CHAPTER XII. The last twenty-four hours have witnessed a carnival of brutality. From cabin to forecastle it seems to be broken out like a contagion. I scarcely know where to begin. Wolf Larson was really the cause of it. The relations among the men strained and made tense by feud squirrels and grudges were in the state of unstable equilibrium, and evil passions flared up in flame like prairie grass. Thomas Mugridge is a sneak, a spy, and an informer. He has been attempting to carry favor 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-talked Wolf Larson. Johnson, it seems, bought a suit of oil-skins 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 a miniature dry-good store which is carried by all sealing schooners, in 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-pollars and steers, in the place of wages they receive allay, a rate of so much for skin for every skin captured in their particular boat. Instead of Johnson's grumbling at the Slop Chest, I knew nothing, so that what I witnessed came with the shock of sudden surprise. I had just finished sweeping the cabin and had been inveigled by Wolf Larson into a discussion of Hamlet, his favorite Shakespearean character, when Johansson 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 center 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 Larson 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 Larson's materialism. The sailor Johnson was swayed by the 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. 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 assurity 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 Johansson stood away several feet to the side of him, and fully three yards in front of him sat Wolf Larson 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 Larson. Johnson, he began. My name is Johnson, sir, the sailor boldly corrected.  Can you guess why I have sent for you? Yes, and no, sir, came the slow reply. My work is done well. The mate knows that, and you know that, sir. So there cannot be any complaint. And is that all? Wolf Larson 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 Larson prompted. Don't be afraid of my feelings. I am not afraid, the sailor retorted, a slight angry flesh rising through a sunburn. If I do not speak 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.  I know English, and I know what you mean, sir. Johnson answered his flesh deepening at the splirer on his knowledge of the English language. Johnson, Wolf Larson said, with an air of dismissing all that it yarned before, as introductory to the main business at hand, I understand you're not quite satisfied with those oil skins. No, I am not. They are no good, sir.  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 Johansson. His big fists were clenching and unclenching and his face was positively feignish, so malignantly did he look at Johnson. I noticed a black discoloration still faintly visible under Johansson'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. But I could not imagine. Do you know what happens to men who say what you've said about my slop chest and me? Wolf Larson was demanding. I know, sir, was the answer. What? Wolf Larson demanded sharply and imperatively. What you and the mate there are going to do to me, sir? Look at him, hump, Wolf Larson 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?  His human fictions, as you choose to call them, make for nobility and manhood. You have no fictions, no dreams, no ideals.   True, hump, quite true, I have no fictions that make for nobility and manhood.  My only doctrine is the doctrine of expediency and it makes for surviving. This bit of ferment we call Johnson, when he is no longer a bit of ferment, only dust and ashes will have no more nobility than any dust and ashes while I shall 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 unfair is 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, squirrely, springing from the sitting position 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 his stomach, the other up to protect the head, but Wolf Larson's fist drove midway between on the chest with a crushing, resounding impact. Johnson's breath suddenly expelled, shot from his mouth, and is suddenly checked, with a forced audible expiration of a man wielding an axe. He almost fell backwards 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 revolving. It turns me sick even now when I think of it. Johnson fought bravely enough, but he was no match for Wolf Larson, much less for Wolf Larson 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 dead. 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 Larson, leaving his victim for the moment, and with one of his tremendous springs, gained my sight 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 Larson and Johansson were all about the poor fellow.  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 beam and kick him where he lay. Easy, Johansson, easy as she goes, Wolf Larson finally said. But the beast in the mate was up and rampant, and Wolf Larson was compelled to brush him away with a back-handed sweep of the arm, gentle enough, apparently, but which hurled Johansson back like a cork, driving his head against the wall with a crash.  Jerk opened the doors, hump, I was commanded.  The blood from his nose gushed in a scarlet stream over the feet of the helmsman, who was none other than Lewis, his boat mate. But Lewis took and gave a spoke and gazed imperturbably into the binocle. Not so was the conduct of George Leach, the erstwhile cabin boy. For an aft there was nothing that could have surprised us more than his consequent behavior. He it was that came up on the poop without orders and dragged Johnson forward, where he said 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 discolored 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 behavior. 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 Larson was smoking a cigar and examining the patent log, which the ghost usually towed his stern, 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.   I was thunderstruck. I looked for his instant annihilation. But it was not Wolf Larson's whim to annihilate him. He saundered 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 Larson as he had never been indicted before. The sailors assembled in a fearful group just outside the four-castle scuttle and watched and listened. The hunters piled pel-mel out of the steerage, but as leeches 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 dust-beard Wolf Larson in his teeth. I knew for myself that I was shocked into admiration of the boy, and I saw in him the splendid invincibility of immortality rising above the flesh and the fears of the flesh as the prophets of old to condemn unrighteousness. And such condemnation! He hailed forth Wolf Larson's soul naked to this gorn of men. He reigned upon it curses from God in high heaven and withered it with a heat of invictive that savored of a medieval excommunication of the Catholic Church. He ran the gommelette of denunciation rising to hearts 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 his 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 Larson 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 leaf 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.  You can do it. I ain't afraid. There's no one to stop you.   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 cabin door, but now he 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 Larson who seemed not to see him. But the cockney was unabashed, though mad, stark mad. He turned to Leach, saying, Such language! Shocking! Leach's rage was no longer impotent. Here at last was something ready at 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, Help! Help! Take him away, can't you? Take him away! The hunters laughed from sheer relief. Tragedy had dwindled the farce had begun. The sailors now crowded boldly off, grinning and shuffling to watch the pummeling of the hated cockney. And even I felt a great joy surge up within me. I confessed 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 Larson's face never changed. He did not change his position, either, but continued to gaze down with 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 of 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 shoulder of the cabin. He rolled toward it and groveled toward it, fell toward it when he was knocked down.  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 program. 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 wool-flarsen. 