บทที่ บทที่ 18 · Chapter XVIII

The next day, while the storm was blowing itself out, Wolf Larsen and I

crammed anatomy and surgery and set Mugridge’s ribs. Then, when the

storm broke, Wolf Larsen cruised back and forth over that portion of the

ocean where we had encountered it, and somewhat more to the westward,

while the boats were being repaired and new sails made and bent. Sealing

schooner after sealing schooner we sighted and boarded, most of which

were in search of lost boats, and most of which were carrying boats and

crews they had picked up and which did not belong to them. For the thick

of the fleet had been to the westward of us, and the boats, scattered far

and wide, had headed in mad flight for the nearest refuge.

Two of our boats, with men all safe, we took off the _Cisco_, and, to

Wolf Larsen’s huge delight and my own grief, he culled Smoke, with Nilson

and Leach, from the _San Diego_. So that, at the end of five days, we

found ourselves short but four men—Henderson, Holyoak, Williams, and

Kelly,—and were once more hunting on the flanks of the herd.

As we followed it north we began to encounter the dreaded sea-fogs. Day

after day the boats lowered and were swallowed up almost ere they touched

the water, while we on board pumped the horn at regular intervals and

every fifteen minutes fired the bomb gun. Boats were continually being

lost and found, it being the custom for a boat to hunt, on lay, with

whatever schooner picked it up, until such time it was recovered by its

own schooner. But Wolf Larsen, as was to be expected, being a boat

short, took possession of the first stray one and compelled its men to

hunt with the _Ghost_, not permitting them to return to their own

schooner when we sighted it. I remember how he forced the hunter and his

two men below, a rifle at their breasts, when their captain passed by at

biscuit-toss and hailed us for information.

Thomas Mugridge, so strangely and pertinaciously clinging to life, was

soon limping about again and performing his double duties of cook and

cabin-boy. Johnson and Leach were bullied and beaten as much as ever,

and they looked for their lives to end with the end of the hunting

season; while the rest of the crew lived the lives of dogs and were

worked like dogs by their pitiless master. As for Wolf Larsen and

myself, we got along fairly well; though I could not quite rid myself of

the idea that right conduct, for me, lay in killing him. He fascinated

me immeasurably, and I feared him immeasurably. And yet, I could not

imagine him lying prone in death. There was an endurance, as of

perpetual youth, about him, which rose up and forbade the picture. I

could see him only as living always, and dominating always, fighting and

destroying, himself surviving.

One diversion of his, when we were in the midst of the herd and the sea

was too rough to lower the boats, was to lower with two boat-pullers and

a steerer and go out himself. He was a good shot, too, and brought many

a skin aboard under what the hunters termed impossible hunting

conditions. It seemed the breath of his nostrils, this carrying his life

in his hands and struggling for it against tremendous odds.

I was learning more and more seamanship; and one clear day—a thing we

rarely encountered now—I had the satisfaction of running and handling the

_Ghost_ and picking up the boats myself. Wolf Larsen had been smitten

with one of his headaches, and I stood at the wheel from morning until

evening, sailing across the ocean after the last lee boat, and heaving to

and picking it and the other five up without command or suggestion from

him.

Gales we encountered now and again, for it was a raw and stormy region,

and, in the middle of June, a typhoon most memorable to me and most

important because of the changes wrought through it upon my future. We

must have been caught nearly at the centre of this circular storm, and

Wolf Larsen ran out of it and to the southward, first under a

double-reefed jib, and finally under bare poles. Never had I imagined so

great a sea. The seas previously encountered were as ripples compared

with these, which ran a half-mile from crest to crest and which upreared,

I am confident, above our masthead. So great was it that Wolf Larsen

himself did not dare heave to, though he was being driven far to the

southward and out of the seal herd.

We must have been well in the path of the trans-Pacific steamships when

the typhoon moderated, and here, to the surprise of the hunters, we found

ourselves in the midst of seals—a second herd, or sort of rear-guard,

they declared, and a most unusual thing. But it was “Boats over!” the

boom-boom of guns, and the pitiful slaughter through the long day.

