บทที่ บทที่ 5 · Chapter V

But my first night in the hunters’ steerage was also my last. Next day

Johansen, the new mate, was routed from the cabin by Wolf Larsen, and

sent into the steerage to sleep thereafter, while I took possession of

the tiny cabin state-room, which, on the first day of the voyage, had

already had two occupants. The reason for this change was quickly

learned by the hunters, and became the cause of a deal of grumbling on

their part. It seemed that Johansen, in his sleep, lived over each night

the events of the day. His incessant talking and shouting and bellowing

of orders had been too much for Wolf Larsen, who had accordingly foisted

the nuisance upon his hunters.

After a sleepless night, I arose weak and in agony, to hobble through my

second day on the _Ghost_. Thomas Mugridge routed me out at half-past

five, much in the fashion that Bill Sykes must have routed out his dog;

but Mr. Mugridge’s brutality to me was paid back in kind and with

interest. The unnecessary noise he made (I had lain wide-eyed the whole

night) must have awakened one of the hunters; for a heavy shoe whizzed

through the semi-darkness, and Mr. Mugridge, with a sharp howl of pain,

humbly begged everybody’s pardon. Later on, in the galley, I noticed

that his ear was bruised and swollen. It never went entirely back to its

normal shape, and was called a “cauliflower ear” by the sailors.

The day was filled with miserable variety. I had taken my dried clothes

down from the galley the night before, and the first thing I did was to

exchange the cook’s garments for them. I looked for my purse. In

addition to some small change (and I have a good memory for such things),

it had contained one hundred and eighty-five dollars in gold and paper.

The purse I found, but its contents, with the exception of the small

silver, had been abstracted. I spoke to the cook about it, when I went

on deck to take up my duties in the galley, and though I had looked

forward to a surly answer, I had not expected the belligerent harangue

that I received.

“Look ’ere, ’Ump,” he began, a malicious light in his eyes and a snarl in

his throat; “d’ye want yer nose punched? If you think I’m a thief, just

keep it to yerself, or you’ll find ’ow bloody well mistyken you are.

Strike me blind if this ayn’t gratitude for yer! ’Ere you come, a pore

mis’rable specimen of ’uman scum, an’ I tykes yer into my galley an’

treats yer ’ansom, an’ this is wot I get for it. Nex’ time you can go to

’ell, say I, an’ I’ve a good mind to give you what-for anyw’y.”

So saying, he put up his fists and started for me. To my shame be it, I

cowered away from the blow and ran out the galley door. What else was I

to do? Force, nothing but force, obtained on this brute-ship. Moral

suasion was a thing unknown. Picture it to yourself: a man of ordinary

stature, slender of build, and with weak, undeveloped muscles, who has

lived a peaceful, placid life, and is unused to violence of any sort—what

could such a man possibly do? There was no more reason that I should

stand and face these human beasts than that I should stand and face an

infuriated bull.

So I thought it out at the time, feeling the need for vindication and

desiring to be at peace with my conscience. But this vindication did not

satisfy. Nor, to this day can I permit my manhood to look back upon

those events and feel entirely exonerated. The situation was something

that really exceeded rational formulas for conduct and demanded more than

the cold conclusions of reason. When viewed in the light of formal

logic, there is not one thing of which to be ashamed; but nevertheless a

shame rises within me at the recollection, and in the pride of my manhood

I feel that my manhood has in unaccountable ways been smirched and

sullied.

All of which is neither here nor there. The speed with which I ran from

the galley caused excruciating pain in my knee, and I sank down

helplessly at the break of the poop. But the Cockney had not pursued me.

“Look at ’im run! Look at ’im run!” I could hear him crying. “An’ with

a gyme leg at that! Come on back, you pore little mamma’s darling. I

won’t ’it yer; no, I won’t.”

I came back and went on with my work; and here the episode ended for the

time, though further developments were yet to take place. I set the

breakfast-table in the cabin, and at seven o’clock waited on the hunters

and officers. The storm had evidently broken during the night, though a

huge sea was still running and a stiff wind blowing. Sail had been made

in the early watches, so that the _Ghost_ was racing along under

everything except the two topsails and the flying jib. These three

sails, I gathered from the conversation, were to be set immediately after

breakfast. I learned, also, that Wolf Larsen was anxious to make the

most of the storm, which was driving him to the south-west into that

portion of the sea where he expected to pick up with the north-east

trades. It was before this steady wind that he hoped to make the major

portion of the run to Japan, curving south into the tropics and north

again as he approached the coast of Asia.

