________________________________________________
_ It has dawned upon me that I have never placed a proper valuation
upon womankind. For that matter, though not amative to any
considerable degree so far as I have discovered, I was never
outside the atmosphere of women until now. My mother and sisters
were always about me, and I was always trying to escape them; for
they worried me to distraction with their solicitude for my health
and with their periodic inroads on my den, when my orderly
confusion, upon which I prided myself, was turned into worse
confusion and less order, though it looked neat enough to the eye.
I never could find anything when they had departed. But now, alas,
how welcome would have been the feel of their presence, the frou-
frou and swish-swish of their skirts which I had so cordially
detested! I am sure, if I ever get home, that I shall never be
irritable with them again. They may dose me and doctor me morning,
noon, and night, and dust and sweep and put my den to rights every
minute of the day, and I shall only lean back and survey it all and
be thankful in that I am possessed of a mother and some several
sisters.
All of which has set me wondering. Where are the mothers of these
twenty and odd men on the Ghost? It strikes me as unnatural and
unhealthful that men should be totally separated from women and
herd through the world by themselves. Coarseness and savagery are
the inevitable results. These men about me should have wives, and
sisters, and daughters; then would they be capable of softness, and
tenderness, and sympathy. As it is, not one of them is married.
In years and years not one of them has been in contact with a good
woman, or within the influence, or redemption, which irresistibly
radiates from such a creature. There is no balance in their lives.
Their masculinity, which in itself is of the brute, has been over-
developed. The other and spiritual side of their natures has been
dwarfed - atrophied, in fact.
They are a company of celibates, grinding harshly against one
another and growing daily more calloused from the grinding. It
seems to me impossible sometimes that they ever had mothers. It
would appear that they are a half-brute, half-human species, a race
apart, wherein there is no such thing as sex; that they are hatched
out by the sun like turtle eggs, or receive life in some similar
and sordid fashion; and that all their days they fester in
brutality and viciousness, and in the end die as unlovely as they
have lived.
Rendered curious by this new direction of ideas, I talked with
Johansen last night - the first superfluous words with which he has
favoured me since the voyage began. He left Sweden when he was
eighteen, is now thirty-eight, and in all the intervening time has
not been home once. He had met a townsman, a couple of years
before, in some sailor boarding-house in Chile, so that he knew his
mother to be still alive.
"She must be a pretty old woman now," he said, staring meditatively
into the binnacle and then jerking a sharp glance at Harrison, who
was steering a point off the course.
"When did you last write to her?"
He performed his mental arithmetic aloud. "Eighty-one; no -
eighty-two, eh? no - eighty-three? Yes, eighty-three. Ten years
ago. From some little port in Madagascar. I was trading.
"You see," he went on, as though addressing his neglected mother
across half the girth of the earth, "each year I was going home.
So what was the good to write? It was only a year. And each year
something happened, and I did not go. But I am mate, now, and when
I pay off at 'Frisco, maybe with five hundred dollars, I will ship
myself on a windjammer round the Horn to Liverpool, which will give
me more money; and then I will pay my passage from there home.
Then she will not do any more work."
"But does she work? now? How old is she?"
"About seventy," he answered. And then, boastingly, "We work from
the time we are born until we die, in my country. That's why we
live so long. I will live to a hundred."
I shall never forget this conversation. The words were the last I
ever heard him utter. Perhaps they were the last he did utter,
too. For, going down into the cabin to turn in, I decided that it
was too stuffy to sleep below. It was a calm night. We were out
of the Trades, and the Ghost was forging ahead barely a knot an
hour. So I tucked a blanket and pillow under my arm and went up on
deck.
As I passed between Harrison and the binnacle, which was built into
the top of the cabin, I noticed that he was this time fully three
points off. Thinking that he was asleep, and wishing him to escape
reprimand or worse, I spoke to him. But he was not asleep. His
eyes were wide and staring. He seemed greatly perturbed, unable to
reply to me.
"What's the matter?" I asked. "Are you sick?"
He shook his head, and with a deep sign as of awakening, caught his
breath.
"You'd better get on your course, then," I chided.
He put a few spokes over, and I watched the compass-card swing
slowly to N.N.W. and steady itself with slight oscillations.
I took a fresh hold on my bedclothes and was preparing to start on,
when some movement caught my eye and I looked astern to the rail.
A sinewy hand, dripping with water, was clutching the rail. A
second hand took form in the darkness beside it. I watched,
fascinated. What visitant from the gloom of the deep was I to
behold? Whatever it was, I knew that it was climbing aboard by the
log-line. I saw a head, the hair wet and straight, shape itself,
and then the unmistakable eyes and face of Wolf Larsen. His right
cheek was red with blood, which flowed from some wound in the head.
