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

again I fitfully slept, but the pain of the cold always aroused me.  How Maud could stand it was beyond me.  I was too tired to thrash my arms about and warm myself, but I found strength time and again to chafe her hands and feet to restore the circulation.  And still she pleaded with me not to cast off the masts.  About three in the morning she was caught by a cold cramp, and after I had rubbed her out of that she became quite numb.  I was frightened.  I got out the oars and made her row, though she was so weak I thought she would faint at every stroke.

Morning broke, and we looked long in the growing light for our island.  At last it showed, small and black, on the horizon, fully fifteen miles away.  I scanned the sea with my glasses.  Far away in the south-west I could see a dark line on the water, which grew even as I looked at it.

“Fair wind!” I cried in a husky voice I did not recognize as my own.

Maud tried to reply, but could not speak.  Her lips were blue with cold, and she was hollow-eyed—but oh, how bravely her brown eyes looked at me!  How piteously brave!

Again I fell to chafing her hands and to moving her arms up and down and about until she could thrash them herself.  Then I compelled her to stand up, and though she would have fallen had I not supported her, I forced her to walk back and forth the several steps between the thwart and the stern-sheets, and finally to spring up and down.

“Oh, you brave, brave woman,” I said, when I saw the life coming back into her face.  “Did you know that you were brave?”

“I never used to be,” she answered.  “I was never brave till I knew you.  It is you who have made me brave.”

“Nor I, until I knew you,” I answered.

She gave me a quick look, and again I caught that dancing, tremulous light and something more in her eyes.  But it was only for the moment.  Then she smiled.

“It must have been the conditions,” she said; but I knew she was wrong, and I wondered if she likewise knew.  Then the wind came, fair and fresh, and the boat was soon labouring through a heavy sea toward the island.  At half-past three in the afternoon we passed the south-western promontory.  Not only were we hungry, but we were now suffering from thirst.  Our lips were dry and cracked, nor could we longer moisten them with our tongues.  Then the wind slowly died down.  By night it was dead calm and I was toiling once more at the oars—but weakly, most weakly.  At two in the morning the boat’s bow touched the beach of our own inner cove and I staggered out to make the painter fast.  Maud could not stand, nor had I strength to carry her.  I fell in the sand with her, and, when I had recovered, contented myself with putting my hands under her shoulders and dragging her up the beach to the hut.

The next day we did no work.  In fact, we slept till three in the afternoon, or at least I did, for I awoke to find Maud cooking dinner.  Her power of recuperation was wonderful.  There was something tenacious about that lily-frail body of hers, a clutch on existence which one could not reconcile with its patent weakness.

“You know I was travelling to Japan for my health,” she said, as we lingered at the fire after dinner and delighted in the movelessness of loafing.  “I was not very strong.  I never was.  The doctors recommended a sea voyage, and I chose the longest.”

“You little knew what you were choosing,” I laughed.

“But I shall be a different women for the experience, as well as a stronger woman,” she answered; “and, I hope a better woman.  At least I shall understand a great deal more of life.”

Then, as the short day waned, we fell to discussing Wolf Larsen’s blindness.  It was inexplicable.  And that it was grave, I instanced his statement that he intended to stay and die on Endeavour Island.  When he, strong man that he was, loving life as he did, accepted his death, it was plain that he was troubled by something more than mere blindness.  There had been his terrific headaches, and we were agreed that it was some sort of brain break-down, and that in his attacks he endured pain beyond our comprehension.

I noticed as we talked over his condition, that Maud’s sympathy went out to him more and more; yet I could not but love her for it, so sweetly womanly was it.  Besides, there was no false sentiment about her feeling.  She was agreed that the most rigorous treatment was necessary if we were to escape, though she recoiled at the suggestion that I might some time be compelled to take his life to save my own—“our own,” she put it.

In the morning we had breakfast and were at work by daylight.  I found a light kedge anchor in the fore-hold, where such things were kept; and with a deal of exertion got it on deck and into the boat.  With a long running-line coiled down in the stem, I rowed well out into our little cove and dropped the anchor into the water.  There was no wind, the tide was high, and the schooner floated.  Casting off the shore-lines, I kedged her out by main strength (the windlass being broken), till she rode nearly up and down to the small anchor—too small to hold her in any breeze.  So I lowered the big starboard anchor, giving plenty of slack; and by afternoon I was at work on the windlass.

Three days I worked on that windlass.  Least of all things was I a mechanic, and in that time I accomplished what an ordinary machinist would have done in as many hours.  I had to learn my tools to begin with, and every simple mechanical principle which such a man would have at his finger ends I had likewise to learn.  And at the end of three days I had a windlass which worked clumsily.  It never gave the satisfaction the old windlass had given, but it worked and made my work possible.