After breakfast I had another unenviable experience. When I had finished

washing the dishes, I cleaned the cabin stove and carried the ashes up on

deck to empty them. Wolf Larsen and Henderson were standing near the

wheel, deep in conversation. The sailor, Johnson, was steering. As I

started toward the weather side I saw him make a sudden motion with his

head, which I mistook for a token of recognition and good-morning. In

reality, he was attempting to warn me to throw my ashes over the lee

side. Unconscious of my blunder, I passed by Wolf Larsen and the hunter

and flung the ashes over the side to windward. The wind drove them back,

and not only over me, but over Henderson and Wolf Larsen. The next

instant the latter kicked me, violently, as a cur is kicked. I had not

realized there could be so much pain in a kick. I reeled away from him

and leaned against the cabin in a half-fainting condition. Everything

was swimming before my eyes, and I turned sick. The nausea overpowered

me, and I managed to crawl to the side of the vessel. But Wolf Larsen

did not follow me up. Brushing the ashes from his clothes, he had

resumed his conversation with Henderson. Johansen, who had seen the

affair from the break of the poop, sent a couple of sailors aft to clean

up the mess.

Later in the morning I received a surprise of a totally different sort.

Following the cook’s instructions, I had gone into Wolf Larsen’s

state-room to put it to rights and make the bed. Against the wall, near

the head of the bunk, was a rack filled with books. I glanced over them,

noting with astonishment such names as Shakespeare, Tennyson, Poe, and De

Quincey. There were scientific works, too, among which were represented

men such as Tyndall, Proctor, and Darwin. Astronomy and physics were

represented, and I remarked Bulfinch’s _Age of Fable_, Shaw’s _History of

English and American Literature_, and Johnson’s _Natural History_ in two

large volumes. Then there were a number of grammars, such as Metcalf’s,

and Reed and Kellogg’s; and I smiled as I saw a copy of _The Dean’s

English_.

I could not reconcile these books with the man from what I had seen of

him, and I wondered if he could possibly read them. But when I came to

make the bed I found, between the blankets, dropped apparently as he had

sunk off to sleep, a complete Browning, the Cambridge Edition. It was

open at “In a Balcony,” and I noticed, here and there, passages

underlined in pencil. Further, letting drop the volume during a lurch of

the ship, a sheet of paper fell out. It was scrawled over with

geometrical diagrams and calculations of some sort.

It was patent that this terrible man was no ignorant clod, such as one

would inevitably suppose him to be from his exhibitions of brutality. At

once he became an enigma. One side or the other of his nature was

perfectly comprehensible; but both sides together were bewildering. I

had already remarked that his language was excellent, marred with an

occasional slight inaccuracy. Of course, in common speech with the

sailors and hunters, it sometimes fairly bristled with errors, which was

due to the vernacular itself; but in the few words he had held with me it

had been clear and correct.

This glimpse I had caught of his other side must have emboldened me, for

I resolved to speak to him about the money I had lost.

“I have been robbed,” I said to him, a little later, when I found him

pacing up and down the poop alone.

“Sir,” he corrected, not harshly, but sternly.

“I have been robbed, sir,” I amended.

“How did it happen?” he asked.

Then I told him the whole circumstance, how my clothes had been left to

dry in the galley, and how, later, I was nearly beaten by the cook when I

mentioned the matter.

He smiled at my recital. “Pickings,” he concluded; “Cooky’s pickings.

And don’t you think your miserable life worth the price? Besides,

consider it a lesson. You’ll learn in time how to take care of your

money for yourself. I suppose, up to now, your lawyer has done it for

you, or your business agent.”

I could feel the quiet sneer through his words, but demanded, “How can I

get it back again?”

“That’s your look-out. You haven’t any lawyer or business agent now, so

you’ll have to depend on yourself. When you get a dollar, hang on to it.

A man who leaves his money lying around, the way you did, deserves to

lose it. Besides, you have sinned. You have no right to put temptation

in the way of your fellow-creatures. You tempted Cooky, and he fell.

You have placed his immortal soul in jeopardy. By the way, do you

believe in the immortal soul?”

His lids lifted lazily as he asked the question, and it seemed that the

deeps were opening to me and that I was gazing into his soul. But it was

an illusion. Far as it might have seemed, no man has ever seen very far

into Wolf Larsen’s soul, or seen it at all,—of this I am convinced. It

was a very lonely soul, I was to learn, that never unmasked, though at

rare moments it played at doing so.

“I read immortality in your eyes,” I answered, dropping the “sir,”—an

experiment, for I thought the intimacy of the conversation warranted it.

