The Sea-Wolf
Johnson turned obediently to the door, at the same time, over the cook’s
shoulder, favouring me with an amazingly solemn and portentous wink as
though to emphasize his interrupted remark and the need for me to be
soft-spoken with the captain.
Hanging over the cook’s arm was a loose and crumpled array of
evil-looking and sour-smelling garments.
“They was put aw’y wet, sir,” he vouchsafed explanation. “But you’ll
’ave to make them do till I dry yours out by the fire.”
Clinging to the woodwork, staggering with the roll of the ship, and aided
by the cook, I managed to slip into a rough woollen undershirt. On the
instant my flesh was creeping and crawling from the harsh contact. He
noticed my involuntary twitching and grimacing, and smirked:
“I only ’ope yer don’t ever ’ave to get used to such as that in this
life, ’cos you’ve got a bloomin’ soft skin, that you ’ave, more like a
lydy’s than any I know of. I was bloomin’ well sure you was a gentleman
as soon as I set eyes on yer.”
I had taken a dislike to him at first, and as he helped to dress me this
dislike increased. There was something repulsive about his touch. I
shrank from his hand; my flesh revolted. And between this and the smells
arising from various pots boiling and bubbling on the galley fire, I was
in haste to get out into the fresh air. Further, there was the need of
seeing the captain about what arrangements could be made for getting me
ashore.
A cheap cotton shirt, with frayed collar and a bosom discoloured with
what I took to be ancient blood-stains, was put on me amid a running and
apologetic fire of comment. A pair of workman’s brogans encased my feet,
and for trousers I was furnished with a pair of pale blue, washed-out
overalls, one leg of which was fully ten inches shorter than the other.
The abbreviated leg looked as though the devil had there clutched for the
Cockney’s soul and missed the shadow for the substance.
“And whom have I to thank for this kindness?” I asked, when I stood
completely arrayed, a tiny boy’s cap on my head, and for coat a dirty,
striped cotton jacket which ended at the small of my back and the sleeves
of which reached just below my elbows.
The cook drew himself up in a smugly humble fashion, a deprecating smirk
on his face. Out of my experience with stewards on the Atlantic liners
at the end of the voyage, I could have sworn he was waiting for his tip.
From my fuller knowledge of the creature I now know that the posture was
unconscious. An hereditary servility, no doubt, was responsible.
“Mugridge, sir,” he fawned, his effeminate features running into a greasy
smile. “Thomas Mugridge, sir, an’ at yer service.”
“All right, Thomas,” I said. “I shall not forget you—when my clothes are
dry.”
A soft light suffused his face and his eyes glistened, as though
somewhere in the deeps of his being his ancestors had quickened and
stirred with dim memories of tips received in former lives.
“Thank you, sir,” he said, very gratefully and very humbly indeed.
Precisely in the way that the door slid back, he slid aside, and I
stepped out on deck. I was still weak from my prolonged immersion. A
puff of wind caught me,—and I staggered across the moving deck to a
corner of the cabin, to which I clung for support. The schooner, heeled
over far out from the perpendicular, was bowing and plunging into the
long Pacific roll. If she were heading south-west as Johnson had said,
the wind, then, I calculated, was blowing nearly from the south. The fog
was gone, and in its place the sun sparkled crisply on the surface of the
water. I turned to the east, where I knew California must lie, but could
see nothing save low-lying fog-banks—the same fog, doubtless, that had
brought about the disaster to the _Martinez_ and placed me in my present
situation. To the north, and not far away, a group of naked rocks thrust
above the sea, on one of which I could distinguish a lighthouse. In the
south-west, and almost in our course, I saw the pyramidal loom of some
vessel’s sails.
Having completed my survey of the horizon, I turned to my more immediate
surroundings. My first thought was that a man who had come through a
collision and rubbed shoulders with death merited more attention than I
received. Beyond a sailor at the wheel who stared curiously across the
top of the cabin, I attracted no notice whatever.
Everybody seemed interested in what was going on amid ships. There, on a
hatch, a large man was lying on his back. He was fully clothed, though
his shirt was ripped open in front. Nothing was to be seen of his chest,
however, for it was covered with a mass of black hair, in appearance like
the furry coat of a dog. His face and neck were hidden beneath a black
beard, intershot with grey, which would have been stiff and bushy had it
not been limp and draggled and dripping with water. His eyes were
closed, and he was apparently unconscious; but his mouth was wide open,
his breast, heaving as though from suffocation as he laboured noisily for
breath. A sailor, from time to time and quite methodically, as a matter
of routine, dropped a canvas bucket into the ocean at the end of a rope,
hauled it in hand under hand, and sluiced its contents over the prostrate
man.
