________________________________________________
_ Among the most vivid memories of my life are those of the events on
the Ghost which occurred during the forty hours succeeding the
discovery of my love for Maud Brewster. I, who had lived my life
in quiet places, only to enter at the age of thirty-five upon a
course of the most irrational adventure I could have imagined,
never had more incident and excitement crammed into any forty hours
of my experience. Nor can I quite close my ears to a small voice
of pride which tells me I did not do so badly, all things
considered.
To begin with, at the midday dinner, Wolf Larsen informed the
hunters that they were to eat thenceforth in the steerage. It was
an unprecedented thing on sealing-schooners, where it is the custom
for the hunters to rank, unofficially as officers. He gave no
reason, but his motive was obvious enough. Horner and Smoke had
been displaying a gallantry toward Maud Brewster, ludicrous in
itself and inoffensive to her, but to him evidently distasteful.
The announcement was received with black silence, though the other
four hunters glanced significantly at the two who had been the
cause of their banishment. Jock Horner, quiet as was his way, gave
no sign; but the blood surged darkly across Smoke's forehead, and
he half opened his mouth to speak. Wolf Larsen was watching him,
waiting for him, the steely glitter in his eyes; but Smoke closed
his mouth again without having said anything.
"Anything to say?" the other demanded aggressively.
It was a challenge, but Smoke refused to accept it.
"About what?" he asked, so innocently that Wolf Larsen was
disconcerted, while the others smiled.
"Oh, nothing," Wolf Larsen said lamely. "I just thought you might
want to register a kick."
"About what?" asked the imperturbable Smoke.
Smoke's mates were now smiling broadly. His captain could have
killed him, and I doubt not that blood would have flowed had not
Maud Brewster been present. For that matter, it was her presence
which enabled. Smoke to act as he did. He was too discreet and
cautious a man to incur Wolf Larsen's anger at a time when that
anger could be expressed in terms stronger than words. I was in
fear that a struggle might take place, but a cry from the helmsman
made it easy for the situation to save itself.
"Smoke ho!" the cry came down the open companion-way.
"How's it bear?" Wolf Larsen called up.
"Dead astern, sir."
"Maybe it's a Russian," suggested Latimer.
His words brought anxiety into the faces of the other hunters. A
Russian could mean but one thing - a cruiser. The hunters, never
more than roughly aware of the position of the ship, nevertheless
knew that we were close to the boundaries of the forbidden sea,
while Wolf Larsen's record as a poacher was notorious. All eyes
centred upon him.
"We're dead safe," he assured them with a laugh. "No salt mines
this time, Smoke. But I'll tell you what - I'll lay odds of five
to one it's the Macedonia."
No one accepted his offer, and he went on: "In which event, I'll
lay ten to one there's trouble breezing up."
"No, thank you," Latimer spoke up. "I don't object to losing my
money, but I like to get a run for it anyway. There never was a
time when there wasn't trouble when you and that brother of yours
got together, and I'll lay twenty to one on that."
A general smile followed, in which Wolf Larsen joined, and the
dinner went on smoothly, thanks to me, for he treated me abominably
the rest of the meal, sneering at me and patronizing me till I was
all a-tremble with suppressed rage. Yet I knew I must control
myself for Maud Brewster's sake, and I received my reward when her
eyes caught mine for a fleeting second, and they said, as
distinctly as if she spoke, "Be brave, be brave."
We left the table to go on deck, for a steamer was a welcome break
in the monotony of the sea on which we floated, while the
conviction that it was Death Larsen and the Macedonia added to the
excitement. The stiff breeze and heavy sea which had sprung up the
previous afternoon had been moderating all morning, so that it was
now possible to lower the boats for an afternoon's hunt. The
hunting promised to be profitable. We had sailed since daylight
across a sea barren of seals, and were now running into the herd.
The smoke was still miles astern, but overhauling us rapidly, when
we lowered our boats. They spread out and struck a northerly
course across the ocean. Now and again we saw a sail lower, heard
the reports of the shot-guns, and saw the sail go up again. The
seals were thick, the wind was dying away; everything favoured a
big catch. As we ran off to get our leeward position of the last
lee boat, we found the ocean fairly carpeted with sleeping seals.
