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

And then she would be up on her feet and toiling hard as ever.  Where she obtained this strength was the marvel to me.

“Think of the long rest this winter,” was her reply to my remonstrances.  “Why, we’ll be clamorous for something to do.”

We held a housewarming in my hut the night it was roofed.  It was the end of the third day of a fierce storm which had swung around the compass from the south-east to the north-west, and which was then blowing directly in upon us.  The beaches of the outer cove were thundering with the surf, and even in our land-locked inner cove a respectable sea was breaking.  No high backbone of island sheltered us from the wind, and it whistled and bellowed about the hut till at times I feared for the strength of the walls.  The skin roof, stretched tightly as a drumhead, I had thought, sagged and bellied with every gust; and innumerable interstices in the walls, not so tightly stuffed with moss as Maud had supposed, disclosed themselves.  Yet the seal-oil burned brightly and we were warm and comfortable.

It was a pleasant evening indeed, and we voted that as a social function on Endeavour Island it had not yet been eclipsed.  Our minds were at ease.  Not only had we resigned ourselves to the bitter winter, but we were prepared for it.  The seals could depart on their mysterious journey into the south at any time, now, for all we cared; and the storms held no terror for us.  Not only were we sure of being dry and warm and sheltered from the wind, but we had the softest and most luxurious mattresses that could be made from moss.  This had been Maud’s idea, and she had herself jealously gathered all the moss.  This was to be my first night on the mattress, and I knew I should sleep the sweeter because she had made it.

As she rose to go she turned to me with the whimsical way she had, and said:

“Something is going to happen—is happening, for that matter.  I feel it.  Something is coming here, to us.  It is coming now.  I don’t know what, but it is coming.”

“Good or bad?” I asked.

She shook her head.  “I don’t know, but it is there, somewhere.”

She pointed in the direction of the sea and wind.

“It’s a lee shore,” I laughed, “and I am sure I’d rather be here than arriving, a night like this.”

“You are not frightened?” I asked, as I stepped to open the door for her.

Her eyes looked bravely into mine.

“And you feel well? perfectly well?”

“Never better,” was her answer.

We talked a little longer before she went.

“Good-night, Maud,” I said.

“Good-night, Humphrey,” she said.

This use of our given names had come about quite as a matter of course, and was as unpremeditated as it was natural.  In that moment I could have put my arms around her and drawn her to me.  I should certainly have done so out in that world to which we belonged.  As it was, the situation stopped there in the only way it could; but I was left alone in my little hut, glowing warmly through and through with a pleasant satisfaction; and I knew that a tie, or a tacit something, existed between us which had not existed before.

CHAPTER XXXII

I awoke, oppressed by a mysterious sensation.  There seemed something missing in my environment.  But the mystery and oppressiveness vanished after the first few seconds of waking, when I identified the missing something as the wind.  I had fallen asleep in that state of nerve tension with which one meets the continuous shock of sound or movement, and I had awakened, still tense, bracing myself to meet the pressure of something which no longer bore upon me.

It was the first night I had spent under cover in several months, and I lay luxuriously for some minutes under my blankets (for once not wet with fog or spray), analysing, first, the effect produced upon me by the cessation of the wind, and next, the joy which was mine from resting on the mattress made by Maud’s hands.  When I had dressed and opened the door, I heard the waves still lapping on the beach, garrulously attesting the fury of the night.  It was a clear day, and the sun was shining.  I had slept late, and I stepped outside with sudden energy, bent upon making up lost time as befitted a dweller on Endeavour Island.

And when outside, I stopped short.  I believed my eyes without question, and yet I was for the moment stunned by what they disclosed to me.  There, on the beach, not fifty feet away, bow on, dismasted, was a black-hulled vessel.  Masts and booms, tangled with shrouds, sheets, and rent canvas, were rubbing gently alongside.  I could have rubbed my eyes as I looked.  There was the home-made galley we had built, the familiar break of the poop, the low yacht-cabin scarcely rising above the rail.  It was the Ghost.

What freak of fortune had brought it here—here of all spots? what chance of chances?  I looked at the bleak, inaccessible wall at my back and know the profundity of despair.  Escape was hopeless, out of the question.  I thought of Maud, asleep there in the hut we had reared; I remembered her “Good-night, Humphrey”; “my woman, my mate,” went ringing through my brain, but now, alas, it was a knell that sounded.  Then everything went black before my eyes.

Possibly it was the fraction of a second, but I had no knowledge of how long an interval had lapsed before I was myself again.  There lay the Ghost, bow on to the beach, her splintered bowsprit projecting over the sand, her tangled spars rubbing against her side to the lift of the crooning waves.  Something must be done, must be done.