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 assistants while he probed and cleansed the passage made by the bullets, and I saw the two men endure his crude surgery without anesthetics and with no more to uphold them than a stiff tumbler of whiskey. Then, in the first dog-watch, trouble came to a head in the forecastle. It took its rise out of the tittle-tattle and the tail-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 rubbed the other half. The second dog-watch and the day were wound up by a fight between Johansson and the lean, Yankee-looking hunter, Latimer. It was caused by the remarks of Latimer as a concern in the noises made by the mate in his sleep, and though Johansson 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 Charlie Furesseth, the cruel epigrams and occasional harsh witticisms of the Fellows at Bibelot, and the nasty remarks of some 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 with something strangely and fearfully new to me. Not for nothing had I been called sissy van Wyden, I thought, as I tossed dresslessly 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 Larson'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 had been 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 Wyden. I was Humph, cabin boy on the schooner ghost. Wolf Larson 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. End of chapter 12 Chapter 13 of The Seawolf This library of hocks recording is in the public domain. The Seawolf by Jack London Chapter 13 For three days I did my own work on Thomas Mugridge's too, and I flatter myself that I did his work well. I know that it won Wolf Larson's approval, while the sailors beamed with satisfaction during the brief time my regime lasted. The first clean bite since I come aboard, Harrison said to me at the golly door, as he returned the dinner pots and pans from the forecastle, somehow Tommy's grub always tastes of grease, stale grease, and I reckon he ain't changed his shirt since he left Frisco. I know he hasn't, I answered. And I'll bet he sleeps in it, Harrison added. And you won't lose, I agreed. The same shirt, and he hasn't had it off once in all this time. But three days was all that Wolf Larson allowed him in which to recover from the effects of the beating. On the fourth day, lame and sore, scarcely able to see, so closed were his eyes, he was hailed from his bunk by the nap of the neck and set to his duty. He sniffled and wept, but Wolf Larson was pitiless. And see that you served no more slops, was his parting and junction, no more grease and dirt, mind, and a clean shirt occasionally, or you'll get a toe over the side. Understand? Thomas Mugridge crawled weakly across the galley floor, and a short lurch of the ghosts set him staggering. In attempting to recover himself, he reached for the iron railing, which surrounded the stove and kept the pots from sliding off, but he missed the railing and his hand with his weight behind it, landed squarely on the hot surface. There was a sizzle and odor of burning flesh and a sharp cry of pain. Oh, God, God, what have I done, while sitting down in the coal box and nursing as new hurt by rocking back and forth. Why has all this come on me? It makes me fair sick, it does, and I try so hard to go through life, armless and hurtin' nobody. The tears were running down his puffed and discolored cheeks, and his face was drawn with pain. A savage expression flitted across it. Oh, how I ate him! Oh, how I ate him! he gritted out. Whom, I asked, but the poor wretch was weeping again over his misfortunes.  For I had come to see a malignant devil in him which impelled him to hate all the world. I sometimes thought that he hated even himself, so grotesquely had to life dealt with him and so monstrously. At such moments of great sympathy welled up within me, and I felt shame that I had ever joyed in his discomforture or pain. Life had been unfair to him. It had played him a scurvy trick when it fashioned him into the thing he was, and it had played him scurvy tricks ever since. What chance had he to be anything else than he was? And as though answering my unspoken thought he welled, I never had no chance nor our for chance.  Or ever did anything for me, eh? Ooh, I sigh. Never mind, Tommy, I said, placing a soothing hand on his shoulder. Cheer up, it'll all come right in the end. You've long years before you and you can make anything you please of yourself.  It's a lie, and you know it. I'm already mied and mied out of livens and scraps. It's all right for you. You was born a gentleman.  It can't come right. If I was president in the United States tomorrow, I would have filled my belly for one time when I was a kiddie and it went empty. How could I, I sigh. I was born to sufferin' and surer. I've had more cruel sufferin' than any ten men I have.  I've had the fever in Aspenwall and Ivana and New Orleans. I near died of the scurvy and was rotten with it six months in Barbados. Smallpox and Honolulu, two broken legs in Shanghai, pneumonia in Unalaska, three busted ribs in me, insides all twisted in Frisco. And here I am now. Look at me. Look at me. My ribs kicked loose from my back again.  How can it be made up to me, I ask. Who's going to do it? God.  This tirade against destiny went on for an hour or more, and then he buckled to his work, limping and groaning, and in his eyes a great hatred for all created things. His diagnosis was correct, however, for he was seized with occasional sicknesses during which he vomited blood and suffered great pain.  Several days more passed before Johnson crawled on deck and went about his work in a half-hearted way.  But still worse it seemed that his spirit was broken. He was abject before Wolf Larson and almost groveled to Johansson. Not so was the conduct of Leech. He went about the deck like a tiger cub, glaring his hatred openly at Wolf Larson and Johansson. I'll do for you yet, you slab-footed swede, I heard him say to Johansson one night on deck. The mate cursed him in the darkness, and the next moment some missile struck the galley a sharp wrap. There was more cursing and a mocking laugh, and when all was quiet I stole outside and found a heavy knife embedded over an inch in solid wood. A few minutes later the mate came fumbling about in search of it, but I returned it privilege to Leech next day. He grinned when I handed it over, yet it was a grin that contained more sincere thanks than a multitude of the verbosities of speech common to the members of my own class. Unlike anyone else in the ship's company I've now found myself with no quarrels on my hands and in the good graces of all. The hunters possibly no more than tolerated me, though none of them disliked me, while smoke and Henderson convalescent under a deck awning and swinging day and night in their hammocks assured me that I was better than any hospital nurse, and they would not forget me at the end of the voyage when they were paid off. As though I stood in need of their money, I who could have bought them out bag in baggage in the schooner and its equipment at a score of times over. But upon me had devolved the task of tending their wounds and pulling them through, and I did my best by them. Wolf Larson underwent another bad attack of headache which lasted two days.  But nothing I could do seemed to relieve him. At my suggestion, however, he gave up smoking and drinking, though why such a magnificent animal as he should have headaches at all puzzles me. "'Tis the hand of God,' I'm telling you, is the way Lewis sees it. "'Tis a visitation for his black-hearted deeds, and there's more behind in common or else.' "'Or else?' I prompt. "'God is nodding and not doing his duty, though it's me I shouldn't say it.' I was mistaken when I said that I was in the good graces of all. Not only does Thomas Mugridge continue to hate me, but he has discovered a new reason for hating me. It took me no little while to puzzle it out, but I finally discovered that it was because I was more luckily born than he. "'Gentlemen born,' he puts it. "'And still no more dead men,' I twitted Lewis, while smoking Henderson side by side and friendly conversation took their first exercise on deck.  "'She's a common, I tell you, and it'll be sheets and howl-eared stand by all hands when she begins to howl.' I've had to feel of it this long time, and I feel it as plainly as I feel the rigging of a dark night. She's close, she's close. "'Who goes first?' I queried. "'Not Faddle Lewis,' I promise you,' he laughed. "'For it is in the bones of me. I know that come this time next year I'll be gazing in the old mother's eyes. Worry of watching if the sea for the five sons she gave to it.' "'What's he been sighing to your,' Thomas Mugridge demanded a moment later. "'That he's going home some day to see his mother,' I answered diplomatically. "'I never add none,' was the cockney's comment, as he gazed with clusterless, hopeless eyes into mine. CHAPTER XIV It is dawned upon me that I have never placed a proper evaluation upon womankind. For that matter, though not omitive 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 could never find anything when they had departed. But now, alas, how welcome would have been the feel of their presence, their fru-fru 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 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 you 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 heard through the world by themselves. Corseness 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, and 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 overdeveloped. 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 soared 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 Johansson last night. The first superfluous words with which he has favored me since the voyage began. He left Sweden when he was 18, is now 38, and in all the intervening time has not been home once. He met a townsman a couple of years ago in some sailor boarding-house in Chile, so he knew his mother must be still alive. She must be a pretty old woman now, he said, stirring meditatively into the binnacle and then jerking a sharp glance at Harrison, who was stirring a point off the course. When did you last write to her? He performed his mental arithmetic aloud. 81, no, 82, uh, no, 83? Yes, 83. 