________________________________________________
_ The last twenty-four hours have witnessed a carnival of brutality.
From cabin to forecastle it seems to have broken out like a
contagion. I scarcely know where to begin. Wolf Larsen was really
the cause of it. The relations among the men, strained and made
tense by feuds, quarrels and grudges, were in a state of unstable
equilibrium, and evil passions flared up in flame like prairie-
grass.
Thomas Mugridge is a sneak, a spy, an informer. He has been
attempting to curry favour and reinstate himself in the good graces
of the captain by carrying tales of the men forward. He it was, I
know, that carried some of Johnson's hasty talk to Wolf Larsen.
Johnson, it seems, bought a suit of oilskins from the slop-chest
and found them to be of greatly inferior quality. Nor was he slow
in advertising the fact. The slop-chest is a sort of miniature
dry-goods store which is carried by all sealing schooners and which
is stocked with articles peculiar to the needs of the sailors.
Whatever a sailor purchases is taken from his subsequent earnings
on the sealing grounds; for, as it is with the hunters so it is
with the boat-pullers and steerers - in the place of wages they
receive a "lay," a rate of so much per skin for every skin captured
in their particular boat.
But of Johnson's grumbling at the slop-chest I knew nothing, so
that what I witnessed came with a shock of sudden surprise. I had
just finished sweeping the cabin, and had been inveigled by Wolf
Larsen into a discussion of Hamlet, his favourite Shakespearian
character, when Johansen descended the companion stairs followed by
Johnson. The latter's cap came off after the custom of the sea,
and he stood respectfully in the centre of the cabin, swaying
heavily and uneasily to the roll of the schooner and facing the
captain.
"Shut the doors and draw the slide," Wolf Larsen said to me.
As I obeyed I noticed an anxious light come into Johnson's eyes,
but I did not dream of its cause. I did not dream of what was to
occur until it did occur, but he knew from the very first what was
coming and awaited it bravely. And in his action I found complete
refutation of all Wolf Larsen's materialism. The sailor Johnson
was swayed by idea, by principle, and truth, and sincerity. He was
right, he knew he was right, and he was unafraid. He would die for
the right if needs be, he would be true to himself, sincere with
his soul. And in this was portrayed the victory of the spirit over
the flesh, the indomitability and moral grandeur of the soul that
knows no restriction and rises above time and space and matter with
a surety and invincibleness born of nothing else than eternity and
immortality.
But to return. I noticed the anxious light in Johnson's eyes, but
mistook it for the native shyness and embarrassment of the man.
The mate, Johansen, stood away several feet to the side of him, and
fully three yards in front of him sat Wolf Larsen on one of the
pivotal cabin chairs. An appreciable pause fell after I had closed
the doors and drawn the slide, a pause that must have lasted fully
a minute. It was broken by Wolf Larsen.
"Yonson," he began.
"My name is Johnson, sir," the sailor boldly corrected.
"Well, Johnson, then, damn you! Can you guess why I have sent for
you?"
"Yes, and no, sir," was the slow reply. "My work is done well.
The mate knows that, and you know it, sir. So there cannot be any
complaint."
"And is that all?" Wolf Larsen queried, his voice soft, and low,
and purring.
"I know you have it in for me," Johnson continued with his
unalterable and ponderous slowness. "You do not like me. You -
you - "
"Go on," Wolf Larsen prompted. "Don't be afraid of my feelings."
"I am not afraid," the sailor retorted, a slight angry flush rising
through his sunburn. "If I speak not fast, it is because I have
not been from the old country as long as you. You do not like me
because I am too much of a man; that is why, sir."
"You are too much of a man for ship discipline, if that is what you
mean, and if you know what I mean," was Wolf Larsen's retort.
"I know English, and I know what you mean, sir," Johnson answered,
his flush deepening at the slur on his knowledge of the English
language.
"Johnson," Wolf Larsen said, with an air of dismissing all that had
gone before as introductory to the main business in hand, "I
understand you're not quite satisfied with those oilskins?"
"No, I am not. They are no good, sir."
"And you've been shooting off your mouth about them."
"I say what I think, sir," the sailor answered courageously, not
failing at the same time in ship courtesy, which demanded that
"sir" be appended to each speech he made.
It was at this moment that I chanced to glance at Johansen. His
big fists were clenching and unclenching, and his face was
positively fiendish, so malignantly did he look at Johnson. I
noticed a black discoloration, still faintly visible, under
Johansen's eye, a mark of the thrashing he had received a few
nights before from the sailor. For the first time I began to
divine that something terrible was about to be enacted, - what, I
could not imagine.
