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SOMETIMES I THOUGHT Wolf Larsen mad, or half mad at least,
what with his strange moods and vagaries. At other times I took
him for a great man, a genius who had never arrived. And, finally,
I was convinced that he was the perfect type of the primitive
man, born a thousand years or generations too late, and an anachronism
in this culminating century of civilization. He was certainly
an individualist of the most pronounced type. Not only that, but
he was very lonely. There was no congeniality between him and
the rest of the men aboard ship; his tremendous virility and mental
strength walled him apart. They were more like children to him,
even the hunters, and as children he treated them, descending
perforce to their level and playing with them as a man plays with
puppies. Or else he probed them with the cruel hand of a vivisectionist,
groping about in their mental processes and examining their souls
as though to see of what this soul-stuff was made.
I had seen him a score of times, at table, insulting this hunter
or that with cool and level eyes and, withal, a certain air of
interest, pondering their actions or replies or petty rages with
a curiosity almost laughable to me who stood onlooker and who
understood. Concerning his own rages, I was convinced that they
were not real, that they were sometimes experiments, but that
in the main they were the habits of a pose or attitude he had
seen fit to take toward his fellowmen. I knew, with the possible
exception of the incident of the dead mate, that I had not seen
him really angry; nor did I wish ever to see him in a genuine
rage, when all the force of him would be called into play.
While on the question of vagaries, I shall tell what befell
Thomas Mugridge in the cabin, and at the same time complete an
incident upon which I have already touched once or twice. The
twelve o'clock dinner was over, one day, and I had just finished
putting the cabin in order, when Wolf Larsen and Thomas Mugridge
descended the companion-stairs. Though the cook had a cubby-hole
of a state-room opening off from the cabin, in the cabin itself
he had never dared to linger or to be seen, and he flitted to
and fro, once or twice a day, like a timid specter.
'So you know how to play Nap,' Wolf Larsen was saying in a
pleased sort of voice. 'I might have guessed an Englishman would
know. I learned it myself in English ships.'
Thomas Mugridge was beside himself, a blithering imbecile,
so pleased was he at chumming thus with the captain. The little
airs he put on, and the painful striving to assume the easy carriage
of a man born to a dignified place in life, would have been sickening
had they not been ludicrous. He quite ignored my presence, though
I credited him with being simply unable to see me. His pale, wishy-washy
eyes were swimming like lazy summer seas, though what blissful
visions they beheld were beyond my imagination.
'Get the cards, Hump,' Wolf Larsen ordered, as they took seats
at the table, 'and bring out the cigars and the whiskey you'll
find in my berth.'
I returned with the articles in time to hear the Cockney hinting
broadly that there was a mystery about him- that he might be a
gentleman's son gone wrong or something or other; also, that he
was a remittance-man, and was paid to keep away from- England-
'p'yed 'an'somely, sir,' was the way he put it; 'p'yed 'an'somely
to sling my 'ook an' keep slingin' it.'
I had brought the customary liquor-glasses, but Wolf Larsen
frowned, shook his head, and signaled with his hands for me to
bring the tumblers. These he filled two thirds full with undiluted
whiskey,- 'a gentleman's drink,' quoth Thomas Mugridge,- and they
clinked their glasses to the glorious game of Nap, lighted cigars,
and fell to shuffling and dealing the cards.
They played for money. They increased the amounts of the bets.
They drank whiskey, they drank it neat, and I fetched more. I
do not know whether Wolf Larsen cheated,- a thing he was thoroughly
capable of doing,- but he won steadily. The cook made repeated
journeys to his bunk for money. Each time he performed the journey
with greater swagger, but he never brought more than a few dollars
at a time. He grew maudlin, familiar, could hardly see the cards
or sit upright. As a preliminary to another journey to his bunk,
he hooked Wolf Larsen's buttonhole with a greasy forefinger and
vacuously proclaimed and reiterated: 'I got money. I got money,
I tell yer, an' I'm a gentleman's son.'
Wolf Larsen was unaffected by the drink, yet he drank glass
for glass, and, if anything, his glasses were fuller. There was
no change in him. He did not appear even amused at the other's
antics.
