Chapter Chapter 26 · Chapter XXVI

Wolf Larsen took the distribution of the whisky off my hands, and the

bottles began to make their appearance while I worked over the fresh

batch of wounded men in the forecastle. I had seen whisky drunk, such as

whisky-and-soda by the men of the clubs, but never as these men drank it,

from pannikins and mugs, and from the bottles—great brimming drinks, each

one of which was in itself a debauch. But they did not stop at one or

two. They drank and drank, and ever the bottles slipped forward and they

drank more.

Everybody drank; the wounded drank; Oofty-Oofty, who helped me, drank.

Only Louis refrained, no more than cautiously wetting his lips with the

liquor, though he joined in the revels with an abandon equal to that of

most of them. It was a saturnalia. In loud voices they shouted over the

day’s fighting, wrangled about details, or waxed affectionate and made

friends with the men whom they had fought. Prisoners and captors

hiccoughed on one another’s shoulders, and swore mighty oaths of respect

and esteem. They wept over the miseries of the past and over the

miseries yet to come under the iron rule of Wolf Larsen. And all cursed

him and told terrible tales of his brutality.

It was a strange and frightful spectacle—the small, bunk-lined space, the

floor and walls leaping and lurching, the dim light, the swaying shadows

lengthening and fore-shortening monstrously, the thick air heavy with

smoke and the smell of bodies and iodoform, and the inflamed faces of the

men—half-men, I should call them. I noted Oofty-Oofty, holding the end

of a bandage and looking upon the scene, his velvety and luminous eyes

glistening in the light like a deer’s eyes, and yet I knew the barbaric

devil that lurked in his breast and belied all the softness and

tenderness, almost womanly, of his face and form. And I noticed the

boyish face of Harrison,—a good face once, but now a demon’s,—convulsed

with passion as he told the new-comers of the hell-ship they were in and

shrieked curses upon the head of Wolf Larsen.

Wolf Larsen it was, always Wolf Larsen, enslaver and tormentor of men, a

male Circe and these his swine, suffering brutes that grovelled before

him and revolted only in drunkenness and in secrecy. And was I, too, one

of his swine? I thought. And Maud Brewster? No! I ground my teeth in

my anger and determination till the man I was attending winced under my

hand and Oofty-Oofty looked at me with curiosity. I felt endowed with a

sudden strength. What of my new-found love, I was a giant. I feared

nothing. I would work my will through it all, in spite of Wolf Larsen

and of my own thirty-five bookish years. All would be well. I would

make it well. And so, exalted, upborne by a sense of power, I turned my

back on the howling inferno and climbed to the deck, where the fog

drifted ghostly through the night and the air was sweet and pure and

quiet.

The steerage, where were two wounded hunters, was a repetition of the

forecastle, except that Wolf Larsen was not being cursed; and it was with

a great relief that I again emerged on deck and went aft to the cabin.

Supper was ready, and Wolf Larsen and Maud were waiting for me.

While all his ship was getting drunk as fast as it could, he remained

sober. Not a drop of liquor passed his lips. He did not dare it under

the circumstances, for he had only Louis and me to depend upon, and Louis

was even now at the wheel. We were sailing on through the fog without a

look-out and without lights. That Wolf Larsen had turned the liquor

loose among his men surprised me, but he evidently knew their psychology

and the best method of cementing in cordiality, what had begun in

bloodshed.

His victory over Death Larsen seemed to have had a remarkable effect upon

him. The previous evening he had reasoned himself into the blues, and I

had been waiting momentarily for one of his characteristic outbursts.

Yet nothing had occurred, and he was now in splendid trim. Possibly his

success in capturing so many hunters and boats had counteracted the

customary reaction. At any rate, the blues were gone, and the blue

devils had not put in an appearance. So I thought at the time; but, ah

me, little I knew him or knew that even then, perhaps, he was meditating

an outbreak more terrible than any I had seen.

As I say, he discovered himself in splendid trim when I entered the

cabin. He had had no headaches for weeks, his eyes were clear blue as

the sky, his bronze was beautiful with perfect health; life swelled

through his veins in full and magnificent flood. While waiting for me he

had engaged Maud in animated discussion. Temptation was the topic they

had hit upon, and from the few words I heard I made out that he was

contending that temptation was temptation only when a man was seduced by

it and fell.

“For look you,” he was saying, “as I see it, a man does things because of

desire. He has many desires. He may desire to escape pain, or to enjoy

pleasure. But whatever he does, he does because he desires to do it.”

“But suppose he desires to do two opposite things, neither of which will

permit him to do the other?” Maud interrupted.

“The very thing I was coming to,” he said.

