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CHAPTER VIII
Sometimes I
think Wolf Larsen mad, or half-mad at least, what of his strange moods and
vagaries. At other times I take him for a great man, a genius who has
never arrived. And, finally, I am convinced that he is the perfect type
of the primitive man, born a thousand years or generations too late and an
anachronism in this culminating century of civilization. He is certainly
an individualist of the most pronounced type. Not only that, but he is
very lonely. There is no congeniality between him and the rest of the men
aboard ship. His tremendous virility and mental strength wall him
apart. They are more like children to him, even the hunters, and as
children he treats them, descending perforce to their level and playing with
them as a man plays with puppies. Or else he probes them with the cruel
hand of a vivisectionist, groping about in their mental processes and examining
their souls as though to see of what soul-stuff is made. I have seen
him a score of times, at table, insulting this hunter or that, with cool and
level eyes and, withal, a certain air of interest, pondering their actions or
replies or petty rages with a curiosity almost laughable to me who stood
onlooker and who understood. Concerning his own rages, I am convinced
that they are not real, that they are sometimes experiments, but that in the
main they are the habits of a pose or attitude he has seen fit to take toward
his fellow-men. I know, with the possible exception of the incident of
the dead mate, that I have not seen him really angry; nor do I wish ever to see
him in a genuine rage, when all the force of him is called into play. While on the
question of vagaries, I shall tell what befell Thomas Mugridge in the cabin,
and at the same time complete an incident upon which I have already touched
once or twice. The twelve o’clock dinner was over, one day, and I had
just finished putting the cabin in order, when Wolf Larsen and Thomas Mugridge
descended the companion stairs. Though the cook had a cubby-hole of a
state-room opening off from the cabin, in the cabin itself he had never dared
to linger or to be seen, and he flitted to and fro, once or twice a day, a
timid spectre. “So you know
how to play ‘Nap,’” Wolf Larsen was saying in a pleased sort of voice. “I
might have guessed an Englishman would know. I learned it myself in
English ships.” Thomas
Mugridge was beside himself, a blithering imbecile, so pleased was he at
chumming thus with the captain. The little airs he put on and the painful
striving to assume the easy carriage of a man born to a dignified place in life
would have been sickening had they not been ludicrous. He quite ignored
my presence, though I credited him with being simply unable to see me.
His pale, wishy-washy eyes were swimming like lazy summer seas, though what
blissful visions they beheld were beyond my imagination. “Get the
cards, Hump,” Wolf Larsen ordered, as they took seats at the table. “And
bring out the cigars and the whisky you’ll find in my berth.” I returned
with the articles in time to hear the Cockney hinting broadly that there was a
mystery about him, that he might be a gentleman’s son gone wrong or something
or other; also, that he was a remittance man and was paid to keep away from
England — “p’yed ’ansomely, sir,” was the way he put it; “p’yed ’ansomely to
sling my ’ook an’ keep slingin’ it.” I had
brought the customary liquor glasses, but Wolf Larsen frowned, shook his head,
and signalled with his hands for me to bring the tumblers. These he
filled two-thirds full with undiluted whisky — “a gentleman’s drink?” quoth
Thomas Mugridge, — and they clinked their glasses to the glorious game of
“Nap,” lighted cigars, and fell to shuffling and dealing the cards. They played
for money. They increased the amounts of the bets. They drank
whisky, they drank it neat, and I fetched more. I do not know whether
Wolf Larsen cheated or not, — a thing he was thoroughly capable of doing, — but
he won steadily. The cook made repeated journeys to his bunk for
money. Each time he performed the journey with greater swagger, but he
never brought more than a few dollars at a time. He grew maudlin,
familiar, could hardly see the cards or sit upright. As a preliminary to
another journey to his bunk, he hooked Wolf Larsen’s buttonhole with a greasy
forefinger and vacuously proclaimed and reiterated, “I got money, I got money,
I tell yer, an’ I’m a gentleman’s son.” Wolf Larsen
was unaffected by the drink, yet he drank glass for glass, and if anything his
glasses were fuller. There was no change in him. He did not appear
even amused at the other’s antics. In the end,
with loud protestations that he could lose like a gentleman, the cook’s last
money was staked on the game — and lost. Whereupon he leaned his head on
his hands and wept. Wolf Larsen looked curiously at him, as though about
to probe and vivisect him, then changed his mind, as from the foregone
conclusion that there was nothing there to probe. “Hump,” he
said to me, elaborately polite, “kindly take Mr. Mugridge’s arm and help him up
on deck. He is not feeling very well.” “And tell
Johnson to douse him with a few buckets of salt water,” he added, in a lower
tone for my ear alone. I left Mr.