In the end, with loud protestations that he could lose like
a gentleman, the cook's last money was staked on the game and
lost. Whereupon he leaned his head on his hands and wept. Wolf
Larsen looked curiously at him, as though about to probe and vivisect
him, then changed his mind, as from the foregone conclusion that
there was nothing there to probe.
'Hump,' he said to me, elaborately polite, 'kindly take Mr.
Mugridge's arm and help him up on deck. He is not feeling very
well. And tell Johansen to douse him with a few buckets of salt
water,' he added in a lower tone, for my ear alone.
I left Mr. Mugridge on deck, in the hands of a couple of grinning
sailors who had been told off for the purpose. Mr. Mugridge was
sleepily spluttering that he was a gentleman's son. But as I descended
the companion-stairs to clear the table I heard him shriek as
the first bucket of water struck him.
Wolf Larsen was counting his winnings.
'One hundred and eighty-five dollars, even,' he said aloud.
'Just as I thought. The beggar came aboard without a cent.'
'And what you have won is mine, sir,' I said boldly.
He favored me with a quizzical smile. 'Hump, I have studied
some grammar in my time, and I think your tenses are tangled.
"Was mine," you should have said, not "is mine."'
'It is a question, not of grammar, but of ethics,' I answered.
It was possibly a minute before he spoke.
'D' ye know, Hump,' he said, with a slow seriousness which
had in it an indefinable strain of sadness, 'that this is the
first time I have heard the word "ethics" in the mouth
of a man. You and I are the only men on this ship who know its
meaning.'
'At one time in my life,' he continued, after another pause,
'I dreamed that I might some day talk with men who used such language,
that I might lift myself out of the place in life in which I had
been born, and hold conversations and mingle with men who talked
about just such things as ethics. And this is the first time I
have ever heard the word pronounced. Which is all by the way,
for you are wrong. It is a question neither of grammar nor ethics,
but of fact.'
'I understand,' I said. 'The fact is that you have the money.'
His face brightened. He seemed pleased at my perspicacity.
'But it's avoiding the real question,' I continued, 'which
is one of right.'
'Ah,' he remarked, with a wry pucker of his mouth, 'I see you
still believe in such things as right and wrong.'
'But don't you- at all?' I demanded.
'Not the least bit. Might is right, and that is all there is
to it. Weakness is wrong. Which is a very poor way of saying that
it is good for oneself to be strong, and evil for oneself to be
weak, or, better yet, it is pleasurable to be strong, because
of the profits; painful to be weak, because of the penalties.
just now the possession of this money is a pleasurable thing.
It is good for one to possess it. Being able to possess it, I
wrong myself and the life that is in me if I give it to you and
forego the pleasure of possessing it.'
'But you wrong me by withholding it,' I objected.
'Not at all. One man cannot wrong another man. He can only
wrong himself. As I see it, I do wrong always when I consider
the interests of others. Don't you see? How can two particles
of the yeast wrong each other by striving to devour each other?
It is their inborn heritage to strive to devour, and to strive
not to be devoured. When they depart from this they sin.'
'Then you don't believe in altruism?' I asked.
He received the word as though it had a familiar ring, though
he pondered it thoughtfully. 'Let me see; it means something about
cooperation, doesn't it?'
Well, in a way there has come to be a sort of connection,'
I answered, unsurprised by this time at such gaps in his vocabulary,
which, like his knowledge, was the acquirement of a self-read,
self-educated man whom no one had directed in his studies, and
who had thought much and talked little or not at all. 'An altruistic
act is an act performed for the welfare of others. It is unselfish,
as opposed to an act performed for self, which is selfish.'
He nodded his head. 'Oh, yes, I remember it now. I ran across
it in Spencer.'
'Spencer!' I cried. 'Have you read him?'
'Not very much,' was his confession. 'I understood quite a
good deal of "First Principles," but his "Biology"
took the wind out of my sails, and his "Psychology"
left me butting around in the doldrums for many a day. I honestly
could not understand what he was driving at. I put it down to
mental deficiency on my part, but since then I have decided that
it was for want of preparation. I had no proper basis. Only Spencer
and myself know how hard I hammered. But I did get something out
of his "Data of Ethics." There's where I ran across
"altruism," and I remember now how it was used.'
