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

She hesitated, as if in doubt how best to word her gratitude.

“Well?” I said, brutally, for I was not quite pleased with her thanking me.

“You might help me,” she smiled.

“To acknowledge your obligations before you die?  Not at all.  We are not going to die.  We shall land on that island, and we shall be snug and sheltered before the day is done.”

I spoke stoutly, but I did not believe a word.  Nor was I prompted to lie through fear.  I felt no fear, though I was sure of death in that boiling surge amongst the rocks which was rapidly growing nearer.  It was impossible to hoist sail and claw off that shore.  The wind would instantly capsize the boat; the seas would swamp it the moment it fell into the trough; and, besides, the sail, lashed to the spare oars, dragged in the sea ahead of us.

As I say, I was not afraid to meet my own death, there, a few hundred yards to leeward; but I was appalled at the thought that Maud must die.  My cursed imagination saw her beaten and mangled against the rocks, and it was too terrible.  I strove to compel myself to think we would make the landing safely, and so I spoke, not what I believed, but what I preferred to believe.

I recoiled before contemplation of that frightful death, and for a moment I entertained the wild idea of seizing Maud in my arms and leaping overboard.  Then I resolved to wait, and at the last moment, when we entered on the final stretch, to take her in my arms and proclaim my love, and, with her in my embrace, to make the desperate struggle and die.

Instinctively we drew closer together in the bottom of the boat.  I felt her mittened hand come out to mine.  And thus, without speech, we waited the end.  We were not far off the line the wind made with the western edge of the promontory, and I watched in the hope that some set of the current or send of the sea would drift us past before we reached the surf.

“We shall go clear,” I said, with a confidence which I knew deceived neither of us.

“By God, we will go clear!” I cried, five minutes later.

The oath left my lips in my excitement—the first, I do believe, in my life, unless “trouble it,” an expletive of my youth, be accounted an oath.

“I beg your pardon,” I said.

“You have convinced me of your sincerity,” she said, with a faint smile.  “I do know, now, that we shall go clear.”

I had seen a distant headland past the extreme edge of the promontory, and as we looked we could see grow the intervening coastline of what was evidently a deep cove.  At the same time there broke upon our ears a continuous and mighty bellowing.  It partook of the magnitude and volume of distant thunder, and it came to us directly from leeward, rising above the crash of the surf and travelling directly in the teeth of the storm.  As we passed the point the whole cove burst upon our view, a half-moon of white sandy beach upon which broke a huge surf, and which was covered with myriads of seals.  It was from them that the great bellowing went up.

“A rookery!” I cried.  “Now are we indeed saved.  There must be men and cruisers to protect them from the seal-hunters.  Possibly there is a station ashore.”

But as I studied the surf which beat upon the beach, I said, “Still bad, but not so bad.  And now, if the gods be truly kind, we shall drift by that next headland and come upon a perfectly sheltered beach, where we may land without wetting our feet.”

And the gods were kind.  The first and second headlands were directly in line with the south-west wind; but once around the second,—and we went perilously near,—we picked up the third headland, still in line with the wind and with the other two.  But the cove that intervened!  It penetrated deep into the land, and the tide, setting in, drifted us under the shelter of the point.  Here the sea was calm, save for a heavy but smooth ground-swell, and I took in the sea-anchor and began to row.  From the point the shore curved away, more and more to the south and west, until at last it disclosed a cove within the cove, a little land-locked harbour, the water level as a pond, broken only by tiny ripples where vagrant breaths and wisps of the storm hurtled down from over the frowning wall of rock that backed the beach a hundred feet inshore.

Here were no seals whatever.  The boat’s stern touched the hard shingle.  I sprang out, extending my hand to Maud.  The next moment she was beside me.  As my fingers released hers, she clutched for my arm hastily.  At the same moment I swayed, as about to fall to the sand.  This was the startling effect of the cessation of motion.  We had been so long upon the moving, rocking sea that the stable land was a shock to us.  We expected the beach to lift up this way and that, and the rocky walls to swing back and forth like the sides of a ship; and when we braced ourselves, automatically, for these various expected movements, their non-occurrence quite overcame our equilibrium.

“I really must sit down,” Maud said, with a nervous laugh and a dizzy gesture, and forthwith she sat down on the sand.

I attended to making the boat secure and joined her.  Thus we landed on Endeavour Island, as we came to it, land-sick from long custom of the sea.

“Fool!” I cried aloud in my vexation.

I had unloaded the boat and carried its contents high up on the beach, where I had set about making a camp.  There was driftwood, though not much, on the beach, and the sight of a coffee tin I had taken from the Ghost’s larder had given me the idea of a fire.

“Blithering idiot!” I was continuing.

But Maud said, “Tut, tut,” in gentle reproval, and then asked why I was a blithering idiot.

