Bab Bab 15 · Chapter XV

There was a deal of cursing and groaning as the men at the bottom of the

ladder crawled to their feet.

“Somebody strike a light, my thumb’s out of joint,” said one of the men,

Parsons, a swarthy, saturnine man, boat-steerer in Standish’s boat, in

which Harrison was puller.

“You’ll find it knockin’ about by the bitts,” Leach said, sitting down on

the edge of the bunk in which I was concealed.

There was a fumbling and a scratching of matches, and the sea-lamp flared

up, dim and smoky, and in its weird light bare-legged men moved about

nursing their bruises and caring for their hurts. Oofty-Oofty laid hold

of Parsons’s thumb, pulling it out stoutly and snapping it back into

place. I noticed at the same time that the Kanaka’s knuckles were laid

open clear across and to the bone. He exhibited them, exposing beautiful

white teeth in a grin as he did so, and explaining that the wounds had

come from striking Wolf Larsen in the mouth.

“So it was you, was it, you black beggar?” belligerently demanded one

Kelly, an Irish-American and a longshoreman, making his first trip to

sea, and boat-puller for Kerfoot.

As he made the demand he spat out a mouthful of blood and teeth and

shoved his pugnacious face close to Oofty-Oofty. The Kanaka leaped

backward to his bunk, to return with a second leap, flourishing a long

knife.

“Aw, go lay down, you make me tired,” Leach interfered. He was

evidently, for all of his youth and inexperience, cock of the forecastle.

“G’wan, you Kelly. You leave Oofty alone. How in hell did he know it

was you in the dark?”

Kelly subsided with some muttering, and the Kanaka flashed his white

teeth in a grateful smile. He was a beautiful creature, almost feminine

in the pleasing lines of his figure, and there was a softness and

dreaminess in his large eyes which seemed to contradict his well-earned

reputation for strife and action.

“How did he get away?” Johnson asked.

He was sitting on the side of his bunk, the whole pose of his figure

indicating utter dejection and hopelessness. He was still breathing

heavily from the exertion he had made. His shirt had been ripped

entirely from him in the struggle, and blood from a gash in the cheek was

flowing down his naked chest, marking a red path across his white thigh

and dripping to the floor.

“Because he is the devil, as I told you before,” was Leach’s answer; and

thereat he was on his feet and raging his disappointment with tears in

his eyes.

“And not one of you to get a knife!” was his unceasing lament.

But the rest of the hands had a lively fear of consequences to come and

gave no heed to him.

“How’ll he know which was which?” Kelly asked, and as he went on he

looked murderously about him—“unless one of us peaches.”

“He’ll know as soon as ever he claps eyes on us,” Parsons replied. “One

look at you’d be enough.”

“Tell him the deck flopped up and gouged yer teeth out iv yer jaw,” Louis

grinned. He was the only man who was not out of his bunk, and he was

jubilant in that he possessed no bruises to advertise that he had had a

hand in the night’s work. “Just wait till he gets a glimpse iv yer mugs

to-morrow, the gang iv ye,” he chuckled.

“We’ll say we thought it was the mate,” said one. And another, “I know

what I’ll say—that I heered a row, jumped out of my bunk, got a jolly

good crack on the jaw for my pains, and sailed in myself. Couldn’t tell

who or what it was in the dark and just hit out.”

“An’ ’twas me you hit, of course,” Kelly seconded, his face brightening

for the moment.

Leach and Johnson took no part in the discussion, and it was plain to see

that their mates looked upon them as men for whom the worst was

inevitable, who were beyond hope and already dead. Leach stood their

fears and reproaches for some time. Then he broke out:

“You make me tired! A nice lot of gazabas you are! If you talked less

with yer mouth and did something with yer hands, he’d a-ben done with by

now. Why couldn’t one of you, just one of you, get me a knife when I

sung out? You make me sick! A-beefin’ and bellerin’ ’round, as though

he’d kill you when he gets you! You know damn well he wont. Can’t

afford to. No shipping masters or beach-combers over here, and he wants

yer in his business, and he wants yer bad. Who’s to pull or steer or

sail ship if he loses yer? It’s me and Johnson have to face the music.

Get into yer bunks, now, and shut yer faces; I want to get some sleep.”

“That’s all right all right,” Parsons spoke up. “Mebbe he won’t do for

us, but mark my words, hell ’ll be an ice-box to this ship from now on.”

All the while I had been apprehensive concerning my own predicament.

What would happen to me when these men discovered my presence? I could

never fight my way out as Wolf Larsen had done. And at this moment

Latimer called down the scuttles:

“Hump! The old man wants you!”

“He ain’t down here!” Parsons called back.

“Yes, he is,” I said, sliding out of the bunk and striving my hardest to

keep my voice steady and bold.

The sailors looked at me in consternation. Fear was strong in their

faces, and the devilishness which comes of fear.

“I’m coming!” I shouted up to Latimer.

“No you don’t!” Kelly cried, stepping between me and the ladder, his

right hand shaped into a veritable strangler’s clutch. “You damn little

sneak! I’ll shut yer mouth!”

“Let him go,” Leach commanded.

“Not on yer life,” was the angry retort.

Leach never changed his position on the edge of the bunk. “Let him go, I

say,” he repeated; but this time his voice was gritty and metallic.

