The Sea-Wolf
Late that afternoon we hove up anchor and got away. Nothing was before
us but the three or four months’ hunting on the sealing grounds. The
outlook was black indeed, and I went about my work with a heavy heart.
An almost funereal gloom seemed to have descended upon the _Ghost_. Wolf
Larsen had taken to his bunk with one of his strange, splitting
headaches. Harrison stood listlessly at the wheel, half supporting
himself by it, as though wearied by the weight of his flesh. The rest of
the men were morose and silent. I came upon Kelly crouching to the lee
of the forecastle scuttle, his head on his knees, his arms about his
head, in an attitude of unutterable despondency.
Johnson I found lying full length on the forecastle head, staring at the
troubled churn of the forefoot, and I remembered with horror the
suggestion Wolf Larsen had made. It seemed likely to bear fruit. I
tried to break in on the man’s morbid thoughts by calling him away, but
he smiled sadly at me and refused to obey.
Leach approached me as I returned aft.
“I want to ask a favour, Mr. Van Weyden,” he said. “If it’s yer luck to
ever make ’Frisco once more, will you hunt up Matt McCarthy? He’s my old
man. He lives on the Hill, back of the Mayfair bakery, runnin’ a
cobbler’s shop that everybody knows, and you’ll have no trouble. Tell
him I lived to be sorry for the trouble I brought him and the things I
done, and—and just tell him ‘God bless him,’ for me.”
I nodded my head, but said, “We’ll all win back to San Francisco, Leach,
and you’ll be with me when I go to see Matt McCarthy.”
“I’d like to believe you,” he answered, shaking my hand, “but I can’t.
Wolf Larsen ’ll do for me, I know it; and all I can hope is, he’ll do it
quick.”
And as he left me I was aware of the same desire at my heart. Since it
was to be done, let it be done with despatch. The general gloom had
gathered me into its folds. The worst appeared inevitable; and as I
paced the deck, hour after hour, I found myself afflicted with Wolf
Larsen’s repulsive ideas. What was it all about? Where was the grandeur
of life that it should permit such wanton destruction of human souls? It
was a cheap and sordid thing after all, this life, and the sooner over
the better. Over and done with! I, too, leaned upon the rail and gazed
longingly into the sea, with the certainty that sooner or later I should
be sinking down, down, through the cool green depths of its oblivion.
CHAPTER XVII
Strange to say, in spite of the general foreboding, nothing of especial
moment happened on the _Ghost_. We ran on to the north and west till we
raised the coast of Japan and picked up with the great seal herd. Coming
from no man knew where in the illimitable Pacific, it was travelling
north on its annual migration to the rookeries of Bering Sea. And north
we travelled with it, ravaging and destroying, flinging the naked
carcasses to the shark and salting down the skins so that they might
later adorn the fair shoulders of the women of the cities.
It was wanton slaughter, and all for woman’s sake. No man ate of the
seal meat or the oil. After a good day’s killing I have seen our decks
covered with hides and bodies, slippery with fat and blood, the scuppers
running red; masts, ropes, and rails spattered with the sanguinary
colour; and the men, like butchers plying their trade, naked and red of
arm and hand, hard at work with ripping and flensing-knives, removing the
skins from the pretty sea-creatures they had killed.
It was my task to tally the pelts as they came aboard from the boats, to
oversee the skinning and afterward the cleansing of the decks and
bringing things ship-shape again. It was not pleasant work. My soul and
my stomach revolted at it; and yet, in a way, this handling and directing
of many men was good for me. It developed what little executive ability
I possessed, and I was aware of a toughening or hardening which I was
undergoing and which could not be anything but wholesome for “Sissy” Van
Weyden.
One thing I was beginning to feel, and that was that I could never again
be quite the same man I had been. While my hope and faith in human life
still survived Wolf Larsen’s destructive criticism, he had nevertheless
been a cause of change in minor matters. He had opened up for me the
world of the real, of which I had known practically nothing and from
which I had always shrunk. I had learned to look more closely at life as
it was lived, to recognize that there were such things as facts in the
world, to emerge from the realm of mind and idea and to place certain
values on the concrete and objective phases of existence.
I saw more of Wolf Larsen than ever when we had gained the grounds. For
when the weather was fair and we were in the midst of the herd, all hands
were away in the boats, and left on board were only he and I, and Thomas
Mugridge, who did not count. But there was no play about it. The six
boats, spreading out fan-wise from the schooner until the first weather
boat and the last lee boat were anywhere from ten to twenty miles apart,
cruised along a straight course over the sea till nightfall or bad
weather drove them in. It was our duty to sail the _Ghost_ well to
leeward of the last lee boat, so that all the boats should have fair wind
to run for us in case of squalls or threatening weather.
It is no slight matter for two men, particularly when a stiff wind has
sprung up, to handle a vessel like the _Ghost_, steering, keeping
look-out for the boats, and setting or taking in sail; so it devolved
upon me to learn, and learn quickly. Steering I picked up easily, but
running aloft to the crosstrees and swinging my whole weight by my arms
when I left the ratlines and climbed still higher, was more difficult.
