The Sea-Wolf
“They have dreams,” I interrupted, “radiant, flashing dreams—”
“Of grub,” he concluded sententiously.
“And of more—”
“Grub. Of a larger appetite and more luck in satisfying it.” His voice
sounded harsh. There was no levity in it. “For, look you, they dream of
making lucky voyages which will bring them more money, of becoming the
mates of ships, of finding fortunes—in short, of being in a better
position for preying on their fellows, of having all night in, good grub
and somebody else to do the dirty work. You and I are just like them.
There is no difference, except that we have eaten more and better. I am
eating them now, and you too. But in the past you have eaten more than I
have. You have slept in soft beds, and worn fine clothes, and eaten good
meals. Who made those beds? and those clothes? and those meals? Not
you. You never made anything in your own sweat. You live on an income
which your father earned. You are like a frigate bird swooping down upon
the boobies and robbing them of the fish they have caught. You are one
with a crowd of men who have made what they call a government, who are
masters of all the other men, and who eat the food the other men get and
would like to eat themselves. You wear the warm clothes. They made the
clothes, but they shiver in rags and ask you, the lawyer, or business
agent who handles your money, for a job.”
“But that is beside the matter,” I cried.
“Not at all.” He was speaking rapidly now, and his eyes were flashing.
“It is piggishness, and it is life. Of what use or sense is an
immortality of piggishness? What is the end? What is it all about? You
have made no food. Yet the food you have eaten or wasted might have
saved the lives of a score of wretches who made the food but did not eat
it. What immortal end did you serve? or did they? Consider yourself and
me. What does your boasted immortality amount to when your life runs
foul of mine? You would like to go back to the land, which is a
favourable place for your kind of piggishness. It is a whim of mine to
keep you aboard this ship, where my piggishness flourishes. And keep you
I will. I may make or break you. You may die to-day, this week, or next
month. I could kill you now, with a blow of my fist, for you are a
miserable weakling. But if we are immortal, what is the reason for this?
To be piggish as you and I have been all our lives does not seem to be
just the thing for immortals to be doing. Again, what’s it all about?
Why have I kept you here?—”
“Because you are stronger,” I managed to blurt out.
“But why stronger?” he went on at once with his perpetual queries.
“Because I am a bigger bit of the ferment than you? Don’t you see?
Don’t you see?”
“But the hopelessness of it,” I protested.
“I agree with you,” he answered. “Then why move at all, since moving is
living? Without moving and being part of the yeast there would be no
hopelessness. But,—and there it is,—we want to live and move, though we
have no reason to, because it happens that it is the nature of life to
live and move, to want to live and move. If it were not for this, life
would be dead. It is because of this life that is in you that you dream
of your immortality. The life that is in you is alive and wants to go on
being alive for ever. Bah! An eternity of piggishness!”
He abruptly turned on his heel and started forward. He stopped at the
break of the poop and called me to him.
“By the way, how much was it that Cooky got away with?” he asked.
“One hundred and eighty-five dollars, sir,” I answered.
He nodded his head. A moment later, as I started down the companion
stairs to lay the table for dinner, I heard him loudly cursing some men
amidships.
CHAPTER VI
By the following morning the storm had blown itself quite out and the
_Ghost_ was rolling slightly on a calm sea without a breath of wind.
Occasional light airs were felt, however, and Wolf Larsen patrolled the
poop constantly, his eyes ever searching the sea to the north-eastward,
from which direction the great trade-wind must blow.
The men were all on deck and busy preparing their various boats for the
season’s hunting. There are seven boats aboard, the captain’s dingey,
and the six which the hunters will use. Three, a hunter, a boat-puller,
and a boat-steerer, compose a boat’s crew. On board the schooner the
boat-pullers and steerers are the crew. The hunters, too, are supposed
to be in command of the watches, subject, always, to the orders of Wolf
Larsen.
All this, and more, I have learned. The _Ghost_ is considered the
fastest schooner in both the San Francisco and Victoria fleets. In fact,
she was once a private yacht, and was built for speed. Her lines and
fittings—though I know nothing about such things—speak for themselves.
Johnson was telling me about her in a short chat I had with him during
yesterday’s second dog-watch. He spoke enthusiastically, with the love
for a fine craft such as some men feel for horses. He is greatly
disgusted with the outlook, and I am given to understand that Wolf Larsen
bears a very unsavoury reputation among the sealing captains. It was the
_Ghost_ herself that lured Johnson into signing for the voyage, but he is
already beginning to repent.
As he told me, the _Ghost_ is an eighty-ton schooner of a remarkably fine
model. Her beam, or width, is twenty-three feet, and her length a little
over ninety feet. A lead keel of fabulous but unknown weight makes her
very stable, while she carries an immense spread of canvas. From the
deck to the truck of the maintopmast is something over a hundred feet,
while the foremast with its topmast is eight or ten feet shorter. I am
giving these details so that the size of this little floating world which
holds twenty-two men may be appreciated. It is a very little world, a
mote, a speck, and I marvel that men should dare to venture the sea on a
contrivance so small and fragile.
Wolf Larsen has, also, a reputation for reckless carrying on of sail. I
overheard Henderson and another of the hunters, Standish, a Californian,
talking about it. Two years ago he dismasted the _Ghost_ in a gale on
Bering Sea, whereupon the present masts were put in, which are stronger
and heavier in every way. He is said to have remarked, when he put them
in, that he preferred turning her over to losing the sticks.
