The Sea Wolf

by Jack London

  “That you are at least consistent,” was all I could say, and I went on washing the dishes.

  Chapter VII

  * * *

  At last, after three days of variable winds, we have caught the north-east trades. I came on deck, after a good night’s rest in spite of my poor knee, to find the Ghost foaming along, wing-andwing, and every sail drawing except the jibs, with a fresh breeze astern. Oh, the wonder of the great trade-wind! All day we sailed, and all night, and the next day, and the next, day after day, the wind always astern and blowing steadily and strong. The schooner sailed herself. There was no pulling and hauling on sheets and tackles, no shifting of topsails, no work at all for the sailors to do except to steer. At night when the sun went down, the sheets were slackened; in the morning, when they yielded up the damp of the dew and relaxed, they were pulled tight again — and that was all.

  Ten knots, twelve knots, eleven knots, varying from time to time, is the speed we are making. And ever out of the north-east the brave wind blows, driving us on our course two hundred and fifty miles between the dawns. It saddens me and gladdens me, the gait with which we are leaving San Francisco behind and with which we are foaming down upon the tropics. Each day grows perceptibly warmer. In the second dog-watch the sailors come on deck, stripped, and heave buckets of water upon one another from overside. Flying-fish are beginning to be seen, and during the night the watch above scrambles over the deck in pursuit of those that fall aboard. In the morning, Thomas Mugridge being duly bribed, the galley is pleasantly areek with the odour of their frying; while dolphin meat is served fore and aft on such occasions as Johnson catches the blazing beauties from the bowsprit end.

  Johnson seems to spend all his spare time there or aloft at the crosstrees, watching the Ghost cleaving the water under press of sail. There is passion, adoration, in his eyes, and he goes about in a sort of trance, gazing in ecstasy at the swelling sails, the foaming wake, and the heave and the run of her over the liquid mountains that are moving with us in stately procession.

  The days and nights are “all a wonder and a wild delight,” and though I have little time from my dreary work, I steal odd moments to gaze and gaze at the unending glory of what I never dreamed the world possessed. Above, the sky is stainless blue — blue as the sea itself, which under the forefoot is of the colour and sheen of azure satin. All around the horizon are pale, fleecy clouds, never changing, never moving, like a silver setting for the flawless turquoise sky.

  I do not forget one night, when I should have been asleep, of lying on the forecastle-head and gazing down at the spectral ripple of foam thrust aside by the Ghost’s forefoot. It sounded like the gurgling of a brook over mossy stones in some quiet dell, and the crooning song of it lured me away and out of myself till I was no longer Hump the cabin-boy, nor Van Weyden, the man who had dreamed away thirty-five years among books. But a voice behind me, the unmistakable voice of Wolf Larsen, strong with the invincible certitude of the man and mellow with appreciation of the words he was quoting, aroused me.

  “’O the blazing tropic night, when the wake’s a welt of light That holds the hot sky tame, And the steady forefoot snores through the planet-powdered floors Where the scared whale flukes in flame. Her plates are scarred by the sun, dear lass, And her ropes are taut with the dew, For we’re booming down on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail, We’re sagging south on the Long Trail — the trail that is always new.’”

  “Eh, Hump? How’s it strike you?” he asked, after the due pause which words and setting demanded.

  I looked into his face. It was aglow with light, as the sea itself, and the eyes were flashing in the starshine.

  “It strikes me as remarkable, to say the least, that you should show enthusiasm,” I answered coldly.

  “Why, man, it’s living! it’s life!” he cried.

  “Which is a cheap thing and without value.” I flung his words at him.

  He laughed, and it was the first time I had heard honest mirth in his voice.

  “Ah, I cannot get you to understand, cannot drive it into your head, what a thing this life is. Of course life is valueless, except to itself. And I can tell you that my life is pretty valuable just now — to myself. It is beyond price, which you will acknowledge is a terrific overrating, but which I cannot help, for it is the life that is in me that makes the rating.”

