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CHAPTER XII
The last
twenty-four hours have witnessed a carnival of brutality. From cabin to
forecastle it seems to have broken out like a contagion. I scarcely know
where to begin. Wolf Larsen was really the cause of it. The
relations among the men, strained and made tense by feuds, quarrels and
grudges, were in a state of unstable equilibrium, and evil passions flared up
in flame like prairie-grass. Thomas
Mugridge is a sneak, a spy, an informer. He has been attempting to curry
favour and reinstate himself in the good graces of the captain by carrying
tales of the men forward. He it was, I know, that carried some of
Johnson’s hasty talk to Wolf Larsen. Johnson, it seems, bought a suit of
oilskins from the slop-chest and found them to be of greatly inferior
quality. Nor was he slow in advertising the fact. The slop-chest is
a sort of miniature dry-goods store which is carried by all sealing schooners
and which is stocked with articles peculiar to the needs of the sailors.
Whatever a sailor purchases is taken from his subsequent earnings on the
sealing grounds; for, as it is with the hunters so it is with the boat-pullers
and steerers — in the place of wages they receive a “lay,” a rate of so much
per skin for every skin captured in their particular boat. But of
Johnson’s grumbling at the slop-chest I knew nothing, so that what I witnessed
came with a shock of sudden surprise. I had just finished sweeping the
cabin, and had been inveigled by Wolf Larsen into a discussion of Hamlet, his
favourite Shakespearian character, when Johansen descended the companion stairs
followed by Johnson. The latter’s cap came off after the custom of the
sea, and he stood respectfully in the centre of the cabin, swaying heavily and
uneasily to the roll of the schooner and facing the captain. “Shut the
doors and draw the slide,” Wolf Larsen said to me. As I obeyed
I noticed an anxious light come into Johnson’s eyes, but I did not dream of its
cause. I did not dream of what was to occur until it did occur, but he
knew from the very first what was coming and awaited it bravely. And in
his action I found complete refutation of all Wolf Larsen’s materialism.
The sailor Johnson was swayed by idea, by principle, and truth, and
sincerity. He was right, he knew he was right, and he was unafraid.
He would die for the right if needs be, he would be true to himself, sincere
with his soul. And in this was portrayed the victory of the spirit over
the flesh, the indomitability and moral grandeur of the soul that knows no
restriction and rises above time and space and matter with a surety and
invincibleness born of nothing else than eternity and immortality. But to
return. I noticed the anxious light in Johnson’s eyes, but mistook it for
the native shyness and embarrassment of the man. The mate, Johansen,
stood away several feet to the side of him, and fully three yards in front of
him sat Wolf Larsen on one of the pivotal cabin chairs. An appreciable
pause fell after I had closed the doors and drawn the slide, a pause that must
have lasted fully a minute. It was broken by Wolf Larsen. “Yonson,” he
began. “My name is
Johnson, sir,” the sailor boldly corrected. “Well,
Johnson, then, damn you! Can you guess why I have sent for you?” “Yes, and
no, sir,” was the slow reply. “My work is done well. The mate knows
that, and you know it, sir. So there cannot be any complaint.” “And is that
all?” Wolf Larsen queried, his voice soft, and low, and purring. “I know you
have it in for me,” Johnson continued with his unalterable and ponderous
slowness. “You do not like me. You — you — ” “Go on,”
Wolf Larsen prompted. “Don’t be afraid of my feelings.” “I am not
afraid,” the sailor retorted, a slight angry flush rising through his sunburn.
