The Sea-Wolf Page #14

"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
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an’ shot four iv his men?  Wasn’t I a-layin’ on the Emma L., not three
hundred yards away?  An’ there was a man the same year he killed with a
blow iv his fist.  Yes, sir, killed ’im dead-oh.  His head must iv
smashed like an eggshell.  An’ wasn’t there the Governor of Kura Island,
an’ the Chief iv Police, Japanese gentlemen, sir, an’ didn’t they come
aboard the Ghost as his guests, a-bringin’ their wives along—wee an’
pretty little bits of things like you see ’em painted on fans.  An’ as he
was a-gettin’ under way, didn’t the fond husbands get left astern-like in
their sampan, as it might be by accident?  An’ wasn’t it a week later
that the poor little ladies was put ashore on the other side of the
island, with nothin’ before ’em but to walk home acrost the mountains on
their weeny-teeny little straw sandals which wouldn’t hang together a
mile?  Don’t I know?  ’Tis the beast he is, this Wolf Larsen—the great
big beast mentioned iv in Revelation; an’ no good end will he ever come
to.  But I’ve said nothin’ to ye, mind ye.  I’ve whispered never a word;
for old fat Louis’ll live the voyage out if the last mother’s son of yez
go to the fishes.”

“Wolf Larsen!” he snorted a moment later.  “Listen to the word, will ye!
Wolf—’tis what he is.  He’s not black-hearted like some men.  ’Tis no
heart he has at all.  Wolf, just wolf, ’tis what he is.  D’ye wonder he’s
well named?”

“But if he is so well-known for what he is,” I queried, “how is it that
he can get men to ship with him?”

“An’ how is it ye can get men to do anything on God’s earth an’ sea?”
Louis demanded with Celtic fire.  “How d’ye find me aboard if ’twasn’t
that I was drunk as a pig when I put me name down?  There’s them that
can’t sail with better men, like the hunters, and them that don’t know,
like the poor devils of wind-jammers for’ard there.  But they’ll come to
it, they’ll come to it, an’ be sorry the day they was born.  I could weep
for the poor creatures, did I but forget poor old fat Louis and the
troubles before him.  But ’tis not a whisper I’ve dropped, mind ye, not a
whisper.”

“Them hunters is the wicked boys,” he broke forth again, for he suffered
from a constitutional plethora of speech.  “But wait till they get to
cutting up iv jinks and rowin’ ’round.  He’s the boy’ll fix ’em.  ’Tis
him that’ll put the fear of God in their rotten black hearts.  Look at
that hunter iv mine, Horner.  ‘Jock’ Horner they call him, so quiet-like
an’ easy-goin’, soft-spoken as a girl, till ye’d think butter wouldn’t
melt in the mouth iv him.  Didn’t he kill his boat-steerer last year?
’Twas called a sad accident, but I met the boat-puller in Yokohama an’
the straight iv it was given me.  An’ there’s Smoke, the black little
devil—didn’t the Roosians have him for three years in the salt mines of
Siberia, for poachin’ on Copper Island, which is a Roosian preserve?
Shackled he was, hand an’ foot, with his mate.  An’ didn’t they have
words or a ruction of some kind?—for ’twas the other fellow Smoke sent up
in the buckets to the top of the mine; an’ a piece at a time he went up,
a leg to-day, an’ to-morrow an arm, the next day the head, an’ so on.”

“But you can’t mean it!” I cried out, overcome with the horror of it.

“Mean what!” he demanded, quick as a flash.  “’Tis nothin’ I’ve said.
Deef I am, and dumb, as ye should be for the sake iv your mother; an’
never once have I opened me lips but to say fine things iv them an’ him,
God curse his soul, an’ may he rot in purgatory ten thousand years, and
then go down to the last an’ deepest hell iv all!”

Johnson, the man who had chafed me raw when I first came aboard, seemed
the least equivocal of the men forward or aft.  In fact, there was
nothing equivocal about him.  One was struck at once by his
straightforwardness and manliness, which, in turn, were tempered by a
modesty which might be mistaken for timidity.  But timid he was not.  He
seemed, rather, to have the courage of his convictions, the certainty of
his manhood.  It was this that made him protest, at the commencement of
our acquaintance, against being called Yonson.  And upon this, and him,
Louis passed judgment and prophecy.

“’Tis a fine chap, that squarehead Johnson we’ve for’ard with us,” he
said.  “The best sailorman in the fo’c’sle.  He’s my boat-puller.  But
it’s to trouble he’ll come with Wolf Larsen, as the sparks fly upward.
It’s meself that knows.  I can see it brewin’ an’ comin’ up like a storm
in the sky.  I’ve talked to him like a brother, but it’s little he sees
in takin’ in his lights or flyin’ false signals.  He grumbles out when
things don’t go to suit him, and there’ll be always some tell-tale
carryin’ word iv it aft to the Wolf.  The Wolf is strong, and it’s the
way of a wolf to hate strength, an’ strength it is he’ll see in
Johnson—no knucklin’ under, and a ‘Yes, sir, thank ye kindly, sir,’ for a
curse or a blow.  Oh, she’s a-comin’!  She’s a-comin’!  An’ God knows
where I’ll get another boat-puller!  What does the fool up an’ say, when
the old man calls him Yonson, but ‘Me name is Johnson, sir,’ an’ then
spells it out, letter for letter.  Ye should iv seen the old man’s face!
I thought he’d let drive at him on the spot.  He didn’t, but he will, an’
he’ll break that squarehead’s heart, or it’s little I know iv the ways iv
men on the ships iv the sea.”

Thomas Mugridge is becoming unendurable.  I am compelled to Mister him
and to Sir him with every speech.  One reason for this is that Wolf
Larsen seems to have taken a fancy to him.  It is an unprecedented thing,
I take it, for a captain to be chummy with the cook; but this is
certainly what Wolf Larsen is doing.  Two or three times he put his head
into the galley and chaffed Mugridge good-naturedly, and once, this
afternoon, he stood by the break of the poop and chatted with him for
fully fifteen minutes.  When it was over, and Mugridge was back in the
galley, he became greasily radiant, and went about his work, humming
coster songs in a nerve-racking and discordant falsetto.

“I always get along with the officers,” he remarked to me in a
confidential tone.  “I know the w’y, I do, to myke myself uppreci-yted.
There was my last skipper—w’y I thought nothin’ of droppin’ down in the
cabin for a little chat and a friendly glass.  ‘Mugridge,’ sez ’e to me,
‘Mugridge,’ sez ’e, ‘you’ve missed yer vokytion.’  ‘An’ ’ow’s that?’ sez
I.  ‘Yer should ’a been born a gentleman, an’ never ’ad to work for yer
livin’.’  God strike me dead, ’Ump, if that ayn’t wot ’e sez, an’ me
a-sittin’ there in ’is own cabin, jolly-like an’ comfortable, a-smokin’
’is cigars an’ drinkin’ ’is rum.”

This chitter-chatter drove me to distraction.  I never heard a voice I
hated so.  His oily, insinuating tones, his greasy smile and his
monstrous self-conceit grated on my nerves till sometimes I was all in a
tremble.  Positively, he was the most disgusting and loathsome person I

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