The Sea-Wolf
and helped her to a seat on the cabin. I thought she might faint
outright, but she controlled herself.
“Will you get a tourniquet, Mr. Van Weyden,” Wolf Larsen called to me.
I hesitated. Her lips moved, and though they formed no words, she
commanded me with her eyes, plainly as speech, to go to the help of the
unfortunate man. “Please,” she managed to whisper, and I could but obey.
By now I had developed such skill at surgery that Wolf Larsen, with a few
words of advice, left me to my task with a couple of sailors for
assistants. For his task he elected a vengeance on the shark. A heavy
swivel-hook, baited with fat salt-pork, was dropped overside; and by the
time I had compressed the severed veins and arteries, the sailors were
singing and heaving in the offending monster. I did not see it myself,
but my assistants, first one and then the other, deserted me for a few
moments to run amidships and look at what was going on. The shark, a
sixteen-footer, was hoisted up against the main-rigging. Its jaws were
pried apart to their greatest extension, and a stout stake, sharpened at
both ends, was so inserted that when the pries were removed the spread
jaws were fixed upon it. This accomplished, the hook was cut out. The
shark dropped back into the sea, helpless, yet with its full strength,
doomed—to lingering starvation—a living death less meet for it than for
the man who devised the punishment.
CHAPTER XXII
I knew what it was as she came toward me. For ten minutes I had watched
her talking earnestly with the engineer, and now, with a sign for
silence, I drew her out of earshot of the helmsman. Her face was white
and set; her large eyes, larger than usual what of the purpose in them,
looked penetratingly into mine. I felt rather timid and apprehensive,
for she had come to search Humphrey Van Weyden’s soul, and Humphrey Van
Weyden had nothing of which to be particularly proud since his advent on
the _Ghost_.
We walked to the break of the poop, where she turned and faced me. I
glanced around to see that no one was within hearing distance.
“What is it?” I asked gently; but the expression of determination on her
face did not relax.
“I can readily understand,” she began, “that this morning’s affair was
largely an accident; but I have been talking with Mr. Haskins. He tells
me that the day we were rescued, even while I was in the cabin, two men
were drowned, deliberately drowned—murdered.”
There was a query in her voice, and she faced me accusingly, as though I
were guilty of the deed, or at least a party to it.
“The information is quite correct,” I answered. “The two men were
murdered.”
“And you permitted it!” she cried.
“I was unable to prevent it, is a better way of phrasing it,” I replied,
still gently.
“But you tried to prevent it?” There was an emphasis on the “tried,” and
a pleading little note in her voice.
“Oh, but you didn’t,” she hurried on, divining my answer. “But why
didn’t you?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “You must remember, Miss Brewster, that you are
a new inhabitant of this little world, and that you do not yet understand
the laws which operate within it. You bring with you certain fine
conceptions of humanity, manhood, conduct, and such things; but here you
will find them misconceptions. I have found it so,” I added, with an
involuntary sigh.
She shook her head incredulously.
“What would you advise, then?” I asked. “That I should take a knife, or
a gun, or an axe, and kill this man?”
She half started back.
“No, not that!”
“Then what should I do? Kill myself?”
“You speak in purely materialistic terms,” she objected. “There is such
a thing as moral courage, and moral courage is never without effect.”
“Ah,” I smiled, “you advise me to kill neither him nor myself, but to let
him kill me.” I held up my hand as she was about to speak. “For moral
courage is a worthless asset on this little floating world. Leach, one
of the men who were murdered, had moral courage to an unusual degree. So
had the other man, Johnson. Not only did it not stand them in good
stead, but it destroyed them. And so with me if I should exercise what
little moral courage I may possess.
“You must understand, Miss Brewster, and understand clearly, that this
man is a monster. He is without conscience. Nothing is sacred to him,
nothing is too terrible for him to do. It was due to his whim that I was
detained aboard in the first place. It is due to his whim that I am
still alive. I do nothing, can do nothing, because I am a slave to this
monster, as you are now a slave to him; because I desire to live, as you
will desire to live; because I cannot fight and overcome him, just as you
will not be able to fight and overcome him.”
She waited for me to go on.
“What remains? Mine is the role of the weak. I remain silent and suffer
ignominy, as you will remain silent and suffer ignominy. And it is well.
It is the best we can do if we wish to live. The battle is not always to
the strong. We have not the strength with which to fight this man; we
must dissimulate, and win, if win we can, by craft. If you will be
advised by me, this is what you will do. I know my position is perilous,
and I may say frankly that yours is even more perilous. We must stand
together, without appearing to do so, in secret alliance. I shall not be
able to side with you openly, and, no matter what indignities may be put
upon me, you are to remain likewise silent. We must provoke no scenes
with this man, nor cross his will. And we must keep smiling faces and be
friendly with him no matter how repulsive it may be.”
She brushed her hand across her forehead in a puzzled way, saying, “Still
I do not understand.”
“You must do as I say,” I interrupted authoritatively, for I saw Wolf
Larsen’s gaze wandering toward us from where he paced up and down with
Latimer amidships. “Do as I say, and ere long you will find I am right.”