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 windjam around the horn till Everpool which will give me more money and then I will pay my passage from there home. I will not do any more work. But does she work? Now? How old is she? About seventy, he answered. And then, boastingly, we worked from the time we were born until we die in my country. That is 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 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 at 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 is the matter I asked? Are you sick? He shook his head and with a deep sigh as of awakening caught his breath. He'd better get on course then I chided. He put a few spokes over and the compass card swing slowly to north-northwest and steady itself with slight oscillations. I took a fresh hold on my bedclothes and was preparing to start on when some motion caught my eye and I lucked to stern to the rail. A senui 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 Larson. His right cheek was red with blood which flowed from some wound on 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 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. Johansson, he called softly. Where is he? he demanded of Harrison. The young fellow seemed to have recovered his composure before he answered steadily enough. I don't know, sir. I saw him go forward a little while ago. So did I go forward, 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 Larson shook his head. He said, Come on, leave it where it is. I followed it as heels. There was nothing stirring amid ships. Those cursed hunters was his comment.  But on the four-castle 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 to let the watch sleep with the exception of the officer, the helmsman, in the lookout. Whose lookout, he demanded. Me, sir, answered Holyoke, 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 Larson had turned away with a snort of disgust. Leaving the sailor rubbing, his eyes were surprised at having been let off so easily. Softly, now, Wolf Larson warned me in a whisper as he doubled his body into the four-castle scuttle and prepared to descend. I followed with a quaking heart. What was to happen? I knew no more than I did know what had happened. But blood had been shed and it was through no whim of Wolf Larson down over the side with his scalp laid open. Besides, Johansson was missing. It was my first descent into the four-castle, and I shall not soon forget my impression of it, God as I stood on my feet at the bottom of the ladder. Built directly into the eyes of the schooner, it was of the shape of a triangle along the three sides of which stood the bunks It was no larger than a whole bedroom in Grubstreet, 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 four-castles 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 the whole wall-space hung deep with sea-boots, oil-skins, 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 were no colds or colds, 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 air was filled with the noise of their snoring and of their size and half-growns, tokens plain of the rest of the animal man. This was evidently Wolf-Larsen's quest to find the men who appeared to be asleep and 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 book Caraccio. He took the sea-lamp from a swinging frame and handed it to me. He began at the first bunks forward on starboard side. In the top one lay Ufti Ufti at Kanaka splendid seamen, 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 whatsoever. The eyes only moved. They flashed wide open, big and black, and stared unblinkingly into our faces. Wolf-Larsen put his finger to his lips as a sign for silence, and the eyes closed again.  While Wolf-Larsen held his wrist, he stirred uneasily, bowing his body so that for a second it rested on shoulders and heels. His lips moved, and he gave voice to this enigmatic utterance. A shelling's worth a quarter, but keep your lamps out for throp any beds, or the publicans will shove them on you for sixpence. Then he rolled over on his side with a heavy sobbing sigh, saying, a sixpence is a tanner and a tanner. Satisfied with the honesty of his and Canuck's sleep, Wolf-Larsen passed on to the next two bunks on the starbird side, occupied top and bottom, as we saw in the light of the sea lamp, by Leech and Johnson. As Wolf-Larsen bent down to the lower bunk to take Johnson's pulse, eye standing erect and holding the lamp, saw Leech's head rise going on. He must have divine Wolf-Larsen's trick and the sureness of detection, for the light was at once dashed from my hand, and the floor castle 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 and furiorated bellow go up from Wolf-Larsen that was desperate and blood-curdling. Johnson must have joined him immediately so that his object and groveling 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 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 labored breathing, the short quick gasts 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 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 Larson 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 his tremendous strength I felt that there 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.  Who demanded those who had been really asleep and who had wakened to they knew not what?  This was greeted by whoops of joy and from then on Wolf Larson had seven strong men on top of him, Lewis 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 fashion he could beneath him in the darkness. 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 Larson, but with 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. One 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. 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 ladder held it so that its light was on the scuttle. Wolf Larson 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 mini-leg 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 regained and it still went up. Who is it? Latimer cried. In the rays of the lantern I could see his perfect face peering down. Larson, I heard a muffled cry from within the mass. Latimer reached down with his free hand. I saw a hand shoot up to grass-pizz. Latimer pulled and the next couple of steps were made with a rush. Then Wolf Larson's other hand reached up and clutched the edge of the ladder. The mass swung clear of the ladder, the men still clinging to their escaping foe. They began to drop off to be brushed off against the sharp edge of the scuttle to be knocked off by the legs which were now kicking powerfully. Leech was the last to go, falling sheer back from the top of the scuttle and striking on head and shoulders upon the sprawling mates beneath. Wolf Larson and the lantern and we were left in darkness. End of chapter 14 Chapter 15 of The Seawolf This library box recording is in the public domain. The Seawolf by Jack London Chapter 15 There was a deal of cursing and groaning as the men at the bottom of the ladder crawled to their feet. Somebody struck a light, my thumb's out of joint, said as far as the satirating men. The boat steered and stannish his boat, in which Harrison was polar. You'll find it knocking about by the bits, Leech said, sitting down on the edge of the bunk in which I was concealed. There was a fumbling and the scratching of matches and the sea lamp flared up, dim and smoky and in its weird light bare-legged men moved about nursing their bruises and caring for others. Ufti ufti laid hold of Parsons thumb, pulling it out stoutly and snapping it back into place. I noticed at the same time that the Canuck's knuckles were laid open clean across into the bone. He exhibited them exposing beautiful white teeth and a grin as he did so, and explaining that the wounds had come from striking Wolf-Larsen in the mouth. So it was you, was it, you beggar, belligerently demanded one Kelly, an Irish-American and a longshoreman making his first trip to sea and boat-polar for cure-foot. As he made the demand, he spat out a mouthful of blood and teeth and shoved his pugnacious face close to Ufti ufti. The Canuka leaped backward to his bunk to return with a second leap, flourishing a long knife.  He was evidently for all his youth and inexperienced cock of the forecastle.   Kelly subsided with some muttering and the Canuka flashed his white teeth in a grateful smile. He was a beautiful creature, almost feminine in the pleasing lines of his figure, and there was a softness and large eyes which seemed to counter-deckt his well-earned reputation for strife and action. How did he get away? Johnson asked. He was sitting on the side of his bunk, the whole pose of his figure indicating utter dejection and hopelessness. He was still breathing heavily from the exertion he had made. His shirt had been ripped entirely from him in the struggle, and blood from a gash in the cheek was flowing down his naked chest, marking a red path across his white thigh and ripping to the floor. Because he is the devil, as I told you before, it was Leach's answer, and there at he was on his feet and raging his disappointment with tears in his eyes. And not one of you to get a knife was his unceasing lament, but the rest of the hands had a lively fear of consequences to come and gave no heed to him.  He'll know as soon as ever he claps eyes on his parson, replied. One look at you'd be enough.  He was the only man who was not out of his bunk, and he was jubilant in that he possessed no bruises to advertise that he had had a hand in the night's work. Just wait till he gets a glimpse of your mugs tomorrow, the gang of ye. He chuckled. We'll say we thought it was the mate, said one, and another. I know what I'll say that I heard a row jumped out of my bunk, got a jolly good crack on the jaw from my pains, and sailed in myself. Couldn't tell who or what it was yet out. And it was me you hid, of course, Kelly seconded his face brightening for the moment. Leech and Johnson took no part in the discussion, and it was plain to see that their mates looked upon them as men for whom the worst was inevitable, who were beyond hope and already dead. Leech stood their fears and reproaches for some time. Then he broke out. You make me tired. A nice lot of gizab as you are.  