It came upon me suddenly, as strange, that nothing moved aboard.  Wearied from the night of struggle and wreck, all hands were yet asleep, I thought.  My next thought was that Maud and I might yet escape.  If we could take to the boat and make round the point before any one awoke?  I would call her and start.  My hand was lifted at her door to knock, when I recollected the smallness of the island.  We could never hide ourselves upon it.  There was nothing for us but the wide raw ocean.  I thought of our snug little huts, our supplies of meat and oil and moss and firewood, and I knew that we could never survive the wintry sea and the great storms which were to come.

So I stood, with hesitant knuckle, without her door.  It was impossible, impossible.  A wild thought of rushing in and killing her as she slept rose in my mind.  And then, in a flash, the better solution came to me.  All hands were asleep.  Why not creep aboard the Ghost,—well I knew the way to Wolf Larsen’s bunk,—and kill him in his sleep?  After that—well, we would see.  But with him dead there was time and space in which to prepare to do other things; and besides, whatever new situation arose, it could not possibly be worse than the present one.

My knife was at my hip.  I returned to my hut for the shot-gun, made sure it was loaded, and went down to the Ghost.  With some difficulty, and at the expense of a wetting to the waist, I climbed aboard.  The forecastle scuttle was open.  I paused to listen for the breathing of the men, but there was no breathing.  I almost gasped as the thought came to me: What if the Ghost is deserted?  I listened more closely.  There was no sound.  I cautiously descended the ladder.  The place had the empty and musty feel and smell usual to a dwelling no longer inhabited.  Everywhere was a thick litter of discarded and ragged garments, old sea-boots, leaky oilskins—all the worthless forecastle dunnage of a long voyage.

Abandoned hastily, was my conclusion, as I ascended to the deck.  Hope was alive again in my breast, and I looked about me with greater coolness.  I noted that the boats were missing.  The steerage told the same tale as the forecastle.  The hunters had packed their belongings with similar haste.  The Ghost was deserted.  It was Maud’s and mine.  I thought of the ship’s stores and the lazarette beneath the cabin, and the idea came to me of surprising Maud with something nice for breakfast.

The reaction from my fear, and the knowledge that the terrible deed I had come to do was no longer necessary, made me boyish and eager.  I went up the steerage companion-way two steps at a time, with nothing distinct in my mind except joy and the hope that Maud would sleep on until the surprise breakfast was quite ready for her.  As I rounded the galley, a new satisfaction was mine at thought of all the splendid cooking utensils inside.  I sprang up the break of the poop, and saw—Wolf Larsen.  What of my impetus and the stunning surprise, I clattered three or four steps along the deck before I could stop myself.  He was standing in the companion-way, only his head and shoulders visible, staring straight at me.  His arms were resting on the half-open slide.  He made no movement whatever—simply stood there, staring at me.

I began to tremble.  The old stomach sickness clutched me.  I put one hand on the edge of the house to steady myself.  My lips seemed suddenly dry and I moistened them against the need of speech.  Nor did I for an instant take my eyes off him.  Neither of us spoke.  There was something ominous in his silence, his immobility.  All my old fear of him returned and my new fear was increased an hundred-fold.  And still we stood, the pair of us, staring at each other.

I was aware of the demand for action, and, my old helplessness strong upon me, I was waiting for him to take the initiative.  Then, as the moments went by, it came to me that the situation was analogous to the one in which I had approached the long-maned bull, my intention of clubbing obscured by fear until it became a desire to make him run.  So it was at last impressed upon me that I was there, not to have Wolf Larsen take the initiative, but to take it myself.

I cocked both barrels and levelled the shot-gun at him.  Had he moved, attempted to drop down the companion-way, I know I would have shot him.  But he stood motionless and staring as before.  And as I faced him, with levelled gun shaking in my hands, I had time to note the worn and haggard appearance of his face.  It was as if some strong anxiety had wasted it.  The cheeks were sunken, and there was a wearied, puckered expression on the brow.  And it seemed to me that his eyes were strange, not only the expression, but the physical seeming, as though the optic nerves and supporting muscles had suffered strain and slightly twisted the eyeballs.

All this I saw, and my brain now working rapidly, I thought a thousand thoughts; and yet I could not pull the triggers.  I lowered the gun and stepped to the corner of the cabin, primarily to relieve the tension on my nerves and to make a new start, and incidentally to be closer.  Again I raised the gun.  He was almost at arm’s length.  There was no hope for him.  I was resolved.  There was no possible chance of missing him, no matter how poor my marksmanship.  And yet I wrestled with myself and could not pull the triggers.

“Well?” he demanded impatiently.

I strove vainly to force my fingers down on the triggers, and vainly I strove to say something.

“Why don’t you shoot?” he asked.

I cleared my throat of a huskiness which prevented speech.  “Hump,” he said slowly, “you can’t do it.  You are