This, too, I learned, and quickly, for I felt somehow a wild desire to
vindicate myself in Wolf Larsen’s eyes, to prove my right to live in ways
other than of the mind. Nay, the time came when I took joy in the run of
the masthead and in the clinging on by my legs at that precarious height
while I swept the sea with glasses in search of the boats.
I remember one beautiful day, when the boats left early and the reports
of the hunters’ guns grew dim and distant and died away as they scattered
far and wide over the sea. There was just the faintest wind from the
westward; but it breathed its last by the time we managed to get to
leeward of the last lee boat. One by one—I was at the masthead and
saw—the six boats disappeared over the bulge of the earth as they
followed the seal into the west. We lay, scarcely rolling on the placid
sea, unable to follow. Wolf Larsen was apprehensive. The barometer was
down, and the sky to the east did not please him. He studied it with
unceasing vigilance.
“If she comes out of there,” he said, “hard and snappy, putting us to
windward of the boats, it’s likely there’ll be empty bunks in steerage
and fo’c’sle.”
By eleven o’clock the sea had become glass. By midday, though we were
well up in the northerly latitudes, the heat was sickening. There was no
freshness in the air. It was sultry and oppressive, reminding me of what
the old Californians term “earthquake weather.” There was something
ominous about it, and in intangible ways one was made to feel that the
worst was about to come. Slowly the whole eastern sky filled with clouds
that over-towered us like some black sierra of the infernal regions. So
clearly could one see cañon, gorge, and precipice, and the shadows that
lie therein, that one looked unconsciously for the white surf-line and
bellowing caverns where the sea charges on the land. And still we rocked
gently, and there was no wind.
“It’s no squall,” Wolf Larsen said. “Old Mother Nature’s going to get
up on her hind legs and howl for all that’s in her, and it’ll keep us
jumping, Hump, to pull through with half our boats. You’d better run up
and loosen the topsails.”
“But if it is going to howl, and there are only two of us?” I asked, a
note of protest in my voice.
“Why we’ve got to make the best of the first of it and run down to our
boats before our canvas is ripped out of us. After that I don’t give a
rap what happens. The sticks ’ll stand it, and you and I will have to,
though we’ve plenty cut out for us.”
Still the calm continued. We ate dinner, a hurried and anxious meal for
me with eighteen men abroad on the sea and beyond the bulge of the earth,
and with that heaven-rolling mountain range of clouds moving slowly down
upon us. Wolf Larsen did not seem affected, however; though I noticed,
when we returned to the deck, a slight twitching of the nostrils, a
perceptible quickness of movement. His face was stern, the lines of it
had grown hard, and yet in his eyes—blue, clear blue this day—there was a
strange brilliancy, a bright scintillating light. It struck me that he
was joyous, in a ferocious sort of way; that he was glad there was an
impending struggle; that he was thrilled and upborne with knowledge that
one of the great moments of living, when the tide of life surges up in
flood, was upon him.
Once, and unwitting that he did so or that I saw, he laughed aloud,
mockingly and defiantly, at the advancing storm. I see him yet standing
there like a pigmy out of the _Arabian Nights_ before the huge front of
some malignant genie. He was daring destiny, and he was unafraid.
He walked to the galley. “Cooky, by the time you’ve finished pots and
pans you’ll be wanted on deck. Stand ready for a call.”
“Hump,” he said, becoming cognizant of the fascinated gaze I bent upon
him, “this beats whisky and is where your Omar misses. I think he only
half lived after all.”
The western half of the sky had by now grown murky. The sun had dimmed
and faded out of sight. It was two in the afternoon, and a ghostly
twilight, shot through by wandering purplish lights, had descended upon
us. In this purplish light Wolf Larsen’s face glowed and glowed, and to
my excited fancy he appeared encircled by a halo. We lay in the midst of
an unearthly quiet, while all about us were signs and omens of oncoming
sound and movement. The sultry heat had become unendurable. The sweat
was standing on my forehead, and I could feel it trickling down my nose.
I felt as though I should faint, and reached out to the rail for support.
And then, just then, the faintest possible whisper of air passed by. It
was from the east, and like a whisper it came and went. The drooping
canvas was not stirred, and yet my face had felt the air and been cooled.
“Cooky,” Wolf Larsen called in a low voice. Thomas Mugridge turned a
pitiable scared face. “Let go that foreboom tackle and pass it across,
and when she’s willing let go the sheet and come in snug with the tackle.
And if you make a mess of it, it will be the last you ever make.
Understand?”
“Mr. Van Weyden, stand by to pass the head-sails over. Then jump for the
topsails and spread them quick as God’ll let you—the quicker you do it
the easier you’ll find it. As for Cooky, if he isn’t lively bat him
between the eyes.”
I was aware of the compliment and pleased, in that no threat had
accompanied my instructions. We were lying head to north-west, and it
was his intention to jibe over all with the first puff.
“We’ll have the breeze on our quarter,” he explained to me. “By the last
guns the boats were bearing away slightly to the south’ard.”
He turned and walked aft to the wheel. I went forward and took my
station at the jibs. Another whisper of wind, and another, passed by.
The canvas flapped lazily.
“Thank Gawd she’s not comin’ all of a bunch, Mr. Van Weyden,” was the
Cockney’s fervent ejaculation.
And I was indeed thankful, for I had by this time learned enough to know,