________________________________________________
_ No wonder we called it Endeavour Island. For two weeks we toiled
at building a hut. Maud insisted on helping, and I could have wept
over her bruised and bleeding hands. And still, I was proud of her
because of it. There was something heroic about this gently-bred
woman enduring our terrible hardship and with her pittance of
strength bending to the tasks of a peasant woman. She gathered
many of the stones which I built into the walls of the hut; also,
she turned a deaf ear to my entreaties when I begged her to desist.
She compromised, however, by taking upon herself the lighter
labours of cooking and gathering driftwood and moss for our
winter's supply.
The hut's walls rose without difficulty, and everything went
smoothly until the problem of the roof confronted me. Of what use
the four walls without a roof? And of what could a roof be made?
There were the spare oars, very true. They would serve as roof-
beams; but with what was I to cover them? Moss would never do.
Tundra grass was impracticable. We needed the sail for the boat,
and the tarpaulin had begun to leak.
"Winters used walrus skins on his hut," I said.
"There are the seals," she suggested.
So next day the hunting began. I did not know how to shoot, but I
proceeded to learn. And when I had expended some thirty shells for
three seals, I decided that the ammunition would be exhausted
before I acquired the necessary knowledge. I had used eight shells
for lighting fires before I hit upon the device of banking the
embers with wet moss, and there remained not over a hundred shells
in the box.
"We must club the seals," I announced, when convinced of my poor
marksmanship. "I have heard the sealers talk about clubbing them."
"They are so pretty," she objected. "I cannot bear to think of it
being done. It is so directly brutal, you know; so different from
shooting them."
"That roof must go on," I answered grimly. "Winter is almost here.
It is our lives against theirs. It is unfortunate we haven't
plenty of ammunition, but I think, anyway, that they suffer less
from being clubbed than from being all shot up. Besides, I shall
do the clubbing."
"That's just it," she began eagerly, and broke off in sudden
confusion.
"Of course," I began, "if you prefer - "
"But what shall I be doing?" she interrupted, with that softness I
knew full well to be insistence.
"Gathering firewood and cooking dinner," I answered lightly.
She shook her head. "It is too dangerous for you to attempt
alone."
"I know, I know," she waived my protest. "I am only a weak woman,
but just my small assistance may enable you to escape disaster."
"But the clubbing?" I suggested.
"Of course, you will do that. I shall probably scream. I'll look
away when - "
"The danger is most serious," I laughed.
"I shall use my judgment when to look and when not to look," she
replied with a grand air.
The upshot of the affair was that she accompanied me next morning.
I rowed into the adjoining cove and up to the edge of the beach.
There were seals all about us in the water, and the bellowing
thousands on the beach compelled us to shout at each other to make
ourselves heard.
"I know men club them," I said, trying to reassure myself, and
gazing doubtfully at a large bull, not thirty feet away, upreared
on his fore-flippers and regarding me intently. "But the question
is, How do they club them?"
"Let us gather tundra grass and thatch the roof," Maud said.
She was as frightened as I at the prospect, and we had reason to be
gazing at close range at the gleaming teeth and dog-like mouths.
"I always thought they were afraid of men," I said.
"How do I know they are not afraid?" I queried a moment later,
after having rowed a few more strokes along the beach. "Perhaps,
if I were to step boldly ashore, they would cut for it, and I could
not catch up with one." And still I hesitated.
"I heard of a man, once, who invaded the nesting grounds of wild
geese," Maud said. "They killed him."
"The geese?"
"Yes, the geese. My brother told me about it when I was a little
girl."
"But I know men club them," I persisted.
"I think the tundra grass will make just as good a roof," she said.
Far from her intention, her words were maddening me, driving me on.
I could not play the coward before her eyes. "Here goes," I said,
backing water with one oar and running the bow ashore.
I stepped out and advanced valiantly upon a long-maned bull in the
midst of his wives. I was armed with the regular club with which
the boat-pullers killed the wounded seals gaffed aboard by the
hunters. It was only a foot and a half long, and in my superb
ignorance I never dreamed that the club used ashore when raiding
the rookeries measured four to five feet. The cows lumbered out of
my way, and the distance between me and the bull decreased. He
raised himself on his flippers with an angry movement. We were a
dozen feet apart. Still I advanced steadily, looking for him to
turn tail at any moment and run.