I wondered what this man could have got from such a work. Spencer
I remembered enough to know that altruism was imperative to his
ideal of highest conduct. Wolf Larsen evidently had sifted the
great philosopher's teachings, rejecting and selecting according
to his needs and desires.
'What else did you run across?' I asked.
His brows drew in slightly with the mental effort of suitably
phrasing thoughts which he had never before put into speech. I
felt an elation of spirit. I was groping in his soul-stuff, as
he made a practice of groping in the soul-stuff of others. I was
exploring virgin territory. A strange, a terribly strange region
was unrolling itself before my eyes.
'In as few words as possible,' he began, 'Spencer puts it something
like this: First, a man must act for his own benefit- to do this
is to be moral and good. Next, he must act for the benefit of
his children. And third, he must act for the benefit of his race.'
'And the highest, finest right conduct,' I interjected, 'is
that act which benefits at the same time the man, his children,
and his race.'
'I wouldn't stand for that,' he replied. 'Couldn't see the
necessity for it, nor the common sense. I cut out the race and
the children. I would sacrifice nothing for them. It's just so
much slush and sentiment, and you must see it yourself, at least
for one who does not believe in eternal life. With immortality
before me, altruism would be a paying business proposition. I
might elevate my soul to all kinds of altitudes. But with nothing
eternal before me but death, given for a brief spell this yeasty
crawling and squirming which is called life, why, it would be
immoral for me to perform any act that was a sacrifice. Any sacrifice
that makes me lose one crawl or squirm is foolish; and not only
foolish, for it is a wrong against myself, and a wicked thing.
I must not lose one crawl or squirm if I am to get the most out
of the ferment. Nor will the eternal movelessness that is coming
to me be made easier or harder by the sacrifices or selfishnesses
of the time when I was yeasty and acrawl.'
'Then you are an individualist, a materialist, and, logically,
a hedonist.'
'Big words,' he smiled. 'But what is a hedonist?'
He nodded agreement when I had given the definition.
'And you are also,' I continued, 'a man one could not trust
in the least thing where it was possible for a selfish interest
to intervene?'
'Now you're beginning to understand,' he said, brightening.
'You are a man utterly without what the world calls morals?'
'That's it.'
'A man of whom to be always afraid-'
'That's the way to put it.'
'As one is afraid of a snake, or a tiger, or a shark?'
'Now you know me,' he said. 'And you know me as I am generally
known. Other men call me "Wolf."'
'You are a sort of monster,' I added audaciously, 'a Caliban
who has pondered Setebos, and who acts as you act, in idle moments,
by whim and fancy.'
His brow clouded at the allusion. He did not understand, and
I quickly learned that he did not know the poem.
'I'm just reading Browning,' he confessed, 'and it's pretty
tough. I haven't got very far along, and as it is, I've about
lost my bearings.'
Not to be tiresome, I shall say that I fetched the book from
his state-room and read 'Caliban' aloud. He was delighted. It
was a primitive mode of reasoning and of looking at things that
he understood thoroughly. He interrupted again and again with
comment and criticism. When I finished, he had me read it over
a second time, and a third. We fell into discussion- philosophy,
science, evolution, religion. He betrayed the inaccuracies of
the self-read man, and, it must be granted, the certitude and
directness of the primitive mind. The very simplicity of his reasoning
was its strength, and his materialism was far more compelling
than the subtly complex materialism of Charley Furuseth. Not that
I, a confirmed, and, as Furuseth phrased it, a temperamental,
idealist, was to be compelled; but that Wolf Larsen stormed the
last strongholds of my faith with a vigor that received respect
while not accorded conviction.
Time passed. Supper was at hand and the table not laid. I became
restless and anxious, and when Thomas Mugridge glared down the
companionway, sick and angry of countenance, I prepared to go
about my duties. But Wolf Larsen cried out to him':
'Cooky, you've got to hustle tonight. I'm busy with Hump, and
you'll do the best you can without him.'
And again the unprecedented was established. That night I sat
at table with the captain and the hunters, while Thomas Mugridge
waited on us and washed the dishes afterward- a whim, a Caliban-mood
of Wolf Larsen's, and one I foresaw would bring me trouble. In
the meantime we talked and talked, much to the disgust of the
hunters, who could not understand a word.
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