In half a day I got the two topmasts aboard and the shears rigged and guyed as before.  And that night I slept on board and on deck beside my work.  Maud, who refused to stay alone ashore, slept in the forecastle.  Wolf Larsen had sat about, listening to my repairing the windlass and talking with Maud and me upon indifferent subjects.  No reference was made on either side to the destruction of the shears; nor did he say anything further about my leaving his ship alone.  But still I had feared him, blind and helpless and listening, always listening, and I never let his strong arms get within reach of me while I worked.

On this night, sleeping under my beloved shears, I was aroused by his footsteps on the deck.  It was a starlight night, and I could see the bulk of him dimly as he moved about.  I rolled out of my blankets and crept noiselessly after him in my stocking feet.  He had armed himself with a draw-knife from the tool-locker, and with this he prepared to cut across the throat-halyards I had again rigged to the shears.  He felt the halyards with his hands and discovered that I had not made them fast.  This would not do for a draw-knife, so he laid hold of the running part, hove taut, and made fast.  Then he prepared to saw across with the draw-knife.

“I wouldn’t, if I were you,” I said quietly.

He heard the click of my pistol and laughed.

“Hello, Hump,” he said.  “I knew you were here all the time.  You can’t fool my ears.”

“That’s a lie, Wolf Larsen,” I said, just as quietly as before.  “However, I am aching for a chance to kill you, so go ahead and cut.”

“You have the chance always,” he sneered.

“Go ahead and cut,” I threatened ominously.

“I’d rather disappoint you,” he laughed, and turned on his heel and went aft.

“Something must be done, Humphrey,” Maud said, next morning, when I had told her of the night’s occurrence.  “If he has liberty, he may do anything.  He may sink the vessel, or set fire to it.  There is no telling what he may do.  We must make him a prisoner.”

“But how?” I asked, with a helpless shrug.  “I dare not come within reach of his arms, and he knows that so long as his resistance is passive I cannot shoot him.”

“There must be some way,” she contended.  “Let me think.”

“There is one way,” I said grimly.

She waited.

I picked up a seal-club.

“It won’t kill him,” I said.  “And before he could recover I’d have him bound hard and fast.”

She shook her head with a shudder.  “No, not that.  There must be some less brutal way.  Let us wait.”

But we did not have to wait long, and the problem solved itself.  In the morning, after several trials, I found the point of balance in the foremast and attached my hoisting tackle a few feet above it.  Maud held the turn on the windlass and coiled down while I heaved.  Had the windlass been in order it would not have been so difficult; as it was, I was compelled to apply all my weight and strength to every inch of the heaving.  I had to rest frequently.  In truth, my spells of resting were longer than those of working.  Maud even contrived, at times when all my efforts could not budge the windlass, to hold the turn with one hand and with the other to throw the weight of her slim body to my assistance.

At the end of an hour the single and double blocks came together at the top of the shears.  I could hoist no more.  And yet the mast was not swung entirely inboard.  The butt rested against the outside of the port rail, while the top of the mast overhung the water far beyond the starboard rail.  My shears were too short.  All my work had been for nothing.  But I no longer despaired in the old way.  I was acquiring more confidence in myself and more confidence in the possibilities of windlasses, shears, and hoisting tackles.  There was a way in which it could be done, and it remained for me to find that way.

While I was considering the problem, Wolf Larsen came on deck.  We noticed something strange about him at once.  The indecisiveness, or feebleness, of his movements was more pronounced.  His walk was actually tottery as he came down the port side of the cabin.  At the break of the poop he reeled, raised one hand to his eyes with the familiar brushing gesture, and fell down the steps—still on his feet—to the main deck, across which he staggered, falling and flinging out his arms for support.  He regained his balance by the steerage companion-way and stood there dizzily for a space, when he suddenly crumpled up and collapsed, his legs bending under him as he sank to the deck.

“One of his attacks,” I whispered to Maud.

She nodded her head; and I could see sympathy warm in her eyes.

We went up to him, but he seemed unconscious, breathing spasmodically.  She took charge of him, lifting his head to keep the blood out of it and despatching me to the cabin for a pillow.  I also brought blankets, and we made him comfortable.  I took his pulse.  It beat steadily and strong, and was quite normal.  This puzzled me.  I became suspicious.

“What if he should be feigning this?” I asked, still holding his wrist.

Maud shook her head, and there was reproof in her eyes.  But just then the wrist I held leaped from my hand, and the hand clasped like