The Sea Wolf by Jack London (best classic literature .txt) 📖

no other interest than Wolf Larsen, and his presence weighed us down with an apprehension which prevented us from doing any of the little things we had planned.

But at the end of the week the smoke ceased rising from the galley, and he no longer showed himself on the poop.  I could see Maud’s solicitude again growing, though she timidly—and even proudly, I think—forbore a repetition of her request.  After all, what censure could be put upon her?  She was divinely altruistic, and she was a woman.  Besides, I was myself aware of hurt at thought of this man whom I had tried to kill, dying alone with his fellow-creatures so near.  He was right.  The code of my group was stronger than I.  The fact that he had hands, feet, and a body shaped somewhat like mine, constituted a claim which I could not ignore.

So I did not wait a second time for Maud to send me.  I discovered that we stood in need of condensed milk and marmalade, and announced that I was going aboard.  I could see that she wavered.  She even went so far as to murmur that they were non-essentials and that my trip after them might be inexpedient.  And as she had followed the trend of my silence, she now followed the trend of my speech, and she knew that I was going aboard, not because of condensed milk and marmalade, but because of her and of her anxiety, which she knew she had failed to hide.

I took off my shoes when I gained the forecastle head, and went noiselessly aft in my stocking feet.  Nor did I call this time from the top of the companion-way.  Cautiously descending, I found the cabin deserted.  The door to his state-room was closed.  At first I thought of knocking, then I remembered my ostensible errand and resolved to carry it out.  Carefully avoiding noise, I lifted the trap-door in the floor and set it to one side.  The slop-chest, as well as the provisions, was stored in the lazarette, and I took advantage of the opportunity to lay in a stock of underclothing.

As I emerged from the lazarette I heard sounds in Wolf Larsen’s state-room.  I crouched and listened.  The door-knob rattled.  Furtively, instinctively, I slunk back behind the table and drew and cocked my revolver.  The door swung open and he came forth.  Never had I seen so profound a despair as that which I saw on his face,—the face of Wolf Larsen the fighter, the strong man, the indomitable one.  For all the world like a woman wringing her hands, he raised his clenched fists and groaned.  One fist unclosed, and the open palm swept across his eyes as though brushing away cobwebs.

“God!  God!” he groaned, and the clenched fists were raised again to the infinite despair with which his throat vibrated.

It was horrible.  I was trembling all over, and I could feel the shivers running up and down my spine and the sweat standing out on my forehead.  Surely there can be little in this world more awful than the spectacle of a strong man in the moment when he is utterly weak and broken.

But Wolf Larsen regained control of himself by an exertion of his remarkable will.  And it was exertion.  His whole frame shook with the struggle.  He resembled a man on the verge of a fit.  His face strove to compose itself, writhing and twisting in the effort till he broke down again.  Once more the clenched fists went upward and he groaned.  He caught his breath once or twice and sobbed.  Then he was successful.  I could have thought him the old Wolf Larsen, and yet there was in his movements a vague suggestion of weakness and indecision.  He started for the companion-way, and stepped forward quite as I had been accustomed to see him do; and yet again, in his very walk, there seemed that suggestion of weakness and indecision.

I was now concerned with fear for myself.  The open trap lay directly in his path, and his discovery of it would lead instantly to his discovery of me.  I was angry with myself for being caught in so cowardly a position, crouching on the floor.  There was yet time.  I rose swiftly to my feet, and, I know, quite unconsciously assumed a defiant attitude.  He took no notice of me.  Nor did he notice the open trap.  Before I could grasp the situation, or act, he had walked right into the trap.  One foot was descending into the opening, while the other foot was just on the verge of beginning the uplift.  But when the descending foot missed the solid flooring and felt vacancy beneath, it was the old Wolf Larsen and the tiger muscles that made the falling body spring across the opening, even as it fell, so that he struck on his chest and stomach, with arms outstretched, on the floor of the opposite side.  The next instant he had drawn up his legs and rolled clear.  But he rolled into my marmalade and underclothes and against the trap-door.

The expression on his face was one of complete comprehension.  But before I could guess what he had comprehended, he had dropped the trap-door into place, closing the lazarette.  Then I understood.  He thought he had me inside.  Also, he was blind, blind as a bat.  I watched him, breathing carefully so that he should not hear me.  He stepped quickly to his state-room.  I saw his hand miss the door-knob by an inch, quickly fumble for it, and find it.  This was my chance.  I tiptoed across the cabin and to the top of the stairs.  He came back, dragging a heavy sea-chest, which he deposited on top of the trap.  Not content with this he fetched a second chest and placed it on top of the first.  Then he gathered up the marmalade and underclothes and put them on the table.  When he started up the companion-way, I retreated, silently rolling over on top of the cabin.

