The Sea-Wolf
She was in striking contrast to Wolf Larsen. Each was nothing that the
other was, everything that the other was not. I noted them walking the
deck together one morning, and I likened them to the extreme ends of the
human ladder of evolution—the one the culmination of all savagery, the
other the finished product of the finest civilization. True, Wolf Larsen
possessed intellect to an unusual degree, but it was directed solely to
the exercise of his savage instincts and made him but the more formidable
a savage. He was splendidly muscled, a heavy man, and though he strode
with the certitude and directness of the physical man, there was nothing
heavy about his stride. The jungle and the wilderness lurked in the
uplift and downput of his feet. He was cat-footed, and lithe, and
strong, always strong. I likened him to some great tiger, a beast of
prowess and prey. He looked it, and the piercing glitter that arose at
times in his eyes was the same piercing glitter I had observed in the
eyes of caged leopards and other preying creatures of the wild.
But this day, as I noted them pacing up and down, I saw that it was she
who terminated the walk. They came up to where I was standing by the
entrance to the companion-way. Though she betrayed it by no outward
sign, I felt, somehow, that she was greatly perturbed. She made some
idle remark, looking at me, and laughed lightly enough; but I saw her
eyes return to his, involuntarily, as though fascinated; then they fell,
but not swiftly enough to veil the rush of terror that filled them.
It was in his eyes that I saw the cause of her perturbation. Ordinarily
grey and cold and harsh, they were now warm and soft and golden, and all
a-dance with tiny lights that dimmed and faded, or welled up till the
full orbs were flooded with a glowing radiance. Perhaps it was to this
that the golden colour was due; but golden his eyes were, enticing and
masterful, at the same time luring and compelling, and speaking a demand
and clamour of the blood which no woman, much less Maud Brewster, could
misunderstand.
Her own terror rushed upon me, and in that moment of fear—the most
terrible fear a man can experience—I knew that in inexpressible ways she
was dear to me. The knowledge that I loved her rushed upon me with the
terror, and with both emotions gripping at my heart and causing my blood
at the same time to chill and to leap riotously, I felt myself drawn by a
power without me and beyond me, and found my eyes returning against my
will to gaze into the eyes of Wolf Larsen. But he had recovered himself.
The golden colour and the dancing lights were gone. Cold and grey and
glittering they were as he bowed brusquely and turned away.
“I am afraid,” she whispered, with a shiver. “I am so afraid.”
I, too, was afraid, and what of my discovery of how much she meant to me
my mind was in a turmoil; but, I succeeded in answering quite calmly:
“All will come right, Miss Brewster. Trust me, it will come right.”
She answered with a grateful little smile that sent my heart pounding,
and started to descend the companion-stairs.
For a long while I remained standing where she had left me. There was
imperative need to adjust myself, to consider the significance of the
changed aspect of things. It had come, at last, love had come, when I
least expected it and under the most forbidding conditions. Of course,
my philosophy had always recognized the inevitableness of the love-call
sooner or later; but long years of bookish silence had made me
inattentive and unprepared.
And now it had come! Maud Brewster! My memory flashed back to that
first thin little volume on my desk, and I saw before me, as though in
the concrete, the row of thin little volumes on my library shelf. How I
had welcomed each of them! Each year one had come from the press, and to
me each was the advent of the year. They had voiced a kindred intellect
and spirit, and as such I had received them into a camaraderie of the
mind; but now their place was in my heart.
My heart? A revulsion of feeling came over me. I seemed to stand
outside myself and to look at myself incredulously. Maud Brewster!
Humphrey Van Weyden, “the cold-blooded fish,” the “emotionless monster,”
the “analytical demon,” of Charley Furuseth’s christening, in love! And
then, without rhyme or reason, all sceptical, my mind flew back to a
small biographical note in the red-bound _Who’s Who_, and I said to
myself, “She was born in Cambridge, and she is twenty-seven years old.”
And then I said, “Twenty-seven years old and still free and fancy free?”
But how did I know she was fancy free? And the pang of new-born jealousy
put all incredulity to flight. There was no doubt about it. I was
jealous; therefore I loved. And the woman I loved was Maud Brewster.
I, Humphrey Van Weyden, was in love! And again the doubt assailed me.
Not that I was afraid of it, however, or reluctant to meet it. On the
contrary, idealist that I was to the most pronounced degree, my
philosophy had always recognized and guerdoned love as the greatest thing
in the world, the aim and the summit of being, the most exquisite pitch
of joy and happiness to which life could thrill, the thing of all things
to be hailed and welcomed and taken into the heart. But now that it had
come I could not believe. I could not be so fortunate. It was too good,
too good to be true. Symons’s lines came into my head:
“I wandered all these years among
A world of women, seeking you.”
And then I had ceased seeking. It was not for me, this greatest thing in
the world, I had decided. Furuseth was right; I was abnormal, an
“emotionless monster,” a strange bookish creature, capable of pleasuring
in sensations only of the mind. And though I had been surrounded by
women all my days, my appreciation of them had been æsthetic and nothing
more. I had actually, at times, considered myself outside the pale, a
monkish fellow denied the eternal or the passing passions I saw and
understood so well in others. And now it had come! Undreamed of and
unheralded, it had come. In what could have been no less than an
ecstasy, I left my post at the head of the companion-way and started
along the deck, murmuring to myself those beautiful lines of Mrs.
