The Sea-Wolf
the least equivocal of the men forward or aft. In fact, there was
nothing equivocal about him. One was struck at once by his
straightforwardness and manliness, which, in turn, were tempered by a
modesty which might be mistaken for timidity. But timid he was not. He
seemed, rather, to have the courage of his convictions, the certainty of
his manhood. It was this that made him protest, at the commencement of
our acquaintance, against being called Yonson. And upon this, and him,
Louis passed judgment and prophecy.
“’Tis a fine chap, that squarehead Johnson we’ve for’ard with us,” he
said. “The best sailorman in the fo’c’sle. He’s my boat-puller. But
it’s to trouble he’ll come with Wolf Larsen, as the sparks fly upward.
It’s meself that knows. I can see it brewin’ an’ comin’ up like a storm
in the sky. I’ve talked to him like a brother, but it’s little he sees
in takin’ in his lights or flyin’ false signals. He grumbles out when
things don’t go to suit him, and there’ll be always some tell-tale
carryin’ word iv it aft to the Wolf. The Wolf is strong, and it’s the
way of a wolf to hate strength, an’ strength it is he’ll see in
Johnson—no knucklin’ under, and a ‘Yes, sir, thank ye kindly, sir,’ for a
curse or a blow. Oh, she’s a-comin’! She’s a-comin’! An’ God knows
where I’ll get another boat-puller! What does the fool up an’ say, when
the old man calls him Yonson, but ‘Me name is Johnson, sir,’ an’ then
spells it out, letter for letter. Ye should iv seen the old man’s face!
I thought he’d let drive at him on the spot. He didn’t, but he will, an’
he’ll break that squarehead’s heart, or it’s little I know iv the ways iv
men on the ships iv the sea.”
Thomas Mugridge is becoming unendurable. I am compelled to Mister him
and to Sir him with every speech. One reason for this is that Wolf
Larsen seems to have taken a fancy to him. It is an unprecedented thing,
I take it, for a captain to be chummy with the cook; but this is
certainly what Wolf Larsen is doing. Two or three times he put his head
into the galley and chaffed Mugridge good-naturedly, and once, this
afternoon, he stood by the break of the poop and chatted with him for
fully fifteen minutes. When it was over, and Mugridge was back in the
galley, he became greasily radiant, and went about his work, humming
coster songs in a nerve-racking and discordant falsetto.
“I always get along with the officers,” he remarked to me in a
confidential tone. “I know the w’y, I do, to myke myself uppreci-yted.
There was my last skipper—w’y I thought nothin’ of droppin’ down in the
cabin for a little chat and a friendly glass. ‘Mugridge,’ sez ’e to me,
‘Mugridge,’ sez ’e, ‘you’ve missed yer vokytion.’ ‘An’ ’ow’s that?’ sez
I. ‘Yer should ’a been born a gentleman, an’ never ’ad to work for yer
livin’.’ God strike me dead, ’Ump, if that ayn’t wot ’e sez, an’ me
a-sittin’ there in ’is own cabin, jolly-like an’ comfortable, a-smokin’
’is cigars an’ drinkin’ ’is rum.”
This chitter-chatter drove me to distraction. I never heard a voice I
hated so. His oily, insinuating tones, his greasy smile and his
monstrous self-conceit grated on my nerves till sometimes I was all in a
tremble. Positively, he was the most disgusting and loathsome person I
have ever met. The filth of his cooking was indescribable; and, as he
cooked everything that was eaten aboard, I was compelled to select what I
ate with great circumspection, choosing from the least dirty of his
concoctions.
My hands bothered me a great deal, unused as they were to work. The
nails were discoloured and black, while the skin was already grained with
dirt which even a scrubbing-brush could not remove. Then blisters came,
in a painful and never-ending procession, and I had a great burn on my
forearm, acquired by losing my balance in a roll of the ship and pitching
against the galley stove. Nor was my knee any better. The swelling had
not gone down, and the cap was still up on edge. Hobbling about on it
from morning till night was not helping it any. What I needed was rest,
if it were ever to get well.
Rest! I never before knew the meaning of the word. I had been resting
all my life and did not know it. But now, could I sit still for one
half-hour and do nothing, not even think, it would be the most
pleasurable thing in the world. But it is a revelation, on the other
hand. I shall be able to appreciate the lives of the working people
hereafter. I did not dream that work was so terrible a thing. From
half-past five in the morning till ten o’clock at night I am everybody’s
slave, with not one moment to myself, except such as I can steal near the
end of the second dog-watch. Let me pause for a minute to look out over
the sea sparkling in the sun, or to gaze at a sailor going aloft to the
gaff-topsails, or running out the bowsprit, and I am sure to hear the
hateful voice, “’Ere, you, ’Ump, no sodgerin’. I’ve got my peepers on
yer.”
There are signs of rampant bad temper in the steerage, and the gossip is
going around that Smoke and Henderson have had a fight. Henderson seems
the best of the hunters, a slow-going fellow, and hard to rouse; but
roused he must have been, for Smoke had a bruised and discoloured eye,
and looked particularly vicious when he came into the cabin for supper.