It was at this time that I was approached by Leach. I had just finished

tallying the skins of the last boat aboard, when he came to my side, in

the darkness, and said in a low tone:

“Can you tell me, Mr. Van Weyden, how far we are off the coast, and what

the bearings of Yokohama are?”

My heart leaped with gladness, for I knew what he had in mind, and I gave

him the bearings—west-north-west, and five hundred miles away.

“Thank you, sir,” was all he said as he slipped back into the darkness.

Next morning No. 3 boat and Johnson and Leach were missing. The

water-breakers and grub-boxes from all the other boats were likewise

missing, as were the beds and sea bags of the two men. Wolf Larsen was

furious. He set sail and bore away into the west-north-west, two hunters

constantly at the mastheads and sweeping the sea with glasses, himself

pacing the deck like an angry lion. He knew too well my sympathy for the

runaways to send me aloft as look-out.

The wind was fair but fitful, and it was like looking for a needle in a

haystack to raise that tiny boat out of the blue immensity. But he put

the _Ghost_ through her best paces so as to get between the deserters and

the land. This accomplished, he cruised back and forth across what he

knew must be their course.

On the morning of the third day, shortly after eight bells, a cry that

the boat was sighted came down from Smoke at the masthead. All hands

lined the rail. A snappy breeze was blowing from the west with the

promise of more wind behind it; and there, to leeward, in the troubled

silver of the rising sun, appeared and disappeared a black speck.

We squared away and ran for it. My heart was as lead. I felt myself

turning sick in anticipation; and as I looked at the gleam of triumph in

Wolf Larsen’s eyes, his form swam before me, and I felt almost

irresistibly impelled to fling myself upon him. So unnerved was I by the

thought of impending violence to Leach and Johnson that my reason must

have left me. I know that I slipped down into the steerage in a daze,

and that I was just beginning the ascent to the deck, a loaded shot-gun

in my hands, when I heard the startled cry:

“There’s five men in that boat!”

I supported myself in the companion-way, weak and trembling, while the

observation was being verified by the remarks of the rest of the men.

Then my knees gave from under me and I sank down, myself again, but

overcome by shock at knowledge of what I had so nearly done. Also, I was

very thankful as I put the gun away and slipped back on deck.

No one had remarked my absence. The boat was near enough for us to make

out that it was larger than any sealing boat and built on different

lines. As we drew closer, the sail was taken in and the mast unstepped.

Oars were shipped, and its occupants waited for us to heave to and take

them aboard.

Smoke, who had descended to the deck and was now standing by my side,

began to chuckle in a significant way. I looked at him inquiringly.

“Talk of a mess!” he giggled.

“What’s wrong?” I demanded.

Again he chuckled. “Don’t you see there, in the stern-sheets, on the

bottom? May I never shoot a seal again if that ain’t a woman!”

I looked closely, but was not sure until exclamations broke out on all

sides. The boat contained four men, and its fifth occupant was certainly

a woman. We were agog with excitement, all except Wolf Larsen, who was

too evidently disappointed in that it was not his own boat with the two

victims of his malice.

We ran down the flying jib, hauled the jib-sheets to wind-ward and the

main-sheet flat, and came up into the wind. The oars struck the water,

and with a few strokes the boat was alongside. I now caught my first

fair glimpse of the woman. She was wrapped in a long ulster, for the

morning was raw; and I could see nothing but her face and a mass of light

brown hair escaping from under the seaman’s cap on her head. The eyes

were large and brown and lustrous, the mouth sweet and sensitive, and the

face itself a delicate oval, though sun and exposure to briny wind had

burnt the face scarlet.

She seemed to me like a being from another world. I was aware of a

hungry out-reaching for her, as of a starving man for bread. But then, I

had not seen a woman for a very long time. I know that I was lost in a

great wonder, almost a stupor,—this, then, was a woman?—so that I forgot

myself and my mate’s duties, and took no part in helping the new-comers

aboard. For when one of the sailors lifted her into Wolf Larsen’s

downstretched arms, she looked up into our curious faces and smiled

amusedly and sweetly, as only a woman can smile, and as I had seen no one

smile for so long that I had forgotten such smiles existed.

