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

quite stiff across the small of the back, so much so that I straightened up with an effort and with pain.  I looked proudly at my work.  It was beginning to show.  I was wild with desire, like a child with a new toy, to hoist something with my shears.

“I wish it weren’t so late,” I said.  “I’d like to see how it works.”

“Don’t be a glutton, Humphrey,” Maud chided me.  “Remember, to-morrow is coming, and you’re so tired now that you can hardly stand.”

“And you?” I said, with sudden solicitude.  “You must be very tired.  You have worked hard and nobly.  I am proud of you, Maud.”

“Not half so proud as I am of you, nor with half the reason,” she answered, looking me straight in the eyes for a moment with an expression in her own and a dancing, tremulous light which I had not seen before and which gave me a pang of quick delight, I know not why, for I did not understand it.  Then she dropped her eyes, to lift them again, laughing.

“If our friends could see us now,” she said.  “Look at us.  Have you ever paused for a moment to consider our appearance?”

“Yes, I have considered yours, frequently,” I answered, puzzling over what I had seen in her eyes and puzzled by her sudden change of subject.

“Mercy!” she cried.  “And what do I look like, pray?”

“A scarecrow, I’m afraid,” I replied.  “Just glance at your draggled skirts, for instance.  Look at those three-cornered tears.  And such a waist!  It would not require a Sherlock Holmes to deduce that you have been cooking over a camp-fire, to say nothing of trying out seal-blubber.  And to cap it all, that cap!  And all that is the woman who wrote ‘A Kiss Endured.’”

She made me an elaborate and stately courtesy, and said, “As for you, sir—”

And yet, through the five minutes of banter which followed, there was a serious something underneath the fun which I could not but relate to the strange and fleeting expression I had caught in her eyes.  What was it?  Could it be that our eyes were speaking beyond the will of our speech?  My eyes had spoken, I knew, until I had found the culprits out and silenced them.  This had occurred several times.  But had she seen the clamour in them and understood?  And had her eyes so spoken to me?  What else could that expression have meant—that dancing, tremulous light, and a something more which words could not describe.  And yet it could not be.  It was impossible.  Besides, I was not skilled in the speech of eyes.  I was only Humphrey Van Weyden, a bookish fellow who loved.  And to love, and to wait and win love, that surely was glorious enough for me.  And thus I thought, even as we chaffed each other’s appearance, until we arrived ashore and there were other things to think about.

“It’s a shame, after working hard all day, that we cannot have an uninterrupted night’s sleep,” I complained, after supper.

“But there can be no danger now? from a blind man?” she queried.

“I shall never be able to trust him,” I averred, “and far less now that he is blind.  The liability is that his part helplessness will make him more malignant than ever.  I know what I shall do to-morrow, the first thing—run out a light anchor and kedge the schooner off the beach.  And each night when we come ashore in the boat, Mr. Wolf Larsen will be left a prisoner on board.  So this will be the last night we have to stand watch, and because of that it will go the easier.”

We were awake early and just finishing breakfast as daylight came.

“Oh, Humphrey!” I heard Maud cry in dismay and suddenly stop.

I looked at her.  She was gazing at the Ghost.  I followed her gaze, but could see nothing unusual.  She looked at me, and I looked inquiry back.

“The shears,” she said, and her voice trembled.

I had forgotten their existence.  I looked again, but could not see them.

“If he has—” I muttered savagely.

She put her hand sympathetically on mine, and said, “You will have to begin over again.”

“Oh, believe me, my anger means nothing; I could not hurt a fly,” I smiled back bitterly.  “And the worst of it is, he knows it.  You are right.  If he has destroyed the shears, I shall do nothing except begin over again.”

“But I’ll stand my watch on board hereafter,” I blurted out a moment later.  “And if he interferes—”

“But I dare not stay ashore all night alone,” Maud was saying when I came back to myself.  “It would be so much nicer if he would be friendly with us and help us.  We could all live comfortably aboard.”

“We will,” I asserted, still savagely, for the destruction of my beloved shears had hit me hard.  “That is, you and I will live aboard, friendly or not with Wolf Larsen.”

“It’s childish,” I laughed later, “for him to do such things, and for me to grow angry over them, for that matter.”

But my heart smote me when we climbed aboard and looked at the havoc he had done.  The shears were gone altogether.  The guys had been slashed right and left.  The throat-halyards which I had rigged were cut across through every part.  And he knew I could not splice.  A thought struck me.  I ran to the windlass.  It would not work.  He had broken it.  We looked at each other in consternation.  Then I ran to the side.  The masts, booms, and gaffs I had cleared were gone.  He had found the lines which held them, and cast them adrift.

Tears were in Maud’s eyes, and I do believe they were for me.  I could have wept myself.  Where now was our project of remasting the Ghost?  He had done his work well.  I sat down on the hatch-combing and rested my chin on my hands in black despair.