"Do you know what happens to men who say what you've said about my
slop-chest and me?" Wolf Larsen was demanding.
"I know, sir," was the answer.
"What?" Wolf Larsen demanded, sharply and imperatively.
"What you and the mate there are going to do to me, sir."
"Look at him, Hump," Wolf Larsen said to me, "look at this bit of
animated dust, this aggregation of matter that moves and breathes
and defies me and thoroughly believes itself to be compounded of
something good; that is impressed with certain human fictions such
as righteousness and honesty, and that will live up to them in
spite of all personal discomforts and menaces. What do you think
of him, Hump? What do you think of him?"
"I think that he is a better man than you are," I answered,
impelled, somehow, with a desire to draw upon myself a portion of
the wrath I felt was about to break upon his head. "His human
fictions, as you choose to call them, make for nobility and
manhood. You have no fictions, no dreams, no ideals. You are a
pauper."
He nodded his head with a savage pleasantness. "Quite true, Hump,
quite true. I have no fictions that make for nobility and manhood.
A living dog is better than a dead lion, say I with the Preacher.
My only doctrine is the doctrine of expediency, and it makes for
surviving. This bit of the ferment we call 'Johnson,' when he is
no longer a bit of the ferment, only dust and ashes, will have no
more nobility than any dust and ashes, while I shall still be alive
and roaring."
"Do you know what I am going to do?" he questioned.
I shook my head.
"Well, I am going to exercise my prerogative of roaring and show
you how fares nobility. Watch me."
Three yards away from Johnson he was, and sitting down. Nine feet!
And yet he left the chair in full leap, without first gaining a
standing position. He left the chair, just as he sat in it,
squarely, springing from the sitting posture like a wild animal, a
tiger, and like a tiger covered the intervening space. It was an
avalanche of fury that Johnson strove vainly to fend off. He threw
one arm down to protect the stomach, the other arm up to protect
the head; but Wolf Larsen's fist drove midway between, on the
chest, with a crushing, resounding impact. Johnson's breath,
suddenly expelled, shot from his mouth and as suddenly checked,
with the forced, audible expiration of a man wielding an axe. He
almost fell backward, and swayed from side to side in an effort to
recover his balance.
I cannot give the further particulars of the horrible scene that
followed. It was too revolting. It turns me sick even now when I
think of it. Johnson fought bravely enough, but he was no match
for Wolf Larsen, much less for Wolf Larsen and the mate. It was
frightful. I had not imagined a human being could endure so much
and still live and struggle on. And struggle on Johnson did. Of
course there was no hope for him, not the slightest, and he knew it
as well as I, but by the manhood that was in him he could not cease
from fighting for that manhood.
It was too much for me to witness. I felt that I should lose my
mind, and I ran up the companion stairs to open the doors and
escape on deck. But Wolf Larsen, leaving his victim for the
moment, and with one of his tremendous springs, gained my side and
flung me into the far corner of the cabin.
"The phenomena of life, Hump," he girded at me. "Stay and watch
it. You may gather data on the immortality of the soul. Besides,
you know, we can't hurt Johnson's soul. It's only the fleeting
form we may demolish."
It seemed centuries - possibly it was no more than ten minutes that
the beating continued. Wolf Larsen and Johansen were all about the
poor fellow. They struck him with their fists, kicked him with
their heavy shoes, knocked him down, and dragged him to his feet to
knock him down again. His eyes were blinded so that he could not
set, and the blood running from ears and nose and mouth turned the
cabin into a shambles. And when he could no longer rise they still
continued to beat and kick him where he lay.
"Easy, Johansen; easy as she goes," Wolf Larsen finally said.
But the beast in the mate was up and rampant, and Wolf Larsen was
compelled to brush him away with a back-handed sweep of the arm,
gentle enough, apparently, but which hurled Johansen back like a
cork, driving his head against the wall with a crash. He fell to
the floor, half stunned for the moment, breathing heavily and
blinking his eyes in a stupid sort of way.
"Jerk open the doors, - Hump," I was commanded.
I obeyed, and the two brutes picked up the senseless man like a
sack of rubbish and hove him clear up the companion stairs, through
the narrow doorway, and out on deck. The blood from his nose
gushed in a scarlet stream over the feet of the helmsman, who was
none other than Louis, his boat-mate. But Louis took and gave a
spoke and gazed imperturbably into the binnacle.
