The Sea-Wolf Page #17

"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

								


“We were talking about this yesterday,” he said.  “I held that life was a
ferment, a yeasty something which devoured life that it might live, and
that living was merely successful piggishness.  Why, if there is anything
in supply and demand, life is the cheapest thing in the world.  There is
only so much water, so much earth, so much air; but the life that is
demanding to be born is limitless.  Nature is a spendthrift.  Look at the
fish and their millions of eggs.  For that matter, look at you and me.
In our loins are the possibilities of millions of lives.  Could we but
find time and opportunity and utilize the last bit and every bit of the
unborn life that is in us, we could become the fathers of nations and
populate continents.  Life?  Bah!  It has no value.  Of cheap things it
is the cheapest.  Everywhere it goes begging.  Nature spills it out with
a lavish hand.  Where there is room for one life, she sows a thousand
lives, and it’s life eats life till the strongest and most piggish life
is left.”

“You have read Darwin,” I said.  “But you read him misunderstandingly
when you conclude that the struggle for existence sanctions your wanton
destruction of life.”

He shrugged his shoulders.  “You know you only mean that in relation to
human life, for of the flesh and the fowl and the fish you destroy as
much as I or any other man.  And human life is in no wise different,
though you feel it is and think that you reason why it is.  Why should I
be parsimonious with this life which is cheap and without value?  There
are more sailors than there are ships on the sea for them, more workers
than there are factories or machines for them.  Why, you who live on the
land know that you house your poor people in the slums of cities and
loose famine and pestilence upon them, and that there still remain more
poor people, dying for want of a crust of bread and a bit of meat (which
is life destroyed), than you know what to do with.  Have you ever seen
the London dockers fighting like wild beasts for a chance to work?”

He started for the companion stairs, but turned his head for a final
word.  “Do you know the only value life has is what life puts upon
itself?  And it is of course over-estimated since it is of necessity
prejudiced in its own favour.  Take that man I had aloft.  He held on as
if he were a precious thing, a treasure beyond diamonds or rubies.  To
you?  No.  To me?  Not at all.  To himself?  Yes.  But I do not accept
his estimate.  He sadly overrates himself.  There is plenty more life
demanding to be born.  Had he fallen and dripped his brains upon the deck
like honey from the comb, there would have been no loss to the world.  He
was worth nothing to the world.  The supply is too large.  To himself
only was he of value, and to show how fictitious even this value was,
being dead he is unconscious that he has lost himself.  He alone rated
himself beyond diamonds and rubies.  Diamonds and rubies are gone, spread
out on the deck to be washed away by a bucket of sea-water, and he does
not even know that the diamonds and rubies are gone.  He does not lose
anything, for with the loss of himself he loses the knowledge of loss.
Don’t you see?  And what have you to say?”

“That you are at least consistent,” was all I could say, and I went on
washing the dishes.




CHAPTER VII


At last, after three days of variable winds, we have caught the
north-east trades.  I came on deck, after a good night’s rest in spite of
my poor knee, to find the Ghost foaming along, wing-and-wing, and every
sail drawing except the jibs, with a fresh breeze astern.  Oh, the wonder
of the great trade-wind!  All day we sailed, and all night, and the next
day, and the next, day after day, the wind always astern and blowing
steadily and strong.  The schooner sailed herself.  There was no pulling
and hauling on sheets and tackles, no shifting of topsails, no work at
all for the sailors to do except to steer.  At night when the sun went
down, the sheets were slackened; in the morning, when they yielded up the
damp of the dew and relaxed, they were pulled tight again—and that was
all.

Ten knots, twelve knots, eleven knots, varying from time to time, is the
speed we are making.  And ever out of the north-east the brave wind
blows, driving us on our course two hundred and fifty miles between the
dawns.  It saddens me and gladdens me, the gait with which we are leaving
San Francisco behind and with which we are foaming down upon the tropics.
Each day grows perceptibly warmer.  In the second dog-watch the sailors
come on deck, stripped, and heave buckets of water upon one another from
overside.  Flying-fish are beginning to be seen, and during the night the
watch above scrambles over the deck in pursuit of those that fall aboard.
In the morning, Thomas Mugridge being duly bribed, the galley is
pleasantly areek with the odour of their frying; while dolphin meat is
served fore and aft on such occasions as Johnson catches the blazing
beauties from the bowsprit end.

Johnson seems to spend all his spare time there or aloft at the
crosstrees, watching the Ghost cleaving the water under press of sail.
There is passion, adoration, in his eyes, and he goes about in a sort of
trance, gazing in ecstasy at the swelling sails, the foaming wake, and
the heave and the run of her over the liquid mountains that are moving
with us in stately procession.

The days and nights are “all a wonder and a wild delight,” and though I
have little time from my dreary work, I steal odd moments to gaze and
gaze at the unending glory of what I never dreamed the world possessed.
Above, the sky is stainless blue—blue as the sea itself, which under the
forefoot is of the colour and sheen of azure satin.  All around the
horizon are pale, fleecy clouds, never changing, never moving, like a
silver setting for the flawless turquoise sky.

I do not forget one night, when I should have been asleep, of lying on
the forecastle-head and gazing down at the spectral ripple of foam thrust
aside by the Ghost’s forefoot.  It sounded like the gurgling of a brook
over mossy stones in some quiet dell, and the crooning song of it lured
me away and out of myself till I was no longer Hump the cabin-boy, nor
Van Weyden, the man who had dreamed away thirty-five years among books.
But a voice behind me, the unmistakable voice of Wolf Larsen, strong with
the invincible certitude of the man and mellow with appreciation of the
words he was quoting, aroused me.

   “‘O the blazing tropic night, when the wake’s a welt of light
      That holds the hot sky tame,
   And the steady forefoot snores through the planet-powdered floors
      Where the scared whale flukes in flame.
   Her plates are scarred by the sun, dear lass,
      And her ropes are taut with the dew,
   For we’re booming down on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail,

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