The Works of Jack London: Novels, Short Stories, Poems, Plays, Memoirs & Essays. Jack London
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at the break of the poop. But the Cockney had not pursued me.
“Look at ‘im run! Look at ‘im run!” I could hear him crying. “An’ with a gyme leg at that! Come on back, you pore little mamma’s darling. I won’t ‘it yer; no, I won’t.”
I came back and went on with my work; and here the episode ended for the time, though further developments were yet to take place. I set the breakfast-table in the cabin, and at seven o’clock waited on the hunters and officers. The storm had evidently broken during the night, though a huge sea was still running and a stiff wind blowing. Sail had been made in the early watches, so that the Ghost was racing along under everything except the two topsails and the flying jib. These three sails, I gathered from the conversation, were to be set immediately after breakfast. I learned, also, that Wolf Larsen was anxious to make the most of the storm, which was driving him to the south-west into that portion of the sea where he expected to pick up with the north-east trades. It was before this steady wind that he hoped to make the major portion of the run to Japan, curving south into the tropics and north again as he approached the coast of Asia.
After breakfast I had another unenviable experience. When I had finished washing the dishes, I cleaned the cabin stove and carried the ashes up on deck to empty them. Wolf Larsen and Henderson were standing near the wheel, deep in conversation. The sailor, Johnson, was steering. As I started toward the weather side I saw him make a sudden motion with his head, which I mistook for a token of recognition and good-morning. In reality, he was attempting to warn me to throw my ashes over the lee side. Unconscious of my blunder, I passed by Wolf Larsen and the hunter and flung the ashes over the side to windward. The wind drove them back, and not only over me, but over Henderson and Wolf Larsen. The next instant the latter kicked me, violently, as a cur is kicked. I had not realized there could be so much pain in a kick. I reeled away from him and leaned against the cabin in a half-fainting condition. Everything was swimming before my eyes, and I turned sick. The nausea overpowered me, and I managed to crawl to the side of the vessel. But Wolf Larsen did not follow me up. Brushing the ashes from his clothes, he had resumed his conversation with Henderson. Johansen, who had seen the affair from the break of the poop, sent a couple of sailors aft to clean up the mess.
Later in the morning I received a surprise of a totally different sort. Following the cook’s instructions, I had gone into Wolf Larsen’s state-room to put it to rights and make the bed. Against the wall, near the head of the bunk, was a rack filled with books. I glanced over them, noting with astonishment such names as Shakespeare, Tennyson, Poe, and De Quincey. There were scientific works, too, among which were represented men such as Tyndall, Proctor, and Darwin. Astronomy and physics were represented, and I remarked Bulfinch’s Age of Fable, Shaw’s History of English and American Literature, and Johnson’s Natural History in two large volumes. Then there were a number of grammars, such as Metcalf’s, and Reed and Kellogg’s; and I smiled as I saw a copy of The Dean’s English.
I could not reconcile these books with the man from what I had seen of him, and I wondered if he could possibly read them. But when I came to make the bed I found, between the blankets, dropped apparently as he had sunk off to sleep, a complete Browning, the Cambridge Edition. It was open at “In a Balcony,” and I noticed, here and there, passages underlined in pencil. Further, letting drop the volume during a lurch of the ship, a sheet of paper fell out. It was scrawled over with geometrical diagrams and calculations of some sort.
It was patent that this terrible man was no ignorant clod, such as one would inevitably suppose him to be from his exhibitions of brutality. At once he became an enigma. One side or the other of his nature was perfectly comprehensible; but both sides together were bewildering. I had already remarked that his language was excellent, marred with an occasional slight inaccuracy. Of course, in common speech with the sailors and hunters, it sometimes fairly bristled with errors, which was due to the vernacular itself; but in the few words he had held with me it had been clear and correct.
This glimpse I had caught of his other side must have emboldened me, for I resolved to speak to him about the money I had lost.
“I have been robbed,” I said to him, a little later, when I found him pacing up and down the poop alone.
“Sir,” he corrected, not harshly, but sternly.
“I have been robbed, sir,” I amended.
“How did it happen?” he asked.
Then I told him the whole circumstance, how my clothes had been left to dry in the galley, and how, later, I was nearly beaten by the cook when I mentioned the matter.
He smiled at my recital. “Pickings,” he concluded; “Cooky’s pickings. And don’t you think your miserable life worth the price? Besides, consider it a lesson. You’ll learn in time how to take care of your money for yourself. I suppose, up to now, your lawyer has done it for you, or your business agent.”
I could feel the quiet sneer through his words, but demanded, “How can I get it back again?”
“That’s your look-out. You haven’t any lawyer or business agent now, so you’ll have to depend on yourself. When you get a dollar, hang on to it. A man who leaves his money lying around, the way you did, deserves to lose it. Besides, you have sinned. You have no right to put temptation in the way of your fellow-creatures. You tempted Cooky, and he fell. You have placed his immortal soul in jeopardy. By the way, do you believe in the immortal soul?”
His lids lifted lazily as he asked the question, and it seemed that the deeps were opening to me and that I was gazing into his soul. But it was an illusion. Far as it might have seemed, no man has ever seen very far into Wolf Larsen’s soul, or seen it at all,—of this I am convinced. It was a very lonely soul, I was to learn, that never unmasked, though at rare moments it played at doing so.
“I read immortality in your eyes,” I answered, dropping the “sir,”- -an experiment, for I thought the intimacy of the conversation warranted it.
He took no notice. “By that, I take it, you see something that is alive, but that necessarily does not have to live for ever.”
“I read more than that,” I continued boldly.
“Then you read consciousness. You read the consciousness of life that it is alive; but still no further away, no endlessness of life.”
How clearly he thought, and how well he expressed what he thought! From regarding me curiously, he turned his head and glanced out over the leaden sea to windward. A bleakness came into his eyes, and the lines of his mouth grew severe and harsh. He was evidently in a pessimistic mood.
“Then to what end?” he demanded abruptly, turning back to me. “If I am immortal—why?”
I halted. How could I explain my idealism to this man? How could I put into speech a something felt, a something like the strains of music heard in sleep, a something that convinced yet transcended utterance?
“What do you believe, then?” I countered.
“I believe that life is a mess,” he answered promptly. “It is like yeast, a ferment, a thing that moves and may move for a minute, an hour, a year, or a hundred years, but that in the end will cease to move. The big eat the little that they may continue to move, the strong eat the weak that they may retain their strength. The lucky eat the most and move the longest, that is all. What do you make of those things?”
He swept his am in an impatient gesture toward a number of the sailors who were working on some kind of rope stuff amidships.
“They move, so does the jelly-fish move. They move in order to eat in order that they may keep moving. There you have it. They live for their belly’s sake, and the belly is for their sake. It’s a circle; you get nowhere. Neither do they. In the end they come to a standstill. They move no more. They are dead.”
“They have dreams,” I interrupted, “radiant, flashing dreams—”
“Of grub,” he concluded sententiously.
“And of more—”
“Grub. Of a larger appetite