The Sea-Wolf
The hunter had managed to get the boat before the wind again, but we ran
down upon it, going at least two feet to its one. A hundred yards away,
I saw the boat-puller pass a rifle to the hunter. Wolf Larsen went
amidships and took the coil of the throat-halyards from its pin. Then he
peered over the rail with levelled rifle. Twice I saw the hunter let go
the steering-oar with one hand, reach for his rifle, and hesitate. We
were now alongside and foaming past.
“Here, you!” Wolf Larsen cried suddenly to the boat-puller. “Take a
turn!”
At the same time he flung the coil of rope. It struck fairly, nearly
knocking the man over, but he did not obey. Instead, he looked to his
hunter for orders. The hunter, in turn, was in a quandary. His rifle
was between his knees, but if he let go the steering-oar in order to
shoot, the boat would sweep around and collide with the schooner. Also
he saw Wolf Larsen’s rifle bearing upon him and knew he would be shot ere
he could get his rifle into play.
“Take a turn,” he said quietly to the man.
The boat-puller obeyed, taking a turn around the little forward thwart
and paying the line as it jerked taut. The boat sheered out with a rush,
and the hunter steadied it to a parallel course some twenty feet from the
side of the _Ghost_.
“Now, get that sail down and come alongside!” Wolf Larsen ordered.
He never let go his rifle, even passing down the tackles with one hand.
When they were fast, bow and stern, and the two uninjured men prepared to
come aboard, the hunter picked up his rifle as if to place it in a secure
position.
“Drop it!” Wolf Larsen cried, and the hunter dropped it as though it were
hot and had burned him.
Once aboard, the two prisoners hoisted in the boat and under Wolf
Larsen’s direction carried the wounded boat-steerer down into the
forecastle.
“If our five boats do as well as you and I have done, we’ll have a pretty
full crew,” Wolf Larsen said to me.
“The man you shot—he is—I hope?” Maud Brewster quavered.
“In the shoulder,” he answered. “Nothing serious, Mr. Van Weyden will
pull him around as good as ever in three or four weeks.”
“But he won’t pull those chaps around, from the look of it,” he added,
pointing at the _Macedonia’s_ third boat, for which I had been steering
and which was now nearly abreast of us. “That’s Horner’s and Smoke’s
work. I told them we wanted live men, not carcasses. But the joy of
shooting to hit is a most compelling thing, when once you’ve learned how
to shoot. Ever experienced it, Mr. Van Weyden?”
I shook my head and regarded their work. It had indeed been bloody, for
they had drawn off and joined our other three boats in the attack on the
remaining two of the enemy. The deserted boat was in the trough of the
sea, rolling drunkenly across each comber, its loose spritsail out at
right angles to it and fluttering and flapping in the wind. The hunter
and boat-puller were both lying awkwardly in the bottom, but the
boat-steerer lay across the gunwale, half in and half out, his arms
trailing in the water and his head rolling from side to side.
“Don’t look, Miss Brewster, please don’t look,” I had begged of her, and
I was glad that she had minded me and been spared the sight.
“Head right into the bunch, Mr. Van Weyden,” was Wolf Larsen’s command.
As we drew nearer, the firing ceased, and we saw that the fight was over.
The remaining two boats had been captured by our five, and the seven were
grouped together, waiting to be picked up.
“Look at that!” I cried involuntarily, pointing to the north-east.
The blot of smoke which indicated the _Macedonia’s_ position had
reappeared.
“Yes, I’ve been watching it,” was Wolf Larsen’s calm reply. He measured
the distance away to the fog-bank, and for an instant paused to feel the
weight of the wind on his cheek. “We’ll make it, I think; but you can
depend upon it that blessed brother of mine has twigged our little game
and is just a-humping for us. Ah, look at that!”
The blot of smoke had suddenly grown larger, and it was very black.
“I’ll beat you out, though, brother mine,” he chuckled. “I’ll beat you
out, and I hope you no worse than that you rack your old engines into
scrap.”
When we hove to, a hasty though orderly confusion reigned. The boats
came aboard from every side at once. As fast as the prisoners came over
the rail they were marshalled forward to the forecastle by our hunters,
while our sailors hoisted in the boats, pell-mell, dropping them anywhere
upon the deck and not stopping to lash them. We were already under way,
all sails set and drawing, and the sheets being slacked off for a wind
abeam, as the last boat lifted clear of the water and swung in the
tackles.
There was need for haste. The _Macedonia_, belching the blackest of
smoke from her funnel, was charging down upon us from out of the
north-east. Neglecting the boats that remained to her, she had altered
her course so as to anticipate ours. She was not running straight for
us, but ahead of us. Our courses were converging like the sides of an
angle, the vertex of which was at the edge of the fog-bank. It was
there, or not at all, that the _Macedonia_ could hope to catch us. The
hope for the _Ghost_ lay in that she should pass that point before the
_Macedonia_ arrived at it.
Wolf Larsen was steering, his eyes glistening and snapping as they dwelt
upon and leaped from detail to detail of the chase. Now he studied the
sea to windward for signs of the wind slackening or freshening, now the
_Macedonia_; and again, his eyes roved over every sail, and he gave
commands to slack a sheet here a trifle, to come in on one there a
trifle, till he was drawing out of the _Ghost_ the last bit of speed she
possessed. All feuds and grudges were forgotten, and I was surprised at
the alacrity with which the men who had so long endured his brutality
sprang to execute his orders. Strange to say, the unfortunate Johnson
came into my mind as we lifted and surged and heeled along, and I was
aware of a regret that he was not alive and present; he had so loved the
_Ghost_ and delighted in her sailing powers.
