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Elisha Cuthbert Photos Books: Martin Eden The Pickwick Papers The Sea Wolf |
was once a private yacht, and was built for speed. Her
lines and fittings--though I know nothing about such things--speak
for themselves. Johnson was telling me about her in a short chat I
had with him during yesterdays second dog-watch. He spoke
enthusiastically, with the love for a fine craft such as some men
feel for horses. He is greatly disgusted with the outlook, and I
am given to understand that Wolf Larsen bears a very unsavoury
reputation among the sealing captains. It was the Ghost herself
that lured Johnson into signing for the voyage, but he is already
beginning to repent.
As he told me, the Ghost is an eighty-ton schooner of a remarkably
fine model. Her beam, or width, is twenty-three feet, and her
length a little over ninety feet. A lead keel of fabulous but
unknown weight makes her very stable, while she carries an immense
spread of canvas. From the deck to the truck of the maintopmast is
something over a hundred feet, while the foremast with its topmast
is eight or ten feet shorter. I am giving these details so that
the size of this little floating world which holds twenty-two men
may be appreciated. It is a very little world, a mote, a speck,
and I marvel that men should dare to venture the sea on a
contrivance so small and fragile.
Wolf Larsen has, also, a reputation for reckless carrying on of
sail. I overheard Henderson and another of the hunters, Standish,
a Californian, talking about it. Two years ago he dismasted the
Ghost in a gale on Bering Sea, whereupon the present masts were put
in, which are stronger and heavier in every way. He is said to
have remarked, when he put them in, that he preferred turning her
over to losing the sticks.
Every man aboard, with the exception of Johansen, who is rather
overcome by his promotion, seems to have an excuse for having
sailed on the Ghost. Half the men forward are deep-water sailors,
and their excuse is that they did not know anything about her or
her captain. And those who do know, whisper that the hunters,
while excellent shots, were so notorious for their quarrelsome and
rascally proclivities that they could not sign on any decent
schooner.
I have made the acquaintance of another one of the crew,--Louis he
is called, a rotund and jovial-faced Nova Scotia Irishman, and a
very sociable fellow, prone to talk as long as he can find a
listener. In the afternoon, while the cook was below asleep and I
was peeling the everlasting potatoes, Louis dropped into the galley
for a "yarn." His excuse for being aboard was that he was drunk
when he signed. He assured me again and again that it was the last
thing in the world he would dream of doing in a sober moment. It
seems that he has been seal-hunting regularly each season for a
dozen years, and is accounted one of the two or three very best
boat-steerers in both fleets.
"Ah, my boy," he shook his head ominously at me, "tis the worst
schooner ye could iv selected, nor were ye drunk at the time as was
I. Tis sealin is the sailors paradise--on other ships than
this. The mate was the first, but mark me words, therell be more
dead men before the trip is done with. Hist, now, between you an
meself and the stanchion there, this Wolf Larsen is a regular
devil, an the Ghostll be a hell-ship like shes always ben since
he had hold iv her. Dont I know? Dont I know? Dont I remember
him in Hakodate two years gone, when he had a row an shot four iv
his men? Wasnt I a-layin on the Emma L., not three hundred yards
away? An there was a man the same year he killed with a blow iv
his fist. Yes, sir, killed im dead-oh. His head must iv smashed
like an eggshell. An wasnt there the Governor of Kura Island,
an the Chief iv Police, Japanese gentlemen, sir, an didnt they
come aboard the Ghost as his guests, a-bringin their wives along--
wee an pretty little bits of things like you see em painted on
fans. An as he was a-gettin under way, didnt the fond husbands
get left astern-like in their sampan, as it might be by accident?
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