They were all about us, thicker than I had ever seen them before,
in twos and threes and bunches, stretched full length on the
surface and sleeping for all the world like so many lazy young
dogs.
Under the approaching smoke the hull and upper-works of a steamer
were growing larger. It was the Macedonia. I read her name
through the glasses as she passed by scarcely a mile to starboard.
Wolf Larsen looked savagely at the vessel, while Maud Brewster was
curious.
"Where is the trouble you were so sure was breezing up, Captain
Larsen?" she asked gaily.
He glanced at her, a moment's amusement softening his features.
"What did you expect? That they'd come aboard and cut our
throats?"
"Something like that," she confessed. "You understand, seal-
hunters are so new and strange to me that I am quite ready to
expect anything."
He nodded his head. "Quite right, quite right. Your error is that
you failed to expect the worst."
"Why, what can be worse than cutting our throats?" she asked, with
pretty naive surprise.
"Cutting our purses," he answered. "Man is so made these days that
his capacity for living is determined by the money he possesses."
"'Who steals my purse steals trash,'" she quoted.
"Who steals my purse steals my right to live," was the reply, "old
saws to the contrary. For he steals my bread and meat and bed, and
in so doing imperils my life. There are not enough soup-kitchens
and bread-lines to go around, you know, and when men have nothing
in their purses they usually die, and die miserably - unless they
are able to fill their purses pretty speedily."
"But I fail to see that this steamer has any designs on your
purse."
"Wait and you will see," he answered grimly.
We did not have long to wait. Having passed several miles beyond
our line of boats, the Macedonia proceeded to lower her own. We
knew she carried fourteen boats to our five (we were one short
through the desertion of Wainwright), and she began dropping them
far to leeward of our last boat, continued dropping them athwart
our course, and finished dropping them far to windward of our first
weather boat. The hunting, for us, was spoiled. There were no
seals behind us, and ahead of us the line of fourteen boats, like a
huge broom, swept the herd before it.
Our boats hunted across the two or three miles of water between
them and the point where the Macedonia's had been dropped, and then
headed for home. The wind had fallen to a whisper, the ocean was
growing calmer and calmer, and this, coupled with the presence of
the great herd, made a perfect hunting day - one of the two or
three days to be encountered in the whole of a lucky season. An
angry lot of men, boat-pullers and steerers as well as hunters,
swarmed over our side. Each man felt that he had been robbed; and
the boats were hoisted in amid curses, which, if curses had power,
would have settled Death Larsen for all eternity - "Dead and damned
for a dozen iv eternities," commented Louis, his eyes twinkling up
at me as he rested from hauling taut the lashings of his boat.
"Listen to them, and find if it is hard to discover the most vital
thing in their souls," said Wolf Larsen. "Faith? and love? and
high ideals? The good? the beautiful? the true?"
"Their innate sense of right has been violated," Maud Brewster
said, joining the conversation.
She was standing a dozen feet away, one hand resting on the main-
shrouds and her body swaying gently to the slight roll of the ship.
She had not raised her voice, and yet I was struck by its clear and
bell-like tone. Ah, it was sweet in my ears! I scarcely dared
look at her just then, for the fear of betraying myself. A boy's
cap was perched on her head, and her hair, light brown and arranged
in a loose and fluffy order that caught the sun, seemed an aureole
about the delicate oval of her face. She was positively
bewitching, and, withal, sweetly spirituelle, if not saintly. All
my old-time marvel at life returned to me at sight of this splendid
incarnation of it, and Wolf Larsen's cold explanation of life and
its meaning was truly ridiculous and laughable.
"A sentimentalist," he sneered, "like Mr. Van Weyden. Those men
are cursing because their desires have been outraged. That is all.