At six feet the panicky thought rushed into my mind, What if he
will not run? Why, then I shall club him, came the answer. In my
fear I had forgotten that I was there to get the bull instead of to
make him run. And just then he gave a snort and a snarl and rushed
at me. His eyes were blazing, his mouth was wide open; the teeth
gleamed cruelly white. Without shame, I confess that it was I who
turned and footed it. He ran awkwardly, but he ran well. He was
but two paces behind when I tumbled into the boat, and as I shoved
off with an oar his teeth crunched down upon the blade. The stout
wood was crushed like an egg-shell. Maud and I were astounded. A
moment later he had dived under the boat, seized the keel in his
mouth, and was shaking the boat violently.
"My!" said Maud. "Let's go back."
I shook my head. "I can do what other men have done, and I know
that other men have clubbed seals. But I think I'll leave the
bulls alone next time."
"I wish you wouldn't," she said.
"Now don't say, 'Please, please,'" I cried, half angrily, I do
believe.
She made no reply, and I knew my tone must have hurt her.
"I beg your pardon," I said, or shouted, rather, in order to make
myself heard above the roar of the rookery. "If you say so, I'll
turn and go back; but honestly, I'd rather stay."
"Now don't say that this is what you get for bringing a woman
along," she said. She smiled at me whimsically, gloriously, and I
knew there was no need for forgiveness.
I rowed a couple of hundred feet along the beach so as to recover
my nerves, and then stepped ashore again.
"Do be cautious," she called after me.
I nodded my head and proceeded to make a flank attack on the
nearest harem. All went well until I aimed a blow at an outlying
cowls head and fell short. She snorted and tried to scramble away.
I ran in close and struck another blow, hitting the shoulder
instead of the head.
"Watch out!" I heard Maud scream.
In my excitement I had not been taking notice of other things, and
I looked up to see the lord of the harem charging down upon me.
Again I fled to the boat, hotly pursued; but this time Maud made no
suggestion of turning back.
"It would be better, I imagine, if you let harems alone and devoted
your attention to lonely and inoffensive-looking seals," was what
she said. "I think I have read something about them. Dr. Jordan's
book, I believe. They are the young bulls, not old enough to have
harems of their own. He called them the holluschickie, or
something like that. It seems to me if we find where they haul out
- "
"It seems to me that your fighting instinct is aroused," I laughed.
She flushed quickly and prettily. "I'll admit I don't like defeat
any more than you do, or any more than I like the idea of killing
such pretty, inoffensive creatures."
"Pretty!" I sniffed. "I failed to mark anything pre-eminently
pretty about those foamy-mouthed beasts that raced me."
"Your point of view," she laughed. "You lacked perspective. Now
if you did not have to get so close to the subject - "
"The very thing!" I cried. "What I need is a longer club. And
there's that broken oar ready to hand."
"It just comes to me," she said, "that Captain Larsen was telling
me how the men raided the rookeries. They drive the seals, in
small herds, a short distance inland before they kill them."
"I don't care to undertake the herding of one of those harems," I
objected.
"But there are the holluschickie," she said. "The holluschickie
haul out by themselves, and Dr. Jordan says that paths are left
between the harems, and that as long as the holluschickie keep
strictly to the path they are unmolested by the masters of the
harem."
"There's one now," I said, pointing to a young bull in the water.
"Let's watch him, and follow him if he hauls out."
He swam directly to the beach and clambered out into a small
opening between two harems, the masters of which made warning
noises but did not attack him. We watched him travel slowly
inward, threading about among the harems along what must have been
the path.
"Here goes," I said, stepping out; but I confess my heart was in my
mouth as I thought of going through the heart of that monstrous
herd.
"It would be wise to make the boat fast," Maud said.
She had stepped out beside me, and I regarded her with wonderment.
She nodded her head determinedly. "Yes, I'm going with you, so you
may as well secure the boat and arm me with a club."
"Let's go back," I said dejectedly. "I think tundra grass, will
do, after all."
"You know it won't," was her reply. "Shall I lead?"
