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I SEEMED SWINGING IN A mighty rhythm through orbit vastness.
Sparkling points of light spluttered and shot past me. They were
stars, I knew, and flaring comets, that peopled my flight among
the suns. As I reached the limit of my swing and prepared to rush
back on the counter-swing, a great gong struck, and thundered
and reverberated through abysmal space. For an immeasurable period,
quiescent, lapped in the rippling of placid centuries, I enjoyed
and pondered my tremendous flight.
But a change came over the face of the dream, for a dream I
told myself it must be. My rhythm grew shorter and shorter. I
was jerked from swing to counter-swing with irritating haste.
I could scarcely catch my breath, so fiercely was I impelled through
the heavens. The gong thundered more frequently and more furiously.
I grew to await it with a nameless dread. Then it seemed as though
I were being dragged over rasping sands, white and hot in the
sun. This gave place to a sense of intolerable anguish. My skin
was scorching in the torment of fire. The gong clanged and knelled.
The sparkling points of light flashed past me in an interminable
stream, as though the whole sidereal system were dropping into
the void. I gasped, caught my breath painfully, and opened my
eyes. Two men were kneeling beside me, working over me. My mighty
rhythm was the lift and forward plunge of a ship on the sea. The
terrific gong was a frying-pan, hanging on the wall, that rattled
and clattered with each leap of the ship. The rasping, scorching
sands were a man's hard hands chafing my naked chest. I squirmed
under the pain of it and half lifted my head. My chest was raw
and red, and I could see tiny blood-globules starting through
the torn and inflamed cuticle.
'That'll do, Yonson,' one of the men said. 'Carn't yer see
you've bloomin' well rubbed all the gent's skin off?'
The man addressed as Yonson, a man of the heavy Scandinavian
type, ceased chafing me and arose awkwardly to his feet. The man
who had spoken to him was clearly a Cockney, with the clean lines
and weakly pretty, almost effeminate, face of the man who has
absorbed the sound of Bow Bells with his mother's milk. A draggled
muslin cap on his head, and a dirty gunny-sack about his slim
hips, proclaimed him cook of the decidedly dirty ship's galley
in which I found myself.
'An' 'ow yer feelin' now, sir?' he asked, with the subservient
smirk which comes only of generations of tip-seeking ancestors.
For reply, I twisted weakly into a sitting posture, and was
helped by Yonson to my feet. The rattle and bang of the frying-pan
was grating horribly on my nerves. I could not collect my thoughts.
Clutching the woodwork of the galley for support,- and I confess
the grease with which it was scummed put my teeth on edge,- I
reached across a hot cooking-range to the offending utensil, unhooked
it, and wedged it securely into the coal-box.
The cook grinned at my exhibition of nerves, and thrust into
my hand a steaming mug with an ''Ere, this'll do yer good.'
It was a nauseous mess,- ship's coffee,- but the heat of it
was revivifying. Between gulps of the molten stuff I glanced down
at my raw and bleeding chest and turned to the Scandinavian.
'Thank you, Mr. Yonson,' I said; 'but don't you think your
measures were rather heroic?'
It was because he understood the reproof of my action, rather
than of my words, that he held up his palm for inspection. It
was remarkably calloused. I passed my hand over the horny projections,
and my teeth went on edge once more from the horrible rasping
sensation produced.
'My name is Johnson, not Yonson,' he said in very good, though
slow, English, with no more than a shade of accent to it.
There was mild protest in his pale-blue eyes, and, withal,
a timid frankness and manliness that quite won me to him.
'Thank you, Mr. Johnson,' I corrected, and reached out my hand
for his.
He hesitated, awkward and bashful, shifted his weight from
one leg to the other, then blunderingly gripped my hand in a hearty
shake.
'Have you any dry clothes I may put on?' I asked the cook.
'Yes, sir,' he answered, with cheerful alacrity. 'I'll run
down an' tyke a look over my kit, if you've no objections, sir,
to wearin' my things.'
He dived out of the galley door, or glided, rather, with a
swiftness and smoothness of gait that struck me as being not so
much cat-like as oily. In fact, this oiliness, or greasiness,
as I was later to learn, was probably the most salient expression
of his personality.
'And where am I?' I asked Johnson, whom I took, and rightly,
to be one of the sailors. 'What vessel is this? And where is she
bound?'
'Off the Farralones, heading about sou'west,' he answered slowly
and methodically, as though groping for his best English, and
rigidly observing the order of my queries. 'The schooner Ghost;
bound seal-hunting to Japan.'
'And who is the captain? I must see him as soon as I am dressed?'
