The Sea Wolf, Jack London [best memoirs of all time TXT] 📗

I dropped my arm for a moment, and a moment only.  Again the knife was raised, and Wolf Larsen would have surely died had she not stepped between.  Her arms were around me, her hair was brushing my face.  My pulse rushed up in an unwonted manner, yet my rage mounted with it.  She looked me bravely in the eyes.

“For my sake,” she begged.

“I would kill him for your sake!” I cried, trying to free my arm without hurting her.

“Hush!” she said, and laid her fingers lightly on my lips.  I could have kissed them, had I dared, even then, in my rage, the touch of them was so sweet, so very sweet.  “Please, please,” she pleaded, and she disarmed me by the words, as I was to discover they would ever disarm me.

I stepped back, separating from her, and replaced the knife in its sheath.  I looked at Wolf Larsen.  He still pressed his left hand against his forehead.  It covered his eyes.  His head was bowed.  He seemed to have grown limp.  His body was sagging at the hips, his great shoulders were drooping and shrinking forward.

“Van, Weyden!” he called hoarsely, and with a note of fright in his voice.  “Oh, Van Weyden! where are you?”

I looked at Maud.  She did not speak, but nodded her head.

“Here I am,” I answered, stepping to his side.  “What is the matter?”

“Help me to a seat,” he said, in the same hoarse, frightened voice.

“I am a sick man; a very sick man, Hump,” he said, as he left my sustaining grip and sank into a chair.

His head dropped forward on the table and was buried in his hands.  From time to time it rocked back and forward as with pain.  Once, when he half raised it, I saw the sweat standing in heavy drops on his forehead about the roots of his hair.

“I am a sick man, a very sick man,” he repeated again, and yet once again.

“What is the matter?” I asked, resting my hand on his shoulder.  “What can I do for you?”

But he shook my hand off with an irritated movement, and for a long time I stood by his side in silence.  Maud was looking on, her face awed and frightened.  What had happened to him we could not imagine.

“Hump,” he said at last, “I must get into my bunk.  Lend me a hand.  I’ll be all right in a little while.  It’s those damn headaches, I believe.  I was afraid of them.  I had a feeling—no, I don’t know what I’m talking about.  Help me into my bunk.”

But when I got him into his bunk he again buried his face in his hands, covering his eyes, and as I turned to go I could hear him murmuring, “I am a sick man, a very sick man.”

Maud looked at me inquiringly as I emerged.  I shook my head, saying:

“Something has happened to him.  What, I don’t know.  He is helpless, and frightened, I imagine, for the first time in his life.  It must have occurred before he received the knife-thrust, which made only a superficial wound.  You must have seen what happened.”

She shook her head.  “I saw nothing.  It is just as mysterious to me.  He suddenly released me and staggered away.  But what shall we do?  What shall I do?”

“If you will wait, please, until I come back,” I answered.

I went on deck.  Louis was at the wheel.

“You may go for’ard and turn in,” I said, taking it from him.

He was quick to obey, and I found myself alone on the deck of the Ghost.  As quietly as was possible, I clewed up the topsails, lowered the flying jib and staysail, backed the jib over, and flattened the mainsail.  Then I went below to Maud.  I placed my finger on my lips for silence, and entered Wolf Larsen’s room.  He was in the same position in which I had left him, and his head was rocking—almost writhing—from side to side.

“Anything I can do for you?” I asked.

He made no reply at first, but on my repeating the question he answered, “No, no; I’m all right.  Leave me alone till morning.”

But as I turned to go I noted that his head had resumed its rocking motion.  Maud was waiting patiently for me, and I took notice, with a thrill of joy, of the queenly poise of her head and her glorious, calm eyes.  Calm and sure they were as her spirit itself.

“Will you trust yourself to me for a journey of six hundred miles or so?” I asked.

“You mean—?” she asked, and I knew she had guessed aright.

“Yes, I mean just that,” I replied.  “There is nothing left for us but the open boat.”

“For me, you mean,” she said.  “You are certainly as safe here as you have been.”

“No, there is nothing left for us but the open boat,” I iterated stoutly.  “Will you please dress as warmly as you can, at once, and make into a bundle whatever you wish to bring with you.”

“And make all haste,” I added, as she turned toward her state-room.

The lazarette was directly beneath the cabin, and, opening the trap-door in the floor and carrying a candle with me, I dropped down and began overhauling the ship’s stores.  I selected mainly from the canned goods, and by the time I was ready, willing hands were extended from above to receive what I passed up.

We worked in silence.  I helped myself also to blankets, mittens, oilskins, caps, and such things, from the slop-chest.  It was no light adventure, this trusting ourselves in a small boat to so raw and stormy a sea, and it was imperative that we should guard ourselves against the cold and wet.

