Kabanata Kabanata 24 · Chapter XXIV

Among the most vivid memories of my life are those of the events on the

_Ghost_ which occurred during the forty hours succeeding the discovery of

my love for Maud Brewster. I, who had lived my life in quiet places,

only to enter at the age of thirty-five upon a course of the most

irrational adventure I could have imagined, never had more incident and

excitement crammed into any forty hours of my experience. Nor can I

quite close my ears to a small voice of pride which tells me I did not do

so badly, all things considered.

To begin with, at the midday dinner, Wolf Larsen informed the hunters

that they were to eat thenceforth in the steerage. It was an

unprecedented thing on sealing-schooners, where it is the custom for the

hunters to rank, unofficially as officers. He gave no reason, but his

motive was obvious enough. Horner and Smoke had been displaying a

gallantry toward Maud Brewster, ludicrous in itself and inoffensive to

her, but to him evidently distasteful.

The announcement was received with black silence, though the other four

hunters glanced significantly at the two who had been the cause of their

banishment. Jock Horner, quiet as was his way, gave no sign; but the

blood surged darkly across Smoke’s forehead, and he half opened his mouth

to speak. Wolf Larsen was watching him, waiting for him, the steely

glitter in his eyes; but Smoke closed his mouth again without having said

anything.

“Anything to say?” the other demanded aggressively.

It was a challenge, but Smoke refused to accept it.

“About what?” he asked, so innocently that Wolf Larsen was disconcerted,

while the others smiled.

“Oh, nothing,” Wolf Larsen said lamely. “I just thought you might want

to register a kick.”

“About what?” asked the imperturbable Smoke.

Smoke’s mates were now smiling broadly. His captain could have killed

him, and I doubt not that blood would have flowed had not Maud Brewster

been present. For that matter, it was her presence which enabled Smoke

to act as he did. He was too discreet and cautious a man to incur Wolf

Larsen’s anger at a time when that anger could be expressed in terms

stronger than words. I was in fear that a struggle might take place, but

a cry from the helmsman made it easy for the situation to save itself.

“Smoke ho!” the cry came down the open companion-way.

“How’s it bear?” Wolf Larsen called up.

“Dead astern, sir.”

“Maybe it’s a Russian,” suggested Latimer.

His words brought anxiety into the faces of the other hunters. A Russian

could mean but one thing—a cruiser. The hunters, never more than roughly

aware of the position of the ship, nevertheless knew that we were close

to the boundaries of the forbidden sea, while Wolf Larsen’s record as a

poacher was notorious. All eyes centred upon him.

“We’re dead safe,” he assured them with a laugh. “No salt mines this

time, Smoke. But I’ll tell you what—I’ll lay odds of five to one it’s

the _Macedonia_.”

No one accepted his offer, and he went on: “In which event, I’ll lay ten

to one there’s trouble breezing up.”

“No, thank you,” Latimer spoke up. “I don’t object to losing my money,

but I like to get a run for it anyway. There never was a time when there

wasn’t trouble when you and that brother of yours got together, and I’ll

lay twenty to one on that.”

A general smile followed, in which Wolf Larsen joined, and the dinner

went on smoothly, thanks to me, for he treated me abominably the rest of

the meal, sneering at me and patronizing me till I was all a-tremble with

suppressed rage. Yet I knew I must control myself for Maud Brewster’s

sake, and I received my reward when her eyes caught mine for a fleeting

second, and they said, as distinctly as if she spoke, “Be brave, be

brave.”

We left the table to go on deck, for a steamer was a welcome break in the

monotony of the sea on which we floated, while the conviction that it was

Death Larsen and the _Macedonia_ added to the excitement. The stiff

breeze and heavy sea which had sprung up the previous afternoon had been

moderating all morning, so that it was now possible to lower the boats

for an afternoon’s hunt. The hunting promised to be profitable. We had

sailed since daylight across a sea barren of seals, and were now running

into the herd.