“If I speak not fast, it is because I have not been from the old country as
long as you. You do not like me because I am too much of a man; that is
why, sir.” “You are too
much of a man for ship discipline, if that is what you mean, and if you know what
I mean,” was Wolf Larsen’s retort. “I know
English, and I know what you mean, sir,” Johnson answered, his flush deepening
at the slur on his knowledge of the English language. “Johnson,”
Wolf Larsen said, with an air of dismissing all that had gone before as
introductory to the main business in hand, “I understand you’re not quite
satisfied with those oilskins?” “No, I am
not. They are no good, sir.” “And you’ve
been shooting off your mouth about them.” “I say what
I think, sir,” the sailor answered courageously, not failing at the same time
in ship courtesy, which demanded that “sir” be appended to each speech he made. It was at
this moment that I chanced to glance at Johansen. His big fists were
clenching and unclenching, and his face was positively fiendish, so malignantly
did he look at Johnson. I noticed a black discoloration, still faintly
visible, under Johansen’s eye, a mark of the thrashing he had received a few
nights before from the sailor. For the first time I began to divine that
something terrible was about to be enacted, — what, I could not imagine. “Do you know
what happens to men who say what you’ve said about my slop-chest and me?” Wolf
Larsen was demanding. “I know,
sir,” was the answer. “What?” Wolf
Larsen demanded, sharply and imperatively. “What you
and the mate there are going to do to me, sir.” “Look at
him, Hump,” Wolf Larsen said to me, “look at this bit of animated dust, this
aggregation of matter that moves and breathes and defies me and thoroughly
believes itself to be compounded of something good; that is impressed with
certain human fictions such as righteousness and honesty, and that will live up
to them in spite of all personal discomforts and menaces. What do you
think of him, Hump? What do you think of him?” “I think that
he is a better man than you are,” I answered, impelled, somehow, with a desire
to draw upon myself a portion of the wrath I felt was about to break upon his
head. “His human fictions, as you choose to call them, make for nobility
and manhood. You have no fictions, no dreams, no ideals. You are a
pauper.” He nodded
his head with a savage pleasantness. “Quite true, Hump, quite true.
I have no fictions that make for nobility and manhood. A living dog is
better than a dead lion, say I with the Preacher. My only doctrine is the
doctrine of expediency, and it makes for surviving. This bit of the
ferment we call ‘Johnson,’ when he is no longer a bit of the ferment, only dust
and ashes, will have no more nobility than any dust and ashes, while I shall still
be alive and roaring.” “Do you know
what I am going to do?” he questioned. I shook my
head. “Well, I am
going to exercise my prerogative of roaring and show you how fares
nobility. Watch me.” Three yards
away from Johnson he was, and sitting down. Nine feet! And yet he
left the chair in full leap, without first gaining a standing position.
He left the chair, just as he sat in it, squarely, springing from the sitting
posture like a wild animal, a tiger, and like a tiger covered the intervening
space. It was an avalanche of fury that Johnson strove vainly to fend
off. He threw one arm down to protect the stomach, the other arm up to
protect the head; but Wolf Larsen’s fist drove midway between, on the chest,
with a crushing, resounding impact. Johnson’s breath, suddenly expelled,
shot from his mouth and as suddenly checked, with the forced, audible
expiration of a man wielding an axe. He almost fell backward, and swayed
from side to side in an effort to recover his balance. I cannot
give the further particulars of the horrible scene that followed. It was
too revolting. It turns me sick even now when I think of it.
Johnson fought bravely enough, but he was no match for Wolf Larsen, much less
for Wolf Larsen and the mate. It was frightful. I had not imagined
a human being could endure so much and still live and struggle on. And
struggle on Johnson did. Of course there was no hope for him, not the
slightest, and he knew it as well as I, but by the manhood that was in him he
could not cease from fighting for that manhood. It was too
much for me to witness. I felt that I should lose my mind, and I ran up
the companion stairs to open the doors and escape on deck. But Wolf
Larsen, leaving his victim for the moment, and with one of his tremendous springs,
gained my side and flung me into the far corner of the cabin. “The
phenomena of life, Hump,” he girded at me. “Stay and watch it. You
may gather data on the immortality of the soul. Besides, you know, we
can’t hurt Johnson’s soul. It’s only the fleeting form we may demolish.” It seemed
centuries — possibly it was no more than ten minutes that the beating
continued. Wolf Larsen and Johansen were all about the poor fellow.
They struck him with their fists, kicked him with their heavy shoes, knocked
him down, and dragged him to his feet to knock him down again. His eyes
were blinded so that he could not set, and the blood running from ears and nose
and mouth turned the cabin into a shambles. And when he could no longer
rise they still continued to beat and kick him where he lay. “Easy,
Johansen; easy as she goes,” Wolf Larsen finally said. But the
beast in the mate was up and rampant, and Wolf Larsen was compelled to brush
him away with a back-handed sweep of the arm, gentle enough, apparently, but
which hurled Johansen back like a cork, driving his head against the wall with
a crash. He fell to the floor, half stunned for the moment, breathing
heavily and blinking his eyes in a stupid sort of way. “Jerk open
the doors, — Hump,” I was commanded. I obeyed,
and the two brutes picked up the senseless man like a sack of rubbish and hove
him clear up the companion stairs, through the narrow doorway, and out on
deck. The blood from his nose gushed in a scarlet stream over the feet of
the helmsman, who was none other than Louis, his boat-mate. But Louis
took and gave a spoke and gazed imperturbably into the binnacle. Not so was
the conduct of George Leach, the erstwhile cabin-boy. Fore and aft there
was nothing that could have surprised us more than his consequent
behaviour. He it was that came up on the poop without orders and dragged
Johnson forward, where he set about dressing his wounds as well as he could and
making him comfortable. Johnson, as Johnson, was unrecognizable; and not
only that, for his features, as human features at all, were unrecognizable, so
discoloured and swollen had they become in the few minutes which had elapsed
between the beginning of the beating and the dragging forward of the body. But of
Leach’s behaviour — By the time I had
finished cleansing the cabin he had taken care of Johnson. I had come up
on deck for a breath of fresh air and to try to get some repose for my
overwrought nerves. Wolf Larsen was smoking a cigar and examining the
patent log which the Ghost
usually towed astern, but which had been hauled in for some purpose.
