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

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

“Clear that raffle,” I answered, pointing to the tangled wreckage overside.

Ah, the decisiveness, the very sound of the words, was good in my ears.  “Clear that raffle!”  Imagine so salty a phrase on the lips of the Humphrey Van Weyden of a few months gone!

There must have been a touch of the melodramatic in my pose and voice, for Maud smiled.  Her appreciation of the ridiculous was keen, and in all things she unerringly saw and felt, where it existed, the touch of sham, the overshading, the overtone.  It was this which had given poise and penetration to her own work and made her of worth to the world.  The serious critic, with the sense of humour and the power of expression, must inevitably command the world’s ear.  And so it was that she had commanded.  Her sense of humour was really the artist’s instinct for proportion.

“I’m sure I’ve heard it before, somewhere, in books,” she murmured gleefully.

I had an instinct for proportion myself, and I collapsed forthwith, descending from the dominant pose of a master of matter to a state of humble confusion which was, to say the least, very miserable.

Her hand leapt out at once to mine.

“I’m so sorry,” she said.

“No need to be,” I gulped.  “It does me good.  There’s too much of the schoolboy in me.  All of which is neither here nor there.  What we’ve got to do is actually and literally to clear that raffle.  If you’ll come with me in the boat, we’ll get to work and straighten things out.”

“‘When the topmen clear the raffle with their clasp-knives in their teeth,’” she quoted at me; and for the rest of the afternoon we made merry over our labour.

Her task was to hold the boat in position while I worked at the tangle.  And such a tangle—halyards, sheets, guys, down-hauls, shrouds, stays, all washed about and back and forth and through, and twined and knotted by the sea.  I cut no more than was necessary, and what with passing the long ropes under and around the booms and masts, of unreeving the halyards and sheets, of coiling down in the boat and uncoiling in order to pass through another knot in the bight, I was soon wet to the skin.

The sails did require some cutting, and the canvas, heavy with water, tried my strength severely; but I succeeded before nightfall in getting it all spread out on the beach to dry.  We were both very tired when we knocked off for supper, and we had done good work, too, though to the eye it appeared insignificant.

Next morning, with Maud as able assistant, I went into the hold of the Ghost to clear the steps of the mast-butts.  We had no more than begun work when the sound of my knocking and hammering brought Wolf Larsen.

“Hello below!” he cried down the open hatch.

The sound of his voice made Maud quickly draw close to me, as for protection, and she rested one hand on my arm while we parleyed.

“Hello on deck,” I replied.  “Good-morning to you.”

“What are you doing down there?” he demanded.  “Trying to scuttle my ship for me?”

“Quite the opposite; I’m repairing her,” was my answer.

“But what in thunder are you repairing?”  There was puzzlement in his voice.

“Why, I’m getting everything ready for re-stepping the masts,” I replied easily, as though it were the simplest project imaginable.

“It seems as though you’re standing on your own legs at last, Hump,” we heard him say; and then for some time he was silent.

“But I say, Hump,” he called down.  “You can’t do it.”

“Oh, yes, I can,” I retorted.  “I’m doing it now.”

“But this is my vessel, my particular property.  What if I forbid you?”

“You forget,” I replied.  “You are no longer the biggest bit of the ferment.  You were, once, and able to eat me, as you were pleased to phrase it; but there has been a diminishing, and I am now able to eat you.  The yeast has grown stale.”

He gave a short, disagreeable laugh.  “I see you’re working my philosophy back on me for all it is worth.  But don’t make the mistake of under-estimating me.  For your own good I warn you.”

“Since when have you become a philanthropist?” I queried.  “Confess, now, in warning me for my own good, that you are very consistent.”

He ignored my sarcasm, saying, “Suppose I clap the hatch on, now?  You won’t fool me as you did in the lazarette.”

“Wolf Larsen,” I said sternly, for the first time addressing him by this his most familiar name, “I am unable to shoot a helpless, unresisting man.  You have proved that to my satisfaction as well as yours.  But I warn you now, and not so much for your own good as for mine, that I shall shoot you the moment you attempt a hostile act.  I can shoot you now, as I stand here; and if you are so minded, just go ahead and try to clap on the hatch.”

“Nevertheless, I forbid you, I distinctly forbid your tampering with my ship.”

“But, man!” I expostulated, “you advance the fact that it is your ship as though it were a moral right.  You have never considered moral rights in your dealings with others.  You surely do not dream that I’ll consider them in dealing with you?”

I had stepped underneath the open hatchway so that I could see him.  The lack of expression on his face, so different from when I had watched him unseen, was enhanced by the unblinking, staring eyes.  It was not a pleasant face to look upon.

“And none so poor, not even Hump, to do him reverence,” he sneered.

The sneer was wholly in his voice.  His face remained expressionless as ever.

“How do you do, Miss Brewster,” he said suddenly, after a pause.