Why couldn't one of you, just one of you, get me a knife when I sung out?    Can't afford to. No shipping masters or beachcomers over here, and he wants you're in his business and he won't. Who's to pole or steer or sail ship if he loses you? It's me and Johnson have to face the music.  I want to get some sleep. That's all right, all right, Parsons spoke up. Maybe he won't do for us but mark my words.  All the while I had been apprehensive concerning my own predicament. What would happen to me when these men discovered my presence? I could never fight my way out as Wolf Larson had done. And at this moment Vladimir called down the scuttles. Hump, the old man wants you. He ain't down here, Parsons called back. Yes he is, I said, sliding out of the bunks, driving my hardest to keep my voice steady and bold. The sailors looked at me in consternation. Fear was strong in their faces and fear. I'm coming, I shouted up to Vladimir. No you don't, Kelly cried, stepping between me and the latter, his right hand shaped into a venerable strangler's clutch.  Let him go, leech commanded. Not on your life was the angry retort. Leech never changed his position on the edge of the bunk. Let him go, I say, he repeated, but this time was gritty and metallic. The Irishman wavered. I made the step by him and he stood aside. When I had gained the latter I turned to the circle of brutal and malignant faces peering at me through the semi-darkness. A sudden and deep sympathy welled up in me. I remembered the cockney's way of putting it. How God must have hated them that they should be tortured so. I said quietly. I tell you he's all right. I could hear Leech saying as I went up the ladder. He don't like the old man no more nor you or me. I found Wolf Larson in the cabin stripped and bloody waiting for me. He greeted me with one of his whimsical smiles. Come, get to work, doctor. The signs are favorable for an extensive practice this voyage. I don't know what the ghost would have been and if I could only cherry such noble sentiments I would tell you her master is deeply grateful. I knew the run of the simple medicine chest the ghost carried and while I was heating water on the cabin stove and getting the things ready for dressing his wounds he moved about laughing and chatting and examining his hurts with a calculating eye.  It has never been my weakness to exalt the flesh, far from it, but there is enough of the artist in me to appreciate its wonder. I must say that I was fascinated by the perfect lines of Wolf Larson's figure and by what I may term the terrible beauty of it. I had noted the men in the forecastle.  Ufti Ufti had been the only one whose lines were at all pleasing while and so far as they pleased. That far they had been what I should call feminine. But Wolf Larson was the villain and almost a god in his perfectness. As he moved about or raised his arms the great muscles leapt and moved under the satiny skin. I have forgotten to say that the bronze ended with his face. His body, thanks to his skin and navy and stock, was fair as the fairest women's. I remember his putting his hand up to feel the wound on his head and my watching the biceps move like a living thing beneath. It was the biceps that had nearly crushed out my life once that I had seen strike so many killing blows. I could not take my eyes from him. I stood motionless a roll of antiseptic cotton in my hand unwinding and spilling itself down to the floor. He noticed me and I became conscious that I was staring at him. God made you well, I said. Did he? He answered. I have told myself and wondered why. Purpose, I began. Utility, he interrupted. This body was made for use. These muscles were made to grip and tear and destroy living things that get between me and life. But have you thought of the other living things? They too have muscles of one kind or another made to grip and tear and destroy and when they come between me and life I outgrip it. Purpose does not explain that. Utility does. It is not beautiful, I protested. Life isn't, you mean, he smiled. Yet you say I was made well. Do you see this? He braced his legs and feet pressing the cabin floor with his toes in a clutching sort of way. Nuts and ridges and mounds of muscle writhed and bunched under the skin. They were as hard as iron. And I observed also that his whole body had unconsciously drawn itself together, tense and alert, that muscles were softly crawling and shaping about the hips, along the back and across the shoulders, that the arms were slightly lifted, their muscles contracting, the fingers croaking till the hands were like talons, and that even some of them were coming watchfulness and measurement and a light none other than of battle. Stability equal Abraham, he said, relaxing on the instant and sinking his body back in the repose, feet with which to clutch the ground, legs to stand on and help withstand, while with arms and hands, teeth and nails I struggled to kill, and to be not killed. Purpose, not argue. I had seen the mechanism of the primitive fighting beast and I was strongly impressed as if I had seen the engines of a great battleship or Atlantic liner. I was surprised, considering the fairest struggle in the forecastle at the superficiality of his hearts, and I pride myself that I had dressed them dexterously.  The blow which he had received before going overboard had laid his scalp open several inches. This, under his direction, I clenched and sewed together, having first shaved the edges of the wound. Then the calf of his leg was badly lacerated and looked as though it had been mangled by a bulldog. Some sailor, he told me, had laid hold of it by his teeth at the beginning of the fight and been dragged to the top of the forecastle ladder when he was kicked loose. By the way, Hum, as I have remarked you are a handyman, Wolf-Warsson began when my work was done. As you know, we're sure to mate. Hereafter you shall stand watches, receive seventy-five dollars per month and be addressed for-and-aft as Mr. Van Wyden. I don't understand navigation, you know, I gasped. Not necessary at all. I really do not care to sit in the high places I objected. I find life precarious enough in my present humble situation. I have no experience. Mediocracy, you see, has its compensations. He smiled as though it were all settled. I won't be mate on this hell-ship, I cried defiantly. I saw his face grow hard and the merciless glitter come into his eyes. He walked to the door of his room saying, and now, Mr. Van Wyden, good night. Good night, Mr. Larson. I answered weakly. End of Chapter 15 Chapter 16 of The Seawolf This Vibervox recording is in the public domain. The Seawolf by Jack London Chapter 16 I cannot say that the position of mate carried with it the fault in that there were no more dishes to wash. I was ignorant of the simplest duties of mate and would have fared badly indeed had the sailors not sympathized with me. I knew nothing of the minutiae of ropes and rigging, of the trimming and setting of sails, but the sailors took pains to put me to write. We was proving an especially good teacher and I had a little trouble with those under me. Otherwise, familiar and varying degree with the sea, they took me as a sort of joke. In truth it was a joke to me that I, the various landsmen, should be filling the office of mate, but to be taken as a joke by others was a different matter. I made no complaint but Wolf Larson demanded the most punctilious sea etiquette in my case, far more than poor Johansson had ever received, and at the expense of several rows, threats, and much grumbling, he brought the hunters to time. I was Mr. Van Wyden, foreign aft, and it was only unofficially that Wolf Larson himself ever addressed me as hump. It was amusing. Perhaps the wind would haul a few points while we were at dinner and as I left the table he would say, Mr. Van Wyden, will you kindly put about on the poor tack? And I would go on deck, back in Lewis to me, and learn from him what was to be done. Then, a few minutes later, having digested his instructions, and thoroughly mastered the maneuver, I would proceed to issue my orders. I remember an early instance of this kind when Wolf Larson appeared on the scene just as I had begun to give orders. He smoked a cigar and looked on quietly and accomplished, and then paced aft by my side along the weather-poop. Hump, he said. I beg pardon, Mr. Van Wyden. I congratulate you. I think you can now fire your father's legs back into the grave to him. You've discovered your own and learned to stand on them. A little rope work, sailmaking, and experience with storms and such things, and by the end of the voyage to the coasting schooner. It was during this period between the death of Johansson and the arrival on the sealing grounds that I passed by pleasantest hours on the coast. Wolf Larson was quite considerate. The sailors helped me, and I was no longer in irritating contact with Thomas Mugridge. And I make free to say, as the days went by, that I found I was taken a certain secret pride in myself. Fantastic as the situation was, a landlubber second in command. I was, nevertheless, carrying it off well. And during that brief time I was proud of myself, and I grew to love the heave and roll of the ghost under my feet as she wallowed north and west through