The Sea-Wolf
the galley and hatch, and who did not seem to be sailors, continued
talking in low tones with one another. These, I afterward learned, were
the hunters, the men who shot the seals, and a very superior breed to
common sailor-folk.
“Johansen!” Wolf Larsen called out. A sailor stepped forward obediently.
“Get your palm and needle and sew the beggar up. You’ll find some old
canvas in the sail-locker. Make it do.”
“What’ll I put on his feet, sir?” the man asked, after the customary “Ay,
ay, sir.”
“We’ll see to that,” Wolf Larsen answered, and elevated his voice in a
call of “Cooky!”
Thomas Mugridge popped out of his galley like a jack-in-the-box.
“Go below and fill a sack with coal.”
“Any of you fellows got a Bible or Prayer-book?” was the captain’s next
demand, this time of the hunters lounging about the companion-way.
They shook their heads, and some one made a jocular remark which I did
not catch, but which raised a general laugh.
Wolf Larsen made the same demand of the sailors. Bibles and Prayer-books
seemed scarce articles, but one of the men volunteered to pursue the
quest amongst the watch below, returning in a minute with the information
that there was none.
The captain shrugged his shoulders. “Then we’ll drop him over without
any palavering, unless our clerical-looking castaway has the burial
service at sea by heart.”
By this time he had swung fully around and was facing me. “You’re a
preacher, aren’t you?” he asked.
The hunters,—there were six of them,—to a man, turned and regarded me. I
was painfully aware of my likeness to a scarecrow. A laugh went up at my
appearance,—a laugh that was not lessened or softened by the dead man
stretched and grinning on the deck before us; a laugh that was as rough
and harsh and frank as the sea itself; that arose out of coarse feelings
and blunted sensibilities, from natures that knew neither courtesy nor
gentleness.
Wolf Larsen did not laugh, though his grey eyes lighted with a slight
glint of amusement; and in that moment, having stepped forward quite
close to him, I received my first impression of the man himself, of the
man as apart from his body, and from the torrent of blasphemy I had heard
him spew forth. The face, with large features and strong lines, of the
square order, yet well filled out, was apparently massive at first sight;
but again, as with the body, the massiveness seemed to vanish, and a
conviction to grow of a tremendous and excessive mental or spiritual
strength that lay behind, sleeping in the deeps of his being. The jaw,
the chin, the brow rising to a goodly height and swelling heavily above
the eyes,—these, while strong in themselves, unusually strong, seemed to
speak an immense vigour or virility of spirit that lay behind and beyond
and out of sight. There was no sounding such a spirit, no measuring, no
determining of metes and bounds, nor neatly classifying in some
pigeon-hole with others of similar type.
The eyes—and it was my destiny to know them well—were large and handsome,
wide apart as the true artist’s are wide, sheltering under a heavy brow
and arched over by thick black eyebrows. The eyes themselves were of
that baffling protean grey which is never twice the same; which runs
through many shades and colourings like intershot silk in sunshine; which
is grey, dark and light, and greenish-grey, and sometimes of the clear
azure of the deep sea. They were eyes that masked the soul with a
thousand guises, and that sometimes opened, at rare moments, and allowed
it to rush up as though it were about to fare forth nakedly into the
world on some wonderful adventure,—eyes that could brood with the
hopeless sombreness of leaden skies; that could snap and crackle points
of fire like those which sparkle from a whirling sword; that could grow
chill as an arctic landscape, and yet again, that could warm and soften
and be all a-dance with love-lights, intense and masculine, luring and
compelling, which at the same time fascinate and dominate women till they
surrender in a gladness of joy and of relief and sacrifice.
But to return. I told him that, unhappily for the burial service, I was
not a preacher, when he sharply demanded:
“What do you do for a living?”
I confess I had never had such a question asked me before, nor had I ever
canvassed it. I was quite taken aback, and before I could find myself
had sillily stammered, “I—I am a gentleman.”
His lip curled in a swift sneer.
“I have worked, I do work,” I cried impetuously, as though he were my
judge and I required vindication, and at the same time very much aware of
my arrant idiocy in discussing the subject at all.
“For your living?”
There was something so imperative and masterful about him that I was
quite beside myself—“rattled,” as Furuseth would have termed it, like a
quaking child before a stern school-master.
“Who feeds you?” was his next question.
“I have an income,” I answered stoutly, and could have bitten my tongue
the next instant. “All of which, you will pardon my observing, has
nothing whatsoever to do with what I wish to see you about.”
But he disregarded my protest.
“Who earned it? Eh? I thought so. Your father. You stand on dead
men’s legs. You’ve never had any of your own. You couldn’t walk alone
between two sunrises and hustle the meat for your belly for three meals.
Let me see your hand.”
His tremendous, dormant strength must have stirred, swiftly and
accurately, or I must have slept a moment, for before I knew it he had
stepped two paces forward, gripped my right hand in his, and held it up
for inspection. I tried to withdraw it, but his fingers tightened,
without visible effort, till I thought mine would be crushed. It is hard
to maintain one’s dignity under such circumstances. I could not squirm
or struggle like a schoolboy. Nor could I attack such a creature who had
but to twist my arm to break it. Nothing remained but to stand still and
accept the indignity. I had time to notice that the pockets of the dead
man had been emptied on the deck, and that his body and his grin had been
wrapped from view in canvas, the folds of which the sailor, Johansen, was
sewing together with coarse white twine, shoving the needle through with
a leather contrivance fitted on the palm of his hand.
