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THE GHOST HAS ATTAINED the southernmost point of the arc she
is describing across the Pacific, and is already beginning to
edge away to the west and north toward some lone island, it is
rumored, where she will fill her water-casks before proceeding
to the season's hunt along the coast of Japan. The hunters have
experimented and practiced with their rifles and shotguns till
they are satisfied, and the boat-pullers and steerers have made
their sprit-sails, bound the oars and rowlocks in leather and
sennit so that they will make no noise when creeping on the seals,
and put their boats in apple-pie order, to use Leach's homely
phrase.
His arm, by the way, has healed nicely, though the scar will
remain all his life. Thomas Mugridge lives in mortal fear of him,
and is afraid to venture on deck after dark. There are two or
three standing quarrels in the forecastle. Louis tells me that
the gossip of the sailors finds its way aft, and that two of the
telltales have been badly beaten by their mates. He shakes his
head dubiously over the outlook for the man Johnson, who is boat-puller
in the same boat with him. Johnson has been guilty of speaking
his mind too freely, and has collided two or three times with
Wolf Larsen over the pronunciation of his name. Johansen he thrashed
on the amidships deck the other night, since which time the mate
has called him by his proper name. But of course it is out of
the question that Johnson should thrash Wolf Larsen.
Louis has also given me additional information about Death
Larsen, which tallies with the captain's brief description. We
may expect to meet Death Larsen on the Japan coast. 'And look
out for squalls,' is Louis's prophecy, 'for they hate one another
like the wolf-whelps they are.' Death Larsen is in command of
the only sealing-steamer in the fleet, which carries fourteen
boats, where the schooners carry only six. There is wild talk
of cannon aboard, and of strange raids and expeditions she may
make, ranging from opium-smuggling into the States and arms-smuggling
into China, to black-birding and open piracy. Yet I cannot but
believe Louis, for I have never yet caught him in a lie, while
he has a cyclopedic knowledge of sealing and the men of the sealing-fleets.
As it is forward and in the galley, so it is in the steerage
and aft, on this veritable hell-ship. Men fight and struggle ferociously
for one another's lives. The hunters are looking for a shooting
scrape at any moment between Smoke and Henderson, whose old quarrel
has not healed, while Wolf Larsen says positively that he will
kill the survivor of the affair if such affair comes off. He frankly
states that the position he takes is based on no moral grounds,
that all the hunters could kill and eat one another, so far as
he is concerned, were it not that he needs them alive for the
hunting. If they will only hold their hands until the season is
over, he promises them a royal carnival, when all grudges can
be settled and the survivors may toss the non-survivors overboard
and arrange a story as to how the missing men were lost at sea.
I think even the hunters are appalled at his cold-bloodedness.
Wicked men though they be, they are certainly very much afraid
of him.
Thomas Mugridge is cur-like in his subjection to me, while
I go about in secret dread of him. His is the courage of fear,
a strange thing I know well of myself, and at any moment it may
master the fear and impel him to the taking of my life. My knee
is much better, though it often aches for long periods, and the
stiffness is gradually leaving the arm which Wolf Larsen squeezed.
Otherwise I am in splendid condition, feel that I am in splendid
condition. My muscles are growing harder and increasing in size.
My hands, however, are a spectacle for grief. Also, I am suffering
from boils, due to the diet most likely, for I was never so afflicted
before.
I was amused, a couple of evenings back, by seeing Wolf Larsen
reading the Bible, a copy of which, after the futile search for
one at the beginning of the voyage, had been found in the dead
mate's sea-chest. I wondered what Wolf Larsen could get from it,
and he read aloud to me from Ecclesiastes. I could imagine he
was speaking the thoughts of his own mind as he read to me, and
his voice, reverberating deeply and mournfully in the confined
cabin, charmed and held me. He may be uneducated, but he certainly
knows how to express the significance of the written word. I can
hear him now, as I shall always hear him, the primal melancholy
vibrant in his voice, as he read from Ecclesiastes the passage
beginning: 'I gathered me also silver and gold.'
'There you have it, Hump,' he said, closing the book upon his
finger and looking up at me. 'The Preacher who was king over Israel
in Jerusalem thought as I think. You call me a pessimist. Is not
this pessimism of the blackest?- 'all is vanity and vexation of
spirit'; 'there is no profit under the sun'; 'there is one event
unto all,' to the fool and the wise, the clean and the unclean,
the sinner and the saint; and that event is death, and an evil
thing, he says. For the Preacher loved life, and did not want
to die, saying, 'For a living dog is better than a dead lion.'