With a shrug of the shoulders, but with the warmest admiration and
pride at heart for this woman, I equipped her with the broken oar
and took another for myself. It was with nervous trepidation that
we made the first few rods of the journey. Once Maud screamed in
terror as a cow thrust an inquisitive nose toward her foot, and
several times I quickened my pace for the same reason. But, beyond
warning coughs from either side, there were no signs of hostility.
It was a rookery which had never been raided by the hunters, and in
consequence the seals were mild-tempered and at the same time
unafraid.
In the very heart of the herd the din was terrific. It was almost
dizzying in its effect. I paused and smiled reassuringly at Maud,
for I had recovered my equanimity sooner than she. I could see
that she was still badly frightened. She came close to me and
shouted:
"I'm dreadfully afraid!"
And I was not. Though the novelty had not yet worn off, the
peaceful comportment of the seals had quieted my alarm. Maud was
trembling.
"I'm afraid, and I'm not afraid," she chattered with shaking jaws.
"It's my miserable body, not I."
"It's all right, it's all right," I reassured her, my arm passing
instinctively and protectingly around her.
I shall never forget, in that moment, how instantly conscious I
became of my manhood. The primitive deeps of my nature stirred. I
felt myself masculine, the protector of the weak, the fighting
male. And, best of all, I felt myself the protector of my loved
one. She leaned against me, so light and lily-frail, and as her
trembling eased away it seemed as though I became aware of
prodigious strength. I felt myself a match for the most ferocious
bull in the herd, and I know, had such a bull charged upon me, that
I should have met it unflinchingly and quite coolly, and I know
that I should have killed it.
"I am all right now," she said, looking up at me gratefully. "Let
us go on."
And that the strength in me had quieted her and given her
confidence, filled me with an exultant joy. The youth of the race
seemed burgeoning in me, over-civilized man that I was, and I lived
for myself the old hunting days and forest nights of my remote and
forgotten ancestry. I had much for which to thank Wolf Larsen, was
my thought as we went along the path between the jostling harems.
A quarter of a mile inland we came upon the holluschickie - sleek
young bulls, living out the loneliness of their bachelorhood and
gathering strength against the day when they would fight their way
into the ranks of the Benedicts.
Everything now went smoothly. I seemed to know just what to do and
how to do it. Shouting, making threatening gestures with my club,
and even prodding the lazy ones, I quickly cut out a score of the
young bachelors from their companions. Whenever one made an
attempt to break back toward the water, I headed it off. Maud took
an active part in the drive, and with her cries and flourishings of
the broken oar was of considerable assistance. I noticed, though,
that whenever one looked tired and lagged, she let it slip past.
But I noticed, also, whenever one, with a show of fight, tried to
break past, that her eyes glinted and showed bright, and she rapped
it smartly with her club.
"My, it's exciting!" she cried, pausing from sheer weakness. "I
think I'll sit down."
I drove the little herd (a dozen strong, now, what of the escapes
she had permitted) a hundred yards farther on; and by the time she
joined me I had finished the slaughter and was beginning to skin.
An hour later we went proudly back along the path between the
harems. And twice again we came down the path burdened with skins,
till I thought we had enough to roof the hut. I set the sail, laid
one tack out of the cove, and on the other tack made our own little
inner cove.
"It's just like home-coming," Maud said, as I ran the boat ashore.
I heard her words with a responsive thrill, it was all so dearly
intimate and natural, and I said:
"It seems as though I have lived this life always. The world of
books and bookish folk is very vague, more like a dream memory than
an actuality. I surely have hunted and forayed and fought all the
days of my life. And you, too, seem a part of it. You are - " I
was on the verge of saying, "my woman, my mate," but glibly changed
it to - "standing the hardship well."
But her ear had caught the flaw. She recognized a flight that
midmost broke. She gave me a quick look.
"Not that. You were saying - ?"
"That the American Mrs. Meynell was living the life of a savage and
living it quite successfully," I said easily.
"Oh," was all she replied; but I could have sworn there was a note
of disappointment in her voice.
But "my woman, my mate" kept ringing in my head for the rest of the
day and for many days. Yet never did it ring more loudly than that
night, as I watched her draw back the blanket of moss from the
coals, blow up the fire, and cook the evening meal. It must have
been latent savagery stirring in me, for the old words, so bound up
with the roots of the race, to grip me and thrill me. And grip and
thrill they did, till I fell asleep, murmuring them to myself over
and over again. _
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