He drew himself inboard with a quick effort, and arose to his feet,
glancing swiftly, as he did so, at the man at the wheel, as though
to assure himself of his identity and that there was nothing to
fear from him. The sea-water was streaming from him. It made
little audible gurgles which distracted me. As he stepped toward
me I shrank back instinctively, for I saw that in his eyes which
spelled death.
"All right, Hump," he said in a low voice. "Where's the mate?"
I shook my head.
"Johansen!" he called softly. "Johansen!"
"Where is he?" he demanded of Harrison.
The young fellow seemed to have recovered his composure, for he
answered steadily enough, "I don't know, sir. I saw him go for'ard
a little while ago."
"So did I go for'ard. But you will observe that I didn't come back
the way I went. Can you explain it?"
"You must have been overboard, sir."
"Shall I look for him in the steerage, sir?" I asked.
Wolf Larsen shook his head. "You wouldn't find him, Hump. But
you'll do. Come on. Never mind your bedding. Leave it where it
is."
I followed at his heels. There was nothing stirring amidships.
"Those cursed hunters," was his comment. "Too damned fat and lazy
to stand a four-hour watch."
But on the forecastle-head we found three sailors asleep. He
turned them over and looked at their faces. They composed the
watch on deck, and it was the ship's custom, in good weather, to
let the watch sleep with the exception of the officer, the
helmsman, and the look-out.
"Who's look-out?" he demanded.
"Me, sir," answered Holyoak, one of the deep-water sailors, a
slight tremor in his voice. "I winked off just this very minute,
sir. I'm sorry, sir. It won't happen again."
"Did you hear or see anything on deck?"
"No, sir, I - "
But Wolf Larsen had turned away with a snort of disgust, leaving
the sailor rubbing his eyes with surprise at having been let of so
easily.
"Softly, now," Wolf Larsen warned me in a whisper, as he doubled
his body into the forecastle scuttle and prepared to descend.
I followed with a quaking heart. What was to happen I knew no more
than did I know what had happened. But blood had been shed, and it
was through no whim of Wolf Larsen that he had gone over the side
with his scalp laid open. Besides, Johansen was missing.
It was my first descent into the forecastle, and I shall not soon
forget my impression of it, caught as I stood on my feet at the
bottom of the ladder. Built directly in the eyes of the schooner,
it was of the shape of a triangle, along the three sides of which
stood the bunks, in double-tier, twelve of them. It was no larger
than a hall bedroom in Grub Street, and yet twelve men were herded
into it to eat and sleep and carry on all the functions of living.
My bedroom at home was not large, yet it could have contained a
dozen similar forecastles, and taking into consideration the height
of the ceiling, a score at least.
It smelled sour and musty, and by the dim light of the swinging
sea-lamp I saw every bit of available wall-space hung deep with
sea-boots, oilskins, and garments, clean and dirty, of various
sorts. These swung back and forth with every roll of the vessel,
giving rise to a brushing sound, as of trees against a roof or
wall. Somewhere a boot thumped loudly and at irregular intervals
against the wall; and, though it was a mild night on the sea, there
was a continual chorus of the creaking timbers and bulkheads and of
abysmal noises beneath the flooring.
The sleepers did not mind. There were eight of them, - the two
watches below, - and the air was thick with the warmth and odour of
their breathing, and the ear was filled with the noise of their
snoring and of their sighs and half-groans, tokens plain of the
rest of the animal-man. But were they sleeping? all of them? Or
had they been sleeping? This was evidently Wolf Larsen's quest -
to find the men who appeared to be asleep and who were not asleep
or who had not been asleep very recently. And he went about it in
a way that reminded me of a story out of Boccaccio.
He took the sea-lamp from its swinging frame and handed it to me.
He began at the first bunks forward on the star-board side. In the
top one lay Oofty-Oofty, a Kanaka and splendid seaman, so named by
his mates. He was asleep on his back and breathing as placidly as
a woman. One arm was under his head, the other lay on top of the
blankets. Wolf Larsen put thumb and forefinger to the wrist and
counted the pulse. In the midst of it the Kanaka roused. He awoke
as gently as he slept. There was no movement of the body whatever.
The eyes, only, moved. They flashed wide open, big and black, and
stared, unblinking, into our faces. Wolf Larsen put his finger to
his lips as a sign for silence, and the eyes closed again.
In the lower bunk lay Louis, grossly fat and warm and sweaty,
asleep unfeignedly and sleeping laboriously. While Wolf Larsen
held his wrist he stirred uneasily, bowing his body so that for a
moment it rested on shoulders and heels. His lips moved, and he
gave voice to this enigmatic utterance:
"A shilling's worth a quarter; but keep your lamps out for
thruppenny-bits, or the publicans 'll shove 'em on you for
sixpence."