“And between these two desires is just where the soul of the man is

manifest,” she went on. “If it is a good soul, it will desire and do the

good action, and the contrary if it is a bad soul. It is the soul that

decides.”

“Bosh and nonsense!” he exclaimed impatiently. “It is the desire that

decides. Here is a man who wants to, say, get drunk. Also, he doesn’t

want to get drunk. What does he do? How does he do it? He is a puppet.

He is the creature of his desires, and of the two desires he obeys the

strongest one, that is all. His soul hasn’t anything to do with it. How

can he be tempted to get drunk and refuse to get drunk? If the desire to

remain sober prevails, it is because it is the strongest desire.

Temptation plays no part, unless—” he paused while grasping the new

thought which had come into his mind—“unless he is tempted to remain

sober.

“Ha! ha!” he laughed. “What do you think of that, Mr. Van Weyden?”

“That both of you are hair-splitting,” I said. “The man’s soul is his

desires. Or, if you will, the sum of his desires is his soul. Therein

you are both wrong. You lay the stress upon the desire apart from the

soul, Miss Brewster lays the stress on the soul apart from the desire,

and in point of fact soul and desire are the same thing.

“However,” I continued, “Miss Brewster is right in contending that

temptation is temptation whether the man yield or overcome. Fire is

fanned by the wind until it leaps up fiercely. So is desire like fire.

It is fanned, as by a wind, by sight of the thing desired, or by a new

and luring description or comprehension of the thing desired. There lies

the temptation. It is the wind that fans the desire until it leaps up to

mastery. That’s temptation. It may not fan sufficiently to make the

desire overmastering, but in so far as it fans at all, that far is it

temptation. And, as you say, it may tempt for good as well as for evil.”

I felt proud of myself as we sat down to the table. My words had been

decisive. At least they had put an end to the discussion.

But Wolf Larsen seemed voluble, prone to speech as I had never seen him

before. It was as though he were bursting with pent energy which must

find an outlet somehow. Almost immediately he launched into a discussion

on love. As usual, his was the sheer materialistic side, and Maud’s was

the idealistic. For myself, beyond a word or so of suggestion or

correction now and again, I took no part.

He was brilliant, but so was Maud, and for some time I lost the thread of

the conversation through studying her face as she talked. It was a face

that rarely displayed colour, but to-night it was flushed and vivacious.

Her wit was playing keenly, and she was enjoying the tilt as much as Wolf

Larsen, and he was enjoying it hugely. For some reason, though I know

not why in the argument, so utterly had I lost it in the contemplation of

one stray brown lock of Maud’s hair, he quoted from Iseult at Tintagel,

where she says:

“Blessed am I beyond women even herein,

That beyond all born women is my sin,

And perfect my transgression.”

As he had read pessimism into Omar, so now he read triumph, stinging

triumph and exultation, into Swinburne’s lines. And he read rightly, and

he read well. He had hardly ceased reading when Louis put his head into

the companion-way and whispered down:

“Be easy, will ye? The fog’s lifted, an’ ’tis the port light iv a

steamer that’s crossin’ our bow this blessed minute.”

Wolf Larsen sprang on deck, and so swiftly that by the time we followed

him he had pulled the steerage-slide over the drunken clamour and was on

his way forward to close the forecastle-scuttle. The fog, though it

remained, had lifted high, where it obscured the stars and made the night

quite black. Directly ahead of us I could see a bright red light and a

white light, and I could hear the pulsing of a steamer’s engines. Beyond

a doubt it was the _Macedonia_.

Wolf Larsen had returned to the poop, and we stood in a silent group,

watching the lights rapidly cross our bow.

“Lucky for me he doesn’t carry a searchlight,” Wolf Larsen said.

“What if I should cry out loudly?” I queried in a whisper.

“It would be all up,” he answered. “But have you thought upon what would

immediately happen?”

Before I had time to express any desire to know, he had me by the throat

with his gorilla grip, and by a faint quiver of the muscles—a hint, as it

were—he suggested to me the twist that would surely have broken my neck.

The next moment he had released me and we were gazing at the

_Macedonia’s_ lights.

“What if I should cry out?” Maud asked.

“I like you too well to hurt you,” he said softly—nay, there was a

tenderness and a caress in his voice that made me wince.

“But don’t do it, just the same, for I’d promptly break Mr. Van Weyden’s

neck.”

“Then she has my permission to cry out,” I said defiantly.

“I hardly think you’ll care to sacrifice the Dean of American Letters the

Second,” he sneered.

We spoke no more, though we had become too used to one another for the

silence to be awkward; and when the red light and the white had

disappeared we returned to the cabin to finish the interrupted supper.