I started.  She had made no noise whatever, had not even moved.  Could it be that some glimmer of vision remained to him? or that his vision was coming back?

“How do you do, Captain Larsen,” she answered.  “Pray, how did you know I was here?”

“Heard you breathing, of course.  I say, Hump’s improving, don’t you think so?”

“I don’t know,” she answered, smiling at me.  “I have never seen him otherwise.”

“You should have seen him before, then.”

“Wolf Larsen, in large doses,” I murmured, “before and after taking.”

“I want to tell you again, Hump,” he said threateningly, “that you’d better leave things alone.”

“But don’t you care to escape as well as we?” I asked incredulously.

“No,” was his answer.  “I intend dying here.”

“Well, we don’t,” I concluded defiantly, beginning again my knocking and hammering.

Next day, the mast-steps clear and everything in readiness, we started to get the two topmasts aboard.  The maintopmast was over thirty feet in length, the foretopmast nearly thirty, and it was of these that I intended making the shears.  It was puzzling work.  Fastening one end of a heavy tackle to the windlass, and with the other end fast to the butt of the foretopmast, I began to heave.  Maud held the turn on the windlass and coiled down the slack.

We were astonished at the ease with which the spar was lifted.  It was an improved crank windlass, and the purchase it gave was enormous.  Of course, what it gave us in power we paid for in distance; as many times as it doubled my strength, that many times was doubled the length of rope I heaved in.  The tackle dragged heavily across the rail, increasing its drag as the spar arose more and more out of the water, and the exertion on the windlass grew severe.

But when the butt of the topmast was level with the rail, everything came to a standstill.

“I might have known it,” I said impatiently.  “Now we have to do it all over again.”

“Why not fasten the tackle part way down the mast?” Maud suggested.

“It’s what I should have done at first,” I answered, hugely disgusted with myself.

Slipping off a turn, I lowered the mast back into the water and fastened the tackle a third of the way down from the butt.  In an hour, what of this and of rests between the heaving, I had hoisted it to the point where I could hoist no more.  Eight feet of the butt was above the rail, and I was as far away as ever from getting the spar on board.  I sat down and pondered the problem.  It did not take long.  I sprang jubilantly to my feet.

“Now I have it!” I cried.  “I ought to make the tackle fast at the point of balance.  And what we learn of this will serve us with everything else we have to hoist aboard.”

Once again I undid all my work by lowering the mast into the water.  But I miscalculated the point of balance, so that when I heaved the top of the mast came up instead of the butt.  Maud looked despair, but I laughed and said it would do just as well.

Instructing her how to hold the turn and be ready to slack away at command, I laid hold of the mast with my hands and tried to balance it inboard across the rail.  When I thought I had it I cried to her to slack away; but the spar righted, despite my efforts, and dropped back toward the water.  Again I heaved it up to its old position, for I had now another idea.  I remembered the watch-tackle—a small double and single block affair—and fetched it.

While I was rigging it between the top of the spar and the opposite rail, Wolf Larsen came on the scene.  We exchanged nothing more than good-mornings, and, though he could not see, he sat on the rail out of the way and followed by the sound all that I did.

Again instructing Maud to slack away at the windlass when I gave the word, I proceeded to heave on the watch-tackle.  Slowly the mast swung in until it balanced at right angles across the rail; and then I discovered to my amazement that there was no need for Maud to slack away.  In fact, the very opposite was necessary.  Making the watch-tackle fast, I hove on the windlass and brought in the mast, inch by inch, till its top tilted down to the deck and finally its whole length lay on the deck.

I looked at my watch.  It was twelve o’clock.  My back was aching sorely, and I felt extremely tired and hungry.  And there on the deck was a single stick of timber to show for a whole morning’s work.  For the first time I thoroughly realized the extent of the task before us.  But I was learning, I was learning.  The afternoon would show far more accomplished.  And it did; for we returned at one o’clock, rested and strengthened by a hearty dinner.

In less than an hour I had the maintopmast on deck and was constructing the shears.  Lashing the two topmasts together, and making allowance for their unequal length, at the point of intersection I attached the double block of the main throat-halyards.  This, with the single block and the throat-halyards themselves, gave me a hoisting tackle.  To prevent the butts of the masts from slipping on the deck, I nailed down thick cleats.  Everything in readiness, I made a line fast to the apex of the shears and carried it directly to the windlass.  I was growing to have faith in that windlass, for it gave me power beyond all expectation.  As usual, Maud held the turn while I heaved.  The shears rose in the air.

Then I discovered I had forgotten guy-ropes.  This necessitated my climbing the shears, which I did twice, before I finished guying it fore and aft and to either side.  Twilight had set in by the time this was accomplished.  Wolf Larsen, who had sat about and listened all afternoon and never opened his mouth, had taken himself off to the galley and started his supper.  I felt