The Sea-Story Megapack: 30 Classic Nautical Works

by Jack Williamson

  “I read immortality in your eyes,” I answered, dropping the “sir,”—an experiment, for I thought the intimacy of the conversation warranted it.

  He took no notice. “By that, I take it, you see something that is alive, but that necessarily does not have to live for ever.”

  “I read more than that,” I continued boldly.

  “Then you read consciousness. You read the consciousness of life that it is alive; but still no further away, no endlessness of life.”

  How clearly he thought, and how well he expressed what he thought! From regarding me curiously, he turned his head and glanced out over the leaden sea to windward. A bleakness came into his eyes, and the lines of his mouth grew severe and harsh. He was evidently in a pessimistic mood.

  “Then to what end?” he demanded abruptly, turning back to me. “If I am immortal—why?”

  I halted. How could I explain my idealism to this man? How could I put into speech a something felt, a something like the strains of music heard in sleep, a something that convinced yet transcended utterance?

  “What do you believe, then?” I countered.

  “I believe that life is a mess,” he answered promptly. “It is like yeast, a ferment, a thing that moves and may move for a minute, an hour, a year, or a hundred years, but that in the end will cease to move. The big eat the little that they may continue to move, the strong eat the weak that they may retain their strength. The lucky eat the most and move the longest, that is all. What do you make of those things?”

  He swept his arm in an impatient gesture toward a number of the sailors who were working on some kind of rope stuff amidships.

  “They move, so does the jelly-fish move. They move in order to eat in order that they may keep moving. There you have it. They live for their belly’s sake, and the belly is for their sake. It’s a circle; you get nowhere. Neither do they. In the end they come to a standstill. They move no more. They are dead.”

  “They have dreams,” I interrupted, “radiant, flashing dreams—”

  “Of grub,” he concluded sententiously.

  “And of more—”

  “Grub. Of a larger appetite and more luck in satisfying it.” His voice sounded harsh. There was no levity in it. “For, look you, they dream of making lucky voyages which will bring them more money, of becoming the mates of ships, of finding fortunes—in short, of being in a better position for preying on their fellows, of having all night in, good grub and somebody else to do the dirty work. You and I are just like them. There is no difference, except that we have eaten more and better. I am eating them now, and you too. But in the past you have eaten more than I have. You have slept in soft beds, and worn fine clothes, and eaten good meals. Who made those beds? and those clothes? and those meals? Not you. You never made anything in your own sweat. You live on an income which your father earned. You are like a frigate bird swooping down upon the boobies and robbing them of the fish they have caught. You are one with a crowd of men who have made what they call a government, who are masters of all the other men, and who eat the food the other men get and would like to eat themselves. You wear the warm clothes. They made the clothes, but they shiver in rags and ask you, the lawyer, or business agent who handles your money, for a job.”

  “But that is beside the matter,” I cried.

  “Not at all.” He was speaking rapidly now, and his eyes were flashing. “It is piggishness, and it is life. Of what use or sense is an immortality of piggishness? What is the end? What is it all about? You have made no food. Yet the food you have eaten or wasted might have saved the lives of a score of wretches who made the food but did not eat it. What immortal end did you serve? or did they? Consider yourself and me. What does your boasted immortality amount to when your life runs foul of mine? You would like to go back to the land, which is a favourable place for your kind of piggishness. It is a whim of mine to keep you aboard this ship, where my piggishness flourishes. And keep you I will. I may make or break you. You may die today, this week, or next month. I could kill you now, with a blow of my fist, for you are a miserable weakling. But if we are immortal, what is the reason for this? To be piggish as you and I have been all our lives does not seem to be just the thing for immortals to be doing. Again, what’s it all about? Why have I kept you here?—”

  “Because you are stronger,” I managed to blurt out.

  “But why stronger?” he went on at once with his perpetual queries. “Because I am a bigger bit of the ferment than you? Don’t you see? Don’t you see?”

  “But the hopelessness of it,” I protested.

  “I agree with you,” he answered. “Then why move at all, since moving is living? Without moving and being part of the yeast there would be no hopelessness. But—and there it is—we want to live and move, though we have no reason to, because it happens that it is the nature of life to live and move, to want to live and move. If it were not for this, life would be dead. It is because of this life that is in you that you dream of your immortality. The life that is in you is alive and wants to go on being alive for ever. Bah! An eternity of piggishness!”

