The Sea-Wolf
“Aren’t you?” I demanded.
She acknowledged her identity with a nod. It was Wolf Larsen’s turn to
be puzzled. The name and its magic signified nothing to him. I was
proud that it did mean something to me, and for the first time in a weary
while I was convincingly conscious of a superiority over him.
“I remember writing a review of a thin little volume—” I had begun
carelessly, when she interrupted me.
“You!” she cried. “You are—”
She was now staring at me in wide-eyed wonder.
I nodded my identity, in turn.
“Humphrey Van Weyden,” she concluded; then added with a sigh of relief,
and unaware that she had glanced that relief at Wolf Larsen, “I am so
glad.”
“I remember the review,” she went on hastily, becoming aware of the
awkwardness of her remark; “that too, too flattering review.”
“Not at all,” I denied valiantly. “You impeach my sober judgment and
make my canons of little worth. Besides, all my brother critics were
with me. Didn’t Lang include your ‘Kiss Endured’ among the four supreme
sonnets by women in the English language?”
“But you called me the American Mrs. Meynell!”
“Was it not true?” I demanded.
“No, not that,” she answered. “I was hurt.”
“We can measure the unknown only by the known,” I replied, in my finest
academic manner. “As a critic I was compelled to place you. You have
now become a yardstick yourself. Seven of your thin little volumes are
on my shelves; and there are two thicker volumes, the essays, which, you
will pardon my saying, and I know not which is flattered more, fully
equal your verse. The time is not far distant when some unknown will
arise in England and the critics will name her the English Maud
Brewster.”
“You are very kind, I am sure,” she murmured; and the very
conventionality of her tones and words, with the host of associations it
aroused of the old life on the other side of the world, gave me a quick
thrill—rich with remembrance but stinging sharp with home-sickness.
“And you are Maud Brewster,” I said solemnly, gazing across at her.
“And you are Humphrey Van Weyden,” she said, gazing back at me with equal
solemnity and awe. “How unusual! I don’t understand. We surely are not
to expect some wildly romantic sea-story from your sober pen.”
“No, I am not gathering material, I assure you,” was my answer. “I have
neither aptitude nor inclination for fiction.”
“Tell me, why have you always buried yourself in California?” she next
asked. “It has not been kind of you. We of the East have seen so very
little of you—too little, indeed, of the Dean of American Letters, the
Second.”
I bowed to, and disclaimed, the compliment. “I nearly met you, once, in
Philadelphia, some Browning affair or other—you were to lecture, you
know. My train was four hours late.”
And then we quite forgot where we were, leaving Wolf Larsen stranded and
silent in the midst of our flood of gossip. The hunters left the table
and went on deck, and still we talked. Wolf Larsen alone remained.
Suddenly I became aware of him, leaning back from the table and listening
curiously to our alien speech of a world he did not know.
I broke short off in the middle of a sentence. The present, with all its
perils and anxieties, rushed upon me with stunning force. It smote Miss
Brewster likewise, a vague and nameless terror rushing into her eyes as
she regarded Wolf Larsen.
He rose to his feet and laughed awkwardly. The sound of it was metallic.
“Oh, don’t mind me,” he said, with a self-depreciatory wave of his hand.
“I don’t count. Go on, go on, I pray you.”
But the gates of speech were closed, and we, too, rose from the table and
laughed awkwardly.
CHAPTER XXI
The chagrin Wolf Larsen felt from being ignored by Maud Brewster and me
in the conversation at table had to express itself in some fashion, and
it fell to Thomas Mugridge to be the victim. He had not mended his ways
nor his shirt, though the latter he contended he had changed. The
garment itself did not bear out the assertion, nor did the accumulations
of grease on stove and pot and pan attest a general cleanliness.
“I’ve given you warning, Cooky,” Wolf Larsen said, “and now you’ve got to
take your medicine.”
Mugridge’s face turned white under its sooty veneer, and when Wolf Larsen
called for a rope and a couple of men, the miserable Cockney fled wildly
out of the galley and dodged and ducked about the deck with the grinning
crew in pursuit. Few things could have been more to their liking than to
give him a tow over the side, for to the forecastle he had sent messes
and concoctions of the vilest order. Conditions favoured the
undertaking. The _Ghost_ was slipping through the water at no more than
three miles an hour, and the sea was fairly calm. But Mugridge had
little stomach for a dip in it. Possibly he had seen men towed before.
Besides, the water was frightfully cold, and his was anything but a
rugged constitution.
As usual, the watches below and the hunters turned out for what promised
sport. Mugridge seemed to be in rabid fear of the water, and he
exhibited a nimbleness and speed we did not dream he possessed. Cornered
in the right-angle of the poop and galley, he sprang like a cat to the
top of the cabin and ran aft. But his pursuers forestalling him, he
doubled back across the cabin, passed over the galley, and gained the
deck by means of the steerage-scuttle. Straight forward he raced, the
boat-puller Harrison at his heels and gaining on him. But Mugridge,
leaping suddenly, caught the jib-boom-lift. It happened in an instant.
Holding his weight by his arms, and in mid-air doubling his body at the
hips, he let fly with both feet. The oncoming Harrison caught the kick
squarely in the pit of the stomach, groaned involuntarily, and doubled up
and sank backward to the deck.