He preferred the vanity and vexation to the silence and unmovableness
of the grave. And so I. To crawl is piggish; but to not crawl,
to be as the clod and rock, is loathsome to contemplate. It is
loathsome to the life that is in me, the very essence of which
is movement, the power of movement, and the consciousness of the
power of movement. Life itself is unsatisfaction, but to look
ahead to death is greater unsatisfaction.'
'You are worse off than Omar,' I said. 'He, at least, after
the customary agonizing of youth, found content and made of his
materialism a joyous thing.'
'Who was Omar?' Wolf Larsen asked, and I did no more work that
day, nor the next, or next.
In his random reading he had never chanced upon the 'Rubaiyat,'
and it was to him like a great find of treasure. Much I remembered,
possibly two thirds of the quatrains, and I managed to piece out
the remainder without difficulty. We talked for hours over single
stanzas, and I found him reading into them a wail of regret and
a rebellion which for the life of me I could not discover myself.
Possibly I recited with a certain joyous lilt which was my own,
for- his memory was good, and at a second rendering, very often
the first, he made a quatrain his own- he recited the same lines
and invested them with an unrest and passionate revolt that were
well-nigh convincing.
I was interested as to which quatrain he would like best, and
was not surprised when he hit upon the one born of an instant's
irritability and quite at variance with the Persian's complacent
philosophy and genial code of life:
What, without asking, hither hurried Whence?
And, without asking, Whither hurried hence!
Oh, many a Cup of this forbidden Wine
Must drown the memory of that insolence!
'Great!' Wolf Larsen cried. 'Great! That's the keynote. Insolence!
He could not have used a better word.'
In vain I objected and denied. He deluged me, overwhelmed me
with argument.
'It's not the nature of life to be otherwise. Life, when it
knows that it must cease living, will always rebel. It cannot
help itself. The Preacher found life and the works of life all
a vanity and vexation, an evil thing; but death, the ceasing to
be able to be vain and vexed, he found an eviler thing. Through
chapter after chapter he is worried by the one event that cometh
to all alike. So Omar, so I, so you, even you, for you rebelled
against dying when Cooky sharpened a knife for you. You were afraid
to die; the life that was in you, that composes you, that is greater
than you, did not want to die. You have talked of the instinct
of immortality. I talk of the instinct of life, which is to live,
and which, when death looms near and large, masters the instinct,
so called, of immortality. It mastered it in you (you cannot deny
it), because a crazy Cockney cook sharpened a knife.
'You are afraid of him now. You are afraid of me. You cannot
deny it. If I catch you by the throat thus,'- his hand was about
my throat, and my breath was shut off,- 'and begin to press the
life out of you, thus, and thus, your instinct of immortality
will go glimmering, and your instinct of life, which is longing
for life, will flutter up, and you will struggle to save yourself.
Eh? I see the fear of death in your eyes. You beat the air with
your arms. You exert all your puny strength to struggle to live.
Your hand is clutching my arm; lightly it feels as a butterfly
resting there. Your chest is heaving, your tongue protruding,
your skin turning dark, your eyes swimming. "To live! To
live! To live!" you are crying; and you are crying to live
here and now, not hereafter. You doubt your immortality, eh? Ha!
ha! You are not sure of it. You won't chance it. This life only
you are certain is real. Ah, it is growing dark and darker. It
is the darkness of death, the ceasing to be, the ceasing to feel,
the ceasing to move, that is gathering about you, descending upon
you, rising around you. Your eyes are becoming set. They are glazing.
My voice sounds faint and far. You cannot see my face. And still
you struggle in my grip. You kick with your legs. Your body draws
itself up in knots like a snake's. Your chest heaves and strains.
To live! To live! To live- '
I heard no more. Consciousness was blotted out by the darkness
he had so graphically described, and when I came to myself I was
lying on the floor, and he was smoking a cigar and regarding me
thoughtfully with that old, familiar light of curiosity in his
eyes.
'Well, have I convinced you?' he demanded. 'Here, take a drink
of this. I want to ask you some questions.'
I rolled my head negatively on the floor. 'Your arguments are
too- er- forcible,' I managed to articulate, at cost of great
pain to my aching throat.
'You'll be all right in half an hour,' he assured me. 'And
I promise I won't use any more physical demonstrations. Get up
now. You can sit on a chair.'
And, toy that I was of this monster, the discussion of Omar
and the Preacher was resumed. And half the night we sat up over
it.
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