He shoved the slide part way back and rested his arms on it, his body still in the companion-way.  His attitude was of one looking forward the length of the schooner, or staring, rather, for his eyes were fixed and unblinking.  I was only five feet away and directly in what should have been his line of vision.  It was uncanny.  I felt myself a ghost, what of my invisibility.  I waved my hand back and forth, of course without effect; but when the moving shadow fell across his face I saw at once that he was susceptible to the impression.  His face became more expectant and tense as he tried to analyze and identify the impression.  He knew that he had responded to something from without, that his sensibility had been touched by a changing something in his environment; but what it was he could not discover.  I ceased waving my hand, so that the shadow remained stationary.  He slowly moved his head back and forth under it and turned from side to side, now in the sunshine, now in the shade, feeling the shadow, as it were, testing it by sensation.

I, too, was busy, trying to reason out how he was aware of the existence of so intangible a thing as a shadow.  If it were his eyeballs only that were affected, or if his optic nerve were not wholly destroyed, the explanation was simple.  If otherwise, then the only conclusion I could reach was that the sensitive skin recognized the difference of temperature between shade and sunshine.  Or, perhaps,—who can tell?—it was that fabled sixth sense which conveyed to him the loom and feel of an object close at hand.

Giving over his attempt to determine the shadow, he stepped on deck and started forward, walking with a swiftness and confidence which surprised me.  And still there was that hint of the feebleness of the blind in his walk.  I knew it now for what it was.

To my amused chagrin, he discovered my shoes on the forecastle head and brought them back with him into the galley.  I watched him build the fire and set about cooking food for himself; then I stole into the cabin for my marmalade and underclothes, slipped back past the galley, and climbed down to the beach to deliver my barefoot report.

CHAPTER XXXIV

“It’s too bad the Ghost has lost her masts.  Why we could sail away in her.  Don’t you think we could, Humphrey?”

I sprang excitedly to my feet.

“I wonder, I wonder,” I repeated, pacing up and down.

Maud’s eyes were shining with anticipation as they followed me.  She had such faith in me!  And the thought of it was so much added power.  I remembered Michelet’s “To man, woman is as the earth was to her legendary son; he has but to fall down and kiss her breast and he is strong again.”  For the first time I knew the wonderful truth of his words.  Why, I was living them.  Maud was all this to me, an unfailing, source of strength and courage.  I had but to look at her, or think of her, and be strong again.

“It can be done, it can be done,” I was thinking and asserting aloud.  “What men have done, I can do; and if they have never done this before, still I can do it.”

“What? for goodness’ sake,” Maud demanded.  “Do be merciful.  What is it you can do?”

“We can do it,” I amended.  “Why, nothing else than put the masts back into the Ghost and sail away.”

“Humphrey!” she exclaimed.

And I felt as proud of my conception as if it were already a fact accomplished.

“But how is it possible to be done?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” was my answer.  “I know only that I am capable of doing anything these days.”

I smiled proudly at her—too proudly, for she dropped her eyes and was for the moment silent.

“But there is Captain Larsen,” she objected.

“Blind and helpless,” I answered promptly, waving him aside as a straw.

“But those terrible hands of his!  You know how he leaped across the opening of the lazarette.”

“And you know also how I crept about and avoided him,” I contended gaily.

“And lost your shoes.”

“You’d hardly expect them to avoid Wolf Larsen without my feet inside of them.”

We both laughed, and then went seriously to work constructing the plan whereby we were to step the masts of the Ghost and return to the world.  I remembered hazily the physics of my school days, while the last few months had given me practical experience with mechanical purchases.  I must say, though, when we walked down to the Ghost to inspect more closely the task before us, that the sight of the great masts lying in the water almost disheartened me.  Where were we to begin?  If there had been one mast standing, something high up to which to fasten blocks and tackles!  But there was nothing.  It reminded me of the problem of lifting oneself by one’s boot-straps.  I understood the mechanics of levers; but where was I to get a fulcrum?

There was the mainmast, fifteen inches in diameter at what was now the butt, still sixty-five feet in length, and weighing, I roughly calculated, at least three thousand pounds.  And then came the foremast, larger in diameter, and weighing surely thirty-five hundred pounds.  Where was I to begin?  Maud stood silently by my side, while I evolved in my mind the contrivance known among sailors as “shears.”  But, though known to sailors, I invented it there on Endeavour Island.  By crossing and lashing the ends of two spars, and then elevating them in the air like an inverted “V,” I could get a point above the deck to which to make fast my hoisting tackle.  To this hoisting tackle I could, if necessary, attach a second hoisting tackle.  And then there was the windlass!

Maud saw that I had achieved a solution, and her eyes warmed