A cruel thing happened just before supper, indicative of the callousness
and brutishness of these men. There is one green hand in the crew,
Harrison by name, a clumsy-looking country boy, mastered, I imagine, by
the spirit of adventure, and making his first voyage. In the light
baffling airs the schooner had been tacking about a great deal, at which
times the sails pass from one side to the other and a man is sent aloft
to shift over the fore-gaff-topsail. In some way, when Harrison was
aloft, the sheet jammed in the block through which it runs at the end of
the gaff. As I understood it, there were two ways of getting it
cleared,—first, by lowering the foresail, which was comparatively easy
and without danger; and second, by climbing out the peak-halyards to the
end of the gaff itself, an exceedingly hazardous performance.
Johansen called out to Harrison to go out the halyards. It was patent to
everybody that the boy was afraid. And well he might be, eighty feet
above the deck, to trust himself on those thin and jerking ropes. Had
there been a steady breeze it would not have been so bad, but the _Ghost_
was rolling emptily in a long sea, and with each roll the canvas flapped
and boomed and the halyards slacked and jerked taut. They were capable
of snapping a man off like a fly from a whip-lash.
Harrison heard the order and understood what was demanded of him, but
hesitated. It was probably the first time he had been aloft in his life.
Johansen, who had caught the contagion of Wolf Larsen’s masterfulness,
burst out with a volley of abuse and curses.
“That’ll do, Johansen,” Wolf Larsen said brusquely. “I’ll have you know
that I do the swearing on this ship. If I need your assistance, I’ll
call you in.”
“Yes, sir,” the mate acknowledged submissively.
In the meantime Harrison had started out on the halyards. I was looking
up from the galley door, and I could see him trembling, as if with ague,
in every limb. He proceeded very slowly and cautiously, an inch at a
time. Outlined against the clear blue of the sky, he had the appearance
of an enormous spider crawling along the tracery of its web.
It was a slight uphill climb, for the foresail peaked high; and the
halyards, running through various blocks on the gaff and mast, gave him
separate holds for hands and feet. But the trouble lay in that the wind
was not strong enough nor steady enough to keep the sail full. When he
was half-way out, the _Ghost_ took a long roll to windward and back again
into the hollow between two seas. Harrison ceased his progress and held
on tightly. Eighty feet beneath, I could see the agonized strain of his
muscles as he gripped for very life. The sail emptied and the gaff swung
amid-ships. The halyards slackened, and, though it all happened very
quickly, I could see them sag beneath the weight of his body. Then the
gaff swung to the side with an abrupt swiftness, the great sail boomed
like a cannon, and the three rows of reef-points slatted against the
canvas like a volley of rifles. Harrison, clinging on, made the giddy
rush through the air. This rush ceased abruptly. The halyards became
instantly taut. It was the snap of the whip. His clutch was broken.
One hand was torn loose from its hold. The other lingered desperately
for a moment, and followed. His body pitched out and down, but in some
way he managed to save himself with his legs. He was hanging by them,
head downward. A quick effort brought his hands up to the halyards
again; but he was a long time regaining his former position, where he
hung, a pitiable object.
“I’ll bet he has no appetite for supper,” I heard Wolf Larsen’s voice,
which came to me from around the corner of the galley. “Stand from
under, you, Johansen! Watch out! Here she comes!”
In truth, Harrison was very sick, as a person is sea-sick; and for a long
time he clung to his precarious perch without attempting to move.
Johansen, however, continued violently to urge him on to the completion
of his task.
“It is a shame,” I heard Johnson growling in painfully slow and correct
English. He was standing by the main rigging, a few feet away from me.
“The boy is willing enough. He will learn if he has a chance. But this
is—” He paused awhile, for the word “murder” was his final judgment.
“Hist, will ye!” Louis whispered to him, “For the love iv your mother
hold your mouth!”
But Johnson, looking on, still continued his grumbling.
“Look here,” the hunter Standish spoke to Wolf Larsen, “that’s my
boat-puller, and I don’t want to lose him.”
“That’s all right, Standish,” was the reply. “He’s your boat-puller when
you’ve got him in the boat; but he’s my sailor when I have him aboard,
and I’ll do what I damn well please with him.”
“But that’s no reason—” Standish began in a torrent of speech.
“That’ll do, easy as she goes,” Wolf Larsen counselled back. “I’ve told
you what’s what, and let it stop at that. The man’s mine, and I’ll make
soup of him and eat it if I want to.”
There was an angry gleam in the hunter’s eye, but he turned on his heel
and entered the steerage companion-way, where he remained, looking
upward. All hands were on deck now, and all eyes were aloft, where a
human life was at grapples with death. The callousness of these men, to
whom industrial organization gave control of the lives of other men, was
appalling. I, who had lived out of the whirl of the world, had never
dreamed that its work was carried on in such fashion. Life had always
seemed a peculiarly sacred thing, but here it counted for nothing, was a
cipher in the arithmetic of commerce. I must say, however, that the
sailors themselves were sympathetic, as instance the case of Johnson; but
the masters (the hunters and the captain) were heartlessly indifferent.
Even the protest of Standish arose out of the fact that he did not wish
to lose his boat-puller. Had it been some other hunter’s boat-puller,
he, like them, would have been no more than amused.
But to return to Harrison. It took Johansen, insulting and reviling the
poor wretch, fully ten minutes to get him started again. A little later
he made the end of the gaff, where, astride the spar itself, he had a
better chance for holding on. He cleared the sheet, and was free to
return, slightly downhill now, along the halyards to the mast. But he
had lost his nerve. Unsafe as was his present position, he was loath to
forsake it for the more unsafe position on the halyards.