The smoke was still miles astern, but overhauling us rapidly, when we

lowered our boats. They spread out and struck a northerly course across

the ocean. Now and again we saw a sail lower, heard the reports of the

shot-guns, and saw the sail go up again. The seals were thick, the wind

was dying away; everything favoured a big catch. As we ran off to get

our leeward position of the last lee boat, we found the ocean fairly

carpeted with sleeping seals. They were all about us, thicker than I had

ever seen them before, in twos and threes and bunches, stretched full

length on the surface and sleeping for all the world like so many lazy

young dogs.

Under the approaching smoke the hull and upper-works of a steamer were

growing larger. It was the _Macedonia_. I read her name through the

glasses as she passed by scarcely a mile to starboard. Wolf Larsen

looked savagely at the vessel, while Maud Brewster was curious.

“Where is the trouble you were so sure was breezing up, Captain Larsen?”

she asked gaily.

He glanced at her, a moment’s amusement softening his features.

“What did you expect? That they’d come aboard and cut our throats?”

“Something like that,” she confessed. “You understand, seal-hunters are

so new and strange to me that I am quite ready to expect anything.”

He nodded his head. “Quite right, quite right. Your error is that you

failed to expect the worst.”

“Why, what can be worse than cutting our throats?” she asked, with pretty

naïve surprise.

“Cutting our purses,” he answered. “Man is so made these days that his

capacity for living is determined by the money he possesses.”

“’Who steals my purse steals trash,’” she quoted.

“Who steals my purse steals my right to live,” was the reply, “old saws

to the contrary. For he steals my bread and meat and bed, and in so

doing imperils my life. There are not enough soup-kitchens and

bread-lines to go around, you know, and when men have nothing in their

purses they usually die, and die miserably—unless they are able to fill

their purses pretty speedily.”

“But I fail to see that this steamer has any designs on your purse.”

“Wait and you will see,” he answered grimly.

We did not have long to wait. Having passed several miles beyond our

line of boats, the _Macedonia_ proceeded to lower her own. We knew she

carried fourteen boats to our five (we were one short through the

desertion of Wainwright), and she began dropping them far to leeward of

our last boat, continued dropping them athwart our course, and finished

dropping them far to windward of our first weather boat. The hunting,

for us, was spoiled. There were no seals behind us, and ahead of us the

line of fourteen boats, like a huge broom, swept the herd before it.

Our boats hunted across the two or three miles of water between them and

the point where the _Macedonia’s_ had been dropped, and then headed for

home. The wind had fallen to a whisper, the ocean was growing calmer and

calmer, and this, coupled with the presence of the great herd, made a

perfect hunting day—one of the two or three days to be encountered in the

whole of a lucky season. An angry lot of men, boat-pullers and steerers

as well as hunters, swarmed over our side. Each man felt that he had

been robbed; and the boats were hoisted in amid curses, which, if curses

had power, would have settled Death Larsen for all eternity—“Dead and

damned for a dozen iv eternities,” commented Louis, his eyes twinkling up

at me as he rested from hauling taut the lashings of his boat.

“Listen to them, and find if it is hard to discover the most vital thing

in their souls,” said Wolf Larsen. “Faith? and love? and high ideals?

The good? the beautiful? the true?”

“Their innate sense of right has been violated,” Maud Brewster said,

joining the conversation.

She was standing a dozen feet away, one hand resting on the main-shrouds

and her body swaying gently to the slight roll of the ship. She had not

raised her voice, and yet I was struck by its clear and bell-like tone.

Ah, it was sweet in my ears! I scarcely dared look at her just then, for

the fear of betraying myself. A boy’s cap was perched on her head, and

her hair, light brown and arranged in a loose and fluffy order that

caught the sun, seemed an aureole about the delicate oval of her face.

She was positively bewitching, and, withal, sweetly spirituelle, if not

saintly. All my old-time marvel at life returned to me at sight of this

splendid incarnation of it, and Wolf Larsen’s cold explanation of life

and its meaning was truly ridiculous and laughable.