“Mr. Van Weyden!”

Wolf Larsen’s voice brought me sharply back to myself.

“Will you take the lady below and see to her comfort? Make up that spare

port cabin. Put Cooky to work on it. And see what you can do for that

face. It’s burned badly.”

He turned brusquely away from us and began to question the new men. The

boat was cast adrift, though one of them called it a “bloody shame” with

Yokohama so near.

I found myself strangely afraid of this woman I was escorting aft. Also

I was awkward. It seemed to me that I was realizing for the first time

what a delicate, fragile creature a woman is; and as I caught her arm to

help her down the companion stairs, I was startled by its smallness and

softness. Indeed, she was a slender, delicate woman as women go, but to

me she was so ethereally slender and delicate that I was quite prepared

for her arm to crumble in my grasp. All this, in frankness, to show my

first impression, after long denial of women in general and of Maud

Brewster in particular.

“No need to go to any great trouble for me,” she protested, when I had

seated her in Wolf Larsen’s arm-chair, which I had dragged hastily from

his cabin. “The men were looking for land at any moment this morning,

and the vessel should be in by night; don’t you think so?”

Her simple faith in the immediate future took me aback. How could I

explain to her the situation, the strange man who stalked the sea like

Destiny, all that it had taken me months to learn? But I answered

honestly:

“If it were any other captain except ours, I should say you would be

ashore in Yokohama to-morrow. But our captain is a strange man, and I

beg of you to be prepared for anything—understand?—for anything.”

“I—I confess I hardly do understand,” she hesitated, a perturbed but not

frightened expression in her eyes. “Or is it a misconception of mine

that shipwrecked people are always shown every consideration? This is

such a little thing, you know. We are so close to land.”

“Candidly, I do not know,” I strove to reassure her. “I wished merely to

prepare you for the worst, if the worst is to come. This man, this

captain, is a brute, a demon, and one can never tell what will be his

next fantastic act.”

I was growing excited, but she interrupted me with an “Oh, I see,” and

her voice sounded weary. To think was patently an effort. She was

clearly on the verge of physical collapse.

She asked no further questions, and I vouchsafed no remark, devoting

myself to Wolf Larsen’s command, which was to make her comfortable. I

bustled about in quite housewifely fashion, procuring soothing lotions

for her sunburn, raiding Wolf Larsen’s private stores for a bottle of

port I knew to be there, and directing Thomas Mugridge in the preparation

of the spare state-room.

The wind was freshening rapidly, the _Ghost_ heeling over more and more,

and by the time the state-room was ready she was dashing through the

water at a lively clip. I had quite forgotten the existence of Leach and

Johnson, when suddenly, like a thunderclap, “Boat ho!” came down the open

companion-way. It was Smoke’s unmistakable voice, crying from the

masthead. I shot a glance at the woman, but she was leaning back in the

arm-chair, her eyes closed, unutterably tired. I doubted that she had

heard, and I resolved to prevent her seeing the brutality I knew would

follow the capture of the deserters. She was tired. Very good. She

should sleep.

There were swift commands on deck, a stamping of feet and a slapping of

reef-points as the _Ghost_ shot into the wind and about on the other

tack. As she filled away and heeled, the arm-chair began to slide across

the cabin floor, and I sprang for it just in time to prevent the rescued

woman from being spilled out.

Her eyes were too heavy to suggest more than a hint of the sleepy

surprise that perplexed her as she looked up at me, and she half

stumbled, half tottered, as I led her to her cabin. Mugridge grinned

insinuatingly in my face as I shoved him out and ordered him back to his

galley work; and he won his revenge by spreading glowing reports among

the hunters as to what an excellent “lydy’s-myde” I was proving myself to

be.

She leaned heavily against me, and I do believe that she had fallen

asleep again between the arm-chair and the state-room. This I discovered

when she nearly fell into the bunk during a sudden lurch of the schooner.

She aroused, smiled drowsily, and was off to sleep again; and asleep I

left her, under a heavy pair of sailor’s blankets, her head resting on a

pillow I had appropriated from Wolf Larsen’s bunk.