The Greatest Sea Adventures - Jack London Edition. Jack London
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is no accounting for it. I was never sick in my life. Something’s gone wrong with my brain. A cancer, a tumour, or something of that nature,—a thing that devours and destroys. It’s attacking my nerve-centres, eating them up, bit by bit, cell by cell—from the pain.”
“The motor-centres, too,” I suggested.
“So it would seem; and the curse of it is that I must lie here, conscious, mentally unimpaired, knowing that the lines are going down, breaking bit by bit communication with the world. I cannot see, hearing and feeling are leaving me, at this rate I shall soon cease to speak; yet all the time I shall be here, alive, active, and powerless.”
“When you say YOU are here, I’d suggest the likelihood of the soul,” I said.
“Bosh!” was his retort. “It simply means that in the attack on my brain the higher psychical centres are untouched. I can remember, I can think and reason. When that goes, I go. I am not. The soul?”
He broke out in mocking laughter, then turned his left ear to the pillow as a sign that he wished no further conversation.
Maud and I went about our work oppressed by the fearful fate which had overtaken him,—how fearful we were yet fully to realize. There was the awfulness of retribution about it. Our thoughts were deep and solemn, and we spoke to each other scarcely above whispers.
“You might remove the handcuffs,” he said that night, as we stood in consultation over him. “It’s dead safe. I’m a paralytic now. The next thing to watch out for is bed sores.”
He smiled his twisted smile, and Maud, her eyes wide with horror, was compelled to turn away her head.
“Do you know that your smile is crooked?” I asked him; for I knew that she must attend him, and I wished to save her as much as possible.
“Then I shall smile no more,” he said calmly. “I thought something was wrong. My right cheek has been numb all day. Yes, and I’ve had warnings of this for the last three days; by spells, my right side seemed going to sleep, sometimes arm or hand, sometimes leg or foot.”
“So my smile is crooked?” he queried a short while after. “Well, consider henceforth that I smile internally, with my soul, if you please, my soul. Consider that I am smiling now.”
And for the space of several minutes he lay there, quiet, indulging his grotesque fancy.
The man of him was not changed. It was the old, indomitable, terrible Wolf Larsen, imprisoned somewhere within that flesh which had once been so invincible and splendid. Now it bound him with insentient fetters, walling his soul in darkness and silence, blocking it from the world which to him had been a riot of action. No more would he conjugate the verb “to do in every mood and tense.” “To be” was all that remained to him—to be, as he had defined death, without movement; to will, but not to execute; to think and reason and in the spirit of him to be as alive as ever, but in the flesh to be dead, quite dead.
And yet, though I even removed the handcuffs, we could not adjust ourselves to his condition. Our minds revolted. To us he was full of potentiality. We knew not what to expect of him next, what fearful thing, rising above the flesh, he might break out and do. Our experience warranted this state of mind, and we went about our work with anxiety always upon us.
I had solved the problem which had arisen through the shortness of the shears. By means of the watch-tackle (I had made a new one), I heaved the butt of the foremast across the rail and then lowered it to the deck. Next, by means of the shears, I hoisted the main boom on board. Its forty feet of length would supply the height necessary properly to swing the mast. By means of a secondary tackle I had attached to the shears, I swung the boom to a nearly perpendicular position, then lowered the butt to the deck, where, to prevent slipping, I spiked great cleats around it. The single block of my original shears-tackle I had attached to the end of the boom. Thus, by carrying this tackle to the windlass, I could raise and lower the end of the boom at will, the butt always remaining stationary, and, by means of guys, I could swing the boom from side to side. To the end of the boom I had likewise rigged a hoisting tackle; and when the whole arrangement was completed I could not but be startled by the power and latitude it gave me.
Of course, two days’ work was required for the accomplishment of this part of my task, and it was not till the morning of the third day that I swung the foremast from the deck and proceeded to square its butt to fit the step. Here I was especially awkward. I sawed and chopped and chiselled the weathered wood till it had the appearance of having been gnawed by some gigantic mouse. But it fitted.
“It will work, I know it will work,” I cried.
“Do you know Dr. Jordan’s final test of truth?” Maud asked.
I shook my head and paused in the act of dislodging the shavings which had drifted down my neck.
“Can we make it work? Can we trust our lives to it? is the test.”
“He is a favourite of yours,” I said.
“When I dismantled my old Pantheon and cast out Napoleon and Caesar and their fellows, I straightway erected a new Pantheon,” she answered gravely, “and the first I installed as Dr. Jordan.”
“A modern hero.”
“And a greater because modern,” she added. “How can the Old World heroes compare with ours?”
I shook my head. We were too much alike in many things for argument. Our points of view and outlook on life at least were very alike.
“For a pair of critics we agree famously,” I laughed.
“And as shipwright and able assistant,” she laughed back.
But there was little time for laughter in those days, what of our heavy work and of the awfulness of Wolf Larsen’s living death.
He had received another stroke. He had lost his voice, or he was losing it. He had only intermittent use of it. As he phrased it, the wires were like the stock market, now up, now down. Occasionally the wires were up and he spoke as well as ever, though slowly and heavily. Then speech would suddenly desert him, in the middle of a sentence perhaps, and for hours, sometimes, we would wait for the connection to be re-established. He complained of great pain in his head, and it was during this period that he arranged a system of communication against the time when speech should leave him altogether—one pressure of the hand for “yes,” two for “no.” It was well that it was arranged, for by evening his voice had gone from him. By hand pressures, after that, he answered our questions, and when he wished to speak he scrawled his thoughts with his left hand, quite legibly, on a sheet of paper.
The fierce winter had now descended upon us. Gale followed gale, with snow and sleet and rain. The seals had started on their great southern migration, and the rookery was practically deserted. I worked feverishly. In spite of the bad weather, and of the wind which especially hindered me, I was on deck from daylight till dark and making substantial progress.
I profited by my lesson learned through raising the shears and then climbing them to attach the guys. To the top of the foremast, which was just lifted conveniently from the deck, I attached the rigging, stays and throat and peak halyards. As usual, I had underrated the amount of work involved in this portion of the task, and two long days were necessary to complete it. And there was so much yet to be done—the sails, for instance, which practically had to be made over.
While I toiled at rigging the foremast, Maud sewed on canvas, ready always to drop everything and come to my assistance when more hands than two were required. The canvas was heavy and hard, and she sewed with the regular sailor’s palm and three-cornered sail-needle. Her hands were soon sadly blistered, but she struggled bravely on, and in addition doing the cooking and taking care of the sick man.
“A fig for superstition,” I said on Friday morning. “That mast goes in to-day.’
Everything was ready for the attempt. Carrying the boom-tackle to the windlass, I hoisted the mast nearly clear of the deck. Making this tackle fast, I took to the windlass the shears-tackle (which was connected