“A sentimentalist,” he sneered, “like Mr. Van Weyden. Those men are

cursing because their desires have been outraged. That is all. What

desires? The desires for the good grub and soft beds ashore which a

handsome pay-day brings them—the women and the drink, the gorging and the

beastliness which so truly expresses them, the best that is in them,

their highest aspirations, their ideals, if you please. The exhibition

they make of their feelings is not a touching sight, yet it shows how

deeply they have been touched, how deeply their purses have been touched,

for to lay hands on their purses is to lay hands on their souls.”

“’You hardly behave as if your purse had been touched,” she said,

smilingly.

“Then it so happens that I am behaving differently, for my purse and my

soul have both been touched. At the current price of skins in the London

market, and based on a fair estimate of what the afternoon’s catch would

have been had not the _Macedonia_ hogged it, the _Ghost_ has lost about

fifteen hundred dollars’ worth of skins.”

“You speak so calmly—” she began.

“But I do not feel calm; I could kill the man who robbed me,” he

interrupted. “Yes, yes, I know, and that man my brother—more sentiment!

Bah!”

His face underwent a sudden change. His voice was less harsh and wholly

sincere as he said:

“You must be happy, you sentimentalists, really and truly happy at

dreaming and finding things good, and, because you find some of them

good, feeling good yourself. Now, tell me, you two, do you find me

good?”

“You are good to look upon—in a way,” I qualified.

“There are in you all powers for good,” was Maud Brewster’s answer.

“There you are!” he cried at her, half angrily. “Your words are empty to

me. There is nothing clear and sharp and definite about the thought you

have expressed. You cannot pick it up in your two hands and look at it.

In point of fact, it is not a thought. It is a feeling, a sentiment, a

something based upon illusion and not a product of the intellect at all.”

As he went on his voice again grew soft, and a confiding note came into

it. “Do you know, I sometimes catch myself wishing that I, too, were

blind to the facts of life and only knew its fancies and illusions.

They’re wrong, all wrong, of course, and contrary to reason; but in the

face of them my reason tells me, wrong and most wrong, that to dream and

live illusions gives greater delight. And after all, delight is the wage

for living. Without delight, living is a worthless act. To labour at

living and be unpaid is worse than to be dead. He who delights the most

lives the most, and your dreams and unrealities are less disturbing to

you and more gratifying than are my facts to me.”

He shook his head slowly, pondering.

“I often doubt, I often doubt, the worthwhileness of reason. Dreams must

be more substantial and satisfying. Emotional delight is more filling

and lasting than intellectual delight; and, besides, you pay for your

moments of intellectual delight by having the blues. Emotional delight

is followed by no more than jaded senses which speedily recuperate. I

envy you, I envy you.”

He stopped abruptly, and then on his lips formed one of his strange

quizzical smiles, as he added:

“It’s from my brain I envy you, take notice, and not from my heart. My

reason dictates it. The envy is an intellectual product. I am like a

sober man looking upon drunken men, and, greatly weary, wishing he, too,

were drunk.”

“Or like a wise man looking upon fools and wishing he, too, were a fool,”

I laughed.

“Quite so,” he said. “You are a blessed, bankrupt pair of fools. You

have no facts in your pocketbook.”

“Yet we spend as freely as you,” was Maud Brewster’s contribution.

“More freely, because it costs you nothing.”

“And because we draw upon eternity,” she retorted.

“Whether you do or think you do, it’s the same thing. You spend what you

haven’t got, and in return you get greater value from spending what you

haven’t got than I get from spending what I have got, and what I have

sweated to get.”

“Why don’t you change the basis of your coinage, then?” she queried

teasingly.

He looked at her quickly, half-hopefully, and then said, all regretfully:

“Too late. I’d like to, perhaps, but I can’t. My pocketbook is stuffed

with the old coinage, and it’s a stubborn thing. I can never bring

myself to recognize anything else as valid.”

He ceased speaking, and his gaze wandered absently past her and became

lost in the placid sea. The old primal melancholy was strong upon him.

He was quivering to it. He had reasoned himself into a spell of the

blues, and within few hours one could look for the devil within him to be

up and stirring. I remembered Charley Furuseth, and knew this man’s

sadness as the penalty which the materialist ever pays for his

materialism.