Johnson looked puzzled and embarrassed. He hesitated while
he groped in his vocabulary and framed a complete answer. 'The
cap'n is Wolf Larsen, or so men call him. I never heard his other
name. But you better speak soft with him. He is mad this morning.
The mate-'
But he did not finish. The cook had glided in.
'Better sling yer 'ook out of 'ere, Yonson,' he said. 'The
Old Man'll be wantin' yer on deck, an' this ayn't no d'y to fall
foul of 'im.'
Johnson turned obediently to the door, at the same time, over
the cook's shoulder, favoring me with an amazingly solemn and
portentous wink, as though to emphasize his interrupted remark
and the need for me to be soft-spoken with the captain.
Hanging over the cook's arm was a loose and crumpled array
of evil-looking and sour-smelling garments.
'They was put aw'y wet, sir,' he vouchsafed explanation. 'But
you'll 'ave to make them do while I dry yours out by the fire.'
Clinging to the woodwork, staggering with the roll of the ship,
and aided by the cook, I managed to slip into a rough woolen undershirt.
On the instant my flesh was creeping and crawling from the harsh
contact. He noticed my involuntary twitching and grimacing, and
smirked:
'I only 'ope yer don't ever 'ave to get used to such as that
in this life, 'cos you've got a bloomin' soft skin, that you 'ave,
more like a lydy's than any I know of. I was bloomin' well sure
you was a gentleman as soon as I set eyes on yer.'
I had taken a dislike to him at the first, and as he helped
to dress me this dislike increased. There was something repulsive
about his touch. I shrank from his hand; my flesh revolted. And
between this and the smells arising from various pots boiling
and bubbling on the galley fire, I was in haste to get out into
the fresh air. Further, there was the need of seeing the captain
about what arrangements could be made for getting me ashore.
A cheap cotton shirt, with frayed collar and a bosom discolored
with what I took to be ancient bloodstains, was put on me amidst
a running and apologetic fire of comment. A pair of workman's
brogans incased my feet, and for trousers I was furnished with
a pair of pale-blue, washed-out overalls, one leg of which was
fully ten inches shorter than the other. The abbreviated leg looked
as though the devil had there clutched for the Cockney's soul
and missed the shadow for the substance.
'And whom have I to thank for this kindness?' I asked, when
I stood completely arrayed, a tiny boy's cap on my head, and for
coat a dirty, striped cotton jacket which ended at the small of
my back, and the sleeves of which reached just below my elbows.
The cook drew himself up in smugly humble fashion, a deprecating
smirk on his face. Out of my experience with stewards on the Atlantic
liners at the end of the voyage, I could have sworn he was waiting
for his tip. From my fuller knowledge of the creature I now know
that the posture was unconscious. An hereditary servility, no
doubt, was responsible.
'Mugridge, sir,' he fawned, his effeminate features running
into a greasy smile. 'Thomas Mugridge, sir, an' at yer service.'
'All right, Thomas,' I said. 'I shall not forget you- when
my clothes are dry.'
A soft light suffused his face, and his eyes glistened, as
though somewhere in the deeps of his being his ancestors had quickened
and stirred with dim memories of tips received in former lives.
'Thank you, sir,' he said very gratefully and very humbly indeed.
Precisely in the way that the door slid back, he slid aside,
and I stepped out on deck. I was still weak from my prolonged
immersion. A puff of wind caught me, and I staggered across the
moving deck to a corner of the cabin, to which I clung for support.
The schooner, heeled over far out from the perpendicular, was
bowing and plunging into the long Pacific roll. If she were heading
southwest, as Johnson had said, the wind, then, I calculated,
was blowing nearly from the south. The fog was gone, and in its
place the sun sparkled crisply on the surface of the water. I
turned to the east, where I knew California must lie, but could
see nothing save low-lying fog-banks- the same fog, doubtless,
that had brought about the disaster to the Martinez and placed
me in my present situation. To the north, not far away, a group
of naked rocks thrust above the sea, on one of which I could distinguish
a lighthouse. In the southwest, and almost in our course, I saw
the pyramidal loom of some vessel's sails.
Having completed my survey of the horizon, I turned to my more
immediate surroundings. My first thought was that a man who had
come through a collision and rubbed shoulders with death merited
more attention than I received. Beyond a sailor at the wheel,
who stared curiously across the top of the cabin, I attracted
no notice whatever.
Everybody seemed interested in what was going on amidships.
