The Sea-Wolf
his voice had gone from him. By hand pressures, after that, he answered
our questions, and when he wished to speak he scrawled his thoughts with
his left hand, quite legibly, on a sheet of paper.
The fierce winter had now descended upon us. Gale followed gale, with
snow and sleet and rain. The seals had started on their great southern
migration, and the rookery was practically deserted. I worked
feverishly. In spite of the bad weather, and of the wind which
especially hindered me, I was on deck from daylight till dark and making
substantial progress.
I profited by my lesson learned through raising the shears and then
climbing them to attach the guys. To the top of the foremast, which was
just lifted conveniently from the deck, I attached the rigging, stays and
throat and peak halyards. As usual, I had underrated the amount of work
involved in this portion of the task, and two long days were necessary to
complete it. And there was so much yet to be done—the sails, for
instance, which practically had to be made over.
While I toiled at rigging the foremast, Maud sewed on canvas, ready
always to drop everything and come to my assistance when more hands than
two were required. The canvas was heavy and hard, and she sewed with the
regular sailor’s palm and three-cornered sail-needle. Her hands were
soon sadly blistered, but she struggled bravely on, and in addition doing
the cooking and taking care of the sick man.
“A fig for superstition,” I said on Friday morning. “That mast goes in
to-day.”
Everything was ready for the attempt. Carrying the boom-tackle to the
windlass, I hoisted the mast nearly clear of the deck. Making this
tackle fast, I took to the windlass the shears-tackle (which was
connected with the end of the boom), and with a few turns had the mast
perpendicular and clear.
Maud clapped her hands the instant she was relieved from holding the
turn, crying:
“It works! It works! We’ll trust our lives to it!”
Then she assumed a rueful expression.
“It’s not over the hole,” she add. “Will you have to begin all over?”
I smiled in superior fashion, and, slacking off on one of the boom-guys
and taking in on the other, swung the mast perfectly in the centre of the
deck. Still it was not over the hole. Again the rueful expression came
on her face, and again I smiled in a superior way. Slacking away on the
boom-tackle and hoisting an equivalent amount on the shears-tackle, I
brought the butt of the mast into position directly over the hole in the
deck. Then I gave Maud careful instructions for lowering away and went
into the hold to the step on the schooner’s bottom.
I called to her, and the mast moved easily and accurately. Straight
toward the square hole of the step the square butt descended; but as it
descended it slowly twisted so that square would not fit into square.
But I had not even a moment’s indecision. Calling to Maud to cease
lowering, I went on deck and made the watch-tackle fast to the mast with
a rolling hitch. I left Maud to pull on it while I went below. By the
light of the lantern I saw the butt twist slowly around till its sides
coincided with the sides of the step. Maud made fast and returned to the
windlass. Slowly the butt descended the several intervening inches, at
the same time slightly twisting again. Again Maud rectified the twist
with the watch-tackle, and again she lowered away from the windlass.
Square fitted into square. The mast was stepped.
I raised a shout, and she ran down to see. In the yellow lantern light
we peered at what we had accomplished. We looked at each other, and our
hands felt their way and clasped. The eyes of both of us, I think, were
moist with the joy of success.
“It was done so easily after all,” I remarked. “All the work was in the
preparation.”
“And all the wonder in the completion,” Maud added. “I can scarcely
bring myself to realize that that great mast is really up and in; that
you have lifted it from the water, swung it through the air, and
deposited it here where it belongs. It is a Titan’s task.”
“And they made themselves many inventions,” I began merrily, then paused
to sniff the air.
I looked hastily at the lantern. It was not smoking. Again I sniffed.
“Something is burning,” Maud said, with sudden conviction.
We sprang together for the ladder, but I raced past her to the deck. A
dense volume of smoke was pouring out of the steerage companion-way.
“The Wolf is not yet dead,” I muttered to myself as I sprang down through
the smoke.
It was so thick in the confined space that I was compelled to feel my
way; and so potent was the spell of Wolf Larsen on my imagination, I was
quite prepared for the helpless giant to grip my neck in a strangle hold.
I hesitated, the desire to race back and up the steps to the deck almost
overpowering me. Then I recollected Maud. The vision of her, as I had
last seen her, in the lantern light of the schooner’s hold, her brown
eyes warm and moist with joy, flashed before me, and I knew that I could
not go back.
I was choking and suffocating by the time I reached Wolf Larsen’s bunk.
I reached my hand and felt for his. He was lying motionless, but moved
slightly at the touch of my hand. I felt over and under his blankets.
There was no warmth, no sign of fire. Yet that smoke which blinded me
and made me cough and gasp must have a source. I lost my head
temporarily and dashed frantically about the steerage. A collision with
the table partially knocked the wind from my body and brought me to
myself. I reasoned that a helpless man could start a fire only near to
where he lay.
I returned to Wolf Larsen’s bunk. There I encountered Maud. How long
she had been there in that suffocating atmosphere I could not guess.
“Go up on deck!” I commanded peremptorily.
“But, Humphrey—” she began to protest in a queer, husky voice.
“Please! please!” I shouted at her harshly.
She drew away obediently, and then I thought, What if she cannot find the
steps? I started after her, to stop at the foot of the companion-way.