the tropic sea to the islet where we filled our water casks. But my happiness was not unalloyed. It was compared a period of less misery slipped in between the past of great miseries and a future of great miseries. For the ghost, so far as the seaman was concerned, was a hell-ship of the worst description. They never had a moment's rest or peace. Wolf Larson treasured against them the attempt on his life and the drubbing he had received in the forecastle. And morning, noon, and night and all night as well he devoted himself to making life unlivable for them. He knew well the psychology of the little thing, and it was the little things by which he kept the crew worked up to a verge of madness. I have seen Harrison called from his bunk to put properly away a misplaced paintbrush and the two watches below hailed from their tired sleep to accompany him and see him do it. A little thing, truly, but when multiplied by the thousand ingenious devices of such a mind, the mental state of the men in the forecastle may be slightly comprehended. Of course, much grumbling went on and the little outbursts were continually occurring. Blows were struck and there were always two or three men nursing injuries at the hands of the human beast who was their master. It was impossible in the face of the heavy arsenal of weapons carried in the stirridge and cabin. Leech and Johnson were the two particular victims of Wolf Larson's diabolic temper and the look of profound melancholy which had settled on Johnson's face and in his eyes made my heart bleed. With Leech it was different. There was too much of the fighting beast in him. He seemed possessed by an insatiable fury which gave no time for grief. His lips had become distorted into a permanent snarl which at mere sight of Wolf Larson broke out in sound, horrible and menacing, and I do believe unconsciously. I have seen him follow a Wolf Larson about with his eyes like an animal which keeper that while the animal like snarl sounded deep in his throat and vibrated forth between his teeth. I remember once on deck in bright day touching him on the shoulder as preliminary to giving an order. His back was toward me and at the first feel of my hand he leaped upright in the air and away from me snarling and turning his head as he leaped. He had for the moment mistaken me for the man he hated. Both he and Johnson would have killed Wolf Larson at the slightest opportunity but the opportunity never came. Wolf Larson was too wise for that and besides they had no adequate weapons. With their fists alone they had no chance whatever. Time and again he fought it out with leech who fought back always like a wild cat tooth and nail and fist until stretched, exhausted or unconscious on the deck and he was never adverse to another encounter. All the devil that was in him challenged the devil on Wolf Larson. They had but to appear on deck at the same time when they would be at it cursing, snarling, striking and I have seen leech fling himself upon Wolf Larson without warning or provocation. Once he threw his heavy sheath knife missing Wolf Larson's throat by an inch. Another time he dropped a steel Marlin spike from the Misencross tree. It was a difficult cast to make on a rolling ship so far into the spike whistling seventy-five feet through the air barely missed Wolf Larson's head as he emerged from the cabin companion way and drove at length two inches and over into the solid deck planking. Still another time he stole into the steerage possessed himself of a loaded shotgun and was making a rush for the deck with it when caught by carefoot and disarmed. I often wondered why Wolf Larson would kill him and make an end to it but he only laughed and seemed to enjoy it. There seemed a certain spice about it such as man must feel who take delight in making pets of ferocious animals. It gives a thrill to life, he explained to me, when life is carried in one's hand. Man is a natural gambler and life is the biggest stake he can lay. The greater the odds, the greater the thrill. Why should I deny myself the joy of exciting leeches sold to fever pitch? For that matter I do him a kindness. The greatness of sensation is mutual. He is living more royally than any man forward, though he does not know it. For he has what they have not, purpose something to do and be done and I'll absorb an end to strive to attain the desire to kill me, the hope that he may kill me. And he is living deep and high. I doubt that he has ever lived so swiftly and keenly before and I honestly envy him sometimes when I see him raging at the summons of passion and sensibility. Ah, but it is cowardly, cowardly I cried. You have all the advantage. Of the two of us, you and I, who is the greater coward? He asked seriously. The situation is unpleasing. You compromise with your conscience when you make yourself a party to it. If you were really great, really true to yourself, you would join forces with Leech and Johnson. But you are afraid, you are afraid, you want to live. The life that is in you cries out that it must live no matter what the cost. So you live ignominously, untrue to the best you dream of, sinning against your whole little code.  Bah! I play the braver part. I do no sin for I am true to the prompting of the life that is in me. I am sincere with my soul at least, and that is what you are not. There was a sting to what he said. Perhaps after all I was playing the cowardly part. And the more I thought about it, the more it appeared to myself, lay in doing what he had advised, lay in joining forces with Johnson and Leech in working for his death. Right here I think entered the austere conscious of my puritan ancestry impaling me toward lurid deeds in sanctioning even murder as right conduct. I dwelled upon the idea. It would be a most moral act to rid the world of such a monster. The humanity would be better and happier for it, life fairer and sweeter. I pondered it long, lying sleepless in my bunk and reviewing an endless procession the facts of the situation. I talked with Johnson and Leech during the night watches when Wolf Larson was below. Both men had lost hope. Johnson, because of temperamental despondency, Leech, because he had beaten himself in his struggle and was exhausted.  Say nothing but saw wood. We're dead men, I know it, but all the same you might be able to do us a favor sometime when we need it damn bad. It was only next day when Wainlight Island that Wolf Larson opened his mouth in prophecy. He had attacked Johnson, been attacked by Leech, and had just finished whipping the pair of them.  As snarl was the answer. And as for you, Johnson, you'll get so tired of life before I'm through with you that you'll fling yourself into the ocean he added in an aside to me.  I had cherished a hope that his victims would find an opportunity to escape while filling our water barrels, but Wolf Larson had selected his spot well. The ghost lay half a mile beyond the surfline of a lonely beach. Here debauched a deep gorge under his direct supervision, for he went ashore himself. Leech and Johnson filled the small casks and rolled them down to the beach. They had no chance to make a break for liberty in one of the boats. Harrison and Kelly, however, made such an attempt. They composed one of the boat's crews and their task was to fly between the schooner and the shore, carrying a single cask each trip. Just before dinner, on the beach with an empty barrel, they aldered their course and bore away to the left to round the promontory which jutted into the sea between them in liberty. Beyond its foaming base lay the pretty villages of the Japanese colonists and smiling valleys which penetrated deep into the interior. Once in the fastnesses they promised and the two men could defy Wolf Larson. They took the deck all morning and I now learned why they were there. Procuring their rifles they opened fire in a leisurely manner upon the deserters. It was a cold-blooded exhibition of marksmanship. At first their bullets zipped harmlessly along the surface of the water on either side of the boat but as the men continued to pull lustily, they struck closer and closer. Now watch me take Kelly's right look, said, drawing the more careful aim. I was looking through the glasses and I saw the oar blade shatter as he shot. Henderson duplicated it selecting Harrison's right oar. The boat slewed around. The two remaining oars were quickly broken. The men tried to row with the splinters and had them shot out of their hands. Kelly ripped up a bottom board and began paddling but dropped it out of pain as its splinters drove into his hands. Then they gave up, letting the boat drift till a second boat, sent from shore by Wolf Larson, took them in tow and brought them aboard. Late that afternoon we hove up anchor and got away. Nothing was before us but the three or four months hunting on the ceiling grounds. The outlook was black indeed and I went about my work with a heavy heart. The memorial gloom seemed to have descended upon the ghost. Wolf Larson had taken to his bunk with one of his strange, splitting headaches. Harrison stood listlessly at the wheel half-supporting himself by it as though wearied by the weight of his flesh. The rest of the men were morose and silent. I came upon Kelly crouching to the lee of the four-castle scuttle, his head on his knees, his arms about his head in an attitude of unutterable despondency. Johnson I found lying full-length on the four-castle head staring at the troubled churn of the forefoot, and I remembered with horror the suggestion Wolf Larson had made. It seemed likely to bear fruit. I tried