Hand-clapping and roars of laughter from the hunters greeted the exploit,
while Mugridge, eluding half of his pursuers at the foremast, ran aft and
through the remainder like a runner on the football field. Straight aft
he held, to the poop and along the poop to the stern. So great was his
speed that as he curved past the corner of the cabin he slipped and fell.
Nilson was standing at the wheel, and the Cockney’s hurtling body struck
his legs. Both went down together, but Mugridge alone arose. By some
freak of pressures, his frail body had snapped the strong man’s leg like
a pipe-stem.
Parsons took the wheel, and the pursuit continued. Round and round the
decks they went, Mugridge sick with fear, the sailors hallooing and
shouting directions to one another, and the hunters bellowing
encouragement and laughter. Mugridge went down on the fore-hatch under
three men; but he emerged from the mass like an eel, bleeding at the
mouth, the offending shirt ripped into tatters, and sprang for the
main-rigging. Up he went, clear up, beyond the ratlines, to the very
masthead.
Half-a-dozen sailors swarmed to the crosstrees after him, where they
clustered and waited while two of their number, Oofty-Oofty and Black
(who was Latimer’s boat-steerer), continued up the thin steel stays,
lifting their bodies higher and higher by means of their arms.
It was a perilous undertaking, for, at a height of over a hundred feet
from the deck, holding on by their hands, they were not in the best of
positions to protect themselves from Mugridge’s feet. And Mugridge
kicked savagely, till the Kanaka, hanging on with one hand, seized the
Cockney’s foot with the other. Black duplicated the performance a moment
later with the other foot. Then the three writhed together in a swaying
tangle, struggling, sliding, and falling into the arms of their mates on
the crosstrees.
The aërial battle was over, and Thomas Mugridge, whining and gibbering,
his mouth flecked with bloody foam, was brought down to deck. Wolf
Larsen rove a bowline in a piece of rope and slipped it under his
shoulders. Then he was carried aft and flung into the sea.
Forty,—fifty,—sixty feet of line ran out, when Wolf Larsen cried “Belay!”
Oofty-Oofty took a turn on a bitt, the rope tautened, and the _Ghost_,
lunging onward, jerked the cook to the surface.
It was a pitiful spectacle. Though he could not drown, and was
nine-lived in addition, he was suffering all the agonies of
half-drowning. The _Ghost_ was going very slowly, and when her stern
lifted on a wave and she slipped forward she pulled the wretch to the
surface and gave him a moment in which to breathe; but between each lift
the stern fell, and while the bow lazily climbed the next wave the line
slacked and he sank beneath.
I had forgotten the existence of Maud Brewster, and I remembered her with
a start as she stepped lightly beside me. It was her first time on deck
since she had come aboard. A dead silence greeted her appearance.
“What is the cause of the merriment?” she asked.
“Ask Captain Larsen,” I answered composedly and coldly, though inwardly
my blood was boiling at the thought that she should be witness to such
brutality.
She took my advice and was turning to put it into execution, when her
eyes lighted on Oofty-Oofty, immediately before her, his body instinct
with alertness and grace as he held the turn of the rope.
“Are you fishing?” she asked him.
He made no reply. His eyes, fixed intently on the sea astern, suddenly
flashed.
“Shark ho, sir!” he cried.
“Heave in! Lively! All hands tail on!” Wolf Larsen shouted, springing
himself to the rope in advance of the quickest.
Mugridge had heard the Kanaka’s warning cry and was screaming madly. I
could see a black fin cutting the water and making for him with greater
swiftness than he was being pulled aboard. It was an even toss whether
the shark or we would get him, and it was a matter of moments. When
Mugridge was directly beneath us, the stern descended the slope of a
passing wave, thus giving the advantage to the shark. The fin
disappeared. The belly flashed white in swift upward rush. Almost
equally swift, but not quite, was Wolf Larsen. He threw his strength
into one tremendous jerk. The Cockney’s body left the water; so did part
of the shark’s. He drew up his legs, and the man-eater seemed no more
than barely to touch one foot, sinking back into the water with a splash.
But at the moment of contact Thomas Mugridge cried out. Then he came in
like a fresh-caught fish on a line, clearing the rail generously and
striking the deck in a heap, on hands and knees, and rolling over.
But a fountain of blood was gushing forth. The right foot was missing,
amputated neatly at the ankle. I looked instantly to Maud Brewster. Her
face was white, her eyes dilated with horror. She was gazing, not at
Thomas Mugridge, but at Wolf Larsen. And he was aware of it, for he
said, with one of his short laughs:
“Man-play, Miss Brewster. Somewhat rougher, I warrant, than what you
have been used to, but still-man-play. The shark was not in the
reckoning. It—”
But at this juncture, Mugridge, who had lifted his head and ascertained
the extent of his loss, floundered over on the deck and buried his teeth
in Wolf Larsen’s leg. Wolf Larsen stooped, coolly, to the Cockney, and
pressed with thumb and finger at the rear of the jaws and below the ears.
The jaws opened with reluctance, and Wolf Larsen stepped free.
“As I was saying,” he went on, as though nothing unwonted had happened,
“the shark was not in the reckoning. It was—ahem—shall we say
Providence?”
She gave no sign that she had heard, though the expression of her eyes
changed to one of inexpressible loathing as she started to turn away.
She no more than started, for she swayed and tottered, and reached her
hand weakly out to mine. I caught her in time to save her from falling,