Perhaps she had gone up. As I stood there, hesitant, I heard her cry
softly:
“Oh, Humphrey, I am lost.”
I found her fumbling at the wall of the after bulkhead, and, half leading
her, half carrying her, I took her up the companion-way. The pure air
was like nectar. Maud was only faint and dizzy, and I left her lying on
the deck when I took my second plunge below.
The source of the smoke must be very close to Wolf Larsen—my mind was
made up to this, and I went straight to his bunk. As I felt about among
his blankets, something hot fell on the back of my hand. It burned me,
and I jerked my hand away. Then I understood. Through the cracks in the
bottom of the upper bunk he had set fire to the mattress. He still
retained sufficient use of his left arm to do this. The damp straw of
the mattress, fired from beneath and denied air, had been smouldering all
the while.
As I dragged the mattress out of the bunk it seemed to disintegrate in
mid-air, at the same time bursting into flames. I beat out the burning
remnants of straw in the bunk, then made a dash for the deck for fresh
air.
Several buckets of water sufficed to put out the burning mattress in the
middle of the steerage floor; and ten minutes later, when the smoke had
fairly cleared, I allowed Maud to come below. Wolf Larsen was
unconscious, but it was a matter of minutes for the fresh air to restore
him. We were working over him, however, when he signed for paper and
pencil.
“Pray do not interrupt me,” he wrote. “I am smiling.”
“I am still a bit of the ferment, you see,” he wrote a little later.
“I am glad you are as small a bit as you are,” I said.
“Thank you,” he wrote. “But just think of how much smaller I shall be
before I die.”
“And yet I am all here, Hump,” he wrote with a final flourish. “I can
think more clearly than ever in my life before. Nothing to disturb me.
Concentration is perfect. I am all here and more than here.”
It was like a message from the night of the grave; for this man’s body
had become his mausoleum. And there, in so strange sepulchre, his spirit
fluttered and lived. It would flutter and live till the last line of
communication was broken, and after that who was to say how much longer
it might continue to flutter and live?
CHAPTER XXXVIII
“I think my left side is going,” Wolf Larsen wrote, the morning after his
attempt to fire the ship. “The numbness is growing. I can hardly move
my hand. You will have to speak louder. The last lines are going down.”
“Are you in pain?” I asked.
I was compelled to repeat my question loudly before he answered:
“Not all the time.”
The left hand stumbled slowly and painfully across the paper, and it was
with extreme difficulty that we deciphered the scrawl. It was like a
“spirit message,” such as are delivered at séances of spiritualists for a
dollar admission.
“But I am still here, all here,” the hand scrawled more slowly and
painfully than ever.
The pencil dropped, and we had to replace it in the hand.
“When there is no pain I have perfect peace and quiet. I have never
thought so clearly. I can ponder life and death like a Hindoo sage.”
“And immortality?” Maud queried loudly in the ear.
Three times the hand essayed to write but fumbled hopelessly. The pencil
fell. In vain we tried to replace it. The fingers could not close on
it. Then Maud pressed and held the fingers about the pencil with her own
hand and the hand wrote, in large letters, and so slowly that the minutes
ticked off to each letter:
“B-O-S-H.”
It was Wolf Larsen’s last word, “bosh,” sceptical and invincible to the
end. The arm and hand relaxed. The trunk of the body moved slightly.
Then there was no movement. Maud released the hand. The fingers spread
slightly, falling apart of their own weight, and the pencil rolled away.
“Do you still hear?” I shouted, holding the fingers and waiting for the
single pressure which would signify “Yes.” There was no response. The
hand was dead.
“I noticed the lips slightly move,” Maud said.
I repeated the question. The lips moved. She placed the tips of her
fingers on them. Again I repeated the question. “Yes,” Maud announced.
We looked at each other expectantly.
“What good is it?” I asked. “What can we say now?”
“Oh, ask him—”
She hesitated.
“Ask him something that requires no for an answer,” I suggested. “Then
we will know for certainty.”
“Are you hungry?” she cried.
The lips moved under her fingers, and she answered, “Yes.”
“Will you have some beef?” was her next query.
“No,” she announced.
“Beef-tea?”
“Yes, he will have some beef-tea,” she said, quietly, looking up at me.
“Until his hearing goes we shall be able to communicate with him. And
after that—”
She looked at me queerly. I saw her lips trembling and the tears
swimming up in her eyes. She swayed toward me and I caught her in my
arms.
“Oh, Humphrey,” she sobbed, “when will it all end? I am so tired, so
tired.”
She buried her head on my shoulder, her frail form shaken with a storm of
weeping. She was like a feather in my arms, so slender, so ethereal.
“She has broken down at last,” I thought. “What can I do without her
help?”
But I soothed and comforted her, till she pulled herself bravely together
and recuperated mentally as quickly as she was wont to do physically.
“I ought to be ashamed of myself,” she said. Then added, with the
whimsical smile I adored, “but I am only one, small woman.”
That phrase, the “one small woman,” startled me like an electric shock.
It was my own phrase, my pet, secret phrase, my love phrase for her.
“Where did you get that phrase?” I demanded, with an abruptness that in