Not so was the conduct of George Leach, the erstwhile cabin-boy.
Fore and aft there was nothing that could have surprised us more
than his consequent behaviour. He it was that came up on the poop
without orders and dragged Johnson forward, where he set about
dressing his wounds as well as he could and making him comfortable.
Johnson, as Johnson, was unrecognizable; and not only that, for his
features, as human features at all, were unrecognizable, so
discoloured and swollen had they become in the few minutes which
had elapsed between the beginning of the beating and the dragging
forward of the body.
But of Leach's behaviour - By the time I had finished cleansing
the cabin he had taken care of Johnson. I had come up on deck for
a breath of fresh air and to try to get some repose for my
overwrought nerves. Wolf Larsen was smoking a cigar and examining
the patent log which the Ghost usually towed astern, but which had
been hauled in for some purpose. Suddenly Leach's voice came to my
ears. It was tense and hoarse with an overmastering rage. I
turned and saw him standing just beneath the break of the poop on
the port side of the galley. His face was convulsed and white, his
eyes were flashing, his clenched fists raised overhead.
"May God damn your soul to hell, Wolf Larsen, only hell's too good
for you, you coward, you murderer, you pig!" was his opening
salutation.
I was thunderstruck. I looked for his instant annihilation. But
it was not Wolf Larsen's whim to annihilate him. He sauntered
slowly forward to the break of the poop, and, leaning his elbow on
the corner of the cabin, gazed down thoughtfully and curiously at
the excited boy.
And the boy indicted Wolf Larsen as he had never been indicted
before. The sailors assembled in a fearful group just outside the
forecastle scuttle and watched and listened. The hunters piled
pell-mell out of the steerage, but as Leach's tirade continued I
saw that there was no levity in their faces. Even they were
frightened, not at the boy's terrible words, but at his terrible
audacity. It did not seem possible that any living creature could
thus beard Wolf Larsen in his teeth. I know for myself that I was
shocked into admiration of the boy, and I saw in him the splendid
invincibleness of immortality rising above the flesh and the fears
of the flesh, as in the prophets of old, to condemn
unrighteousness.
And such condemnation! He haled forth Wolf Larsen's soul naked to
the scorn of men. He rained upon it curses from God and High
Heaven, and withered it with a heat of invective that savoured of a
mediaeval excommunication of the Catholic Church. He ran the gamut
of denunciation, rising to heights of wrath that were sublime and
almost Godlike, and from sheer exhaustion sinking to the vilest and
most indecent abuse.
His rage was a madness. His lips were flecked with a soapy froth,
and sometimes he choked and gurgled and became inarticulate. And
through it all, calm and impassive, leaning on his elbow and gazing
down, Wolf Larsen seemed lost in a great curiosity. This wild
stirring of yeasty life, this terrific revolt and defiance of
matter that moved, perplexed and interested him.
Each moment I looked, and everybody looked, for him to leap upon
the boy and destroy him. But it was not his whim. His cigar went
out, and he continued to gaze silently and curiously.
Leach had worked himself into an ecstasy of impotent rage.
"Pig! Pig! Pig!" he was reiterating at the top of his lungs.
"Why don't you come down and kill me, you murderer? You can do it!
I ain't afraid! There's no one to stop you! Damn sight better
dead and outa your reach than alive and in your clutches! Come on,
you coward! Kill me! Kill me! Kill me!"
It was at this stage that Thomas Mugridge's erratic soul brought
him into the scene. He had been listening at the galley door, but
he now came out, ostensibly to fling some scraps over the side, but
obviously to see the killing he was certain would take place. He
smirked greasily up into the face of Wolf Larsen, who seemed not to
see him. But the Cockney was unabashed, though mad, stark mad. He
turned to Leach, saying:
"Such langwidge! Shockin'!"
Leach's rage was no longer impotent. Here at last was something
ready to hand. And for the first time since the stabbing the
Cockney had appeared outside the galley without his knife. The
words had barely left his mouth when he was knocked down by Leach.
Three times he struggled to his feet, striving to gain the galley,
and each time was knocked down.
"Oh, Lord!" he cried. "'Elp! Elp! Tyke 'im aw'y, carn't yer?
Tyke 'im aw'y!"