Every man aboard, with the exception of Johansen, who is rather overcome
by his promotion, seems to have an excuse for having sailed on the
_Ghost_. Half the men forward are deep-water sailors, and their excuse
is that they did not know anything about her or her captain. And those
who do know, whisper that the hunters, while excellent shots, were so
notorious for their quarrelsome and rascally proclivities that they could
not sign on any decent schooner.
I have made the acquaintance of another one of the crew,—Louis he is
called, a rotund and jovial-faced Nova Scotia Irishman, and a very
sociable fellow, prone to talk as long as he can find a listener. In the
afternoon, while the cook was below asleep and I was peeling the
everlasting potatoes, Louis dropped into the galley for a “yarn.” His
excuse for being aboard was that he was drunk when he signed. He assured
me again and again that it was the last thing in the world he would dream
of doing in a sober moment. It seems that he has been seal-hunting
regularly each season for a dozen years, and is accounted one of the two
or three very best boat-steerers in both fleets.
“Ah, my boy,” he shook his head ominously at me, “’tis the worst schooner
ye could iv selected, nor were ye drunk at the time as was I. ’Tis
sealin’ is the sailor’s paradise—on other ships than this. The mate was
the first, but mark me words, there’ll be more dead men before the trip
is done with. Hist, now, between you an’ meself and the stanchion there,
this Wolf Larsen is a regular devil, an’ the _Ghost’ll_ be a hell-ship
like she’s always ben since he had hold iv her. Don’t I know? Don’t I
know? Don’t I remember him in Hakodate two years gone, when he had a row
an’ shot four iv his men? Wasn’t I a-layin’ on the _Emma L._, not three
hundred yards away? An’ there was a man the same year he killed with a
blow iv his fist. Yes, sir, killed ’im dead-oh. His head must iv
smashed like an eggshell. An’ wasn’t there the Governor of Kura Island,
an’ the Chief iv Police, Japanese gentlemen, sir, an’ didn’t they come
aboard the _Ghost_ as his guests, a-bringin’ their wives along—wee an’
pretty little bits of things like you see ’em painted on fans. An’ as he
was a-gettin’ under way, didn’t the fond husbands get left astern-like in
their sampan, as it might be by accident? An’ wasn’t it a week later
that the poor little ladies was put ashore on the other side of the
island, with nothin’ before ’em but to walk home acrost the mountains on
their weeny-teeny little straw sandals which wouldn’t hang together a
mile? Don’t I know? ’Tis the beast he is, this Wolf Larsen—the great
big beast mentioned iv in Revelation; an’ no good end will he ever come
to. But I’ve said nothin’ to ye, mind ye. I’ve whispered never a word;
for old fat Louis’ll live the voyage out if the last mother’s son of yez
go to the fishes.”
“Wolf Larsen!” he snorted a moment later. “Listen to the word, will ye!
Wolf—’tis what he is. He’s not black-hearted like some men. ’Tis no
heart he has at all. Wolf, just wolf, ’tis what he is. D’ye wonder he’s
well named?”
“But if he is so well-known for what he is,” I queried, “how is it that
he can get men to ship with him?”
“An’ how is it ye can get men to do anything on God’s earth an’ sea?”
Louis demanded with Celtic fire. “How d’ye find me aboard if ’twasn’t
that I was drunk as a pig when I put me name down? There’s them that
can’t sail with better men, like the hunters, and them that don’t know,
like the poor devils of wind-jammers for’ard there. But they’ll come to
it, they’ll come to it, an’ be sorry the day they was born. I could weep
for the poor creatures, did I but forget poor old fat Louis and the
troubles before him. But ’tis not a whisper I’ve dropped, mind ye, not a
whisper.”
“Them hunters is the wicked boys,” he broke forth again, for he suffered
from a constitutional plethora of speech. “But wait till they get to
cutting up iv jinks and rowin’ ’round. He’s the boy’ll fix ’em. ’Tis
him that’ll put the fear of God in their rotten black hearts. Look at
that hunter iv mine, Horner. ‘Jock’ Horner they call him, so quiet-like
an’ easy-goin’, soft-spoken as a girl, till ye’d think butter wouldn’t
melt in the mouth iv him. Didn’t he kill his boat-steerer last year?
’Twas called a sad accident, but I met the boat-puller in Yokohama an’
the straight iv it was given me. An’ there’s Smoke, the black little
devil—didn’t the Roosians have him for three years in the salt mines of
Siberia, for poachin’ on Copper Island, which is a Roosian preserve?
Shackled he was, hand an’ foot, with his mate. An’ didn’t they have
words or a ruction of some kind?—for ’twas the other fellow Smoke sent up
in the buckets to the top of the mine; an’ a piece at a time he went up,
a leg to-day, an’ to-morrow an arm, the next day the head, an’ so on.”
“But you can’t mean it!” I cried out, overcome with the horror of it.
“Mean what!” he demanded, quick as a flash. “’Tis nothin’ I’ve said.
Deef I am, and dumb, as ye should be for the sake iv your mother; an’
never once have I opened me lips but to say fine things iv them an’ him,
God curse his soul, an’ may he rot in purgatory ten thousand years, and
then go down to the last an’ deepest hell iv all!”
Johnson, the man who had chafed me raw when I first came aboard, seemed