“Better get your rifles, you fellows,” Wolf Larsen called to our hunters;
and the five men lined the lee rail, guns in hand, and waited.
The _Macedonia_ was now but a mile away, the black smoke pouring from her
funnel at a right angle, so madly she raced, pounding through the sea at
a seventeen-knot gait—“’Sky-hooting through the brine,” as Wolf Larsen
quoted while gazing at her. We were not making more than nine knots, but
the fog-bank was very near.
A puff of smoke broke from the _Macedonia’s_ deck, we heard a heavy
report, and a round hole took form in the stretched canvas of our
mainsail. They were shooting at us with one of the small cannon which
rumour had said they carried on board. Our men, clustering amidships,
waved their hats and raised a derisive cheer. Again there was a puff of
smoke and a loud report, this time the cannon-ball striking not more than
twenty feet astern and glancing twice from sea to sea to windward ere it
sank.
But there was no rifle-firing for the reason that all their hunters were
out in the boats or our prisoners. When the two vessels were half-a-mile
apart, a third shot made another hole in our mainsail. Then we entered
the fog. It was about us, veiling and hiding us in its dense wet gauze.
The sudden transition was startling. The moment before we had been
leaping through the sunshine, the clear sky above us, the sea breaking
and rolling wide to the horizon, and a ship, vomiting smoke and fire and
iron missiles, rushing madly upon us. And at once, as in an instant’s
leap, the sun was blotted out, there was no sky, even our mastheads were
lost to view, and our horizon was such as tear-blinded eyes may see. The
grey mist drove by us like a rain. Every woollen filament of our
garments, every hair of our heads and faces, was jewelled with a crystal
globule. The shrouds were wet with moisture; it dripped from our rigging
overhead; and on the underside of our booms drops of water took shape in
long swaying lines, which were detached and flung to the deck in mimic
showers at each surge of the schooner. I was aware of a pent, stifled
feeling. As the sounds of the ship thrusting herself through the waves
were hurled back upon us by the fog, so were one’s thoughts. The mind
recoiled from contemplation of a world beyond this wet veil which wrapped
us around. This was the world, the universe itself, its bounds so near
one felt impelled to reach out both arms and push them back. It was
impossible, that the rest could be beyond these walls of grey. The rest
was a dream, no more than the memory of a dream.
It was weird, strangely weird. I looked at Maud Brewster and knew that
she was similarly affected. Then I looked at Wolf Larsen, but there was
nothing subjective about his state of consciousness. His whole concern
was with the immediate, objective present. He still held the wheel, and
I felt that he was timing Time, reckoning the passage of the minutes with
each forward lunge and leeward roll of the _Ghost_.
“Go for’ard and hard alee without any noise,” he said to me in a low
voice. “Clew up the topsails first. Set men at all the sheets. Let
there be no rattling of blocks, no sound of voices. No noise,
understand, no noise.”
When all was ready, the word “hard-a-lee” was passed forward to me from
man to man; and the _Ghost_ heeled about on the port tack with
practically no noise at all. And what little there was,—the slapping of
a few reef-points and the creaking of a sheave in a block or two,—was
ghostly under the hollow echoing pall in which we were swathed.
We had scarcely filled away, it seemed, when the fog thinned abruptly and
we were again in the sunshine, the wide-stretching sea breaking before us
to the sky-line. But the ocean was bare. No wrathful _Macedonia_ broke
its surface nor blackened the sky with her smoke.
Wolf Larsen at once squared away and ran down along the rim of the
fog-bank. His trick was obvious. He had entered the fog to windward of
the steamer, and while the steamer had blindly driven on into the fog in
the chance of catching him, he had come about and out of his shelter and
was now running down to re-enter to leeward. Successful in this, the old
simile of the needle in the haystack would be mild indeed compared with
his brother’s chance of finding him. He did not run long. Jibing the
fore- and main-sails and setting the topsails again, we headed back into
the bank. As we entered I could have sworn I saw a vague bulk emerging
to windward. I looked quickly at Wolf Larsen. Already we were ourselves
buried in the fog, but he nodded his head. He, too, had seen it—the
_Macedonia_, guessing his manœuvre and failing by a moment in
anticipating it. There was no doubt that we had escaped unseen.
“He can’t keep this up,” Wolf Larsen said. “He’ll have to go back for
the rest of his boats. Send a man to the wheel, Mr. Van Weyden, keep
this course for the present, and you might as well set the watches, for
we won’t do any lingering to-night.”
“I’d give five hundred dollars, though,” he added, “just to be aboard the
_Macedonia_ for five minutes, listening to my brother curse.”
“And now, Mr. Van Weyden,” he said to me when he had been relieved from
the wheel, “we must make these new-comers welcome. Serve out plenty of
whisky to the hunters and see that a few bottles slip for’ard. I’ll
wager every man Jack of them is over the side to-morrow, hunting for Wolf
Larsen as contentedly as ever they hunted for Death Larsen.”
“But won’t they escape as Wainwright did?” I asked.
He laughed shrewdly. “Not as long as our old hunters have anything to