Pacing back and forth the length of the hatchways and savagely chewing
the end of a cigar, was the man whose casual glance had rescued me from
the sea. His height was probably five feet ten inches, or ten and a
half; but my first impression, or feel of the man, was not of this, but
of his strength. And yet, while he was of massive build, with broad
shoulders and deep chest, I could not characterize his strength as
massive. It was what might be termed a sinewy, knotty strength, of the
kind we ascribe to lean and wiry men, but which, in him, because of his
heavy build, partook more of the enlarged gorilla order. Not that in
appearance he seemed in the least gorilla-like. What I am striving to
express is this strength itself, more as a thing apart from his physical
semblance. It was a strength we are wont to associate with things
primitive, with wild animals, and the creatures we imagine our
tree-dwelling prototypes to have been—a strength savage, ferocious, alive
in itself, the essence of life in that it is the potency of motion, the
elemental stuff itself out of which the many forms of life have been
moulded; in short, that which writhes in the body of a snake when the
head is cut off, and the snake, as a snake, is dead, or which lingers in
the shapeless lump of turtle-meat and recoils and quivers from the prod
of a finger.
Such was the impression of strength I gathered from this man who paced up
and down. He was firmly planted on his legs; his feet struck the deck
squarely and with surety; every movement of a muscle, from the heave of
the shoulders to the tightening of the lips about the cigar, was
decisive, and seemed to come out of a strength that was excessive and
overwhelming. In fact, though this strength pervaded every action of
his, it seemed but the advertisement of a greater strength that lurked
within, that lay dormant and no more than stirred from time to time, but
which might arouse, at any moment, terrible and compelling, like the rage
of a lion or the wrath of a storm.
The cook stuck his head out of the galley door and grinned encouragingly
at me, at the same time jerking his thumb in the direction of the man who
paced up and down by the hatchway. Thus I was given to understand that
he was the captain, the “Old Man,” in the cook’s vernacular, the
individual whom I must interview and put to the trouble of somehow
getting me ashore. I had half started forward, to get over with what I
was certain would be a stormy five minutes, when a more violent
suffocating paroxysm seized the unfortunate person who was lying on his
back. He wrenched and writhed about convulsively. The chin, with the
damp black beard, pointed higher in the air as the back muscles stiffened
and the chest swelled in an unconscious and instinctive effort to get
more air. Under the whiskers, and all unseen, I knew that the skin was
taking on a purplish hue.
The captain, or Wolf Larsen, as men called him, ceased pacing and gazed
down at the dying man. So fierce had this final struggle become that the
sailor paused in the act of flinging more water over him and stared
curiously, the canvas bucket partly tilted and dripping its contents to
the deck. The dying man beat a tattoo on the hatch with his heels,
straightened out his legs, and stiffened in one great tense effort, and
rolled his head from side to side. Then the muscles relaxed, the head
stopped rolling, and a sigh, as of profound relief, floated upward from
his lips. The jaw dropped, the upper lip lifted, and two rows of
tobacco-discoloured teeth appeared. It seemed as though his features had
frozen into a diabolical grin at the world he had left and outwitted.
Then a most surprising thing occurred. The captain broke loose upon the
dead man like a thunderclap. Oaths rolled from his lips in a continuous
stream. And they were not namby-pamby oaths, or mere expressions of
indecency. Each word was a blasphemy, and there were many words. They
crisped and crackled like electric sparks. I had never heard anything
like it in my life, nor could I have conceived it possible. With a turn
for literary expression myself, and a penchant for forcible figures and
phrases, I appreciated, as no other listener, I dare say, the peculiar
vividness and strength and absolute blasphemy of his metaphors. The
cause of it all, as near as I could make out, was that the man, who was
mate, had gone on a debauch before leaving San Francisco, and then had
the poor taste to die at the beginning of the voyage and leave Wolf
Larsen short-handed.
It should be unnecessary to state, at least to my friends, that I was
shocked. Oaths and vile language of any sort had always been repellent
to me. I felt a wilting sensation, a sinking at the heart, and, I might
just as well say, a giddiness. To me, death had always been invested
with solemnity and dignity. It had been peaceful in its occurrence,
sacred in its ceremonial. But death in its more sordid and terrible
aspects was a thing with which I had been unacquainted till now. As I
say, while I appreciated the power of the terrific denunciation that
swept out of Wolf Larsen’s mouth, I was inexpressibly shocked. The
scorching torrent was enough to wither the face of the corpse. I should
not have been surprised if the wet black beard had frizzled and curled
and flared up in smoke and flame. But the dead man was unconcerned. He
continued to grin with a sardonic humour, with a cynical mockery and
defiance. He was master of the situation.
CHAPTER III
Wolf Larsen ceased swearing as suddenly as he had begun. He relighted
his cigar and glanced around. His eyes chanced upon the cook.
“Well, Cooky?” he began, with a suaveness that was cold and of the temper
of steel.
“Yes, sir,” the cook eagerly interpolated, with appeasing and apologetic
servility.
“Don’t you think you’ve stretched that neck of yours just about enough?
It’s unhealthy, you know. The mate’s gone, so I can’t afford to lose you
too. You must be very, very careful of your health, Cooky. Understand?”
His last word, in striking contrast with the smoothness of his previous
utterance, snapped like the lash of a whip. The cook quailed under it.
“Yes, sir,” was the meek reply, as the offending head disappeared into
the galley.
At this sweeping rebuke, which the cook had only pointed, the rest of the
crew became uninterested and fell to work at one task or another. A
number of men, however, who were lounging about a companion-way between