Again they fell to quoting, and Maud gave Dowson’s “Impenitentia Ultima.”

She rendered it beautifully, but I watched not her, but Wolf Larsen. I

was fascinated by the fascinated look he bent upon Maud. He was quite

out of himself, and I noticed the unconscious movement of his lips as he

shaped word for word as fast as she uttered them. He interrupted her

when she gave the lines:

“And her eyes should be my light while the sun went out behind me,

And the viols in her voice be the last sound in my ear.”

“There are viols in your voice,” he said bluntly, and his eyes flashed

their golden light.

I could have shouted with joy at her control. She finished the

concluding stanza without faltering and then slowly guided the

conversation into less perilous channels. And all the while I sat in a

half-daze, the drunken riot of the steerage breaking through the

bulkhead, the man I feared and the woman I loved talking on and on. The

table was not cleared. The man who had taken Mugridge’s place had

evidently joined his comrades in the forecastle.

If ever Wolf Larsen attained the summit of living, he attained it then.

From time to time I forsook my own thoughts to follow him, and I followed

in amaze, mastered for the moment by his remarkable intellect, under the

spell of his passion, for he was preaching the passion of revolt. It was

inevitable that Milton’s Lucifer should be instanced, and the keenness

with which Wolf Larsen analysed and depicted the character was a

revelation of his stifled genius. It reminded me of Taine, yet I knew

the man had never heard of that brilliant though dangerous thinker.

“He led a lost cause, and he was not afraid of God’s thunderbolts,” Wolf

Larsen was saying. “Hurled into hell, he was unbeaten. A third of God’s

angels he had led with him, and straightway he incited man to rebel

against God, and gained for himself and hell the major portion of all the

generations of man. Why was he beaten out of heaven? Because he was

less brave than God? less proud? less aspiring? No! A thousand times

no! God was more powerful, as he said, Whom thunder hath made greater.

But Lucifer was a free spirit. To serve was to suffocate. He preferred

suffering in freedom to all the happiness of a comfortable servility. He

did not care to serve God. He cared to serve nothing. He was no

figure-head. He stood on his own legs. He was an individual.”

“The first Anarchist,” Maud laughed, rising and preparing to withdraw to

her state-room.

“Then it is good to be an anarchist!” he cried. He, too, had risen, and

he stood facing her, where she had paused at the door of her room, as he

went on:

“‘Here at least

We shall be free; the Almighty hath not built

Here for his envy; will not drive us hence;

Here we may reign secure; and in my choice

To reign is worth ambition, though in hell:

Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.”

It was the defiant cry of a mighty spirit. The cabin still rang with his

voice, as he stood there, swaying, his bronzed face shining, his head up

and dominant, and his eyes, golden and masculine, intensely masculine and

insistently soft, flashing upon Maud at the door.

Again that unnamable and unmistakable terror was in her eyes, and she

said, almost in a whisper, “You are Lucifer.”

The door closed and she was gone. He stood staring after her for a

minute, then returned to himself and to me.

“I’ll relieve Louis at the wheel,” he said shortly, “and call upon you to

relieve at midnight. Better turn in now and get some sleep.”

He pulled on a pair of mittens, put on his cap, and ascended the

companion-stairs, while I followed his suggestion by going to bed. For

some unknown reason, prompted mysteriously, I did not undress, but lay

down fully clothed. For a time I listened to the clamour in the steerage

and marvelled upon the love which had come to me; but my sleep on the

_Ghost_ had become most healthful and natural, and soon the songs and

cries died away, my eyes closed, and my consciousness sank down into the

half-death of slumber.

* * * * *

I knew not what had aroused me, but I found myself out of my bunk, on my

feet, wide awake, my soul vibrating to the warning of danger as it might

have thrilled to a trumpet call. I threw open the door. The cabin light

was burning low. I saw Maud, my Maud, straining and struggling and

crushed in the embrace of Wolf Larsen’s arms. I could see the vain beat

and flutter of her as she strove, pressing her face against his breast,

to escape from him. All this I saw on the very instant of seeing and as

I sprang forward.

I struck him with my fist, on the face, as he raised his head, but it was

a puny blow. He roared in a ferocious, animal-like way, and gave me a

shove with his hand. It was only a shove, a flirt of the wrist, yet so

tremendous was his strength that I was hurled backward as from a

catapult. I struck the door of the state-room which had formerly been

Mugridge’s, splintering and smashing the panels with the impact of my

body. I struggled to my feet, with difficulty dragging myself clear of

the wrecked door, unaware of any hurt whatever. I was conscious only of

an overmastering rage. I think I, too, cried aloud, as I drew the knife

at my hip and sprang forward a second time.