“He deserves to die,” I cried out; “and God forgive me, I am not man enough to be his executioner.”

But Maud was by my side, passing her hand soothingly through my hair as though I were a child, and saying, “There, there; it will all come right.  We are in the right, and it must come right.”

I remembered Michelet and leaned my head against her; and truly I became strong again.  The blessed woman was an unfailing fount of power to me.  What did it matter?  Only a set-back, a delay.  The tide could not have carried the masts far to seaward, and there had been no wind.  It meant merely more work to find them and tow them back.  And besides, it was a lesson.  I knew what to expect.  He might have waited and destroyed our work more effectually when we had more accomplished.

“Here he comes now,” she whispered.

I glanced up.  He was strolling leisurely along the poop on the port side.

“Take no notice of him,” I whispered.  “He’s coming to see how we take it.  Don’t let him know that we know.  We can deny him that satisfaction.  Take off your shoes—that’s right—and carry them in your hand.”

And then we played hide-and-seek with the blind man.  As he came up the port side we slipped past on the starboard; and from the poop we watched him turn and start aft on our track.

He must have known, somehow, that we were on board, for he said “Good-morning” very confidently, and waited, for the greeting to be returned.  Then he strolled aft, and we slipped forward.

“Oh, I know you’re aboard,” he called out, and I could see him listen intently after he had spoken.

It reminded me of the great hoot-owl, listening, after its booming cry, for the stir of its frightened prey.  But we did not stir, and we moved only when he moved.  And so we dodged about the deck, hand in hand, like a couple of children chased by a wicked ogre, till Wolf Larsen, evidently in disgust, left the deck for the cabin.  There was glee in our eyes, and suppressed titters in our mouths, as we put on our shoes and clambered over the side into the boat.  And as I looked into Maud’s clear brown eyes I forgot the evil he had done, and I knew only that I loved her, and that because of her the strength was mine to win our way back to the world.

CHAPTER XXXVI

For two days Maud and I ranged the sea and explored the beaches in search of the missing masts.  But it was not till the third day that we found them, all of them, the shears included, and, of all perilous places, in the pounding surf of the grim south-western promontory.  And how we worked!  At the dark end of the first day we returned, exhausted, to our little cove, towing the mainmast behind us.  And we had been compelled to row, in a dead calm, practically every inch of the way.

Another day of heart-breaking and dangerous toil saw us in camp with the two topmasts to the good.  The day following I was desperate, and I rafted together the foremast, the fore and main booms, and the fore and main gaffs.  The wind was favourable, and I had thought to tow them back under sail, but the wind baffled, then died away, and our progress with the oars was a snail’s pace.  And it was such dispiriting effort.  To throw one’s whole strength and weight on the oars and to feel the boat checked in its forward lunge by the heavy drag behind, was not exactly exhilarating.

Night began to fall, and to make matters worse, the wind sprang up ahead.  Not only did all forward motion cease, but we began to drift back and out to sea.  I struggled at the oars till I was played out.  Poor Maud, whom I could never prevent from working to the limit of her strength, lay weakly back in the stern-sheets.  I could row no more.  My bruised and swollen hands could no longer close on the oar handles.  My wrists and arms ached intolerably, and though I had eaten heartily of a twelve-o’clock lunch, I had worked so hard that I was faint from hunger.

I pulled in the oars and bent forward to the line which held the tow.  But Maud’s hand leaped out restrainingly to mine.

“What are you going to do?” she asked in a strained, tense voice.

“Cast it off,” I answered, slipping a turn of the rope.

But her fingers closed on mine.

“Please don’t,” she begged.

“It is useless,” I answered.  “Here is night and the wind blowing us off the land.”

“But think, Humphrey.  If we cannot sail away on the Ghost, we may remain for years on the island—for life even.  If it has never been discovered all these years, it may never be discovered.”

“You forget the boat we found on the beach,” I reminded her.

“It was a seal-hunting boat,” she replied, “and you know perfectly well that if the men had escaped they would have been back to make their fortunes from the rookery.  You know they never escaped.”

I remained silent, undecided.

“Besides,” she added haltingly, “it’s your idea, and I want to see you succeed.”

Now I could harden my heart.  As soon as she put it on a flattering personal basis, generosity compelled me to deny her.

“Better years on the island than to die to-night, or to-morrow, or the next day, in the open boat.  We are not prepared to brave the sea.  We have no food, no water, no blankets, nothing.  Why, you’d not survive the night without blankets: I know how strong you are.  You are shivering now.”

“It is only nervousness,” she answered.  “I am afraid you will cast off the masts in spite of me.”

“Oh, please, please, Humphrey, don’t!” she burst out, a moment later.

And so it ended, with the phrase she knew had all power over me.  We shivered miserably throughout the night.  Now and