The Irishman wavered. I made to step by him, and he stood aside. When I

had gained the ladder, I turned to the circle of brutal and malignant

faces peering at me through the semi-darkness. A sudden and deep

sympathy welled up in me. I remembered the Cockney’s way of putting it.

How God must have hated them that they should be tortured so!

“I have seen and heard nothing, believe me,” I said quietly.

“I tell yer, he’s all right,” I could hear Leach saying as I went up the

ladder. “He don’t like the old man no more nor you or me.”

I found Wolf Larsen in the cabin, stripped and bloody, waiting for me.

He greeted me with one of his whimsical smiles.

“Come, get to work, Doctor. The signs are favourable for an extensive

practice this voyage. I don’t know what the _Ghost_ would have been

without you, and if I could only cherish such noble sentiments I would

tell you her master is deeply grateful.”

I knew the run of the simple medicine-chest the _Ghost_ carried, and

while I was heating water on the cabin stove and getting the things ready

for dressing his wounds, he moved about, laughing and chatting, and

examining his hurts with a calculating eye. I had never before seen him

stripped, and the sight of his body quite took my breath away. It has

never been my weakness to exalt the flesh—far from it; but there is

enough of the artist in me to appreciate its wonder.

I must say that I was fascinated by the perfect lines of Wolf Larsen’s

figure, and by what I may term the terrible beauty of it. I had noted

the men in the forecastle. Powerfully muscled though some of them were,

there had been something wrong with all of them, an insufficient

development here, an undue development there, a twist or a crook that

destroyed symmetry, legs too short or too long, or too much sinew or bone

exposed, or too little. Oofty-Oofty had been the only one whose lines

were at all pleasing, while, in so far as they pleased, that far had they

been what I should call feminine.

But Wolf Larsen was the man-type, the masculine, and almost a god in his

perfectness. As he moved about or raised his arms the great muscles

leapt and moved under the satiny skin. I have forgotten to say that the

bronze ended with his face. His body, thanks to his Scandinavian stock,

was fair as the fairest woman’s. I remember his putting his hand up to

feel of the wound on his head, and my watching the biceps move like a

living thing under its white sheath. It was the biceps that had nearly

crushed out my life once, that I had seen strike so many killing blows.

I could not take my eyes from him. I stood motionless, a roll of

antiseptic cotton in my hand unwinding and spilling itself down to the

floor.

He noticed me, and I became conscious that I was staring at him.

“God made you well,” I said.

“Did he?” he answered. “I have often thought so myself, and wondered

why.”

“Purpose—” I began.

“Utility,” he interrupted. “This body was made for use. These muscles

were made to grip, and tear, and destroy living things that get between

me and life. But have you thought of the other living things? They,

too, have muscles, of one kind and another, made to grip, and tear, and

destroy; and when they come between me and life, I out-grip them,

out-tear them, out-destroy them. Purpose does not explain that. Utility

does.”

“It is not beautiful,” I protested.

“Life isn’t, you mean,” he smiled. “Yet you say I was made well. Do you

see this?”

He braced his legs and feet, pressing the cabin floor with his toes in a

clutching sort of way. Knots and ridges and mounds of muscles writhed

and bunched under the skin.

“Feel them,” he commanded.

They were hard as iron. And I observed, also, that his whole body had

unconsciously drawn itself together, tense and alert; that muscles were

softly crawling and shaping about the hips, along the back, and across

the shoulders; that the arms were slightly lifted, their muscles

contracting, the fingers crooking till the hands were like talons; and

that even the eyes had changed expression and into them were coming

watchfulness and measurement and a light none other than of battle.

“Stability, equilibrium,” he said, relaxing on the instant and sinking

his body back into repose. “Feet with which to clutch the ground, legs

to stand on and to help withstand, while with arms and hands, teeth and

nails, I struggle to kill and to be not killed. Purpose? Utility is the

better word.”

I did not argue. I had seen the mechanism of the primitive fighting

beast, and I was as strongly impressed as if I had seen the engines of a

great battleship or Atlantic liner.

I was surprised, considering the fierce struggle in the forecastle, at

the superficiality of his hurts, and I pride myself that I dressed them

dexterously. With the exception of several bad wounds, the rest were

merely severe bruises and lacerations. The blow which he had received

before going overboard had laid his scalp open several inches. This,

under his direction, I cleansed and sewed together, having first shaved

the edges of the wound. Then the calf of his leg was badly lacerated and

looked as though it had been mangled by a bulldog. Some sailor, he told

me, had laid hold of it by his teeth, at the beginning of the fight, and

hung on and been dragged to the top of the forecastle ladder, when he was

kicked loose.

“By the way, Hump, as I have remarked, you are a handy man,” Wolf Larsen

began, when my work was done. “As you know, we’re short a mate.

Hereafter you shall stand watches, receive seventy-five dollars per

month, and be addressed fore and aft as Mr. Van Weyden.”

“I—I don’t understand navigation, you know,” I gasped.

“Not necessary at all.”

“I really do not care to sit in the high places,” I objected. “I find

life precarious enough in my present humble situation. I have no

experience. Mediocrity, you see, has its compensations.”

He smiled as though it were all settled.

“I won’t be mate on this hell-ship!” I cried defiantly.

I saw his face grow hard and the merciless glitter come into his eyes.

He walked to the door of his room, saying:

“And now, Mr. Van Weyden, good-night.”

“Good-night, Mr. Larsen,” I answered weakly.