  He abruptly turned on his heel and started forward. He stopped at the break of the poop and called me to him.

  “By the way, how much was it that Cooky got away with?” he asked.

  “One hundred and eighty-five dollars, sir,” I answered.

  He nodded his head. A moment later, as I started down the companion stairs to lay the table for dinner, I heard him loudly cursing some men amidships.

  CHAPTER VI

  By the following morning the storm had blown itself quite out and the Ghost was rolling slightly on a calm sea without a breath of wind. Occasional light airs were felt, however, and Wolf Larsen patrolled the poop constantly, his eyes ever searching the sea to the north-eastward, from which direction the great trade-wind must blow.

  The men were all on deck and busy preparing their various boats for the season’s hunting. There are seven boats aboard, the captain’s dingey, and the six which the hunters will use. Three, a hunter, a boat-puller, and a boat-steerer, compose a boat’s crew. On board the schooner the boat-pullers and steerers are the crew. The hunters, too, are supposed to be in command of the watches, subject, always, to the orders of Wolf Larsen.

  All this, and more, I have learned. The Ghost is considered the fastest schooner in both the San Francisco and Victoria fleets. In fact, she was once a private yacht, and was built for speed. Her lines and fittings—though I know nothing about such things—speak for themselves. Johnson was telling me about her in a short chat I had with him during yesterday’s second dog-watch. He spoke enthusiastically, with the love for a fine craft such as some men feel for horses. He is greatly disgusted with the outlook, and I am given to understand that Wolf Larsen bears a very unsavoury reputation among the sealing captains. It was the Ghost herself that lured Johnson into signing for the voyage, but he is already beginning to repent.

  As he told me, the Ghost is an eighty-ton schooner of a remarkably fine model. Her beam, or width, is twenty-three feet, and her length a little over ninety feet. A lead keel of fabulous but unknown weight makes her very stable, while she carries an immense spread of canvas. From the deck to the truck of the maintopmast is something over a hundred feet, while the foremast with its topmast is eight or ten feet shorter. I am giving these details so that the size of this little floating world which holds twenty-two men may be appreciated. It is a very little world, a mote, a speck, and I marvel that men should dare to venture the sea on a contrivance so small and fragile.

  Wolf Larsen has, also, a reputation for reckless carrying on of sail. I overheard Henderson and another of the hunters, Standish, a Californian, talking about it. Two years ago he dismasted the Ghost in a gale on Bering Sea, whereupon the present masts were put in, which are stronger and heavier in every way. He is said to have remarked, when he put them in, that he preferred turning her over to losing the sticks.

  Every man aboard, with the exception of
Johansen, who is rather overcome by his promotion, seems to have an excuse for having sailed on the Ghost. Half the men forward are deep-water sailors, and their excuse is that they did not know anything about her or her captain. And those who do know, whisper that the hunters, while excellent shots, were so notorious for their quarrelsome and rascally proclivities that they could not sign on any decent schooner.

  I have made the acquaintance of another one of the crew—Louis he is called, a rotund and jovial-faced Nova Scotia Irishman, and a very sociable fellow, prone to talk as long as he can find a listener. In the afternoon, while the cook was below asleep and I was peeling the everlasting potatoes, Louis dropped into the galley for a “yarn.” His excuse for being aboard was that he was drunk when he signed. He assured me again and again that it was the last thing in the world he would dream of doing in a sober moment. It seems that he has been seal-hunting regularly each season for a dozen years, and is accounted one of the two or three very best boat-steerers in both fleets.

