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THE NEXT DAY, WHILE THE STORM was blowing itself out, Wolf
Larsen and I 'crammed' anatomy and surgery and set Mugridge's
ribs. Then, when the storm broke, Wolf Larsen cruised back and
forth over that portion of the ocean where we had encountered
it, and somewhat more to the westward, while the boats were being
repaired and new sails made and bent. Also, a new galley was being
constructed out of odds and ends of lumber from the hold. Sealing-schooner
after sealing-schooner we sighted and boarded, most of which were
in search of lost boats, and most of which were carrying boats
and crews that they had picked up and that did not belong to them.
For the thick of the fleet had been to the westward of us, and
the boats, scattered far and wide, had headed in mad flight for
the nearest refuge.
Two of our boats, with men all safe, we took off the Cisco,
and, to Wolf Larsen's huge delight and my own grief, he culled
Smoke, with Nilson and Leach, from the San Diego. So that, at
the end of five days, we found ourselves short but four men, Henderson,
Holyoak, Williams, and Kelly, and were once more hunting on the
flanks of the herd.
As we followed north, we began to encounter the dreaded sea-fogs.
Day after day the boats were lowered and swallowed up almost before
they touched the water, while we on board pumped the horn at regular
intervals, and every fifteen minutes fired the bomb-gun. Boats
were continually being lost and found, it being the custom for
a boat to hunt, on lay, with whatever schooner picked it up, until
such time as it was recovered by its own schooner. But Wolf Larsen,
as was to be expected, being a boat short, took possession of
the first stray one and compelled its men to hunt with the Ghost,
not permitting them to return to their own schooner when we sighted
it. I remember how he forced the hunter and his two men below,
a rifle at their breasts, when their captain passed by at biscuit-toss
and hailed us for information.
Thomas Mugridge, so strangely and pertinaciously clinging to
life, was soon limping about again and performing his double duties
of cook and cabin-boy. Johnson and Leach were bullied and beaten
as much as ever, and they looked for their lives to end with the
end of the hunting season; while the rest of the crew lived the
lives of dogs and were worked like dogs by their pitiless master.
As for Wolf Larsen and me, we got along fairly well, though I
could not quite rid myself of the idea that right conduct for
me lay in killing him. He fascinated me immeasurably, and I feared
him immeasurably; and yet I could not imagine him lying prone
in death. There was an endurance, as of perpetual youth, about
him, which rose up and forbade the picture. I could see him only
as living always and dominating always, fighting and destroying,
himself surviving.
One diversion of his, when we were in the midst of the herd
and the sea was too rough to lower the boats, was to lower with
two boat-pullers and a steerer and go out himself. He was a good
shot, too, and brought many a skin aboard under what the hunters
termed 'impossible hunting conditions.' It seemed the breath of
his nostrils, this carrying his life in his hands and struggling
for it against tremendous odds.
I was learning more and more seamanship, and one clear day,
a thing we rarely encountered now, I had the satisfaction of running
and handling the Ghost and picking up the boats myself. Wolf Larsen
had been smitten with one of his headaches, and I stood at the
wheel from morning until evening, sailing across the ocean after
the last lee boat, and heaving to and picking it and the other
five up without command or suggestion from him.
Gales we encountered now and again, for it was a raw and stormy
region, and, in the middle of June, a typhoon most memorable to
me, and most important because of the changes wrought through
it upon my future. We must have been caught nearly at the center
of this circular storm, and Wolf Larsen ran out of it and to the
southward, first under a double-reefed jib, and finally under
bare poles. Never had I imagined so great a sea. The seas previously
encountered were as ripples compared with these, which ran a half-mile
from crest to crest and which upreared, I am confident, above
our masthead. So great was it that Wolf Larsen himself did not
dare heave to, though he was being driven far to the southward
and out of the seal herd.
We must have been well in the path of the transpacific steamships
when the typhoon moderated, and here, to the surprise of the hunters,
we found ourselves in the midst of seals- a second herd, or sort
of rear-guard, they declared, and a most unusual thing. But it
was 'Boats over!' the boom, boom of guns, and pitiful slaughter
through the long day.