But something had happened. They were reeling apart. I was close upon

him, my knife uplifted, but I withheld the blow. I was puzzled by the

strangeness of it. Maud was leaning against the wall, one hand out for

support; but he was staggering, his left hand pressed against his

forehead and covering his eyes, and with the right he was groping about

him in a dazed sort of way. It struck against the wall, and his body

seemed to express a muscular and physical relief at the contact, as

though he had found his bearings, his location in space as well as

something against which to lean.

Then I saw red again. All my wrongs and humiliations flashed upon me

with a dazzling brightness, all that I had suffered and others had

suffered at his hands, all the enormity of the man’s very existence. I

sprang upon him, blindly, insanely, and drove the knife into his

shoulder. I knew, then, that it was no more than a flesh wound,—I had

felt the steel grate on his shoulder-blade,—and I raised the knife to

strike at a more vital part.

But Maud had seen my first blow, and she cried, “Don’t! Please don’t!”

I dropped my arm for a moment, and a moment only. Again the knife was

raised, and Wolf Larsen would have surely died had she not stepped

between. Her arms were around me, her hair was brushing my face. My

pulse rushed up in an unwonted manner, yet my rage mounted with it. She

looked me bravely in the eyes.

“For my sake,” she begged.

“I would kill him for your sake!” I cried, trying to free my arm without

hurting her.

“Hush!” she said, and laid her fingers lightly on my lips. I could have

kissed them, had I dared, even then, in my rage, the touch of them was so

sweet, so very sweet. “Please, please,” she pleaded, and she disarmed me

by the words, as I was to discover they would ever disarm me.

I stepped back, separating from her, and replaced the knife in its

sheath. I looked at Wolf Larsen. He still pressed his left hand against

his forehead. It covered his eyes. His head was bowed. He seemed to

have grown limp. His body was sagging at the hips, his great shoulders

were drooping and shrinking forward.

“Van Weyden!” he called hoarsely, and with a note of fright in his

voice. “Oh, Van Weyden! where are you?”

I looked at Maud. She did not speak, but nodded her head.

“Here I am,” I answered, stepping to his side. “What is the matter?”

“Help me to a seat,” he said, in the same hoarse, frightened voice.

“I am a sick man; a very sick man, Hump,” he said, as he left my

sustaining grip and sank into a chair.

His head dropped forward on the table and was buried in his hands. From

time to time it rocked back and forward as with pain. Once, when he half

raised it, I saw the sweat standing in heavy drops on his forehead about

the roots of his hair.

“I am a sick man, a very sick man,” he repeated again, and yet once

again.

“What is the matter?” I asked, resting my hand on his shoulder. “What

can I do for you?”

But he shook my hand off with an irritated movement, and for a long time

I stood by his side in silence. Maud was looking on, her face awed and

frightened. What had happened to him we could not imagine.

“Hump,” he said at last, “I must get into my bunk. Lend me a hand. I’ll

be all right in a little while. It’s those damn headaches, I believe. I

was afraid of them. I had a feeling—no, I don’t know what I’m talking

about. Help me into my bunk.”

But when I got him into his bunk he again buried his face in his hands,

covering his eyes, and as I turned to go I could hear him murmuring, “I

am a sick man, a very sick man.”

Maud looked at me inquiringly as I emerged. I shook my head, saying:

“Something has happened to him. What, I don’t know. He is helpless, and

frightened, I imagine, for the first time in his life. It must have

occurred before he received the knife-thrust, which made only a

superficial wound. You must have seen what happened.”

She shook her head. “I saw nothing. It is just as mysterious to me. He

suddenly released me and staggered away. But what shall we do? What

shall I do?”

“If you will wait, please, until I come back,” I answered.

I went on deck. Louis was at the wheel.

“You may go for’ard and turn in,” I said, taking it from him.

He was quick to obey, and I found myself alone on the deck of the

_Ghost_. As quietly as was possible, I clewed up the topsails, lowered

the flying jib and staysail, backed the jib over, and flattened the

mainsail. Then I went below to Maud. I placed my finger on my lips for

silence, and entered Wolf Larsen’s room. He was in the same position in

which I had left him, and his head was rocking—almost writhing—from side

to side.

“Anything I can do for you?” I asked.

He made no reply at first, but on my repeating the question he answered,

“No, no; I’m all right. Leave me alone till morning.”

But as I turned to go I noted that his head had resumed its rocking

motion. Maud was waiting patiently for me, and I took notice, with a

thrill of joy, of the queenly poise of her head and her glorious, calm

eyes. Calm and sure they were as her spirit itself.