“No matches,” I groaned.  “Not a match did I bring.  And now we shall have no hot coffee, soup, tea, or anything!”

“Wasn’t it—er—Crusoe who rubbed sticks together?” she drawled.

“But I have read the personal narratives of a score of shipwrecked men who tried, and tried in vain,” I answered.  “I remember Winters, a newspaper fellow with an Alaskan and Siberian reputation.  Met him at the Bibelot once, and he was telling us how he attempted to make a fire with a couple of sticks.  It was most amusing.  He told it inimitably, but it was the story of a failure.  I remember his conclusion, his black eyes flashing as he said, ‘Gentlemen, the South Sea Islander may do it, the Malay may do it, but take my word it’s beyond the white man.’”

“Oh, well, we’ve managed so far without it,” she said cheerfully.  “And there’s no reason why we cannot still manage without it.”

“But think of the coffee!” I cried.  “It’s good coffee, too, I know.  I took it from Larsen’s private stores.  And look at that good wood.”

I confess, I wanted the coffee badly; and I learned, not long afterward, that the berry was likewise a little weakness of Maud’s.  Besides, we had been so long on a cold diet that we were numb inside as well as out.  Anything warm would have been most gratifying.  But I complained no more and set about making a tent of the sail for Maud.

I had looked upon it as a simple task, what of the oars, mast, boom, and sprit, to say nothing of plenty of lines.  But as I was without experience, and as every detail was an experiment and every successful detail an invention, the day was well gone before her shelter was an accomplished fact.  And then, that night, it rained, and she was flooded out and driven back into the boat.

The next morning I dug a shallow ditch around the tent, and, an hour later, a sudden gust of wind, whipping over the rocky wall behind us, picked up the tent and smashed it down on the sand thirty yards away.

Maud laughed at my crestfallen expression, and I said, “As soon as the wind abates I intend going in the boat to explore the island.  There must be a station somewhere, and men.  And ships must visit the station.  Some Government must protect all these seals.  But I wish to have you comfortable before I start.”

“I should like to go with you,” was all she said.

“It would be better if you remained.  You have had enough of hardship.  It is a miracle that you have survived.  And it won’t be comfortable in the boat rowing and sailing in this rainy weather.  What you need is rest, and I should like you to remain and get it.”

Something suspiciously akin to moistness dimmed her beautiful eyes before she dropped them and partly turned away her head.

“I should prefer going with you,” she said in a low voice, in which there was just a hint of appeal.

“I might be able to help you a—” her voice broke,—“a little.  And if anything should happen to you, think of me left here alone.”

“Oh, I intend being very careful,” I answered.  “And I shall not go so far but what I can get back before night.  Yes, all said and done, I think it vastly better for you to remain, and sleep, and rest and do nothing.”

She turned and looked me in the eyes.  Her gaze was unfaltering, but soft.

“Please, please,” she said, oh, so softly.

I stiffened myself to refuse, and shook my head.  Still she waited and looked at me.  I tried to word my refusal, but wavered.  I saw the glad light spring into her eyes and knew that I had lost.  It was impossible to say no after that.

The wind died down in the afternoon, and we were prepared to start the following morning.  There was no way of penetrating the island from our cove, for the walls rose perpendicularly from the beach, and, on either side of the cove, rose from the deep water.

Morning broke dull and grey, but calm, and I was awake early and had the boat in readiness.

“Fool!  Imbecile!  Yahoo!” I shouted, when I thought it was meet to arouse Maud; but this time I shouted in merriment as I danced about the beach, bareheaded, in mock despair.

Her head appeared under the flap of the sail.

“What now?” she asked sleepily, and, withal, curiously.

“Coffee!” I cried.  “What do you say to a cup of coffee? hot coffee? piping hot?”

“My!” she murmured, “you startled me, and you are cruel.  Here I have been composing my soul to do without it, and here you are vexing me with your vain suggestions.”

“Watch me,” I said.

From under clefts among the rocks I gathered a few dry sticks and chips.  These I whittled into shavings or split into kindling.  From my note-book I tore out a page, and from the ammunition box took a shot-gun shell.  Removing the wads from the latter with my knife, I emptied the powder on a flat rock.  Next I pried the primer, or cap, from the shell, and laid it on the rock, in the midst of the scattered powder.  All was ready.  Maud still watched from the tent.  Holding the paper in my left hand, I smashed down upon the cap with a rock held in my right.  There was a puff of white smoke, a burst of flame, and the rough edge of the paper was alight.

Maud clapped her hands gleefully.  “Prometheus!” she cried.

But I was too occupied to acknowledge her delight.  The feeble flame must be cherished tenderly if it were to gather strength and live.  I fed it, shaving by shaving, and sliver by sliver, till at last it was snapping