What desires? The desires for the good grub and soft beds ashore
which a handsome pay-day brings them - the women and the drink, the
gorging and the beastliness which so truly expresses them, the best
that is in them, their highest aspirations, their ideals, if you
please. The exhibition they make of their feelings is not a
touching sight, yet it shows how deeply they have been touched, how
deeply their purses have been touched, for to lay hands on their
purses is to lay hands on their souls."
"'You hardly behave as if your purse had been touched," she said,
smilingly.
"Then it so happens that I am behaving differently, for my purse
and my soul have both been touched. At the current price of skins
in the London market, and based on a fair estimate of what the
afternoon's catch would have been had not the Macedonia hogged it,
the Ghost has lost about fifteen hundred dollars' worth of skins."
"You speak so calmly - " she began.
"But I do not feel calm; I could kill the man who robbed me," he
interrupted. "Yes, yes, I know, and that man my brother - more
sentiment! Bah!"
His face underwent a sudden change. His voice was less harsh and
wholly sincere as he said:
"You must be happy, you sentimentalists, really and truly happy at
dreaming and finding things good, and, because you find some of
them good, feeling good yourself. Now, tell me, you two, do you
find me good?"
"You are good to look upon - in a way," I qualified.
"There are in you all powers for good," was Maud Brewster's answer.
"There you are!" he cried at her, half angrily. "Your words are
empty to me. There is nothing clear and sharp and definite about
the thought you have expressed. You cannot pick it up in your two
hands and look at it. In point of fact, it is not a thought. It
is a feeling, a sentiment, a something based upon illusion and not
a product of the intellect at all."
As he went on his voice again grew soft, and a confiding note came
into it. "Do you know, I sometimes catch myself wishing that I,
too, were blind to the facts of life and only knew its fancies and
illusions. They're wrong, all wrong, of course, and contrary to
reason; but in the face of them my reason tells me, wrong and most
wrong, that to dream and live illusions gives greater delight. And
after all, delight is the wage for living. Without delight, living
is a worthless act. To labour at living and be unpaid is worse
than to be dead. He who delights the most lives the most, and your
dreams and unrealities are less disturbing to you and more
gratifying than are my facts to me."
He shook his head slowly, pondering.
"I often doubt, I often doubt, the worthwhileness of reason.
Dreams must be more substantial and satisfying. Emotional delight
is more filling and lasting than intellectual delight; and,
besides, you pay for your moments of intellectual delight by having
the blues. Emotional delight is followed by no more than jaded
senses which speedily recuperate. I envy you, I envy you."
He stopped abruptly, and then on his lips formed one of his strange
quizzical smiles, as he added:
"It's from my brain I envy you, take notice, and not from my heart.
My reason dictates it. The envy is an intellectual product. I am
like a sober man looking upon drunken men, and, greatly weary,
wishing he, too, were drunk."
"Or like a wise man looking upon fools and wishing he, too, were a
fool," I laughed.
"Quite so," he said. "You are a blessed, bankrupt pair of fools.
You have no facts in your pocketbook."
"Yet we spend as freely as you," was Maud Brewster's contribution.
"More freely, because it costs you nothing."
"And because we draw upon eternity," she retorted.
"Whether you do or think you do, it's the same thing. You spend
what you haven't got, and in return you get greater value from
spending what you haven't got than I get from spending what I have
got, and what I have sweated to get."
"Why don't you change the basis of your coinage, then?" she queried
teasingly.
He looked at her quickly, half-hopefully, and then said, all
regretfully: "Too late. I'd like to, perhaps, but I can't. My
pocketbook is stuffed with the old coinage, and it's a stubborn
thing. I can never bring myself to recognize anything else as
valid."
He ceased speaking, and his gaze wandered absently past her and
became lost in the placid sea. The old primal melancholy was
strong upon him. He was quivering to it. He had reasoned himself
into a spell of the blues, and within few hours one could look for
the devil within him to be up and stirring. I remembered Charley
Furuseth, and knew this man's sadness as the penalty which the
materialist ever pays for his materialism. _
Read next: CHAPTER XXV
Read previous: CHAPTER XXIII
Table of content of Sea Wolf
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book