Mugridge on deck, in the hands of a couple of grinning sailors who had been
told off for the purpose. Mr. Mugridge was sleepily spluttering that he
was a gentleman’s son. But as I descended the companion stairs to clear
the table I heard him shriek as the first bucket of water struck him. Wolf Larsen
was counting his winnings. “One hundred
and eighty-five dollars even,” he said aloud. “Just as I thought.
“The beggar came aboard without a cent.” “And what
you have won is mine, sir,” I said boldly. He favoured
me with a quizzical smile. “Hump, I have studied some grammar in my time,
and I think your tenses are tangled. ‘Was mine,’ you should have said,
not ’is mine.’” “It is a
question, not of grammar, but of ethics,” I answered. It was
possibly a minute before he spoke. “D’ye know,
Hump,” he said, with a slow seriousness which had in it an indefinable strain
of sadness, “that this is the first time I have heard the word ‘ethics’ in the
mouth of a man. You and I are the only men on this ship who know its
meaning.” “At one time
in my life,” he continued, after another pause, “I dreamed that I might some
day talk with men who used such language, that I might lift myself out of the
place in life in which I had been born, and hold conversation and mingle with
men who talked about just such things as ethics. And this is the first
time I have ever heard the word pronounced. Which is all by the way, for
you are wrong. It is a question neither of grammar nor ethics, but of
fact.” “I
understand,” I said. “The fact is that you have the money.” His face
brightened. He seemed pleased at my perspicacity. “But it is
avoiding the real question,” I continued, “which is one of right.” “Ah,” he
remarked, with a wry pucker of his mouth, “I see you still believe in such
things as right and wrong.” “But don’t
you? — at all?” I demanded. “Not the
least bit. Might is right, and that is all there is to it. Weakness
is wrong. Which is a very poor way of saying that it is good for oneself
to be strong, and evil for oneself to be weak — or better yet, it is
pleasurable to be strong, because of the profits; painful to be weak, because
of the penalties. Just now the possession of this money is a pleasurable
thing. It is good for one to possess it. Being able to possess it,
I wrong myself and the life that is in me if I give it to you and forego the
pleasure of possessing it.” “But you
wrong me by withholding it,” I objected. “Not at
all. One man cannot wrong another man. He can only wrong
himself. As I see it, I do wrong always when I consider the interests of
others. Don’t you see? How can two particles of the yeast wrong
each other by striving to devour each other? It is their inborn heritage
to strive to devour, and to strive not to be devoured. When they depart
from this they sin.” “Then you
don’t believe in altruism?” I asked. He received
the word as if it had a familiar ring, though he pondered it
thoughtfully. “Let me see, it means something about coöperation, doesn’t
it?” “Well, in a
way there has come to be a sort of connection,” I answered unsurprised by this
time at such gaps in his vocabulary, which, like his knowledge, was the acquirement
of a self-read, self-educated man, whom no one had directed in his studies, and
who had thought much and talked little or not at all. “An altruistic act
is an act performed for the welfare of others. It is unselfish, as
opposed to an act performed for self, which is selfish.” He nodded
his head. “Oh, yes, I remember it now. I ran across it in Spencer.” “Spencer!” I
cried. “Have you read him?” “Not very
much,” was his confession. “I understood quite a good deal of First Principles, but his Biology took the wind out of my sails, and
his Psychology left me butting
around in the doldrums for many a day. I honestly could not understand
what he was driving at. I put it down to mental deficiency on my part,
but since then I have decided that it was for want of preparation. I had
no proper basis. Only Spencer and myself know how hard I hammered.