We worked feverishly at carrying our plunder on deck and depositing it amidships, so feverishly that Maud, whose strength was hardly a positive quantity, had to give over, exhausted, and sit on the steps at the break of the poop.  This did not serve to recover her, and she lay on her back, on the hard deck, arms stretched out, and whole body relaxed.  It was a trick I remembered of my sister, and I knew she would soon be herself again.  I knew, also, that weapons would not come in amiss, and I re-entered Wolf Larsen’s state-room to get his rifle and shot-gun.  I spoke to him, but he made no answer, though his head was still rocking from side to side and he was not asleep.

“Good-bye, Lucifer,” I whispered to myself as I softly closed the door.

Next to obtain was a stock of ammunition,—an easy matter, though I had to enter the steerage companion-way to do it.  Here the hunters stored the ammunition-boxes they carried in the boats, and here, but a few feet from their noisy revels, I took possession of two boxes.

Next, to lower a boat.  Not so simple a task for one man.  Having cast off the lashings, I hoisted first on the forward tackle, then on the aft, till the boat cleared the rail, when I lowered away, one tackle and then the other, for a couple of feet, till it hung snugly, above the water, against the schooner’s side.  I made certain that it contained the proper equipment of oars, rowlocks, and sail.  Water was a consideration, and I robbed every boat aboard of its breaker.  As there were nine boats all told, it meant that we should have plenty of water, and ballast as well, though there was the chance that the boat would be overloaded, what of the generous supply of other things I was taking.

While Maud was passing me the provisions and I was storing them in the boat, a sailor came on deck from the forecastle.  He stood by the weather rail for a time (we were lowering over the lee rail), and then sauntered slowly amidships, where he again paused and stood facing the wind, with his back toward us.  I could hear my heart beating as I crouched low in the boat.  Maud had sunk down upon the deck and was, I knew, lying motionless, her body in the shadow of the bulwark.  But the man never turned, and, after stretching his arms above his head and yawning audibly, he retraced his steps to the forecastle scuttle and disappeared.

A few minutes sufficed to finish the loading, and I lowered the boat into the water.  As I helped Maud over the rail and felt her form close to mine, it was all I could do to keep from crying out, “I love you!  I love you!”  Truly Humphrey Van Weyden was at last in love, I thought, as her fingers clung to mine while I lowered her down to the boat.  I held on to the rail with one hand and supported her weight with the other, and I was proud at the moment of the feat.  It was a strength I had not possessed a few months before, on the day I said good-bye to Charley Furuseth and started for San Francisco on the ill-fated Martinez.

As the boat ascended on a sea, her feet touched and I released her hands.  I cast off the tackles and leaped after her.  I had never rowed in my life, but I put out the oars and at the expense of much effort got the boat clear of the Ghost.  Then I experimented with the sail.  I had seen the boat-steerers and hunters set their spritsails many times, yet this was my first attempt.  What took them possibly two minutes took me twenty, but in the end I succeeded in setting and trimming it, and with the steering-oar in my hands hauled on the wind.

“There lies Japan,” I remarked, “straight before us.”

“Humphrey Van Weyden,” she said, “you are a brave man.”

“Nay,” I answered, “it is you who are a brave woman.”

We turned our heads, swayed by a common impulse to see the last of the Ghost.  Her low hull lifted and rolled to windward on a sea; her canvas loomed darkly in the night; her lashed wheel creaked as the rudder kicked; then sight and sound of her faded away, and we were alone on the dark sea.

Day broke, grey and chill.  The boat was close-hauled on a fresh breeze and the compass indicated that we were just making the course which would bring us to Japan.  Though stoutly mittened, my fingers were cold, and they pained from the grip on the steering-oar.  My feet were stinging from the bite of the frost, and I hoped fervently that the sun would shine.

Before me, in the bottom of the boat, lay Maud.  She, at least, was warm, for under her and over her were thick blankets.  The top one I had drawn over her face to shelter it from the night, so I could see nothing but the vague shape of her, and her light-brown hair, escaped from the covering and jewelled with moisture from the air.

Long I looked at her, dwelling upon that one visible bit of her as only a man would who deemed it the most precious thing in the world.  So insistent was my gaze that at last she stirred under the blankets, the top fold was thrown back and she smiled out on me, her eyes yet heavy with sleep.

“Good-morning, Mr. Van Weyden,” she said.  “Have you sighted land yet?”

“No,” I answered, “but we are approaching it at a rate of six miles an hour.”

She made a mouè of disappointment.

“But that is equivalent to one hundred and forty-four miles in twenty-four hours,” I added reassuringly.

Her face brightened.  “And how far have we to go?”

“Siberia lies off there,” I said, pointing to the west.  “But to the south-west, some six hundred miles, is Japan.  If this wind should hold, we’ll make it in five days.”

“And if it storms?  The boat could not live?”

She had a way of looking one in the eyes and demanding the truth, and thus