The Works of Jack London: Novels, Short Stories, Poems, Plays, Memoirs & Essays. Jack London
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on her lips; for she sang to me before she went to an early bed. It was the first time I had heard her sing, and I lay by the fire, listening and transported, for she was nothing if not an artist in everything she did, and her voice, though not strong, was wonderfully sweet and expressive.
I still slept in the boat, and I lay awake long that night, gazing up at the first stars I had seen in many nights and pondering the situation. Responsibility of this sort was a new thing to me. Wolf Larsen had been quite right. I had stood on my father’s legs. My lawyers and agents had taken care of my money for me. I had had no responsibilities at all. Then, on the Ghost I had learned to be responsible for myself. And now, for the first time in my life, I found myself responsible for some one else. And it was required of me that this should be the gravest of responsibilities, for she was the one woman in the world—the one small woman, as I loved to think of her.
Chapter XXX
No wonder we called it Endeavour Island. For two weeks we toiled at building a hut. Maud insisted on helping, and I could have wept over her bruised and bleeding hands. And still, I was proud of her because of it. There was something heroic about this gently-bred woman enduring our terrible hardship and with her pittance of strength bending to the tasks of a peasant woman. She gathered many of the stones which I built into the walls of the hut; also, she turned a deaf ear to my entreaties when I begged her to desist. She compromised, however, by taking upon herself the lighter labours of cooking and gathering driftwood and moss for our winter’s supply.
The hut’s walls rose without difficulty, and everything went smoothly until the problem of the roof confronted me. Of what use the four walls without a roof? And of what could a roof be made? There were the spare oars, very true. They would serve as roof-beams; but with what was I to cover them? Moss would never do. Tundra grass was impracticable. We needed the sail for the boat, and the tarpaulin had begun to leak.
“Winters used walrus skins on his hut,” I said.
“There are the seals,” she suggested.
So next day the hunting began. I did not know how to shoot, but I proceeded to learn. And when I had expended some thirty shells for three seals, I decided that the ammunition would be exhausted before I acquired the necessary knowledge. I had used eight shells for lighting fires before I hit upon the device of banking the embers with wet moss, and there remained not over a hundred shells in the box.
“We must club the seals,” I announced, when convinced of my poor marksmanship. “I have heard the sealers talk about clubbing them.”
“They are so pretty,” she objected. “I cannot bear to think of it being done. It is so directly brutal, you know; so different from shooting them.”
“That roof must go on,” I answered grimly. “Winter is almost here. It is our lives against theirs. It is unfortunate we haven’t plenty of ammunition, but I think, anyway, that they suffer less from being clubbed than from being all shot up. Besides, I shall do the clubbing.”
“That’s just it,” she began eagerly, and broke off in sudden confusion.
“Of course,” I began, “if you prefer—”
“But what shall I be doing?” she interrupted, with that softness I knew full well to be insistence.
“Gathering firewood and cooking dinner,” I answered lightly.
She shook her head. “It is too dangerous for you to attempt alone.”
“I know, I know,” she waived my protest. “I am only a weak woman, but just my small assistance may enable you to escape disaster.”
“But the clubbing?” I suggested.
“Of course, you will do that. I shall probably scream. I’ll look away when—”
“The danger is most serious,” I laughed.
“I shall use my judgment when to look and when not to look,” she replied with a grand air.
The upshot of the affair was that she accompanied me next morning. I rowed into the adjoining cove and up to the edge of the beach. There were seals all about us in the water, and the bellowing thousands on the beach compelled us to shout at each other to make ourselves heard.
“I know men club them,” I said, trying to reassure myself, and gazing doubtfully at a large bull, not thirty feet away, upreared on his fore-flippers and regarding me intently. “But the question is, How do they club them?”
“Let us gather tundra grass and thatch the roof,” Maud said.
She was as frightened as I at the prospect, and we had reason to be gazing at close range at the gleaming teeth and dog-like mouths.
“I always thought they were afraid of men,” I said.
“How do I know they are not afraid?” I queried a moment later, after having rowed a few more strokes along the beach. “Perhaps, if I were to step boldly ashore, they would cut for it, and I could not catch up with one.” And still I hesitated.
“I heard of a man, once, who invaded the nesting grounds of wild geese,” Maud said. “They killed him.”
“The geese?”
“Yes, the geese. My brother told me about it when I was a little girl.”
“But I know men club them,” I persisted.
“I think the tundra grass will make just as good a roof,” she said.
Far from her intention, her words were maddening me, driving me on. I could not play the coward before her eyes. “Here goes,” I said, backing water with one oar and running the bow ashore.
I stepped out and advanced valiantly upon a long-maned bull in the midst of his wives. I was armed with the regular club with which the boat-pullers killed the wounded seals gaffed aboard by the hunters. It was only a foot and a half long, and in my superb ignorance I never dreamed that the club used ashore when raiding the rookeries measured four to five feet. The cows lumbered out of my way, and the distance between me and the bull decreased. He raised himself on his flippers with an angry movement. We were a dozen feet apart. Still I advanced steadily, looking for him to turn tail at any moment and run.
At six feet the panicky thought rushed into my mind, What if he will not run? Why, then I shall club him, came the answer. In my fear I had forgotten that I was there to get the bull instead of to make him run. And just then he gave a snort and a snarl and rushed at me. His eyes were blazing, his mouth was wide open; the teeth gleamed cruelly white. Without shame, I confess that it was I who turned and footed it. He ran awkwardly, but he ran well. He was but two paces behind when I tumbled into the boat, and as I shoved off with an oar his teeth crunched down upon the blade. The stout wood was crushed like an egg-shell. Maud and I were astounded. A moment later he had dived under the boat, seized the keel in his mouth, and was shaking the boat violently.
“My!” said Maud. “Let’s go back.”
I shook my head. “I can do what other men have done, and I know that other men have clubbed seals. But I think I’ll leave the bulls alone next time.”
“I wish you wouldn’t,” she said.
“Now don’t say, ‘Please, please,’” I cried, half angrily, I do believe.
She made no reply, and I knew my tone must have hurt her.
“I beg your pardon,” I said, or shouted, rather, in order to make myself heard above the roar of the rookery. “If you say so, I’ll turn and go back; but honestly, I’d rather stay.”
“Now don’t say that this is what you get for bringing a woman along,” she said. She smiled at me whimsically, gloriously, and I knew there was no need for forgiveness.
I rowed