  He appeared waiting for the words with which to express the thought that was in him, and finally went on.

  “Do you know, I am filled with a strange uplift; I feel as if all time were echoing through me, as though all powers were mine. I know truth, divine good from evil, right from wrong. My vision is clear and far. I could almost believe in God. But,” and his voice changed and the light went out of his face, —“what is this condition in which I find myself? this joy of living? this exultation of life? this inspiration, I may well call it? It is what comes when there is nothing wrong with one’s digestion, when his stomach is in trim and his appetite has an edge, and all goes well. It is the bribe for living, the champagne of the blood, the effervescence of the ferment — that makes some men think holy thoughts, and other men to see God or to create him when they cannot see him. That is all, the drunkenness of life, the stirring and crawling of the yeast, the babbling of the life that is insane with consciousness that it is alive. And — bah! To-morrow I shall pay for it as the drunkard pays. And I shall know that I must die, at sea most likely, cease crawling of myself to be all a-crawl with the corruption of the sea; to be fed upon, to be carrion, to yield up all the strength and movement of my muscles that it may become strength and movement in fin and scale and the guts of fishes. Bah! And bah! again. The champagne is already flat. The sparkle and bubble has gone out and it is a tasteless drink.”

  He left me as suddenly as he had come, springing to the deck with the weight and softness of a tiger. The Ghost ploughed on her way. I noted the gurgling forefoot was very like a snore, and as I listened to it the effect of Wolf Larsen’s swift rush from sublime exultation to despair slowly left me. Then some deep-water sailor, from the waist of the ship, lifted a rich tenor voice in the “Song of the Trade Wind”:

  * *

  “Oh, I am the wind the seamen love

  I am steady, and strong, and true;

  They follow my track by the clouds above,

  O’er the fathomless tropic blue.

  * * * * *

  Through daylight and dark I follow the bark

  I keep like a hound on her trail;

  I’m strongest at noon, yet under the moon,

  I stiffen the bunt of her sail.”

  * *

  Chapter VIII

  * * *

  Sometimes I think Wolf Larsen mad, or half-mad at least, what of his strange moods and vagaries. At other times I take him for a great man, a genius who has never arrived. And, finally, I am convinced that he is the perfect type of the primitive man, born a thousand years or generations too late and an anachronism in this culminating century of civilization. He is certainly an individualist of the most pronounced type. Not only that, but he is very lonely. There is no congeniality between him and the rest of the men aboard ship. His tremendous virility and mental strength wall him apart. They are more like children to him, even the hunters, and as children he treats them, descending perforce to their level and playing with them as a man plays with puppies. Or else he probes them with the cruel hand of a vivisectionist, groping about in their mental processes and examining their souls as though to see of what soul-stuff is made.

  I have seen him a score of times, at table, insulting this hunter or that, with cool and level eyes and, withal, a certain air of interest, pondering their actions or replies or petty rages with a curiosity almost laughable to me who stood onlooker and who understood. Concerning his own rages, I am convinced that they are not real, that they are sometimes experiments, but that in the main they are the habits of a pose or attitude he has seen fit to take toward his fellow-men. I know, with the possi
ble exception of the incident of the dead mate, that I have not seen him really angry; nor do I wish ever to see him in a genuine rage, when all the force of him is called into play.

  While on the question of vagaries, I shall tell what befell Thomas Mugridge in the cabin, and at the same time complete an incident upon which I have already touched once or twice. The twelve o’clock dinner was over, one day, and I had just finished putting the cabin in order, when Wolf Larsen and Thomas Mugridge descended the companion stairs. Though the cook had a cubby-hole of a stateroom opening off from the cabin, in the cabin itself he had never dared to linger or to be seen, and he flitted to and fro, once or twice a day, a timid spectre.

  “So you know how to play ‘Nap,’” Wolf Larsen was saying in a pleased sort of voice. “I might have guessed an Englishman would know. I learned it myself in English ships.”