to break in on the men's morbid thoughts by calling him away but he smiled sadly at me and refused to obey. Leitch approached me as I returned aft. I want to ask you a favor, Mr. Van Wyden. He said, If it's your luck to ever make Frisco once more, will you hunt up Matt McCarthy? He's my old man. He lives on the hill back of the Mayfair Bakery, running a cobbler's shop that everybody knows, and you'll have no trouble. Tell him I lived to be sorry for the trouble I brought him and the things I'd done, and just tell him God bless him for me. I nodded my head, but said, We'll all win back to San Francisco, Leitch, and you'll be with me when I go to see Matt McCarthy. I'd like to believe you, he answered, shaking my hand, but I can't. Wolf Larson will do for me, I know it, and all I can hope is he'll do it quick. And as he left me, I was aware of the same desire at my heart. The general gloom had gathered me into its folds. The worst appeared inevitable, and as I paced the deck hour after hour, I found myself afflicted with Wolf Larson's repulsive ideas. What was it all about? Where was the grandeur of life that it should permit such wanton destruction of human souls? It was a cheap and sordid thing, after all, this life, and the sooner over, the better. Over and done with. I, too, leaned upon the rail and gazed longingly into the sea with a certainty that sooner or later I should be sinking down down through the cool green depths of its oblivion. End of chapter 16. Chapter 17 of The Seawolf. This library of books recording is in the public domain. The Seawolf by Jack London. Chapter 17 Strange to say, in spite of the general foreboding, nothing of a special moment happened on the ghost. We ran on to the north and west till we reached the coast of Japan and picked up with a great sealherd. Coming from no man knew where in the inimitable pacific, it was traveling north on its annual migration to the rookries of the Bering Sea. And north we traveled with it, ravaging and destroying, flinging the naked carcasses to the shark and salting down the skin so that they might later adorn the fair shoulders of the women of the cities. It was once in slaughter and all for women's sake. No man ate of the seal meat or the oil. After a good day's killing I have seen our decks covered with hides and bodies, slippery with fat and blood, red masks, ropes, and rails splattered with the sanguinary color, and the men, like butchers playing their trade, naked and red of arm and hand, hard at work with ripping and cleansing knives, removing the skins from the pretty sea creatures they had killed. It was my task to tally the pelts as they came aboard from the boats to oversee the skinning and afterward the cleansing of the decks and bringing things ship-shape again. It was not pleasant work. My soul and my stomach revolted at it and yet in a way this handling and directing of many men was good for me. It developed little executive ability I possessed and I was aware of a toughening or hardening which I was undergoing and which could not be anything but wholesome for Sissy Van Wyden. One thing I was beginning to feel and that was that I could never again be quite the same man I had been. While my hope and faith in human life still survived Wolf Larson's destructive criticism, he had nevertheless been a cause of change in minor matters. He had opened up for me the world of the real of which I had known practically nothing and from which I had always shrunk. I had learned to look more closely at life as it was to recognize that there were such things as facts in the world to emerge from the realm of mind and idea and to place certain values on the concrete and objective phases of existence. I saw more of Wolf Larson than ever when we had gained the grounds. For when the weather was fair and we were in the midst of the herd, all hands were away in the boats and left on board were only he and I and Thomas Mugridge did not count. But there was no play about it. The six boats spreading out fan-wise from the schooner until the first weather boat and the last lee boat were anywhere from ten to twenty miles apart cruised along a straight course over the sea till nightfall or bad weather drove them in. It was our duty to sail the ghost well to leeward of the last lee boat so that all the boats should have fair wind to run for in case of squalls or threatening weather. It is no slight matter for two men, particularly when the stiff wind is sprung up to handle a vessel like the ghost steering, keeping look out for the boats and setting or taking in sail so it devolved on me to learn and learn quickly. Steering I picked up easily but running a loft to the cross-trees and swinging my whole weight by my arms when the rat lines and climbs still higher was more difficult. This too I learned and quickly for I felt somehow a wild desire to vindicate myself in Wolf Larson's eyes to prove my right to live in ways other than of the mind. Nay, the time came when I took joy in the run of the mast head and then the clinging on by my legs at that precarious height while I swept the sea with glasses on each of the boats. I remember one beautiful day when the boats left early and the report of the hunters' guns grew dim and distant and died away as they scattered far and wide over the sea. There was just the faintest wind from the westward but it breathed this last by the time we managed to get to Leeward of the last Lee boat. One by one I was at the mast head and saw. The six boats rolled to the earth as they followed the seal into the west. We lay, scarcely rolling on the placid sea, unable to follow. Wolf Larson was apprehensive. The barometer was down and the sky to the east did not please him. He studied it with unceasing vigilance. If she comes out of there he said, hard and snappy putting us to windward of the boats it's likely there will be empty bunks and steerage and focussle. By eleven o'clock the sea had become glass. By midday though we were well up in the northerly latitudes the heat was sickening. There was no freshness in the air. It was sultry and oppressive rebinding me of what the old Californian's term earthquake weather. There was something ominous about it and in intangible ways one was made to feel that the worst was slowly the whole eastern sky filled with clouds that over-towered us like some black Sierra of the infernal regions. So clearly could one see canyon, gorge and precipice and the shadows that lie therein that one looked unconsciously for the white surfline and bellowing caverns where the sea charges on the land. And still we rocked gently and there was no wind. It's no square Wolf Larson said. Old Mother Nature's going to get up on her hind legs and howl for all that's in her and it'll keep us jumping hump to pull through with half our boats. You'd better run up and loosen the top sails. But if it is going to howl and there are only two of us I asked a note of protest in my voice why we've got to make the best of the first of it and run down to our boats before our canvas is ripped out of us.  The sticks will stand it and you and I will have to that we've got plenty cut out for us. Still the calm continued. We ate dinner, a hurried and anxious meal for me with 18 men abroad on the sea and beyond the bulge of the earth and with that heaven rolling mountain range of clouds moving slowly down upon us. Wolf Larson did not seem good, however, though I noticed when we returned to the deck a slight twitching of the nostrils a perceptible quickness of movement. His face was stern, the lines of it had grown hard and yet in his eyes blue, clear blue this day there was a strange brilliancy of bright, scintillating light. It struck me that he was joyous in a ferocious sort of way. That he was glad there was an impending struggle that he was thrilled and upborn with knowledge that one of the great moments of living when the tide of life surges up and flood was upon him. Once and unwittingly that he did so or that I saw, he laughed aloud mockingly and defiantly at the advancing storm.  He was daring destiny and he was unafraid. He walked to the galley. Cookie, by the time you've finished pots and pans you'll be wanted on deck. Stand ready for a call. Hump, he said, becoming cognizant of the fascinating gaze I bent upon him. This beats whiskey and is where your obar misses. I think he only half lived after all. The western half of the sky had by now grown murky. The sun had dimmed and faded out of sight. It was too in the afternoon and a ghostly twilight shot through by wandering purpleish lights had descended upon us. In this purpleish light Wolf Larson's face glowed and glowed and to my excited fancy he appeared encircled by a halo. We lay in the midst of an unearthly quiet while all about us were signs and omens of oncoming sound and movement. The sultry heat had become unendurable. The sweat was standing on my forehead and I could feel it trickling down my nose. I felt as though I should faint and reached out to the rail for support. And then, just then, the faintest possible whisper of air passed by. It was from the east and like a whisper it came and went. The drooping canvas was not stirred and yet my face had felt the air and cooled. Cookie Wolf Larson called in a low voice. Thomas Mugridge turned a pitiful scarred face. Let go that four-boom tackle and pass it across and, when she's willing, let go the sheet and come in snug with the tackle. And if you make a mess of it it will be the last you ever make. Understand? Mr. Van Wyden stand by to pass the head sails over. Then jump for the top sails and let them as quick