Suddenly Leach’s voice came to my ears. It was tense and hoarse with an
overmastering rage. I turned and saw him standing just beneath the break
of the poop on the port side of the galley. His face was convulsed and
white, his eyes were flashing, his clenched fists raised overhead. “May God
damn your soul to hell, Wolf Larsen, only hell’s too good for you, you coward,
you murderer, you pig!” was his opening salutation. "His face was convulsed and white, and his eyes were flashing, his clenched fists raised overhead." I was
thunderstruck. I looked for his instant annihilation. But it was
not Wolf Larsen’s whim to annihilate him. He sauntered slowly forward to
the break of the poop, and, leaning his elbow on the corner of the cabin, gazed
down thoughtfully and curiously at the excited boy. And the boy
indicted Wolf Larsen as he had never been indicted before. The sailors
assembled in a fearful group just outside the forecastle scuttle and watched
and listened. The hunters piled pell-mell out of the steerage, but as
Leach’s tirade continued I saw that there was no levity in their faces.
Even they were frightened, not at the boy’s terrible words, but at his terrible
audacity. It did not seem possible that any living creature could thus
beard Wolf Larsen in his teeth. I know for myself that I was shocked into
admiration of the boy, and I saw in him the splendid invincibleness of
immortality rising above the flesh and the fears of the flesh, as in the
prophets of old, to condemn unrighteousness. And such
condemnation! He haled forth Wolf Larsen’s soul naked to the scorn of
men. He rained upon it curses from God and High Heaven, and withered it
with a heat of invective that savoured of a mediaeval excommunication of the
Catholic Church. He ran the gamut of denunciation, rising to heights of
wrath that were sublime and almost Godlike, and from sheer exhaustion sinking
to the vilest and most indecent abuse. His rage was
a madness. His lips were flecked with a soapy froth, and sometimes he
choked and gurgled and became inarticulate. And through it all, calm and
impassive, leaning on his elbow and gazing down, Wolf Larsen seemed lost in a
great curiosity. This wild stirring of yeasty life, this terrific revolt
and defiance of matter that moved, perplexed and interested him. Each moment
I looked, and everybody looked, for him to leap upon the boy and destroy
him. But it was not his whim. His cigar went out, and he continued
to gaze silently and curiously. Leach had
worked himself into an ecstasy of impotent rage. “Pig!
Pig! Pig!” he was reiterating at the top of his lungs. “Why don’t
you come down and kill me, you murderer? You can do it! I ain’t
afraid! There’s no one to stop you! Damn sight better dead and outa
your reach than alive and in your clutches! Come on, you coward!
Kill me! Kill me! Kill me!” It was at
this stage that Thomas Mugridge’s erratic soul brought him into the
scene. He had been listening at the galley door, but he now came out,
ostensibly to fling some scraps over the side, but obviously to see the killing
he was certain would take place. He smirked greasily up into the face of
Wolf Larsen, who seemed not to see him. But the Cockney was unabashed,
though mad, stark mad. He turned to Leach, saying: “Such
langwidge! Shockin’!” Leach’s rage
was no longer impotent. Here at last was something ready to hand.