Then he rolled over on his side with a heavy, sobbing sigh, saying:
"A sixpence is a tanner, and a shilling a bob; but what a pony is I
don't know."
Satisfied with the honesty of his and the Kanaka's sleep, Wolf
Larsen passed on to the next two bunks on the starboard side,
occupied top and bottom, as we saw in the light of the sea-lamp, by
Leach and Johnson.
As Wolf Larsen bent down to the lower bunk to take Johnson's pulse,
I, standing erect and holding the lamp, saw Leach's head rise
stealthily as he peered over the side of his bunk to see what was
going on. He must have divined Wolf Larsen's trick and the
sureness of detection, for the light was at once dashed from my
hand and the forecastle was left in darkness. He must have leaped,
also, at the same instant, straight down on Wolf Larsen.
The first sounds were those of a conflict between a bull and a
wolf. I heard a great infuriated bellow go up from Wolf Larsen,
and from Leach a snarling that was desperate and blood-curdling.
Johnson must have joined him immediately, so that his abject and
grovelling conduct on deck for the past few days had been no more
than planned deception.
I was so terror-stricken by this fight in the dark that I leaned
against the ladder, trembling and unable to ascend. And upon me
was that old sickness at the pit of the stomach, caused always by
the spectacle of physical violence. In this instance I could not
see, but I could hear the impact of the blows - the soft crushing
sound made by flesh striking forcibly against flesh. Then there
was the crashing about of the entwined bodies, the laboured
breathing, the short quick gasps of sudden pain.
There must have been more men in the conspiracy to murder the
captain and mate, for by the sounds I knew that Leach and Johnson
had been quickly reinforced by some of their mates.
"Get a knife somebody!" Leach was shouting.
"Pound him on the head! Mash his brains out!" was Johnson's cry.
But after his first bellow, Wolf Larsen made no noise. He was
fighting grimly and silently for life. He was sore beset. Down at
the very first, he had been unable to gain his feet, and for all of
his tremendous strength I felt that there was no hope for him.
The force with which they struggled was vividly impressed on me;
for I was knocked down by their surging bodies and badly bruised.
But in the confusion I managed to crawl into an empty lower bunk
out of the way.
"All hands! We've got him! We've got him!" I could hear Leach
crying.
"Who?" demanded those who had been really asleep, and who had
wakened to they knew not what.
"It's the bloody mate!" was Leach's crafty answer, strained from
him in a smothered sort of way.
This was greeted with whoops of joy, and from then on Wolf Larsen
had seven strong men on top of him, Louis, I believe, taking no
part in it. The forecastle was like an angry hive of bees aroused
by some marauder.
"What ho! below there!" I heard Latimer shout down the scuttle, too
cautious to descend into the inferno of passion he could hear
raging beneath him in the darkness.
"Won't somebody get a knife? Oh, won't somebody get a knife?"
Leach pleaded in the first interval of comparative silence.
The number of the assailants was a cause of confusion. They
blocked their own efforts, while Wolf Larsen, with but a single
purpose, achieved his. This was to fight his way across the floor
to the ladder. Though in total darkness, I followed his progress
by its sound. No man less than a giant could have done what he
did, once he had gained the foot of the ladder. Step by step, by
the might of his arms, the whole pack of men striving to drag him
back and down, he drew his body up from the floor till he stood
erect. And then, step by step, hand and foot, he slowly struggled
up the ladder.
The very last of all, I saw. For Latimer, having finally gone for
a lantern, held it so that its light shone down the scuttle. Wolf
Larsen was nearly to the top, though I could not see him. All that
was visible was the mass of men fastened upon him. It squirmed
about, like some huge many-legged spider, and swayed back and forth
to the regular roll of the vessel. And still, step by step with
long intervals between, the mass ascended. Once it tottered, about
to fall back, but the broken hold was regained and it still went
up.
"Who is it?" Latimer cried.
In the rays of the lantern I could see his perplexed face peering
down.
"Larsen," I heard a muffled voice from within the mass.
Latimer reached down with his free hand. I saw a hand shoot up to
clasp his. Latimer pulled, and the next couple of steps were made
with a rush. Then Wolf Larsen's other hand reached up and clutched
the edge of the scuttle. The mass swung clear of the ladder, the
men still clinging to their escaping foe. They began to drop of,
to be brushed off against the sharp edge of the scuttle, to be
knocked off by the legs which were now kicking powerfully. Leach
was the last to go, falling sheer back from the top of the scuttle
and striking on head and shoulders upon his sprawling mates
beneath. Wolf Larsen and the lantern disappeared, and we were left
in darkness. _
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