  “Ah, my boy,” he shook his head ominously at me, “’tis the worst schooner ye could iv selected, nor were ye drunk at the time as was I. ’Tis sealin’ is the sailor’s paradise—on other ships than this. The mate was the first, but mark me words, there’ll be more dead men before the trip is done with. Hist, now, between you an’ meself and the stanchion there, this Wolf Larsen is a regular devil, an’ the Ghost’ll be a hell-ship like she’s always ben since he had hold iv her. Don’t I know? Don’t I know? Don’t I remember him in Hakodate two years gone, when he had a row an’ shot four iv his men? Wasn’t I a-layin’ on the Emma L., not three hundred yards away? An’ there was a man the same year he killed with a blow iv his fist. Yes, sir, killed ’im dead-oh. His head must iv smashed like an eggshell. An’ wasn’t there the Governor of Kura Island, an’ the Chief iv Police, Japanese gentlemen, sir, an’ didn’t they come aboard the Ghost as his guests, a-bringin’ their wives along—wee an’ pretty little bits of things like you see ’em painted on fans. An’ as he was a-gettin’ under way, didn’t the fond husbands get left astern-like in their sampan, as it might be by accident? An’ wasn’t it a week later that the poor little ladies was put ashore on the other side of the island, with nothin’ before ’em but to walk home acrost the mountains on their weeny-teeny little straw sandals which wouldn’t hang together a mile? Don’t I know? ’Tis the beast he is, this Wolf Larsen—the great big beast mentioned iv in Revelation; an’ no good end will he ever come to. But I’ve said nothin’ to ye, mind ye. I’ve whispered never a word; for old fat Louis’ll live the voyage out if the last mother’s son of yez go to the fishes.”

  “Wolf Larsen!” he snorted a moment later. “Listen to the word, will ye! Wolf—’tis what he is. He’s not black-hearted like some men. ’Tis no heart he has at all. Wolf, just wolf, ’tis what he is. D’ye wonder he’s well named?”

  “But if he is so well-known for what he is,” I queried, “how is it that he can get men to ship with him?”

  “An’ how is it ye can get men to do anything on God’s earth an’ sea?” Louis demanded with Celtic fire. “How d’ye find me aboard if ’twasn’t that I was drunk as a pig when I put me name down? There’s them that can’t sail with better men, like the hunters, and them that don’t know, like the poor devils of wind-jammers for’ard there. But they’ll come to it, they’ll come to it, an’ be sorry the day they was born. I could weep for the poor creatures, did I but forget poor old fat Louis and the troubles before him. But ’tis not a whisper I’ve dropped, mind ye, not a whisper.”

  “Them hunters is the wicked boys,” he broke forth again, for he suffered from a constitutional plethora of speech. “But wait till they get to cutting up iv jinks and rowin’ ’round. He’s the boy’ll fix ’em. ’Tis him that’ll put the fear of God in their rotten black hearts. Look at that hunter iv mine, Horner. ‘Jock’ Horner they call him, so quiet-like an’ easy-goin’, soft-spoken as a girl, till ye’d think butter wouldn’t melt in the mouth iv him. Didn’t he kill his boat-steerer last year? ’Twas called a sad accident, but I met the boat-puller in Yokohama an’ the straight iv it was given me. An’ there’s Smoke, the black little devil—didn’t the Roosians have him for three years in the salt mines of Siberia, for poachin’ on Copper Island, which is a Roosian preserve? Shackled he was, hand an’ foot, with his mate. An’ didn’t they have words or a ruction of some kind?—for ’twas the other fellow Smoke sent up in the buckets to the top of the mine; an’ a piece at a time he went up, a leg today, an’ tomorrow an arm, the next day the head, an’ so on.”

  “But you can’t mean it!” I cried out, overcome with the horror of it.

  “Mean what!” he demanded, quick as a flash. “’Tis nothin’ I’ve said. Deef I am, and dumb, as ye should be for the sake iv your mother; an’ never once have I opened me lips but to say fine things iv them an’ him, God curse his soul, an’ may he rot in purgatory ten thousand years, and then go down to the last an’ deepest hell iv all!”

  Johnson, the man who had chafed me raw when I first came aboard, seemed the least equivocal of the men forward or aft. In fact, there was nothing equivocal about him. One was struck at once by his straightforwardness and manliness, which, in turn, were tempered by a modesty which might be mistaken for timidity. But timid he was not. He seemed, rather, to have the courage of his convictions, the certainty of his manhood. It was this that made him protest, at the commencement of our acquaintance, against being called Yonson. And upon this, and him, Louis passed judgment and prophecy.