It was at this time that I was approached by Leach. I had just
finished tallying the skins of the last boat aboard when he came
to my side, in the darkness, and said in a low tone:
'Can you tell me, Mr. Van Weyden, how far we are off the coast,
and what the bearings of Yokohama are?'
My heart leaped with gladness, for I knew what he had in mind,
and I gave him the bearings- west-northwest and five hundred miles
away.
'Thank you, sir,' was all he said as he slipped back into the
darkness.
Next morning No. 3 boat and Johnson and Leach were missing.
The waterbreakers and grub-boxes from all the other boats were
likewise missing, as were the beds and sea-bags of the two men.
Wolf Larsen was furious. He set sail and bore away into the west-northwest,
two hunters constantly at the mastheads, and sweeping the sea
with glasses, himself pacing the deck like an angry lion. He knew
too well my sympathy for the runaways to send me aloft as lookout.
The wind was fair but fitful, and it was like looking for a
needle in a haystack to raise that tiny boat out of the blue immensity.
But he put the Ghost through her best paces, so as to get between
the deserters and the land. This accomplished, he cruised back
and forth across what he knew must be their course.
On the morning of the third day, shortly after eight bells,
a cry that the boat was sighted came down from Smoke at the masthead.
All hands lined the rail. A snappy breeze was blowing from the
west, with the promise of more wind behind it; and there, to leeward,
in the troubled silver of the rising sun, appeared and disappeared
a black speck.
We squared away and ran for it. My heart was as lead. I felt
myself turning sick in anticipation; and as I looked at the gleam
of triumph in Wolf Larsen's eyes, his form swam before me, and
I felt almost irresistibly impelled to fling myself upon him.
So unnerved was I by the thought of impending violence to Leach
and Johnson that my reason must have left me. I know that I slipped
down into the steerage, in a daze, and that I was just beginning
the ascent to the deck, a loaded shotgun in my hands, when I heard
the startled cry:
'There's five men in that boat!'
I supported myself in the companion-way, weak and trembling,
while the observation was being verified by the remarks of the
rest of the men. Then my knees gave from under me, and I sank
down, myself again, but overcome by shock at knowledge of what
I had so nearly done. Also, I was very thankful as I put the gun
away and slipped back on deck.
No one had remarked my absence. The boat was near enough for
us to make out that it was larger than any sealing-boat and built
on different lines. As we drew closer, the sail was taken in and
the mast unstepped. Oars were shipped, and its occupants waited
for us to heave to and take them aboard.
Smoke, who had descended to the deck and was now standing by
my side, began to chuckle in a significant way. I looked at him
inquiringly.
'Talk of a mess!' he giggled. 'It's a pretty one we've got
now.'
'What's wrong?' I demanded.
Again he chuckled. 'Don't you see there, in the stern- sheets,
on the bottom? May I never shoot a seal again if that ain't a
woman!'
I looked closely, but was not sure until exclamation broke
out on all sides. The boat contained four men, and its fifth occupant
was certainly a woman.
We were agog with excitement, all except Wolf Larsen, who was
too evidently disappointed in that it was not his own boat with
the two victims of his malice.
We ran down the flying jib, hauled the jib-sheets to windward
and the mainsheet flat, and came up into the wind. The oars struck
the water, and with a few strokes the boat was alongside. I now
caught my first fair glimpse of the woman. She was wrapped in
a long ulster, for the morning was raw, and I could see nothing
but her face and a mass of light-brown hair escaping from under
the seaman's cap on her head. The eyes were large and brown and
lustrous, the mouth sweet and sensitive, and the face itself a
delicate oval, though sun and exposure to briny wind had burned
the face scarlet.
She seemed to me like a being from another world. I was aware
of a hungry outreaching for her, as of a starving man for bread.
But then I had not seen a woman for a very long time. I know that
I was lost in a great wonder, almost a stupor,- this, then, was
a woman?- so that I forgot myself and my mate's duties, and took
no part in helping the newcomers aboard. For when one of the sailors
lifted her into Wolf Larsen's down-stretched arms, she looked
up into our curious faces and smiled amusedly and sweetly, as
only a woman can smile, and as I had seen no one smile for so
long that I had forgotten such smiles existed.
