The Sea-Wolf Page #22

"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

								

“sentimentalizing about your immortal souls and afraid to die.  At sight
of a sharp knife and a cowardly Cockney the clinging of life to life
overcomes all your fond foolishness.  Why, my dear fellow, you will live
for ever.  You are a god, and God cannot be killed.  Cooky cannot hurt
you.  You are sure of your resurrection.  What’s there to be afraid of?

“You have eternal life before you.  You are a millionaire in immortality,
and a millionaire whose fortune cannot be lost, whose fortune is less
perishable than the stars and as lasting as space or time.  It is
impossible for you to diminish your principal.  Immortality is a thing
without beginning or end.  Eternity is eternity, and though you die here
and now you will go on living somewhere else and hereafter.  And it is
all very beautiful, this shaking off of the flesh and soaring of the
imprisoned spirit.  Cooky cannot hurt you.  He can only give you a boost
on the path you eternally must tread.

“Or, if you do not wish to be boosted just yet, why not boost Cooky?
According to your ideas, he, too, must be an immortal millionaire.  You
cannot bankrupt him.  His paper will always circulate at par.  You cannot
diminish the length of his living by killing him, for he is without
beginning or end.  He’s bound to go on living, somewhere, somehow.  Then
boost him.  Stick a knife in him and let his spirit free.  As it is, it’s
in a nasty prison, and you’ll do him only a kindness by breaking down the
door.  And who knows?—it may be a very beautiful spirit that will go
soaring up into the blue from that ugly carcass.  Boost him along, and
I’ll promote you to his place, and he’s getting forty-five dollars a
month.”

It was plain that I could look for no help or mercy from Wolf Larsen.
Whatever was to be done I must do for myself; and out of the courage of
fear I evolved the plan of fighting Thomas Mugridge with his own weapons.
I borrowed a whetstone from Johansen.  Louis, the boat-steerer, had
already begged me for condensed milk and sugar.  The lazarette, where
such delicacies were stored, was situated beneath the cabin floor.
Watching my chance, I stole five cans of the milk, and that night, when
it was Louis’s watch on deck, I traded them with him for a dirk as lean
and cruel-looking as Thomas Mugridge’s vegetable knife.  It was rusty and
dull, but I turned the grindstone while Louis gave it an edge.  I slept
more soundly than usual that night.

Next morning, after breakfast, Thomas Mugridge began his whet, whet,
whet.  I glanced warily at him, for I was on my knees taking the ashes
from the stove.  When I returned from throwing them overside, he was
talking to Harrison, whose honest yokel’s face was filled with
fascination and wonder.

“Yes,” Mugridge was saying, “an’ wot does ’is worship do but give me two
years in Reading.  But blimey if I cared.  The other mug was fixed
plenty.  Should ’a seen ’im.  Knife just like this.  I stuck it in, like
into soft butter, an’ the w’y ’e squealed was better’n a tu-penny gaff.”
He shot a glance in my direction to see if I was taking it in, and went
on.  “‘I didn’t mean it Tommy,’ ’e was snifflin’; ‘so ’elp me Gawd, I
didn’t mean it!’  ‘I’ll fix yer bloody well right,’ I sez, an’ kept right
after ’im.  I cut ’im in ribbons, that’s wot I did, an’ ’e a-squealin’
all the time.  Once ’e got ’is ’and on the knife an’ tried to ’old it.
‘Ad ’is fingers around it, but I pulled it through, cuttin’ to the bone.
O, ’e was a sight, I can tell yer.”

A call from the mate interrupted the gory narrative, and Harrison went
aft.  Mugridge sat down on the raised threshold to the galley and went on
with his knife-sharpening.  I put the shovel away and calmly sat down on
the coal-box facing him.  He favoured me with a vicious stare.  Still
calmly, though my heart was going pitapat, I pulled out Louis’s dirk and
began to whet it on the stone.  I had looked for almost any sort of
explosion on the Cockney’s part, but to my surprise he did not appear
aware of what I was doing.  He went on whetting his knife.  So did I.
And for two hours we sat there, face to face, whet, whet, whet, till the
news of it spread abroad and half the ship’s company was crowding the
galley doors to see the sight.

Encouragement and advice were freely tendered, and Jock Horner, the
quiet, self-spoken hunter who looked as though he would not harm a mouse,
advised me to leave the ribs alone and to thrust upward for the abdomen,
at the same time giving what he called the “Spanish twist” to the blade.
Leach, his bandaged arm prominently to the fore, begged me to leave a few
remnants of the cook for him; and Wolf Larsen paused once or twice at the
break of the poop to glance curiously at what must have been to him a
stirring and crawling of the yeasty thing he knew as life.

And I make free to say that for the time being life assumed the same
sordid values to me.  There was nothing pretty about it, nothing
divine—only two cowardly moving things that sat whetting steel upon
stone, and a group of other moving things, cowardly and otherwise, that
looked on.  Half of them, I am sure, were anxious to see us shedding each
other’s blood.  It would have been entertainment.  And I do not think
there was one who would have interfered had we closed in a
death-struggle.

On the other hand, the whole thing was laughable and childish.  Whet,
whet, whet,—Humphrey Van Weyden sharpening his knife in a ship’s galley
and trying its edge with his thumb!  Of all situations this was the most
inconceivable.  I know that my own kind could not have believed it
possible.  I had not been called “Sissy” Van Weyden all my days without
reason, and that “Sissy” Van Weyden should be capable of doing this thing
was a revelation to Humphrey Van Weyden, who knew not whether to be
exultant or ashamed.

But nothing happened.  At the end of two hours Thomas Mugridge put away
knife and stone and held out his hand.

“Wot’s the good of mykin’ a ’oly show of ourselves for them mugs?” he
demanded.  “They don’t love us, an’ bloody well glad they’d be a-seein’
us cuttin’ our throats.  Yer not ’arf bad, ’Ump!  You’ve got spunk, as
you Yanks s’y, an’ I like yer in a w’y.  So come on an’ shyke.”

Coward that I might be, I was less a coward than he.  It was a distinct
victory I had gained, and I refused to forego any of it by shaking his
detestable hand.

“All right,” he said pridelessly, “tyke it or leave it, I’ll like yer
none the less for it.”  And to save his face he turned fiercely upon the
onlookers.  “Get outa my galley-doors, you bloomin’ swabs!”

This command was reinforced by a steaming kettle of water, and at sight
of it the sailors scrambled out of the way.  This was a sort of victory
for Thomas Mugridge, and enabled him to accept more gracefully the defeat
I had given him, though, of course, he was too discreet to attempt to

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