  Thomas Mugridge was beside himself, a blithering imbecile, so pleased was he at chumming thus with the captain. The little airs he put on and the painful striving to assume the easy carriage of a man born to a dignified place in life would have been sickening had they not been ludicrous. He quite ignored my presence, though I credited him with being simply unable to see me. His pale, wishywashy eyes were swimming like lazy summer seas, though what blissful visions they beheld were beyond my imagination.

  “Get the cards, Hump,” Wolf Larsen ordered, as they took seats at the table. “And bring out the cigars and the whisky you’ll find in my berth.”

  I returned with the articles in time to hear the Cockney hinting broadly that there was a mystery about him, that he might be a gentleman’s son gone wrong or something or other; also, that he was a remittance man and was paid to keep away from England —“p’yed ‘ansomely, sir,” was the way he put it; “p’yed ‘ansomely to sling my ‘ook an’ keep slingin’ it.”

  I had brought the customary liquor glasses, but Wolf Larsen frowned, shook his head, and signalled with his hands for me to bring the tumblers. These he filled two-thirds full with undiluted whisky —“a gentleman’s drink?” quoth Thomas Mugridge, — and they clinked their glasses to the glorious game of “Nap,” lighted cigars, and fell to shuffling and dealing the cards.

  They played for money. They increased the amounts of the bets. They drank whisky, they drank it neat, and I fetched more. I do not know whether Wolf Larsen cheated or not, — a thing he was thoroughly capable of doing, — but he won steadily. The cook made repeated journeys to his bunk for money. Each time he performed the journey with greater swagger, but he never brought more than a few dollars at a time. He grew maudlin, familiar, could hardly see the cards or sit upright. As a preliminary to another journey to his bunk, he hooked Wolf Larsen’s buttonhole with a greasy forefinger and vacuously proclaimed and reiterated, “I got money, I got money, I tell yer, an’ I’m a gentleman’s son.”

  Wolf Larsen was unaffected by the drink, yet he drank glass for glass, and if anything his glasses were fuller. There was no change in him. He did not appear even amused at the other’s antics.

  In the end, with loud protestations that he could lose like a gentleman, the cook’s last money was staked on the game — and lost. Whereupon he leaned his head on his hands and wept. Wolf Larsen looked curiously at him, as though about to probe and vivisect him, then changed his mind, as from the foregone conclusion that there was nothing there to probe.

  “Hump,” he said to me, elaborately polite, “kindly take Mr. Mugridge’s arm and help him up on deck. He is not feeling very well.”

  “And tell Johnson to douse him with a few buckets of salt water,” he added, in a lower tone for my ear alone.

  I left Mr. Mugridge on deck, in the hands of a couple of grinning sailors who had been told off for the purpose. Mr. Mugridge was sleepily spluttering that he was a gentleman’s son. But as I descended the companion stairs to clear the table I heard him shriek as the first bucket of water struck him.

  Wolf Larsen was counting his winnings.

  “One hundred and eighty-five dollars even,” he said aloud. “Just as I thought. “The beggar came aboard without a cent.”

  “And what you have won is mine, sir,” I said boldly.

  He favoured me with a quizzical smile. “Hump, I have studied some grammar in my time, and I think your tenses are tangled. ‘Was mine,’ you should have said, not ‘is mine.’”

  “It is a question, not of grammar, but of ethics,” I answered.

  It was possibly a minute before he spoke.

  “D’ye know, Hump,” he said, with a slow seriousness which had in it an indefinable strain of sadness, “that this is the first time I have heard the word ‘ethics’ in the mouth of a man. You and I are the only men on this ship who know its meaning.”

  “At one time in my life,” he continued, after another pause, “I dreamed that I might some day talk with men who used such language, that I might lift myself out of the place in life in which I had been born, and hold conversation and mingle with men who talked about just such things as ethics. And this is the first time I have ever heard the word pronounced. Which is all by the way, for you are wrong. It is a question neither of grammar nor ethics, but of fact.”

  “I understand,” I said. “The fact is that you have the money.”