Browning:
“I lived with visions for my company
Instead of men and women years ago,
And found them gentle mates, nor thought to know
A sweeter music than they played to me.”
But the sweeter music was playing in my ears, and I was blind and
oblivious to all about me. The sharp voice of Wolf Larsen aroused me.
“What the hell are you up to?” he was demanding.
I had strayed forward where the sailors were painting, and I came to
myself to find my advancing foot on the verge of overturning a paint-pot.
“Sleep-walking, sunstroke,—what?” he barked.
“No; indigestion,” I retorted, and continued my walk as if nothing
untoward had occurred.
CHAPTER XXIV
Among the most vivid memories of my life are those of the events on the
_Ghost_ which occurred during the forty hours succeeding the discovery of
my love for Maud Brewster. I, who had lived my life in quiet places,
only to enter at the age of thirty-five upon a course of the most
irrational adventure I could have imagined, never had more incident and
excitement crammed into any forty hours of my experience. Nor can I
quite close my ears to a small voice of pride which tells me I did not do
so badly, all things considered.
To begin with, at the midday dinner, Wolf Larsen informed the hunters
that they were to eat thenceforth in the steerage. It was an
unprecedented thing on sealing-schooners, where it is the custom for the
hunters to rank, unofficially as officers. He gave no reason, but his
motive was obvious enough. Horner and Smoke had been displaying a
gallantry toward Maud Brewster, ludicrous in itself and inoffensive to
her, but to him evidently distasteful.
The announcement was received with black silence, though the other four
hunters glanced significantly at the two who had been the cause of their
banishment. Jock Horner, quiet as was his way, gave no sign; but the
blood surged darkly across Smoke’s forehead, and he half opened his mouth
to speak. Wolf Larsen was watching him, waiting for him, the steely
glitter in his eyes; but Smoke closed his mouth again without having said
anything.
“Anything to say?” the other demanded aggressively.
It was a challenge, but Smoke refused to accept it.
“About what?” he asked, so innocently that Wolf Larsen was disconcerted,
while the others smiled.
“Oh, nothing,” Wolf Larsen said lamely. “I just thought you might want
to register a kick.”
“About what?” asked the imperturbable Smoke.
Smoke’s mates were now smiling broadly. His captain could have killed
him, and I doubt not that blood would have flowed had not Maud Brewster
been present. For that matter, it was her presence which enabled Smoke
to act as he did. He was too discreet and cautious a man to incur Wolf
Larsen’s anger at a time when that anger could be expressed in terms
stronger than words. I was in fear that a struggle might take place, but
a cry from the helmsman made it easy for the situation to save itself.
“Smoke ho!” the cry came down the open companion-way.
“How’s it bear?” Wolf Larsen called up.
“Dead astern, sir.”
“Maybe it’s a Russian,” suggested Latimer.
His words brought anxiety into the faces of the other hunters. A Russian
could mean but one thing—a cruiser. The hunters, never more than roughly
aware of the position of the ship, nevertheless knew that we were close
to the boundaries of the forbidden sea, while Wolf Larsen’s record as a
poacher was notorious. All eyes centred upon him.
“We’re dead safe,” he assured them with a laugh. “No salt mines this
time, Smoke. But I’ll tell you what—I’ll lay odds of five to one it’s
the _Macedonia_.”
No one accepted his offer, and he went on: “In which event, I’ll lay ten
to one there’s trouble breezing up.”
“No, thank you,” Latimer spoke up. “I don’t object to losing my money,
but I like to get a run for it anyway. There never was a time when there
wasn’t trouble when you and that brother of yours got together, and I’ll
lay twenty to one on that.”
A general smile followed, in which Wolf Larsen joined, and the dinner
went on smoothly, thanks to me, for he treated me abominably the rest of
the meal, sneering at me and patronizing me till I was all a-tremble with
suppressed rage. Yet I knew I must control myself for Maud Brewster’s
sake, and I received my reward when her eyes caught mine for a fleeting
second, and they said, as distinctly as if she spoke, “Be brave, be
brave.”
We left the table to go on deck, for a steamer was a welcome break in the
monotony of the sea on which we floated, while the conviction that it was
Death Larsen and the _Macedonia_ added to the excitement. The stiff
breeze and heavy sea which had sprung up the previous afternoon had been
moderating all morning, so that it was now possible to lower the boats
for an afternoon’s hunt. The hunting promised to be profitable. We had
sailed since daylight across a sea barren of seals, and were now running
into the herd.
The smoke was still miles astern, but overhauling us rapidly, when we
lowered our boats. They spread out and struck a northerly course across
the ocean. Now and again we saw a sail lower, heard the reports of the
shot-guns, and saw the sail go up again. The seals were thick, the wind
was dying away; everything favoured a big catch. As we ran off to get
our leeward position of the last lee boat, we found the ocean fairly
carpeted with sleeping seals. They were all about us, thicker than I had