The Sea-Wolf Page #16

"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

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“That’ll do, easy as she goes,” Wolf Larsen counselled back.  “I’ve told
you what’s what, and let it stop at that.  The man’s mine, and I’ll make
soup of him and eat it if I want to.”

There was an angry gleam in the hunter’s eye, but he turned on his heel
and entered the steerage companion-way, where he remained, looking
upward.  All hands were on deck now, and all eyes were aloft, where a
human life was at grapples with death.  The callousness of these men, to
whom industrial organization gave control of the lives of other men, was
appalling.  I, who had lived out of the whirl of the world, had never
dreamed that its work was carried on in such fashion.  Life had always
seemed a peculiarly sacred thing, but here it counted for nothing, was a
cipher in the arithmetic of commerce.  I must say, however, that the
sailors themselves were sympathetic, as instance the case of Johnson; but
the masters (the hunters and the captain) were heartlessly indifferent.
Even the protest of Standish arose out of the fact that he did not wish
to lose his boat-puller.  Had it been some other hunter’s boat-puller,
he, like them, would have been no more than amused.

But to return to Harrison.  It took Johansen, insulting and reviling the
poor wretch, fully ten minutes to get him started again.  A little later
he made the end of the gaff, where, astride the spar itself, he had a
better chance for holding on.  He cleared the sheet, and was free to
return, slightly downhill now, along the halyards to the mast.  But he
had lost his nerve.  Unsafe as was his present position, he was loath to
forsake it for the more unsafe position on the halyards.

He looked along the airy path he must traverse, and then down to the
deck.  His eyes were wide and staring, and he was trembling violently.  I
had never seen fear so strongly stamped upon a human face.  Johansen
called vainly for him to come down.  At any moment he was liable to be
snapped off the gaff, but he was helpless with fright.  Wolf Larsen,
walking up and down with Smoke and in conversation, took no more notice
of him, though he cried sharply, once, to the man at the wheel:

“You’re off your course, my man!  Be careful, unless you’re looking for
trouble!”

“Ay, ay, sir,” the helmsman responded, putting a couple of spokes down.

He had been guilty of running the Ghost several points off her course
in order that what little wind there was should fill the foresail and
hold it steady.  He had striven to help the unfortunate Harrison at the
risk of incurring Wolf Larsen’s anger.

The time went by, and the suspense, to me, was terrible.  Thomas
Mugridge, on the other hand, considered it a laughable affair, and was
continually bobbing his head out the galley door to make jocose remarks.
How I hated him!  And how my hatred for him grew and grew, during that
fearful time, to cyclopean dimensions.  For the first time in my life I
experienced the desire to murder—“saw red,” as some of our picturesque
writers phrase it.  Life in general might still be sacred, but life in
the particular case of Thomas Mugridge had become very profane indeed.  I
was frightened when I became conscious that I was seeing red, and the
thought flashed through my mind: was I, too, becoming tainted by the
brutality of my environment?—I, who even in the most flagrant crimes had
denied the justice and righteousness of capital punishment?

Fully half-an-hour went by, and then I saw Johnson and Louis in some sort
of altercation.  It ended with Johnson flinging off Louis’s detaining arm
and starting forward.  He crossed the deck, sprang into the fore rigging,
and began to climb.  But the quick eye of Wolf Larsen caught him.

“Here, you, what are you up to?” he cried.

Johnson’s ascent was arrested.  He looked his captain in the eyes and
replied slowly:

“I am going to get that boy down.”

“You’ll get down out of that rigging, and damn lively about it!  D’ye
hear?  Get down!”

Johnson hesitated, but the long years of obedience to the masters of
ships overpowered him, and he dropped sullenly to the deck and went on
forward.

At half after five I went below to set the cabin table, but I hardly knew
what I did, for my eyes and my brain were filled with the vision of a
man, white-faced and trembling, comically like a bug, clinging to the
thrashing gaff.  At six o’clock, when I served supper, going on deck to
get the food from the galley, I saw Harrison, still in the same position.
The conversation at the table was of other things.  Nobody seemed
interested in the wantonly imperilled life.  But making an extra trip to
the galley a little later, I was gladdened by the sight of Harrison
staggering weakly from the rigging to the forecastle scuttle.  He had
finally summoned the courage to descend.

Before closing this incident, I must give a scrap of conversation I had
with Wolf Larsen in the cabin, while I was washing the dishes.

“You were looking squeamish this afternoon,” he began.  “What was the
matter?”

I could see that he knew what had made me possibly as sick as Harrison,
that he was trying to draw me, and I answered, “It was because of the
brutal treatment of that boy.”

He gave a short laugh.  “Like sea-sickness, I suppose.  Some men are
subject to it, and others are not.”

“Not so,” I objected.

“Just so,” he went on.  “The earth is as full of brutality as the sea is
full of motion.  And some men are made sick by the one, and some by the
other.  That’s the only reason.”

“But you, who make a mock of human life, don’t you place any value upon
it whatever?” I demanded.

“Value?  What value?”  He looked at me, and though his eyes were steady
and motionless, there seemed a cynical smile in them.  “What kind of
value?  How do you measure it?  Who values it?”

“I do,” I made answer.

“Then what is it worth to you?  Another man’s life, I mean.  Come now,
what is it worth?”

The value of life?  How could I put a tangible value upon it?  Somehow,
I, who have always had expression, lacked expression when with Wolf
Larsen.  I have since determined that a part of it was due to the man’s
personality, but that the greater part was due to his totally different
outlook.  Unlike other materialists I had met and with whom I had
something in common to start on, I had nothing in common with him.
Perhaps, also, it was the elemental simplicity of his mind that baffled
me.  He drove so directly to the core of the matter, divesting a question
always of all superfluous details, and with such an air of finality, that
I seemed to find myself struggling in deep water, with no footing under
me.  Value of life?  How could I answer the question on the spur of the
moment?  The sacredness of life I had accepted as axiomatic.  That it was
intrinsically valuable was a truism I had never questioned.  But when he
challenged the truism I was speechless.

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