  “’Tis a fine chap, that squarehead Johnson we’ve for’ard with us,” he said. “The best sailorman in the fo’c’sle. He’s my boat-puller. But it’s to trouble he’ll come with Wolf Larsen, as the sparks fly upward. It’s meself that knows. I can see it brewin’ an’ comin’ up like a storm in the sky. I’ve talked to him like a brother, but it’s little he sees in takin’ in his lights or flyin’ false signals. He grumbles out when things don’t go to suit him, and there’ll be always some tell-tale carryin’ word iv it aft to the Wolf. The Wolf is strong, and it’s the way of a wolf to hate strength, an’ strength it is he’ll see in Johnson—no knucklin’ under, and a ‘Yes, sir, thank ye kindly, sir,’ for a curse or a blow. Oh, she’s a-comin’! She’s a-comin’! An’ God knows where I’ll get another boat-puller! What does the fool up an’ say, when the old man calls him Yonson, but ‘Me name is Johnson, sir,’ an’ then spells it out, letter for letter. Ye should iv seen the old man’s face! I thought he’d let drive at him on the spot. He didn’t, but he will, an’ he’ll break that squarehead’s heart, or it’s little I know iv the ways iv men on the ships iv the sea.”

  Thomas Mugridge is becoming unendurable. I am compelled to Mister him and to Sir him with every speech. One reason for this is that Wolf Larsen seems to have taken a fancy to him. It is an unprecedented thing, I take it, for a captain to be chummy with the cook; but this is certainly what Wolf Larsen is doing. Two or three times he put his head into the galley and chaffed Mugridge good-naturedly, and once, this afternoon, he stood by the break of the poop and chatted with him for fully fifteen minutes. When it was over, and Mugridge was back in the galley, he became greasily radiant, and went about his work, humming coster songs in a nerve-racking and discordant falsetto.

  “I always get along with the officers,” he remarked to me in a confidential tone. “I know the w’y, I do, to myke myself uppreci-yted. There was my last skipper—w’y I thought nothin’ of droppin’ down in the cabin for a little chat and a friendly glass. ‘Mugridge,’ sez ’e to me, ‘Mugridge,’ sez ’e, ‘you’ve missed yer vokytion.’ ‘An’ ’ow’s that?’ sez I. ‘Yer should ’a been born a gentleman, an’ never ’ad to work for yer livin’.’ God strike me dead, ’Ump, if that ayn’t wot ’e sez, an’ me a-sittin’ there in ’is own cabin, jolly-like an’ comfortable, a-smokin’ ’is cigars an’ drinkin’ ’is rum.”

  This chitter-chatter drove me to distraction. I never heard a voice I hated so. His oily, insinuating tone
s, his greasy smile and his monstrous self-conceit grated on my nerves till sometimes I was all in a tremble. Positively, he was the most disgusting and loathsome person I have ever met. The filth of his cooking was indescribable; and, as he cooked everything that was eaten aboard, I was compelled to select what I ate with great circumspection, choosing from the least dirty of his concoctions.

  My hands bothered me a great deal, unused as they were to work. The nails were discoloured and black, while the skin was already grained with dirt which even a scrubbing-brush could not remove. Then blisters came, in a painful and never-ending procession, and I had a great burn on my forearm, acquired by losing my balance in a roll of the ship and pitching against the galley stove. Nor was my knee any better. The swelling had not gone down, and the cap was still up on edge. Hobbling about on it from morning till night was not helping it any. What I needed was rest, if it were ever to get well.

  Rest! I never before knew the meaning of the word. I had been resting all my life and did not know it. But now, could I sit still for one half-hour and do nothing, not even think, it would be the most pleasurable thing in the world. But it is a revelation, on the other hand. I shall be able to appreciate the lives of the working people hereafter. I did not dream that work was so terrible a thing. From half-past five in the morning till ten o’clock at night I am everybody’s slave, with not one moment to myself, except such as I can steal near the end of the second dog-watch. Let me pause for a minute to look out over the sea sparkling in the sun, or to gaze at a sailor going aloft to the gaff-topsails, or running out the bowsprit, and I am sure to hear the hateful voice, “’Ere, you, ’Ump, no sodgerin’. I’ve got my peepers on yer.”

  There are signs of rampant bad temper in the steerage, and the gossip is going around that Smoke and Henderson have had a fight. Henderson seems the best of the hunters, a slow-going fellow, and hard to rouse; but roused he must have been, for Smoke had a bruised and discoloured eye, and looked particularly vicious when he came into the cabin for supper.