The Sea-Wolf Page #21

"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

								

a steady pressure.  What he might have done I did not fully realize till
next day, when he put his head into the galley, and, as a sign of renewed
friendliness, asked me how my arm was getting on.

“It might have been worse,” he smiled.

I was peeling potatoes.  He picked one up from the pan.  It was
fair-sized, firm, and unpeeled.  He closed his hand upon it, squeezed,
and the potato squirted out between his fingers in mushy streams.  The
pulpy remnant he dropped back into the pan and turned away, and I had a
sharp vision of how it might have fared with me had the monster put his
real strength upon me.

But the three days’ rest was good in spite of it all, for it had given my
knee the very chance it needed.  It felt much better, the swelling had
materially decreased, and the cap seemed descending into its proper
place.  Also, the three days’ rest brought the trouble I had foreseen.
It was plainly Thomas Mugridge’s intention to make me pay for those three
days.  He treated me vilely, cursed me continually, and heaped his own
work upon me.  He even ventured to raise his fist to me, but I was
becoming animal-like myself, and I snarled in his face so terribly that
it must have frightened him back.  It is no pleasant picture I can
conjure up of myself, Humphrey Van Weyden, in that noisome ship’s galley,
crouched in a corner over my task, my face raised to the face of the
creature about to strike me, my lips lifted and snarling like a dog’s, my
eyes gleaming with fear and helplessness and the courage that comes of
fear and helplessness.  I do not like the picture.  It reminds me too
strongly of a rat in a trap.  I do not care to think of it; but it was
effective, for the threatened blow did not descend.

Thomas Mugridge backed away, glaring as hatefully and viciously as I
glared.  A pair of beasts is what we were, penned together and showing
our teeth.  He was a coward, afraid to strike me because I had not
quailed sufficiently in advance; so he chose a new way to intimidate me.
There was only one galley knife that, as a knife, amounted to anything.
This, through many years of service and wear, had acquired a long, lean
blade.  It was unusually cruel-looking, and at first I had shuddered
every time I used it.  The cook borrowed a stone from Johansen and
proceeded to sharpen the knife.  He did it with great ostentation,
glancing significantly at me the while.  He whetted it up and down all
day long.  Every odd moment he could find he had the knife and stone out
and was whetting away.  The steel acquired a razor edge.  He tried it
with the ball of his thumb or across the nail.  He shaved hairs from the
back of his hand, glanced along the edge with microscopic acuteness, and
found, or feigned that he found, always, a slight inequality in its edge
somewhere.  Then he would put it on the stone again and whet, whet, whet,
till I could have laughed aloud, it was so very ludicrous.

It was also serious, for I learned that he was capable of using it, that
under all his cowardice there was a courage of cowardice, like mine, that
would impel him to do the very thing his whole nature protested against
doing and was afraid of doing.  “Cooky’s sharpening his knife for Hump,”
was being whispered about among the sailors, and some of them twitted him
about it.  This he took in good part, and was really pleased, nodding his
head with direful foreknowledge and mystery, until George Leach, the
erstwhile cabin-boy, ventured some rough pleasantry on the subject.

Now it happened that Leach was one of the sailors told off to douse
Mugridge after his game of cards with the captain.  Leach had evidently
done his task with a thoroughness that Mugridge had not forgiven, for
words followed and evil names involving smirched ancestries.  Mugridge
menaced with the knife he was sharpening for me.  Leach laughed and
hurled more of his Telegraph Hill Billingsgate, and before either he or I
knew what had happened, his right arm had been ripped open from elbow to
wrist by a quick slash of the knife.  The cook backed away, a fiendish
expression on his face, the knife held before him in a position of
defence.  But Leach took it quite calmly, though blood was spouting upon
the deck as generously as water from a fountain.

“I’m goin’ to get you, Cooky,” he said, “and I’ll get you hard.  And I
won’t be in no hurry about it.  You’ll be without that knife when I come
for you.”

So saying, he turned and walked quietly forward.  Mugridge’s face was
livid with fear at what he had done and at what he might expect sooner or
later from the man he had stabbed.  But his demeanour toward me was more
ferocious than ever.  In spite of his fear at the reckoning he must
expect to pay for what he had done, he could see that it had been an
object-lesson to me, and he became more domineering and exultant.  Also
there was a lust in him, akin to madness, which had come with sight of
the blood he had drawn.  He was beginning to see red in whatever
direction he looked.  The psychology of it is sadly tangled, and yet I
could read the workings of his mind as clearly as though it were a
printed book.

Several days went by, the Ghost still foaming down the trades, and I
could swear I saw madness growing in Thomas Mugridge’s eyes.  And I
confess that I became afraid, very much afraid.  Whet, whet, whet, it
went all day long.  The look in his eyes as he felt the keen edge and
glared at me was positively carnivorous.  I was afraid to turn my
shoulder to him, and when I left the galley I went out backwards—to the
amusement of the sailors and hunters, who made a point of gathering in
groups to witness my exit.  The strain was too great.  I sometimes
thought my mind would give way under it—a meet thing on this ship of
madmen and brutes.  Every hour, every minute of my existence was in
jeopardy.  I was a human soul in distress, and yet no soul, fore or aft,
betrayed sufficient sympathy to come to my aid.  At times I thought of
throwing myself on the mercy of Wolf Larsen, but the vision of the
mocking devil in his eyes that questioned life and sneered at it would
come strong upon me and compel me to refrain.  At other times I seriously
contemplated suicide, and the whole force of my hopeful philosophy was
required to keep me from going over the side in the darkness of night.

Several times Wolf Larsen tried to inveigle me into discussion, but I
gave him short answers and eluded him.  Finally, he commanded me to
resume my seat at the cabin table for a time and let the cook do my work.
Then I spoke frankly, telling him what I was enduring from Thomas
Mugridge because of the three days of favouritism which had been shown
me.  Wolf Larsen regarded me with smiling eyes.

“So you’re afraid, eh?” he sneered.

“Yes,” I said defiantly and honestly, “I am afraid.”

“That’s the way with you fellows,” he cried, half angrily,

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