The Sea-Wolf Page #12

"The Sea-Wolf" by Jack London is a thrilling psychological adventure novel published in 1904. The story follows Humphrey van Weyden, an intellectual and literary critic who is shipwrecked in the Pacific Ocean and rescued by Wolf Larsen, the brutal and enigmatic captain of the seal-hunting schooner Ghost. Larsen, a self-taught, fiercely intelligent, yet ruthless man, forces van Weyden into hard labor, exposing him to the harsh realities of survival, power, and the primal struggle for dominance. As van Weyden endures brutal treatment and harsh conditions aboard the Ghost, he finds himself locked in an intense battle of wills with Larsen, whose philosophy of Nietzschean survivalism and social Darwinism challenges van Weyden’s softer, more civilized ideals. The novel explores existential themes, morality, and the conflict between intellect and brute strength. It is a gripping tale of adventure, transformation, and survival on the high seas, featuring vivid descriptions of marit

• Action and Adventure
• Novel

								


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

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