The Sea-Wolf
would have been impossible for me to have fallen, the _Ghost_ almost on
her beam-ends and the masts parallel with the water, I looked, not down,
but at almost right angles from the perpendicular, to the deck of the
_Ghost_. But I saw, not the deck, but where the deck should have been,
for it was buried beneath a wild tumbling of water. Out of this water I
could see the two masts rising, and that was all. The _Ghost_, for the
moment, was buried beneath the sea. As she squared off more and more,
escaping from the side pressure, she righted herself and broke her deck,
like a whale’s back, through the ocean surface.
Then we raced, and wildly, across the wild sea, the while I hung like a
fly in the crosstrees and searched for the other boats. In half-an-hour
I sighted the second one, swamped and bottom up, to which were
desperately clinging Jock Horner, fat Louis, and Johnson. This time I
remained aloft, and Wolf Larsen succeeded in heaving to without being
swept. As before, we drifted down upon it. Tackles were made fast and
lines flung to the men, who scrambled aboard like monkeys. The boat
itself was crushed and splintered against the schooner’s side as it came
inboard; but the wreck was securely lashed, for it could be patched and
made whole again.
Once more the _Ghost_ bore away before the storm, this time so submerging
herself that for some seconds I thought she would never reappear. Even
the wheel, quite a deal higher than the waist, was covered and swept
again and again. At such moments I felt strangely alone with God, alone
with him and watching the chaos of his wrath. And then the wheel would
reappear, and Wolf Larsen’s broad shoulders, his hands gripping the
spokes and holding the schooner to the course of his will, himself an
earth-god, dominating the storm, flinging its descending waters from him
and riding it to his own ends. And oh, the marvel of it! the marvel of
it! That tiny men should live and breathe and work, and drive so frail a
contrivance of wood and cloth through so tremendous an elemental strife.
As before, the _Ghost_ swung out of the trough, lifting her deck again
out of the sea, and dashed before the howling blast. It was now
half-past five, and half-an-hour later, when the last of the day lost
itself in a dim and furious twilight, I sighted a third boat. It was
bottom up, and there was no sign of its crew. Wolf Larsen repeated his
manœuvre, holding off and then rounding up to windward and drifting down
upon it. But this time he missed by forty feet, the boat passing astern.
“Number four boat!” Oofty-Oofty cried, his keen eyes reading its number
in the one second when it lifted clear of the foam, and upside down.
It was Henderson’s boat and with him had been lost Holyoak and Williams,
another of the deep-water crowd. Lost they indubitably were; but the
boat remained, and Wolf Larsen made one more reckless effort to recover
it. I had come down to the deck, and I saw Horner and Kerfoot vainly
protest against the attempt.
“By God, I’ll not be robbed of my boat by any storm that ever blew out of
hell!” he shouted, and though we four stood with our heads together that
we might hear, his voice seemed faint and far, as though removed from us
an immense distance.
“Mr. Van Weyden!” he cried, and I heard through the tumult as one might
hear a whisper. “Stand by that jib with Johnson and Oofty! The rest of
you tail aft to the mainsheet! Lively now! or I’ll sail you all into
Kingdom Come! Understand?”
And when he put the wheel hard over and the _Ghost’s_ bow swung off,
there was nothing for the hunters to do but obey and make the best of a
risky chance. How great the risk I realized when I was once more buried
beneath the pounding seas and clinging for life to the pinrail at the
foot of the foremast. My fingers were torn loose, and I swept across to
the side and over the side into the sea. I could not swim, but before I
could sink I was swept back again. A strong hand gripped me, and when
the _Ghost_ finally emerged, I found that I owed my life to Johnson. I
saw him looking anxiously about him, and noted that Kelly, who had come
forward at the last moment, was missing.
This time, having missed the boat, and not being in the same position as
in the previous instances, Wolf Larsen was compelled to resort to a
different manœuvre. Running off before the wind with everything to
starboard, he came about, and returned close-hauled on the port tack.
“Grand!” Johnson shouted in my ear, as we successfully came through the
attendant deluge, and I knew he referred, not to Wolf Larsen’s
seamanship, but to the performance of the _Ghost_ herself.
It was now so dark that there was no sign of the boat; but Wolf Larsen
held back through the frightful turmoil as if guided by unerring
instinct. This time, though we were continually half-buried, there was
no trough in which to be swept, and we drifted squarely down upon the
upturned boat, badly smashing it as it was heaved inboard.
Two hours of terrible work followed, in which all hands of us—two
hunters, three sailors, Wolf Larsen and I—reefed, first one and then the
other, the jib and mainsail. Hove to under this short canvas, our decks
were comparatively free of water, while the _Ghost_ bobbed and ducked
amongst the combers like a cork.
I had burst open the ends of my fingers at the very first, and during the
reefing I had worked with tears of pain running down my cheeks. And when
all was done, I gave up like a woman and rolled upon the deck in the
agony of exhaustion.
In the meantime Thomas Mugridge, like a drowned rat, was being dragged
out from under the forecastle head where he had cravenly ensconced
himself. I saw him pulled aft to the cabin, and noted with a shock of
surprise that the galley had disappeared. A clean space of deck showed
where it had stood.