The hunters laughed from sheer relief. Tragedy had dwindled, the
farce had begun. The sailors now crowded boldly aft, grinning and
shuffling, to watch the pummelling of the hated Cockney. And even
I felt a great joy surge up within me. I confess that I delighted
in this beating Leach was giving to Thomas Mugridge, though it was
as terrible, almost, as the one Mugridge had caused to be given to
Johnson. But the expression of Wolf Larsen's face never changed.
He did not change his position either, but continued to gaze down
with a great curiosity. For all his pragmatic certitude, it seemed
as if he watched the play and movement of life in the hope of
discovering something more about it, of discerning in its maddest
writhings a something which had hitherto escaped him, - the key to
its mystery, as it were, which would make all clear and plain.
But the beating! It was quite similar to the one I had witnessed
in the cabin. The Cockney strove in vain to protect himself from
the infuriated boy. And in vain he strove to gain the shelter of
the cabin. He rolled toward it, grovelled toward it, fell toward
it when he was knocked down. But blow followed blow with
bewildering rapidity. He was knocked about like a shuttlecock,
until, finally, like Johnson, he was beaten and kicked as he lay
helpless on the deck. And no one interfered. Leach could have
killed him, but, having evidently filled the measure of his
vengeance, he drew away from his prostrate foe, who was whimpering
and wailing in a puppyish sort of way, and walked forward.
But these two affairs were only the opening events of the day's
programme. In the afternoon Smoke and Henderson fell foul of each
other, and a fusillade of shots came up from the steerage, followed
by a stampede of the other four hunters for the deck. A column of
thick, acrid smoke - the kind always made by black powder - was
arising through the open companion-way, and down through it leaped
Wolf Larsen. The sound of blows and scuffling came to our ears.
Both men were wounded, and he was thrashing them both for having
disobeyed his orders and crippled themselves in advance of the
hunting season. In fact, they were badly wounded, and, having
thrashed them, he proceeded to operate upon them in a rough
surgical fashion and to dress their wounds. I served as assistant
while he probed and cleansed the passages made by the bullets, and
I saw the two men endure his crude surgery without anaesthetics and
with no more to uphold them than a stiff tumbler of whisky.
Then, in the first dog-watch, trouble came to a head in the
forecastle. It took its rise out of the tittle-tattle and tale-
bearing which had been the cause of Johnson's beating, and from the
noise we heard, and from the sight of the bruised men next day, it
was patent that half the forecastle had soundly drubbed the other
half.
The second dog-watch and the day were wound up by a fight between
Johansen and the lean, Yankee-looking hunter, Latimer. It was
caused by remarks of Latimer's concerning the noises made by the
mate in his sleep, and though Johansen was whipped, he kept the
steerage awake for the rest of the night while he blissfully
slumbered and fought the fight over and over again.
As for myself, I was oppressed with nightmare. The day had been
like some horrible dream. Brutality had followed brutality, and
flaming passions and cold-blooded cruelty had driven men to seek
one another's lives, and to strive to hurt, and maim, and destroy.
My nerves were shocked. My mind itself was shocked. All my days
had been passed in comparative ignorance of the animality of man.
In fact, I had known life only in its intellectual phases.
Brutality I had experienced, but it was the brutality of the
intellect - the cutting sarcasm of Charley Furuseth, the cruel
epigrams and occasional harsh witticisms of the fellows at the
Bibelot, and the nasty remarks of some of the professors during my
undergraduate days.
That was all. But that men should wreak their anger on others by
the bruising of the flesh and the letting of blood was something
strangely and fearfully new to me. Not for nothing had I been
called "Sissy" Van Weyden, I thought, as I tossed restlessly on my
bunk between one nightmare and another. And it seemed to me that
my innocence of the realities of life had been complete indeed. I
laughed bitterly to myself, and seemed to find in Wolf Larsen's
forbidding philosophy a more adequate explanation of life than I
found in my own.
And I was frightened when I became conscious of the trend of my
thought. The continual brutality around me was degenerative in its
effect. It bid fair to destroy for me all that was best and
brightest in life. My reason dictated that the beating Thomas
Mugridge had received was an ill thing, and yet for the life of me
I could not prevent my soul joying in it. And even while I was
oppressed by the enormity of my sin, - for sin it was, - I chuckled
with an insane delight. I was no longer Humphrey Van Weyden. I
was Hump, cabin-boy on the schooner Ghost. Wolf Larsen was my
captain, Thomas Mugridge and the rest were my companions, and I was
receiving repeated impresses from the die which had stamped them
all. _
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