as God'll let you. The quicker you do it the easier you'll find it. As for Cookie, if he isn't lively batting between the eyes. I was aware of the compliment and pleased in that no threat had accompanied my instructions. We were aligned head to northwest and it was his intention to jibe over all with the first puff. We'll have the breeze on our quarter, he explained to me. By the last guns the boats were bearing away slightly to the southward. He turned and walked after the wheel. I went forward and took my station at the gibbs. Another whisper of wind and another passed by. The canvas flapped lazily. Thank God she's not coming all of a bunch, Mr. Van Wyden, was the cockney's fervent ejaculation. And I was indeed thankful for I had by this time learned enough to know with all our canvas spread what disaster in such event awaited us. The whispers of wind became puffs, the sails filled, the ghost moved. Wolf Larson put the wheel hard up to port and we began to pay off. The wind was now dead as turn, muttering and puffing stronger and stronger, and my head sails were pounding lustily. I did not see what went on elsewhere, though I felt the sudden surge and heel of the schooner as the wind pressures changed to the jibbing of the four and main sails. My hands were full with the flying gibb, gibb, and stay-sail, and by the time this part of my task was accomplished, the ghost was leaping into the southwest, the wind on her quarter and all her sheets to starboard. Without pausing for breath, though my heart was beating like a trip-hammer from my exertions, crying to the top sails, and before the wind had become too strong, we had them fairly set and were coiling down. Then I went af for orders. Wolf Larson nodded approval and relinquished the wheel to me. The wind was strengthening steadily and the sea rising. For an hour I steered, each moment becoming more difficult. I had not the experience to steer at the gate where we were going on a quartering course. Now take a run up with the glasses and raise some of the boats. We've made at least ten knots and we're going twelve or thirteen now. The old girl knows how to walk. I contended myself with the four cross-trees some seventy feet above the deck. As I searched the vacant stretch of water before me, I comprehended thoroughly the need for haste if we were to recover any of our men. Indeed, as I gazed at the heavy sea we were running, I doubted that there was a boat afloat. It did not seem possible that such frail craft could survive such stress of wind and water. I could not feel the full force of the wind before we were running with it, but from my lofty perch I looked down as though outside the ghost and apart from her and saw the shape of her outline sharply against the foaming sea as she tore along instinct with life. Sometimes she would lift and send across some great wave, burying her starboard rail from view and covering her decks to the hatches with boiling ocean. At such moments, starting from a windward roll, I would go flying through the air with dizzying swiftness as though I clung to the end of a huge inverted pendulum, the arc of which, between the greater rolls, must have been seventy feet or more. Once the terror of this giddy sweep overpowered me and for a while I clung on, hand and foot, weak and trembling, unable to search the sea for the missing boats, or to behold ought of the sea but that which roared underneath and strove to overwhelm the ghost. But the thought of the men in the midst of it steadied me and in my quest for them I forgot myself. For an hour I saw nothing but the naked desolate sea and the vagrant shaft of sunlight struck the ocean and turned its surface to wrathful silver.  I waited patiently. Again the tiny point of black projected itself through the wrathful plays a couple of points off our port bow. I did not attempt to shout but communicated the news to Wolf Larson by waving my arm. He changed the course and I signaled affirmation when the speck showed dead ahead. It grew larger and so swiftly that for the first time I fully appreciated the speed of our flight. Wolf Larson motioned for me to come down and when I stood beside him at the wheel gave me instructions for heaving too.  Yours is to do your own work and have Cookie stand by the foresheet. I managed to make my way forward but there was little choice of sides for the weather rail seemed buried as often as the lee. Having instructed Thomas Mugridge as to what he was to do I clambered into the fore rigging a few feet. The boat was now very close and I could make out plainly that it was lying head to wind and sea and dragging on its mast and sail which had been thrown overboard and made to serve as a sea anchor. The three men were bailing. Each rolling mountain whelmed them from view and I would wait with sickening anxiety fearing that they would never appear again. Then and with black suddenness the boat would shoot clear through the foaming crest bow pointed to the sky and the whole length of her bottom showing wet and dark till she seemed on end. There would be a fleeting glimpse of the three men flinging water dropping over and fall into the yawning valley bow down and showing her full inside length to the stern upreared almost directly above the bow. Each time that she reappeared was a miracle. The ghost suddenly changed her course keeping away and it came to me with a shock that Wolf Larson was giving up the rescue as impossible. Then I realized he was preparing to heave to and drop to the deck to be in readiness. We were now dead before the wind the boat far away in abreast of us. I felt an abrupt easing of the schooner, a loss for the moment of all strain and pressure coupled with a swift acceleration of speed. She was rushing around on her heel into the wind. As she arrived at right angles to the sea the full force of the wind from which we had hitherto run away caught us. I was unfortunately unignorantly facing it. It stood up against me like a wall filling my lungs with air which I could not expel. And as I choked and strangled and as the ghost wallowed for an instant broadside on and rolling straight over and far into the wind I beheld a huge sea rise far above my head. I turned aside, got my breath and looked again. The wave overtopped the ghost and I gazed sheer up and into it. The shaft of sunlight smote the over curl and I caught a glimpse of translucent rushing green backed by a milky smother of foam. Then it descended. Pandemonium broke loose. Everything happened at once. I was struck a crushing stunning blow nowhere in particular and yet everywhere. My hold had been broken loose. I was underwater and the thought passed through my mind that this was the terrible thing of which I had heard rain swept in the trough of the sea. My body struck and pounded as it was dashed helplessly along and turned over and over. And when I could hold my breath no longer I breathed this stinging salt water into my lungs. But through it all I clung to the one idea I must get the jib backed over to windward. I had no fear of death. I had no doubt but that I would come through somehow. And as this idea of following Wolf Larson's order persisted in my dazed consciousness I seemed to see him standing at the wheel in the midst of the wild welder pitting his will against the will of the storm and defying it. I brought up violently against what I took to be the rail, breathed and breathed the sweet air again. I tried to rise but struck my head and was knocked back on hands and knees. By some freak of the waters I had been swept clear into the forecastle head and into the eyes. As I scrambled out on all four I passed over the body of Thomas Mugridge who lay in a groaning heap. There was no time to investigate. I must get the jib backed over. When I emerged on deck it seemed that the end of everything had come. On all sides there was a rending and crashing of wood and steel and canvas. The ghost was being wrenched and torn to fragments. The foresail and foretop sail, empty to the wind by the maneuver and with no one to bring in the sheet in time, were thundering into ribbons, the heavy boom threshing and splintering from rail to rail. The air was thick with flying wreckage, detached ropes and stays were hissing and coiling like snakes and down through it all crashed the gaff of the foresail. The spark could not have missed me by many inches while it stirred to action. Perhaps the situation was not hopeless. I remembered Wolf Larson's caution.  