'Mr. Van Weyden!'
Wolf Larsen's voice brought me sharply back to myself.
'Will you take the lady below and see to her comfort? Make
up that spare port cabin. Put Cooky to work on it. And see what
you can do for that face. It's burned badly.'
He turned brusquely away from us and began to question the
new men. The boat was cast adrift, though one of them called it
a 'bloody shame,' with Yokohama so near.
I found myself strangely afraid of this woman I was escorting
aft. Also, I was awkward. It seemed to me that I was realizing
for the first time what a delicate, fragile creature a woman is,
and as I caught her arm to help her down the companion-stairs,
I was startled by its smallness and softness. Indeed, she was
a slender, delicate woman, as women go, but to me she was so ethereally
slender and delicate that I was quite prepared for her arm to
crumble in my grasp. All this in frankness, to show my first impression,
after long deprivation, of women in general and of Maud Brewster
in particular.
'No need to go to any great trouble for me,' she protested,
when I had seated her in Wolf Larsen's armchair, which I had dragged
hastily from his cabin. 'The men were looking for land at any
moment this morning, and the vessel should be in by night, don't
you think so?'
Her simple faith in the immediate future took me aback. How
could I explain to her the situation, the strange man who stalked
the sea like Destiny, all that it had taken me months to learn?
But I answered honestly:
'If it were any other captain except ours, I should say you
would be ashore in Yokohama tomorrow. But our captain is a strange
man, and I beg of you to be prepared for anything- understand?-
for anything.'
'I- I confess I hardly do understand,' she hesitated, a perturbed
but not frightened expression in her eyes. 'Or is it a misconception
of mine that shipwrecked people are always shown every consideration?
This is such a little thing, you know, we are so close to land.'
'Candidly, I do not know,' I strove to reassure her. 'I wished
merely to prepare you for the worst, if the worst is to come.
This man, this captain, is a brute, a demon, and one can never
tell what will be his next fantastic act.'
I was growing excited, but she interrupted me with an 'Oh,
I see,' and her voice sounded weary. To think was patently an
effort. She was clearly on the verge of physical collapse.
She asked no further questions, and I vouchsafed no remarks,
devoting myself to Wolf Larsen's command, which was to make her
comfortable. I bustled about in quite housewifely fashion, procuring
soothing lotions for her sunburn, raiding Wolf Larsen's private
stores for a bottle of port I knew to be there, and directing
Thomas Mugridge in the preparation of the spare state-room.
The wind was freshening rapidly, the Ghost heeling over more
and more, and by the time the state-room was ready she was dashing
through the water at a lively clip. I had quite forgotten the
existence of Leach and Johnson, when suddenly, like a thunder-clap,
'Boat ho!' came down the open companionway. It was Smoke's unmistakable
voice, crying from the masthead. I shot a glance at the woman,
but she was leaning back in the armchair, her eyes closed, unutterably
tired. I doubted that she had heard, and I resolved to prevent
her seeing the brutality I knew would follow the capture of the
deserters. She was tired. Very good. She should sleep.
There were swift commands on deck, a stamping of feet and a
slapping of reefpoints, as the Ghost shot into the wind and about
on the other tack. As she filled away and heeled, the armchair
began to slide across the cabin floor, and I sprang for it just
in time to prevent the rescued woman from being spilled out.
Her eyes were too heavy to suggest more than a hint of the
sleepy surprise that perplexed her as she looked up at me, and
she half stumbled, half tottered as I led her to her cabin. Mugridge
grinned insinuatingly in my face as I shoved him out and ordered
him back to his galley work, and he won his revenge by spreading
glowing reports among the hunters as to what an excellent 'Lydy's-myde'
I was proving myself to be.
She leaned heavily against me, and I do believe that she had
fallen asleep again between the armchair and the state-room. This
I discovered when she nearly fell into the bunk during a sudden
lurch of the schooner. She aroused, smiled drowsily, and was off
to sleep again; and asleep I left her, under a heavy pair of sailor's
blankets, her head resting on a pillow I had appropriated from
Wolf Larsen's bunk.
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