“What shall I do, then?” she asked, detecting the anxious glance I had
shot at the object of our conversation, and impressed, I flatter myself,
with the earnestness of my manner.
“Dispense with all the moral courage you can,” I said briskly. “Don’t
arouse this man’s animosity. Be quite friendly with him, talk with him,
discuss literature and art with him—he is fond of such things. You will
find him an interested listener and no fool. And for your own sake try
to avoid witnessing, as much as you can, the brutalities of the ship. It
will make it easier for you to act your part.”
“I am to lie,” she said in steady, rebellious tones, “by speech and
action to lie.”
Wolf Larsen had separated from Latimer and was coming toward us. I was
desperate.
“Please, please understand me,” I said hurriedly, lowering my voice.
“All your experience of men and things is worthless here. You must begin
over again. I know,—I can see it—you have, among other ways, been used
to managing people with your eyes, letting your moral courage speak out
through them, as it were. You have already managed me with your eyes,
commanded me with them. But don’t try it on Wolf Larsen. You could as
easily control a lion, while he would make a mock of you. He would—I
have always been proud of the fact that I discovered him,” I said,
turning the conversation as Wolf Larsen stepped on the poop and joined
us. “The editors were afraid of him and the publishers would have none
of him. But I knew, and his genius and my judgment were vindicated when
he made that magnificent hit with his ‘Forge.’”
“And it was a newspaper poem,” she said glibly.
“It did happen to see the light in a newspaper,” I replied, “but not
because the magazine editors had been denied a glimpse at it.”
“We were talking of Harris,” I said to Wolf Larsen.
“Oh, yes,” he acknowledged. “I remember the ‘Forge.’ Filled with pretty
sentiments and an almighty faith in human illusions. By the way, Mr. Van
Weyden, you’d better look in on Cooky. He’s complaining and restless.”
Thus was I bluntly dismissed from the poop, only to find Mugridge
sleeping soundly from the morphine I had given him. I made no haste to
return on deck, and when I did I was gratified to see Miss Brewster in
animated conversation with Wolf Larsen. As I say, the sight gratified
me. She was following my advice. And yet I was conscious of a slight
shock or hurt in that she was able to do the thing I had begged her to do
and which she had notably disliked.
CHAPTER XXIII
Brave winds, blowing fair, swiftly drove the _Ghost_ northward into the
seal herd. We encountered it well up to the forty-fourth parallel, in a
raw and stormy sea across which the wind harried the fog-banks in eternal
flight. For days at a time we could never see the sun nor take an
observation; then the wind would sweep the face of the ocean clean, the
waves would ripple and flash, and we would learn where we were. A day of
clear weather might follow, or three days or four, and then the fog would
settle down upon us, seemingly thicker than ever.
The hunting was perilous; yet the boats, lowered day after day, were
swallowed up in the grey obscurity, and were seen no more till nightfall,
and often not till long after, when they would creep in like sea-wraiths,
one by one, out of the grey. Wainwright—the hunter whom Wolf Larsen had
stolen with boat and men—took advantage of the veiled sea and escaped.
He disappeared one morning in the encircling fog with his two men, and we
never saw them again, though it was not many days when we learned that
they had passed from schooner to schooner until they finally regained
their own.
This was the thing I had set my mind upon doing, but the opportunity
never offered. It was not in the mate’s province to go out in the boats,
and though I manœuvred cunningly for it, Wolf Larsen never granted me the
privilege. Had he done so, I should have managed somehow to carry Miss
Brewster away with me. As it was, the situation was approaching a stage
which I was afraid to consider. I involuntarily shunned the thought of
it, and yet the thought continually arose in my mind like a haunting
spectre.
I had read sea-romances in my time, wherein figured, as a matter of
course, the lone woman in the midst of a shipload of men; but I learned,
now, that I had never comprehended the deeper significance of such a
situation—the thing the writers harped upon and exploited so thoroughly.
And here it was, now, and I was face to face with it. That it should be
as vital as possible, it required no more than that the woman should be
Maud Brewster, who now charmed me in person as she had long charmed me
through her work.
No one more out of environment could be imagined. She was a delicate,
ethereal creature, swaying and willowy, light and graceful of movement.
It never seemed to me that she walked, or, at least, walked after the
ordinary manner of mortals. Hers was an extreme lithesomeness, and she
moved with a certain indefinable airiness, approaching one as down might
float or as a bird on noiseless wings.
She was like a bit of Dresden china, and I was continually impressed with
what I may call her fragility. As at the time I caught her arm when
helping her below, so at any time I was quite prepared, should stress or
rough handling befall her, to see her crumble away. I have never seen
body and spirit in such perfect accord. Describe her verse, as the
critics have described it, as sublimated and spiritual, and you have
described her body. It seemed to partake of her soul, to have analogous
attributes, and to link it to life with the slenderest of chains.
Indeed, she trod the earth lightly, and in her constitution there was
little of the robust clay.