And where was he? I caught sight of him toiling at the main sheet, heaving it in and flat with his tremendous muscles. The stern of the schooner lifted high in the air and his body outlined against a white surge of sea sweeping past. All this and more, a whole field of chaos and wreck in possibly fifteen seconds I had seen and heard and grasped. I did not stop to see what had become of the small boat but sprang to the jib sheet. The jib itself was beginning to slap, partially filling and emptying with sharp reports, but with a turn to the sheet and the application of my whole strength each time it slap I slowly backed it. This I know, I did my best. I pulled till I burst open the ends of all my fingers and while I pulled the flying jib and stay sail, split their claws apart and thundered into nothingness. Still I pulled holding what I gained each time with a double turn until the next slap gave me more. Then the sheet gave with greater ease and Wolf Larson was beside me heaving in alone while I busy taking up the slack. Make fast he shouted and come on. As I followed him I noted that in spite of rack and ruin a rough order obtained. The ghost was hove too. She was still in working order and she was still working. Though the rest of her sails were gone the jib, back to windward and the mainsail hauled down flat where themselves holding and holding her bow to the furriest sea as well. I looked for the boat and while Wolf Larson cleared the boat tackle I saw it lift to leeward on a big sea and not a score a feet away. And so nicely had he made his calculation we drifted down upon it so that nothing remained to do but hook the tackles to either end and heist to the board. But this was not done so easily as it is written. In the bow was kerfoot Ufti Ufti in the stern and Kelly amid ships. As we drifted closer the boat away while we sank in the trough till almost straight above me I could see the heads of the three men trained over side and looking down. Then the next moment we would lift and soar upward while they sank far down beneath us. It seemed incredible that the next surge should not crush the ghost down upon the tiny egg shell. But at the right moment I passed the tackle to the Kanaka while Wolf Larson did the same thing forward to kerfoot. Both tackles were hooked in a trice and the three men deftly timing the roll made a simultaneous leap aboard the schooner. As the ghost rolled her side out of water the boat was lifted snugly against her and before the return roll came we had heaved it in over the side and turned it bottom up on the deck. I noticed blood spouting from kerfoot's left hand in some way the third finger rushed to a pulp. But he gave no sign of pain and with his single right hand helped to slash the boat in its place. Stand by to let that gib over you oofty Wolf Larson commanded the very second we had finished with the boat. Kelly come aft and slack off the mainsheet. You kerfoot go forward and see what's become of Cookie. Mr. Van Wyden run to the loft again and cut away any stray stuff on your way. When commanded he went aft with his particular tigerish leaps to the wheel.  This time as we went into the trough of the sea and were swept there were no sails to carry away. And halfway to the cross trees and flattened against the rigging by the full force of the wind so that it would have been impossible for me to have fallen the ghost almost on her beam ends as she sked parallel with the water. I looked not down but at almost right angles from the perpendicular to the deck of the ghost. But I saw not the deck but where the deck should have been for it was buried beneath a wild tumbling of water. Out of this water I could see the two masks rising and that was all. The ghost for the moment was buried beneath the sea as she squared off more and more escaping from the side pressure she righted herself and broke her deck like a whale's back through the ocean surface. Then we raced and wildly across the wild sea the while I hung on like a fly in the cross trees and searched for the other boats. In half an hour I sighted the second one swamped and bottomed up to which were desperately clinging Jock Horner, Fat Lewis and Johnson. This time I remained aloft and Wolf Larson succeeded in heaving too without being swept as before we drifted down upon it. Tackles were made fast and lines flung to the men who scrambled aboard like monkeys. The boat itself was crushed and splintered against the schooner's side as it came inboard but the wreck was securely lashed for it could be patched and made whole again. The first bore away before the storm this time so submerging herself that for some seconds I thought she would never reappear. Even the wheel quite a deal higher than the waist was covered and swept again and again. At such moments I felt strangely alone with God, alone with him and watching the chaos of his wrath. Then the wheel would reappear in Wolf Larson's broad shoulders his hands gripping the spokes and the schooner to the course of his will, himself an earth-god dominating the storm, flinging its descending waters from him and riding it to his own ends. And oh the marvel of it, the marvel of it, the tiny men should live and breathe and work and drive so frail contrivance of wood and cloth through so tremendous an elemental strife. As before the ghosts swung drifting their deck again out of the sea and dashed before the howling blast, it was now half past five and half an hour later when the last of the day lost itself in the dim and furious twilight I sighted the third boat. It was bottom up and there was no sign of its crew. Wolf Larson repeated his maneuver holding off and then rounding up to windward and drifting down upon it. But this time he missed 40 feet, the boat passing the stern. Number four boat, Ufti Ufti cried, his keen eyes reading its number in the one second when it lifted clear of the foam and upside down. It was Henderson's boat and with him had been lost Holy Oak and Williams, another of the deep water crowd. Lost they indubitably were, but the boat remained and Wolf Larson made one more reckless attempt to recover it. I had come down to the deck and I saw Horner and Kerfoot vainly protest against the attempt. By God I'll not be robbed of my boat by any storm that ever blew out of hell, he shouted. And though we forestood with our heads together that we might hear, his voice seemed faint and far, as though removed from us by an immense distance. Mr. Van Wyden, he cried, and I heard through the tumult as one might hear a whisper. Stand by that jib with Johnson and Ufti. The rest of you tail after the mainsheet. Lively now, or I'll sail you all in the kingdom come. Understand? And when he put the wheel hard over and the ghost bow swung off, there was nothing for the hunters to do but obey and make the best of a risky chance. How great the risk I realized when I was once more buried beneath the pounding seas and the foot of the foremast. My fingers were torn loose and I swept across to the side and over the side into the sea. I could not swim but before I could sink I was swept back again. A strong hand gripped me and when the ghost finally emerged I found that I owed my life to Johnson. I saw him looking anxiously about him and noted that Callie, who had come forward at the last moment this time having missed the boat and not being in the same position as in the previous instances, Wolf Larson was compelled to resort to a different maneuver. Running off before the wind with everything to starboard he came about and returned close hauled on the port tack. Grand Johnson shouted in my ear as we successfully came through the attendant de Lige and I knew that he referred not to Wolf Larson's seamanship but to the performance of the ghost herself. It was now so dark that there was no sign of the boat but Wolf Larson held back through the frightful turmoil as if guided by unerring instinct. This time though we were continually half buried there was no trough in which to be swept and we drifted squarely down upon the upturned boat badly smashing it as it was heaved inboard. Two hours of terrible work followed in which all hands of us two hunters, three sailors Wolf Larson and I reefed first one and then the other the jib and mainsail. Hove two under this short canvas our decks were comparatively free of water while the ghost bobbed and docked amongst the comers like a quark. I had burst open the ends of my fingers at the very first and during the reefing I had worked with tears of pain running down my cheeks and when all was done I gave up like a woman and rolled upon the deck in the agony of exhaustion. In the meantime Thomas Mugridge, like a drowned rat was being dragged out from under the forecastle head where he had cravenly ensconced himself. I saw him pulled after the cabin and noted with a shock of surprise that the golly had disappeared. A clean space of deck showed where it had stood. In the cabin I found all hands assembled sailors as well and while the coffee was being cooked over the small stove we drank whiskey and crunched hard tack. Never in my life had food been so welcome and never had hot coffee tasted so good. So violently did the ghost pitch and toss and tumble that it was impossible for even the sailors to move about without holding on and several times after a cry of, now she takes it we were heaped upon the wall of the port cabins as though it had been the deck.  If anything's going to run us down we couldn't get out of its way. Turn in all hands and get some sleep. The sailors slipped forward setting the side lights as they went while the two hunters remained asleep in the cabin it not being deemed advisable to open the slide to the steerage companion way. Wolf Larson and I between us cut off care-foot's crushed finger and sewed up the stump. Mugridge, who during all the time he had been compelled to cook and serve coffee and keep the fire going had complained of internal pains and now swore that he had a broken river too. On examination we found that he had three and his face was deferred to next day principally for the reason that I did not know anything about broken ribs and would first have to read it up. I don't think it was worth it, I said to Wolf Larson a broken boat for Kelly's life. But Kelly didn't amount to much, was the reply. Good night. After all that had passed suffering intolerable anguish in my finger ends and with three boats missing I say nothing of the wild capers the ghost was cutting. I should have thought it impossible to sleep. But my eyes must have closed the instant my head touched the pillow and in utter exhaustion I swept throughout the night the wild, the ghost lonely and undirected fodder away through the storm. End of chapter 17