Wolf Larsen dropped my hand with a flirt of disdain.
“Dead men’s hands have kept it soft. Good for little else than
dish-washing and scullion work.”
“I wish to be put ashore,” I said firmly, for I now had myself in
control. “I shall pay you whatever you judge your delay and trouble to
be worth.”
He looked at me curiously. Mockery shone in his eyes.
“I have a counter proposition to make, and for the good of your soul. My
mate’s gone, and there’ll be a lot of promotion. A sailor comes aft to
take mate’s place, cabin-boy goes for’ard to take sailor’s place, and you
take the cabin-boy’s place, sign the articles for the cruise, twenty
dollars per month and found. Now what do you say? And mind you, it’s
for your own soul’s sake. It will be the making of you. You might learn
in time to stand on your own legs, and perhaps to toddle along a bit.”
But I took no notice. The sails of the vessel I had seen off to the
south-west had grown larger and plainer. They were of the same
schooner-rig as the _Ghost_, though the hull itself, I could see, was
smaller. She was a pretty sight, leaping and flying toward us, and
evidently bound to pass at close range. The wind had been momentarily
increasing, and the sun, after a few angry gleams, had disappeared. The
sea had turned a dull leaden grey and grown rougher, and was now tossing
foaming whitecaps to the sky. We were travelling faster, and heeled
farther over. Once, in a gust, the rail dipped under the sea, and the
decks on that side were for the moment awash with water that made a
couple of the hunters hastily lift their feet.
“That vessel will soon be passing us,” I said, after a moment’s pause.
“As she is going in the opposite direction, she is very probably bound
for San Francisco.”
“Very probably,” was Wolf Larsen’s answer, as he turned partly away from
me and cried out, “Cooky! Oh, Cooky!”
The Cockney popped out of the galley.
“Where’s that boy? Tell him I want him.”
“Yes, sir;” and Thomas Mugridge fled swiftly aft and disappeared down
another companion-way near the wheel. A moment later he emerged, a
heavy-set young fellow of eighteen or nineteen, with a glowering,
villainous countenance, trailing at his heels.
“’Ere ’e is, sir,” the cook said.
But Wolf Larsen ignored that worthy, turning at once to the cabin-boy.
“What’s your name, boy?”
“George Leach, sir,” came the sullen answer, and the boy’s bearing showed
clearly that he divined the reason for which he had been summoned.
“Not an Irish name,” the captain snapped sharply. “O’Toole or McCarthy
would suit your mug a damn sight better. Unless, very likely, there’s an
Irishman in your mother’s woodpile.”
I saw the young fellow’s hands clench at the insult, and the blood crawl
scarlet up his neck.
“But let that go,” Wolf Larsen continued. “You may have very good
reasons for forgetting your name, and I’ll like you none the worse for it
as long as you toe the mark. Telegraph Hill, of course, is your port of
entry. It sticks out all over your mug. Tough as they make them and
twice as nasty. I know the kind. Well, you can make up your mind to
have it taken out of you on this craft. Understand? Who shipped you,
anyway?”
“McCready and Swanson.”
“Sir!” Wolf Larsen thundered.
“McCready and Swanson, sir,” the boy corrected, his eyes burning with a
bitter light.
“Who got the advance money?”
“They did, sir.”
“I thought as much. And damned glad you were to let them have it.
Couldn’t make yourself scarce too quick, with several gentlemen you may
have heard of looking for you.”
The boy metamorphosed into a savage on the instant. His body bunched
together as though for a spring, and his face became as an infuriated
beast’s as he snarled, “It’s a—”
“A what?” Wolf Larsen asked, a peculiar softness in his voice, as though
he were overwhelmingly curious to hear the unspoken word.
The boy hesitated, then mastered his temper. “Nothin’, sir. I take it
back.”
“And you have shown me I was right.” This with a gratified smile. “How
old are you?”
“Just turned sixteen, sir.”
“A lie. You’ll never see eighteen again. Big for your age at that, with
muscles like a horse. Pack up your kit and go for’ard into the fo’c’sle.
You’re a boat-puller now. You’re promoted; see?”
Without waiting for the boy’s acceptance, the captain turned to the
sailor who had just finished the gruesome task of sewing up the corpse.
“Johansen, do you know anything about navigation?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, never mind; you’re mate just the same. Get your traps aft into
the mate’s berth.”
“Ay, ay, sir,” was the cheery response, as Johansen started forward.
In the meantime the erstwhile cabin-boy had not moved. “What are you
waiting for?” Wolf Larsen demanded.
“I didn’t sign for boat-puller, sir,” was the reply. “I signed for
cabin-boy. An’ I don’t want no boat-pullin’ in mine.”
“Pack up and go for’ard.”
This time Wolf Larsen’s command was thrillingly imperative. The boy
glowered sullenly, but refused to move.
Then came another stirring of Wolf Larsen’s tremendous strength. It was
utterly unexpected, and it was over and done with between the ticks of
two seconds. He had sprung fully six feet across the deck and driven his
fist into the other’s stomach. At the same moment, as though I had been
struck myself, I felt a sickening shock in the pit of my stomach. I
instance this to show the sensitiveness of my nervous organization at the