somewhere else and hereafter. And it is
all very beautiful, this shaking off of the flesh and soaring of the
imprisoned spirit. Cooky cannot hurt you. He can only give you a boost
on the path you eternally must tread.
“Or, if you do not wish to be boosted just yet, why not boost Cooky?
According to your ideas, he, too, must be an immortal millionaire. You
cannot bankrupt him. His paper will always circulate at par. You cannot
diminish the length of his living by killing him, for he is without
beginning or end. He’s bound to go on living, somewhere, somehow. Then
boost him. Stick a knife in him and let his spirit free. As it is, it’s
in a nasty prison, and you’ll do him only a kindness by breaking down the
door. And who knows?—it may be a very beautiful spirit that will go
soaring up into the blue from that ugly carcass. Boost him along, and
I’ll promote you to his place, and he’s getting forty-five dollars a
month.”
It was plain that I could look for no help or mercy from Wolf Larsen.
Whatever was to be done I must do for myself; and out of the courage of
fear I evolved the plan of fighting Thomas Mugridge with his own weapons.
I borrowed a whetstone from Johansen. Louis, the boat-steerer, had
already begged me for condensed milk and sugar. The lazarette, where
such delicacies were stored, was situated beneath the cabin floor.
Watching my chance, I stole five cans of the milk, and that night, when
it was Louis’s watch on deck, I traded them with him for a dirk as lean
and cruel-looking as Thomas Mugridge’s vegetable knife. It was rusty and
dull, but I turned the grindstone while Louis gave it an edge. I slept
more soundly than usual that night.
Next morning, after breakfast, Thomas Mugridge began his whet, whet,
whet. I glanced warily at him, for I was on my knees taking the ashes
from the stove. When I returned from throwing them overside, he was
talking to Harrison, whose honest yokel’s face was filled with
fascination and wonder.
“Yes,” Mugridge was saying, “an’ wot does ’is worship do but give me two
years in Reading. But blimey if I cared. The other mug was fixed
plenty. Should ’a seen ’im. Knife just like this. I stuck it in, like
into soft butter, an’ the w’y ’e squealed was better’n a tu-penny gaff.”
He shot a glance in my direction to see if I was taking it in, and went
on. “‘I didn’t mean it Tommy,’ ’e was snifflin’; ‘so ’elp me Gawd, I
didn’t mean it!’ ‘I’ll fix yer bloody well right,’ I sez, an’ kept right
after ’im. I cut ’im in ribbons, that’s wot I did, an’ ’e a-squealin’
all the time. Once ’e got ’is ’and on the knife an’ tried to ’old it.
‘Ad ’is fingers around it, but I pulled it through, cuttin’ to the bone.
O, ’e was a sight, I can tell yer.”
A call from the mate interrupted the gory narrative, and Harrison went
aft. Mugridge sat down on the raised threshold to the galley and went on
with his knife-sharpening. I put the shovel away and calmly sat down on
the coal-box facing him. He favoured me with a vicious stare. Still
calmly, though my heart was going pitapat, I pulled out Louis’s dirk and
began to whet it on the stone. I had looked for almost any sort of
explosion on the Cockney’s part, but to my surprise he did not appear
aware of what I was doing. He went on whetting his knife. So did I.
And for two hours we sat there, face to face, whet, whet, whet, till the
news of it spread abroad and half the ship’s company was crowding the
galley doors to see the sight.
Encouragement and advice were freely tendered, and Jock Horner, the
quiet, self-spoken hunter who looked as though he would not harm a mouse,
advised me to leave the ribs alone and to thrust upward for the abdomen,
at the same time giving what he called the “Spanish twist” to the blade.
Leach, his bandaged arm prominently to the fore, begged me to leave a few
remnants of the cook for him; and Wolf Larsen paused once or twice at the
break of the poop to glance curiously at what must have been to him a
stirring and crawling of the yeasty thing he knew as life.
And I make free to say that for the time being life assumed the same
sordid values to me. There was nothing pretty about it, nothing
divine—only two cowardly moving things that sat whetting steel upon
stone, and a group of other moving things, cowardly and otherwise, that
looked on. Half of them, I am sure, were anxious to see us shedding each
other’s blood. It would have been entertainment. And I do not think
there was one who would have interfered had we closed in a
death-struggle.
On the other hand, the whole thing was laughable and childish. Whet,
whet, whet,—Humphrey Van Weyden sharpening his knife in a ship’s galley
and trying its edge with his thumb! Of all situations this was the most
inconceivable. I know that my own kind could not have believed it
possible. I had not been called “Sissy” Van Weyden all my days without
reason, and that “Sissy” Van Weyden should be capable of doing this thing
was a revelation to Humphrey Van Weyden, who knew not whether to be
exultant or ashamed.
But nothing happened. At the end of two hours Thomas Mugridge put away
knife and stone and held out his hand.
“Wot’s the good of mykin’ a ’oly show of ourselves for them mugs?” he
demanded. “They don’t love us, an’ bloody well glad they’d be a-seein’
us cuttin’ our throats. Yer not ’arf bad, ’Ump! You’ve got spunk, as
you Yanks s’y, an’ I like yer in a w’y. So come on an’ shyke.”
Coward that I might be, I was less a coward than he. It was a distinct
victory I had gained, and I refused to forego any of it by shaking his
detestable hand.
“All right,” he said pridelessly, “tyke it or leave it, I’ll like yer
none the less for it.” And to save his face he turned fiercely upon the
onlookers. “Get outa my galley-doors, you bloomin’ swabs!”
This command was reinforced by a steaming kettle of water, and at sight
of it the sailors scrambled out of the way. This was a sort of victory
for Thomas Mugridge, and enabled him to accept more gracefully the defeat
I had given him, though, of course, he was too discreet to attempt to
drive the hunters away.
“I see Cooky’s finish,” I heard Smoke say to Horner.
“You bet,” was the reply. “Hump runs the galley from now on, and Cooky
pulls in his horns.”
Mugridge heard and shot a swift glance at me, but I gave no sign that the
conversation had reached me. I had not thought my victory was so
far-reaching and complete, but I resolved to let go nothing I had gained.
As the days went by, Smoke’s prophecy was verified. The Cockney became
more humble and slavish to me than even to Wolf Larsen. I mistered him
and sirred him no longer, washed no more greasy pots, and peeled no more