He took no notice. “By that, I take it, you see something that is alive,

but that necessarily does not have to live for ever.”

“I read more than that,” I continued boldly.

“Then you read consciousness. You read the consciousness of life that it

is alive; but still no further away, no endlessness of life.”

How clearly he thought, and how well he expressed what he thought! From

regarding me curiously, he turned his head and glanced out over the

leaden sea to windward. A bleakness came into his eyes, and the lines of

his mouth grew severe and harsh. He was evidently in a pessimistic mood.

“Then to what end?” he demanded abruptly, turning back to me. “If I am

immortal—why?”

I halted. How could I explain my idealism to this man? How could I put

into speech a something felt, a something like the strains of music heard

in sleep, a something that convinced yet transcended utterance?

“What do you believe, then?” I countered.

“I believe that life is a mess,” he answered promptly. “It is like

yeast, a ferment, a thing that moves and may move for a minute, an hour,

a year, or a hundred years, but that in the end will cease to move. The

big eat the little that they may continue to move, the strong eat the

weak that they may retain their strength. The lucky eat the most and

move the longest, that is all. What do you make of those things?”

He swept his arm in an impatient gesture toward a number of the sailors

who were working on some kind of rope stuff amidships.

“They move, so does the jelly-fish move. They move in order to eat in

order that they may keep moving. There you have it. They live for their

belly’s sake, and the belly is for their sake. It’s a circle; you get

nowhere. Neither do they. In the end they come to a standstill. They

move no more. They are dead.”

“They have dreams,” I interrupted, “radiant, flashing dreams—”

“Of grub,” he concluded sententiously.

“And of more—”

“Grub. Of a larger appetite and more luck in satisfying it.” His voice

sounded harsh. There was no levity in it. “For, look you, they dream of

making lucky voyages which will bring them more money, of becoming the

mates of ships, of finding fortunes—in short, of being in a better

position for preying on their fellows, of having all night in, good grub

and somebody else to do the dirty work. You and I are just like them.

There is no difference, except that we have eaten more and better. I am

eating them now, and you too. But in the past you have eaten more than I

have. You have slept in soft beds, and worn fine clothes, and eaten good

meals. Who made those beds? and those clothes? and those meals? Not

you. You never made anything in your own sweat. You live on an income

which your father earned. You are like a frigate bird swooping down upon

the boobies and robbing them of the fish they have caught. You are one

with a crowd of men who have made what they call a government, who are

masters of all the other men, and who eat the food the other men get and

would like to eat themselves. You wear the warm clothes. They made the

clothes, but they shiver in rags and ask you, the lawyer, or business

agent who handles your money, for a job.”

“But that is beside the matter,” I cried.

“Not at all.” He was speaking rapidly now, and his eyes were flashing.

“It is piggishness, and it is life. Of what use or sense is an

immortality of piggishness? What is the end? What is it all about? You

have made no food. Yet the food you have eaten or wasted might have

saved the lives of a score of wretches who made the food but did not eat

it. What immortal end did you serve? or did they? Consider yourself and

me. What does your boasted immortality amount to when your life runs

foul of mine? You would like to go back to the land, which is a

favourable place for your kind of piggishness. It is a whim of mine to

keep you aboard this ship, where my piggishness flourishes. And keep you

I will. I may make or break you. You may die to-day, this week, or next

month. I could kill you now, with a blow of my fist, for you are a

miserable weakling. But if we are immortal, what is the reason for this?

To be piggish as you and I have been all our lives does not seem to be

just the thing for immortals to be doing. Again, what’s it all about?

Why have I kept you here?—”

“Because you are stronger,” I managed to blurt out.

“But why stronger?” he went on at once with his perpetual queries.

“Because I am a bigger bit of the ferment than you? Don’t you see?

Don’t you see?”

“But the hopelessness of it,” I protested.

“I agree with you,” he answered. “Then why move at all, since moving is

living? Without moving and being part of the yeast there would be no

hopelessness. But,—and there it is,—we want to live and move, though we

have no reason to, because it happens that it is the nature of life to

live and move, to want to live and move. If it were not for this, life

would be dead. It is because of this life that is in you that you dream

of your immortality. The life that is in you is alive and wants to go on

being alive for ever. Bah! An eternity of piggishness!”

He abruptly turned on his heel and started forward. He stopped at the

break of the poop and called me to him.

“By the way, how much was it that Cooky got away with?” he asked.

“One hundred and eighty-five dollars, sir,” I answered.

He nodded his head. A moment later, as I started down the companion

stairs to lay the table for dinner, I heard him loudly cursing some men

amidships.