There, on a hatch, a large man was lying on his back. He was fully
clothed, though his shirt was ripped open in front. Nothing was
to be seen of his chest, however, for it was covered with a mass
of black hair, in appearance like the furry coat of a dog. His
face and neck were hidden beneath a black beard, intershot with
gray, which would have been stiff and bushy had it not been limp
and draggled and dripping with water. His eyes were closed, and
he was apparently unconscious; but his mouth was wide open, his
breast heaving as though from suffocation as he labored noisily
for breath. A sailor, from time to time and quite methodically,
as a matter of routine, dropped a canvas bucket into the ocean
at the end of a rope, hauled it in hand under hand, and sluiced
its contents over the prostrate man.
Pacing back and forth the length of the hatchway, and savagely
chewing the end of a cigar, was the man whose casual glance had
rescued me from the sea. His height was probably five feet ten
inches, or ten and a half; but my first impression or feel of
the man was not of this, but of his strength. And yet, while he
was of massive build, with broad shoulders and deep chest, I could
not characterize his strength as massive. It was what might be
termed a sinewy, knotty strength, of the kind we ascribe to lean
and wiry men, but which, in him, because of his heavy build, partook
more of the enlarged gorilla order. Not that in appearance he
seemed in the least gorilla-like. What I am striving to express
is this strength itself, more as a thing apart from his physical
semblance. It was a strength we are wont to associate with things
primitive, with wild animals and the creatures we imagine our
tree-dwelling prototypes to have been- a strength savage, ferocious,
alive in itself, the essence of life in that it is the potency
of motion, the elemental stuff itself out of which the many forms
of life have been molded.
Such was the impression of strength I gathered from this man
who paced up and down. He was firmly planted on his legs; his
feet struck the deck squarely and with surety: every movement
of a muscle, from the heave of the shoulders to the tightening
of the lips about the cigar, was decisive and seemed to come out
of a strength that was excessive and overwhelming. In fact, though
this strength pervaded every action of his, it seemed but the
advertisement of a greater strength that lurked within, that lay
dormant and no more than stirred from time to time, but which
might arouse at any moment, terrible and compelling, like the
rage of a lion or the wrath of a storm.
The cook stuck his head out of the galley door and grinned
encouragingly at me, at the same time jerking his thumb in the
direction of the man who paced up and down by the hatchway. Thus
I was given to understand that he was the captain, the 'Old Man,'
in the cook's vernacular, the person whom I must interview and
put to the trouble of somehow getting me ashore. I had half started
forward, to get over with what I was certain would be a stormy
quarter of an hour, when a more violent suffocating paroxysm seized
the unfortunate person who was lying on his back. He writhed about
convulsively. The chin, with the damp black beard, pointed higher
in the air as the back muscles stiffened and the chest swelled
in an unconscious and instinctive effort to get more air.
The captain, or Wolf Larsen, as men called him, ceased pacing,
and gazed down at the dying man. So fierce had this final struggle
become that the sailor paused in the act of flinging more water
over him, and stared curiously, the canvas bucket partly tilted
and dripping its contents to the deck. The dying man beat a tattoo
on the hatch with his heels, straightened out his legs, stiffened
in one great, tense effort, and rolled his head from side to side.
Then the muscles relaxed, the head stopped rolling, and a sigh,
as of profound relief, floated upward from his lips. The jaw dropped,
the upper lip lifted, and two rows of tobacco-discolored teeth
appeared. It seemed as though his features had frozen into a diabolical
grin at the world he had left and outwitted.
Then a most surprising thing occurred. The captain broke loose
upon the dead man like a thunderclap. Oaths rolled from his lips
in a continuous stream. And they were not namby-pamby oaths, or
mere expressions of indecency. Each word was a blasphemy, and
there were many words. They crisped and crackled like electric
sparks. I had never heard anything like it in my life, nor could
I have conceived it possible. With a turn for literary expression
myself, and a penchant for forcible figures and phrases, I appreciated
as no other listener, I dare say, the peculiar vividness and strength
and absolute blasphemy of his metaphors. The cause of it all,
as near as I could make out, was that the man, who was mate, had
gone on a debauch before leaving San Francisco, and then had the
poor taste to die at the beginning of the voyage and leave Wolf
Larsen short-handed.
It should be unnecessary to state, at least to my friends,
that I was shocked. Oaths and vile language of any sort had always
been unutterably repellent to me. I felt a wilting sensation,
a sinking at the heart, and, I might just as well say, a giddiness.
To me death had always been invested with solemnity and dignity.
It had been peaceful in its occurrence, sacred in its ceremonial.
But death in its more sordid and terrible aspects was a thing
with which I had been unacquainted till now. As I say, while I
appreciated the power of the terrific denunciation that swept
out of Wolf Larsen's mouth, I was inexpressibly shocked. But the
dead man continued to grin unconcernedly with a sardonic humor,
a cynical mockery and defiance. He was master of the situation.
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