  His face brightened. He seemed pleased at my perspicacity. “But it is avoiding the real question,” I continued, “which is one of right.”

  “Ah,” he remarked, with a wry pucker of his mouth, “I see you still believe in such things as right and wrong.”

  “But don’t you? — at all?” I demanded.

  “Not the least bit. Might is right, and that is all there is to it. Weakness is wrong. Which is a very poor way of saying that it is good for oneself to be strong, and evil for oneself to be weak or better yet, it is pleasurable to be strong, because of the profits; painful to be weak, because of the penalties. Just now the possession of this money is a pleasurable thing. It is good for one to possess it. Being able to possess it, I wrong myself and the life that is in me if I give it to you and forego the pleasure of possessing it.”

  “But you wrong me by withholding it,” I objected.

  “Not at all. One man cannot wrong another man. He can only wrong himself. As I see it, I do wrong always when I consider the interests of others. Don’t you see? How can two particles of the yeast wrong each other by striving to devour each other? It is their inborn heritage to strive to devour, and to strive not to be devoured. When they depart from this they sin.”

  “Then you don’t believe in altruism?” I asked.

  He received the word as if it had a familiar ring, though he pondered it thoughtfully. “Let me see, it means something about cooperation, doesn’t it?”

  “Well, in a way there has come to be a sort of connection,” I answered unsurprised by this time at such gaps in his vocabulary, which, like his knowledge, was the acquirement of a self-read, self-educated man, whom no one had directed in his studies, and who had thought much and talked little or not at all. “An altruistic act is an act performed for the welfare of others. It is unselfish, as opposed to an act performed for self, which is selfish.”

  He nodded his head. “Oh, yes, I remember it now. I ran across it in Spencer.”

  “Spencer!” I cried. “Have you read him?”

  “Not very much,” was his confession. “I understood quite a good deal of FIRST PRINCIPLES, but his BIOLOGY took the wind out of my sails, and his PSYCHOLOGY left me butting around in the doldrums for many a day. I honestly could not understand what he was driving at. I put it down to mental deficiency on my part, but since then I have decided that it was for want of preparation. I had no proper basis. Only Spencer and myself know how hard I hammered. But I did get something out of his DATA OF ETHICS. There’s where I ran across ‘altruism,’ and I remember now how it was used.”

  I wondered what this man could have got from such a work. Spencer I remembered enough to know that altruism was imperative to his ideal of highest conduct. Wolf Larsen, evi
dently, had sifted the great philosopher’s teachings, rejecting and selecting according to his needs and desires.

  “What else did you run across?” I asked.

  His brows drew in slightly with the mental effort of suitably phrasing thoughts which he had never before put into speech. I felt an elation of spirit. I was groping into his soul-stuff as he made a practice of groping in the soul-stuff of others. I was exploring virgin territory. A strange, a terribly strange, region was unrolling itself before my eyes.

  “In as few words as possible,” he began, “Spencer puts it something like this: First, a man must act for his own benefit — to do this is to be moral and good. Next, he must act for the benefit of his children. And third, he must act for the benefit of his race.”

  “And the highest, finest, right conduct,” I interjected, “is that act which benefits at the same time the man, his children, and his race.”

  “I wouldn’t stand for that,” he replied. “Couldn’t see the necessity for it, nor the common sense. I cut out the race and the children. I would sacrifice nothing for them. It’s just so much slush and sentiment, and you must see it yourself, at least for one who does not believe in eternal life. With immortality before me, altruism would be a paying business proposition. I might elevate my soul to all kinds of altitudes. But with nothing eternal before me but death, given for a brief spell this yeasty crawling and squirming which is called life, why, it would be immoral for me to perform any act that was a sacrifice. Any sacrifice that makes me lose one crawl or squirm is foolish, — and not only foolish, for it is a wrong against myself and a wicked thing. I must not lose one crawl or squirm if I am to get the most out of the ferment. Nor will the eternal movelessness that is coming to me be made easier or harder by the sacrifices or selfishnesses of the time when I was yeasty and acrawl.”