“Will you trust yourself to me for a journey of six hundred miles or so?”

I asked.

“You mean—?” she asked, and I knew she had guessed aright.

“Yes, I mean just that,” I replied. “There is nothing left for us but

the open boat.”

“For me, you mean,” she said. “You are certainly as safe here as you

have been.”

“No, there is nothing left for us but the open boat,” I iterated stoutly.

“Will you please dress as warmly as you can, at once, and make into a

bundle whatever you wish to bring with you.”

“And make all haste,” I added, as she turned toward her state-room.

The lazarette was directly beneath the cabin, and, opening the trap-door

in the floor and carrying a candle with me, I dropped down and began

overhauling the ship’s stores. I selected mainly from the canned goods,

and by the time I was ready, willing hands were extended from above to

receive what I passed up.

We worked in silence. I helped myself also to blankets, mittens,

oilskins, caps, and such things, from the slop-chest. It was no light

adventure, this trusting ourselves in a small boat to so raw and stormy a

sea, and it was imperative that we should guard ourselves against the

cold and wet.

We worked feverishly at carrying our plunder on deck and depositing it

amidships, so feverishly that Maud, whose strength was hardly a positive

quantity, had to give over, exhausted, and sit on the steps at the break

of the poop. This did not serve to recover her, and she lay on her back,

on the hard deck, arms stretched out, and whole body relaxed. It was a

trick I remembered of my sister, and I knew she would soon be herself

again. I knew, also, that weapons would not come in amiss, and I

re-entered Wolf Larsen’s state-room to get his rifle and shot-gun. I

spoke to him, but he made no answer, though his head was still rocking

from side to side and he was not asleep.

“Good-bye, Lucifer,” I whispered to myself as I softly closed the door.

Next to obtain was a stock of ammunition,—an easy matter, though I had to

enter the steerage companion-way to do it. Here the hunters stored the

ammunition-boxes they carried in the boats, and here, but a few feet from

their noisy revels, I took possession of two boxes.

Next, to lower a boat. Not so simple a task for one man. Having cast

off the lashings, I hoisted first on the forward tackle, then on the aft,

till the boat cleared the rail, when I lowered away, one tackle and then

the other, for a couple of feet, till it hung snugly, above the water,

against the schooner’s side. I made certain that it contained the proper

equipment of oars, rowlocks, and sail. Water was a consideration, and I

robbed every boat aboard of its breaker. As there were nine boats all

told, it meant that we should have plenty of water, and ballast as well,

though there was the chance that the boat would be overloaded, what of

the generous supply of other things I was taking.

While Maud was passing me the provisions and I was storing them in the

boat, a sailor came on deck from the forecastle. He stood by the weather

rail for a time (we were lowering over the lee rail), and then sauntered

slowly amidships, where he again paused and stood facing the wind, with

his back toward us. I could hear my heart beating as I crouched low in

the boat. Maud had sunk down upon the deck and was, I knew, lying

motionless, her body in the shadow of the bulwark. But the man never

turned, and, after stretching his arms above his head and yawning

audibly, he retraced his steps to the forecastle scuttle and disappeared.

A few minutes sufficed to finish the loading, and I lowered the boat into

the water. As I helped Maud over the rail and felt her form close to

mine, it was all I could do to keep from crying out, “I love you! I love

you!” Truly Humphrey Van Weyden was at last in love, I thought, as her

fingers clung to mine while I lowered her down to the boat. I held on to

the rail with one hand and supported her weight with the other, and I was

proud at the moment of the feat. It was a strength I had not possessed a

few months before, on the day I said good-bye to Charley Furuseth and

started for San Francisco on the ill-fated _Martinez_.

As the boat ascended on a sea, her feet touched and I released her hands.

I cast off the tackles and leaped after her. I had never rowed in my

life, but I put out the oars and at the expense of much effort got the

boat clear of the _Ghost_. Then I experimented with the sail. I had

seen the boat-steerers and hunters set their spritsails many times, yet

this was my first attempt. What took them possibly two minutes took me

twenty, but in the end I succeeded in setting and trimming it, and with

the steering-oar in my hands hauled on the wind.

“There lies Japan,” I remarked, “straight before us.”

“Humphrey Van Weyden,” she said, “you are a brave man.”

“Nay,” I answered, “it is you who are a brave woman.”

We turned our heads, swayed by a common impulse to see the last of the

_Ghost_. Her low hull lifted and rolled to windward on a sea; her canvas

loomed darkly in the night; her lashed wheel creaked as the rudder

kicked; then sight and sound of her faded away, and we were alone on the

dark sea.