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

Lashing the wheel I ran forward, eased the fore and mainsheets, took in on the boom-tackles and trimmed everything for the quartering breeze which was ours.  It was a fresh breeze, very fresh, but I resolved to run as long as I dared.  Unfortunately, when running free, it is impossible to lash the wheel, so I faced an all-night watch.  Maud insisted on relieving me, but proved that she had not the strength to steer in a heavy sea, even if she could have gained the wisdom on such short notice.  She appeared quite heart-broken over the discovery, but recovered her spirits by coiling down tackles and halyards and all stray ropes.  Then there were meals to be cooked in the galley, beds to make, Wolf Larsen to be attended upon, and she finished the day with a grand house-cleaning attack upon the cabin and steerage.

All night I steered, without relief, the wind slowly and steadily increasing and the sea rising.  At five in the morning Maud brought me hot coffee and biscuits she had baked, and at seven a substantial and piping hot breakfast put new lift into me.

Throughout the day, and as slowly and steadily as ever, the wind increased.  It impressed one with its sullen determination to blow, and blow harder, and keep on blowing.  And still the Ghost foamed along, racing off the miles till I was certain she was making at least eleven knots.  It was too good to lose, but by nightfall I was exhausted.  Though in splendid physical trim, a thirty-six-hour trick at the wheel was the limit of my endurance.  Besides, Maud begged me to heave to, and I knew, if the wind and sea increased at the same rate during the night, that it would soon be impossible to heave to.  So, as twilight deepened, gladly and at the same time reluctantly, I brought the Ghost up on the wind.

But I had not reckoned upon the colossal task the reefing of three sails meant for one man.  While running away from the wind I had not appreciated its force, but when we ceased to run I learned to my sorrow, and well-nigh to my despair, how fiercely it was really blowing.  The wind balked my every effort, ripping the canvas out of my hands and in an instant undoing what I had gained by ten minutes of severest struggle.  At eight o’clock I had succeeded only in putting the second reef into the foresail.  At eleven o’clock I was no farther along.  Blood dripped from every finger-end, while the nails were broken to the quick.  From pain and sheer exhaustion I wept in the darkness, secretly, so that Maud should not know.

Then, in desperation, I abandoned the attempt to reef the mainsail and resolved to try the experiment of heaving to under the close-reefed foresail.  Three hours more were required to gasket the mainsail and jib, and at two in the morning, nearly dead, the life almost buffeted and worked out of me, I had barely sufficient consciousness to know the experiment was a success.  The close-reefed foresail worked.  The Ghost clung on close to the wind and betrayed no inclination to fall off broadside to the trough.

I was famished, but Maud tried vainly to get me to eat.  I dozed with my mouth full of food.  I would fall asleep in the act of carrying food to my mouth and waken in torment to find the act yet uncompleted.  So sleepily helpless was I that she was compelled to hold me in my chair to prevent my being flung to the floor by the violent pitching of the schooner.

Of the passage from the galley to the cabin I knew nothing.  It was a sleep-walker Maud guided and supported.  In fact, I was aware of nothing till I awoke, how long after I could not imagine, in my bunk with my boots off.  It was dark.  I was stiff and lame, and cried out with pain when the bed-clothes touched my poor finger-ends.

Morning had evidently not come, so I closed my eyes and went to sleep again.  I did not know it, but I had slept the clock around and it was night again.

Once more I woke, troubled because I could sleep no better.  I struck a match and looked at my watch.  It marked midnight.  And I had not left the deck until three!  I should have been puzzled had I not guessed the solution.  No wonder I was sleeping brokenly.  I had slept twenty-one hours.  I listened for a while to the behaviour of the Ghost, to the pounding of the seas and the muffled roar of the wind on deck, and then turned over on my side and slept peacefully until morning.

When I arose at seven I saw no sign of Maud and concluded she was in the galley preparing breakfast.  On deck I found the Ghost doing splendidly under her patch of canvas.  But in the galley, though a fire was burning and water boiling, I found no Maud.

I discovered her in the steerage, by Wolf Larsen’s bunk.  I looked at him, the man who had been hurled down from the topmost pitch of life to be buried alive and be worse than dead.  There seemed a relaxation of his expressionless face which was new.  Maud looked at me and I understood.

“His life flickered out in the storm,” I said.

“But he still lives,” she answered, infinite faith in her voice.

“He had too great strength.”

“Yes,” she said, “but now it no longer shackles him.  He is a free spirit.”

“He is a free spirit surely,” I answered; and, taking her hand, I led her on deck.

The storm broke that night, which is to say that it diminished as slowly as it had arisen.  After breakfast next morning, when I had hoisted Wolf Larsen’s body on deck ready for burial, it was still blowing heavily and a large sea was running.  The deck was continually awash with the sea which came inboard over the rail and through the scuppers.  The wind smote the schooner with a sudden gust, and she heeled over till her lee rail was buried, the roar in her rigging rising in pitch to a shriek.  We stood in the water to our knees as I bared my head.

“I remember only one part of the service,” I said, “and that is, ‘And the body shall be cast into the sea.’”

Maud looked at me, surprised and shocked; but the spirit of something I had seen before was strong upon me, impelling me to give service to Wolf Larsen as Wolf Larsen had once given service to another man.  I lifted the end of the hatch cover and the canvas-shrouded body slipped feet first into the sea.  The weight of iron dragged it down.  It was gone.

“Good-bye, Lucifer, proud spirit,” Maud whispered, so low that it was drowned by the shouting of the wind; but I saw the movement of her lips and knew.

As we clung to the lee rail and worked our way aft, I happened to glance to leeward.  The Ghost, at the moment, was uptossed on a sea, and I caught a clear view of a small steamship two or three miles away, rolling and pitching, head on to the sea, as it steamed toward us.  It was painted black, and from the talk of the hunters of their poaching exploits I recognized it as a United States revenue cutter.  I pointed it out to Maud and hurriedly led her aft to the safety of the poop.

I started to rush below to the flag-locker, then remembered that in rigging the Ghost.  I had forgotten to make provision for a flag-halyard.

“We need no distress signal,” Maud said.  “They have only to see us.”

“We are saved,” I said, soberly and solemnly.  And then, in an exuberance of joy, “I hardly know whether to be glad or not.”

I looked at her.  Our eyes were not loath to meet.  We leaned toward each other, and before I knew it my arms were about her.

“Need I?” I asked.

And she answered, “There is no need, though the telling of it would be sweet, so sweet.”

Her lips met the press of mine, and, by what strange trick of the imagination I know not, the scene in the cabin of the Ghost flashed upon me, when she had pressed her fingers lightly on my lips and said, “Hush, hush.”

“My woman, my one small woman,” I said, my free hand petting her shoulder in the way all lovers know though never learn in school.

“My man,” she said, looking at me for an instant with tremulous lids which fluttered down and veiled her eyes as she snuggled her head against my breast with a happy little sigh.

I looked toward the cutter.  It was very close.  A boat was being lowered.

“One kiss, dear love,” I whispered.  “One kiss more before they come.”

“And rescue us from ourselves,” she completed, with a most adorable smile, whimsical as I had never seen it, for it was whimsical with love.