And for the first time since the stabbing the Cockney had appeared outside the
galley without his knife. The words had barely left his mouth when he was
knocked down by Leach. Three times he struggled to his feet, striving to
gain the galley, and each time was knocked down. “Oh, Lord!”
he cried. “’Elp! ’Elp! Tyke ’im aw’y, carn’t yer? Tyke
’im aw’y!” The hunters
laughed from sheer relief. Tragedy had dwindled, the farce had
begun. The sailors now crowded boldly aft, grinning and shuffling, to
watch the pummelling of the hated Cockney. And even I felt a great joy
surge up within me. I confess that I delighted in this beating Leach was
giving to Thomas Mugridge, though it was as terrible, almost, as the one
Mugridge had caused to be given to Johnson. But the expression of Wolf
Larsen’s face never changed. He did not change his position either, but
continued to gaze down with a great curiosity. For all his pragmatic
certitude, it seemed as if he watched the play and movement of life in the hope
of discovering something more about it, of discerning in its maddest writhings
a something which had hitherto escaped him, — the key to its mystery, as it
were, which would make all clear and plain. But the
beating! It was quite similar to the one I had witnessed in the
cabin. The Cockney strove in vain to protect himself from the infuriated
boy. And in vain he strove to gain the shelter of the cabin. He
rolled toward it, grovelled toward it, fell toward it when he was knocked
down. But blow followed blow with bewildering rapidity. He was
knocked about like a shuttlecock, until, finally, like Johnson, he was beaten
and kicked as he lay helpless on the deck. And no one interfered.
Leach could have killed him, but, having evidently filled the measure of his
vengeance, he drew away from his prostrate foe, who was whimpering and wailing
in a puppyish sort of way, and walked forward. But these
two affairs were only the opening events of the day’s programme. In the afternoon
Smoke and Henderson fell foul of each other, and a fusillade of shots came up
from the steerage, followed by a stampede of the other four hunters for the
deck. A column of thick, acrid smoke — the kind always made by black
powder — was arising through the open companion-way, and down through it leaped
Wolf Larsen. The sound of blows and scuffling came to our ears.
Both men were wounded, and he was thrashing them both for having disobeyed his
orders and crippled themselves in advance of the hunting season. In fact,
they were badly wounded, and, having thrashed them, he proceeded to operate
upon them in a rough surgical fashion and to dress their wounds. I served
as assistant while he probed and cleansed the passages made by the bullets, and
I saw the two men endure his crude surgery without anaesthetics and with no
more to uphold them than a stiff tumbler of whisky. Then, in the
first dog-watch, trouble came to a head in the forecastle. It took its
rise out of the tittle-tattle and tale-bearing which had been the cause of
Johnson’s beating, and from the noise we heard, and from the sight of the
bruised men next day, it was patent that half the forecastle had soundly
drubbed the other half. The second
dog-watch and the day were wound up by a fight between Johansen and the lean,
Yankee-looking hunter, Latimer. It was caused by remarks of Latimer’s
concerning the noises made by the mate in his sleep, and though Johansen was
whipped, he kept the steerage awake for the rest of the night while he blissfully
slumbered and fought the fight over and over again. As for
myself, I was oppressed with nightmare. The day had been like some
horrible dream. Brutality had followed brutality, and flaming passions
and cold-blooded cruelty had driven men to seek one another’s lives, and to
strive to hurt, and maim, and destroy. My nerves were shocked. My
mind itself was shocked. All my days had been passed in comparative
ignorance of the animality of man. In fact, I had known life only in its
intellectual phases. Brutality I had experienced, but it was the
brutality of the intellect — the cutting sarcasm of Charley Furuseth, the cruel
epigrams and occasional harsh witticisms of the fellows at the Bibelot, and the
nasty remarks of some of the professors during my undergraduate days. That was
all. But that men should wreak their anger on others by the bruising of
the flesh and the letting of blood was something strangely and fearfully new to
me. Not for nothing had I been called “Sissy” Van Weyden, I thought, as I
tossed restlessly on my bunk between one nightmare and another. And it
seemed to me that my innocence of the realities of life had been complete
indeed. I laughed bitterly to myself, and seemed to find in Wolf Larsen’s
forbidding philosophy a more adequate explanation of life than I found in my
own. And I was
frightened when I became conscious of the trend of my thought. The
continual brutality around me was degenerative in its effect. It bid fair
to destroy for me all that was best and brightest in life. My reason
dictated that the beating Thomas Mugridge had received was an ill thing, and
yet for the life of me I could not prevent my soul joying in it. And even
while I was oppressed by the enormity of my sin, — for sin it was, — I chuckled
with an insane delight. I was no longer Humphrey Van Weyden. I was
Hump, cabin-boy on the schooner Ghost.
Wolf Larsen was my captain, Thomas Mugridge and the rest were my companions,
and I was receiving repeated impresses from the die which had stamped them all. |