But I did get something out of his Data of
Ethics. There’s where I ran across ‘altruism,’ and I remember
now how it was used.” I wondered
what this man could have got from such a work. Spencer I remembered
enough to know that altruism was imperative to his ideal of highest
conduct. Wolf Larsen, evidently, had sifted the great philosopher’s
teachings, rejecting and selecting according to his needs and desires. “What else
did you run across?” I asked. His brows
drew in slightly with the mental effort of suitably phrasing thoughts which he
had never before put into speech. I felt an elation of spirit. I
was groping into his soul-stuff as he made a practice of groping in the
soul-stuff of others. I was exploring virgin territory. A strange,
a terribly strange, region was unrolling itself before my eyes. “In as few
words as possible,” he began, “Spencer puts it something like this: First, a
man must act for his own benefit — to do this is to be moral and good.
Next, he must act for the benefit of his children. And third, he must act
for the benefit of his race.” “And the
highest, finest, right conduct,” I interjected, “is that act which benefits at
the same time the man, his children, and his race.” “I wouldn’t
stand for that,” he replied. “Couldn’t see the necessity for it, nor the
common sense. I cut out the race and the children. I would
sacrifice nothing for them. It’s just so much slush and sentiment, and
you must see it yourself, at least for one who does not believe in eternal
life. With immortality before me, altruism would be a paying business
proposition. I might elevate my soul to all kinds of altitudes. But
with nothing eternal before me but death, given for a brief spell this yeasty
crawling and squirming which is called life, why, it would be immoral for me to
perform any act that was a sacrifice. Any sacrifice that makes me lose
one crawl or squirm is foolish, — and not only foolish, for it is a wrong
against myself and a wicked thing. I must not lose one crawl or squirm if
I am to get the most out of the ferment. Nor will the eternal
movelessness that is coming to me be made easier or harder by the sacrifices or
selfishnesses of the time when I was yeasty and acrawl.” “Then you
are an individualist, a materialist, and, logically, a hedonist.” “Big words,”
he smiled. “But what is a hedonist?” He nodded
agreement when I had given the definition. “And you are also,” I
continued, “a man one could not trust in the least thing where it was possible
for a selfish interest to intervene?” “Now you’re
beginning to understand,” he said, brightening. “You are a
man utterly without what the world calls morals?” “That’s it.” “A man of
whom to be always afraid — ” “That’s the
way to put it.” “As one is
afraid of a snake, or a tiger, or a shark?” “Now you
know me,” he said. “And you know me as I am generally known. Other
men call me ‘Wolf.’” “You are a
sort of monster,” I added audaciously, “a Caliban who has pondered Setebos, and
who acts as you act, in idle moments, by whim and fancy.” His brow
clouded at the allusion. He did not understand, and I quickly learned
that he did not know the poem. “I’m just
reading Browning,” he confessed, “and it’s pretty tough. I haven’t got
very far along, and as it is I’ve about lost my bearings.” Not to be
tiresome, I shall say that I fetched the book from his state-room and read
“Caliban” aloud. He was delighted. It was a primitive mode of
reasoning and of looking at things that he understood thoroughly. He
interrupted again and again with comment and criticism. When I finished,
he had me read it over a second time, and a third. We fell into
discussion — philosophy, science, evolution, religion. He betrayed the
inaccuracies of the self-read man, and, it must be granted, the sureness and
directness of the primitive mind. The very simplicity of his reasoning
was its strength, and his materialism was far more compelling than the subtly
complex materialism of Charley Furuseth. Not that I — a confirmed and, as
Furuseth phrased it, a temperamental idealist — was to be compelled; but that
Wolf Larsen stormed the last strongholds of my faith with a vigour that
received respect, while not accorded conviction. Time passed.
Supper was at hand and the table not laid. I became restless and anxious,
and when Thomas Mugridge glared down the companion-way, sick and angry of
countenance, I prepared to go about my duties. But Wolf Larsen cried out
to him: “Cooky,
you’ve got to hustle to-night. I’m busy with Hump, and you’ll do the best
you can without him.” And again
the unprecedented was established. That night I sat at table with the
captain and the hunters, while Thomas Mugridge waited on us and washed the
dishes afterward — a whim, a Caliban-mood of Wolf Larsen’s, and one I foresaw
would bring me trouble. In the meantime we talked and talked, much to the
disgust of the hunters, who could not understand a word. |