In the cabin I found all hands assembled, sailors as well, and while
coffee was being cooked over the small stove we drank whisky and crunched
hard-tack. Never in my life had food been so welcome. And never had hot
coffee tasted so good. So violently did the _Ghost_ pitch and toss and
tumble that it was impossible for even the sailors to move about without
holding on, and several times, after a cry of “Now she takes it!” we were
heaped upon the wall of the port cabins as though it had been the deck.
“To hell with a look-out,” I heard Wolf Larsen say when we had eaten and
drunk our fill. “There’s nothing can be done on deck. If anything’s
going to run us down we couldn’t get out of its way. Turn in, all hands,
and get some sleep.”
The sailors slipped forward, setting the side-lights as they went, while
the two hunters remained to sleep in the cabin, it not being deemed
advisable to open the slide to the steerage companion-way. Wolf Larsen
and I, between us, cut off Kerfoot’s crushed finger and sewed up the
stump. Mugridge, who, during all the time he had been compelled to cook
and serve coffee and keep the fire going, had complained of internal
pains, now swore that he had a broken rib or two. On examination we
found that he had three. But his case was deferred to next day,
principally for the reason that I did not know anything about broken ribs
and would first have to read it up.
“I don’t think it was worth it,” I said to Wolf Larsen, “a broken boat
for Kelly’s life.”
“But Kelly didn’t amount to much,” was the reply. “Good-night.”
After all that had passed, suffering intolerable anguish in my
finger-ends, and with three boats missing, to say nothing of the wild
capers the _Ghost_ was cutting, I should have thought it impossible to
sleep. But my eyes must have closed the instant my head touched the
pillow, and in utter exhaustion I slept throughout the night, the while
the _Ghost_, lonely and undirected, fought her way through the storm.
CHAPTER XVIII
The next day, while the storm was blowing itself out, Wolf Larsen and I
crammed anatomy and surgery and set Mugridge’s ribs. Then, when the
storm broke, Wolf Larsen cruised back and forth over that portion of the
ocean where we had encountered it, and somewhat more to the westward,
while the boats were being repaired and new sails made and bent. Sealing
schooner after sealing schooner we sighted and boarded, most of which
were in search of lost boats, and most of which were carrying boats and
crews they had picked up and which did not belong to them. For the thick
of the fleet had been to the westward of us, and the boats, scattered far
and wide, had headed in mad flight for the nearest refuge.
Two of our boats, with men all safe, we took off the _Cisco_, and, to
Wolf Larsen’s huge delight and my own grief, he culled Smoke, with Nilson
and Leach, from the _San Diego_. So that, at the end of five days, we
found ourselves short but four men—Henderson, Holyoak, Williams, and
Kelly,—and were once more hunting on the flanks of the herd.
As we followed it north we began to encounter the dreaded sea-fogs. Day
after day the boats lowered and were swallowed up almost ere they touched
the water, while we on board pumped the horn at regular intervals and
every fifteen minutes fired the bomb gun. Boats were continually being
lost and found, it being the custom for a boat to hunt, on lay, with
whatever schooner picked it up, until such time it was recovered by its
own schooner. But Wolf Larsen, as was to be expected, being a boat
short, took possession of the first stray one and compelled its men to
hunt with the _Ghost_, not permitting them to return to their own
schooner when we sighted it. I remember how he forced the hunter and his
two men below, a rifle at their breasts, when their captain passed by at
biscuit-toss and hailed us for information.
Thomas Mugridge, so strangely and pertinaciously clinging to life, was
soon limping about again and performing his double duties of cook and
cabin-boy. Johnson and Leach were bullied and beaten as much as ever,
and they looked for their lives to end with the end of the hunting
season; while the rest of the crew lived the lives of dogs and were
worked like dogs by their pitiless master. As for Wolf Larsen and
myself, we got along fairly well; though I could not quite rid myself of
the idea that right conduct, for me, lay in killing him. He fascinated
me immeasurably, and I feared him immeasurably. And yet, I could not
imagine him lying prone in death. There was an endurance, as of
perpetual youth, about him, which rose up and forbade the picture. I
could see him only as living always, and dominating always, fighting and
destroying, himself surviving.
One diversion of his, when we were in the midst of the herd and the sea
was too rough to lower the boats, was to lower with two boat-pullers and
a steerer and go out himself. He was a good shot, too, and brought many
a skin aboard under what the hunters termed impossible hunting
conditions. It seemed the breath of his nostrils, this carrying his life
in his hands and struggling for it against tremendous odds.
I was learning more and more seamanship; and one clear day—a thing we
rarely encountered now—I had the satisfaction of running and handling the
_Ghost_ and picking up the boats myself. Wolf Larsen had been smitten
with one of his headaches, and I stood at the wheel from morning until
evening, sailing across the ocean after the last lee boat, and heaving to
and picking it and the other five up without command or suggestion from
him.
Gales we encountered now and again, for it was a raw and stormy region,
and, in the middle of June, a typhoon most memorable to me and most
important because of the changes wrought through it upon my future. We
must have been caught nearly at the centre of this circular storm, and