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Elisha Cuthbert Photos Books: Martin Eden The Pickwick Papers The Sea Wolf |
all powers were mine. I
know truth, divine good from evil, right from wrong. My vision is
clear and far. I could almost believe in God. But," and his voice
changed and the light went out of his face,--"what is this
condition in which I find myself? this joy of living? this
exultation of life? this inspiration, I may well call it? It is
what comes when there is nothing wrong with ones digestion, when
his stomach is in trim and his appetite has an edge, and all goes
well. It is the bribe for living, the champagne of the blood, the
effervescence of the ferment--that makes some men think holy
thoughts, and other men to see God or to create him when they
cannot see him. That is all, the drunkenness of life, the stirring
and crawling of the yeast, the babbling of the life that is insane
with consciousness that it is alive. And--bah! To-morrow I shall
pay for it as the drunkard pays. And I shall know that I must die,
at sea most likely, cease crawling of myself to be all a-crawl with
the corruption of the sea; to be fed upon, to be carrion, to yield
up all the strength and movement of my muscles that it may become
strength and movement in fin and scale and the guts of fishes.
Bah! And bah! again. The champagne is already flat. The sparkle
and bubble has gone out and it is a tasteless drink."
He left me as suddenly as he had come, springing to the deck with
the weight and softness of a tiger. The Ghost ploughed on her way.
I noted the gurgling forefoot was very like a snore, and as I
listened to it the effect of Wolf Larsens swift rush from sublime
exultation to despair slowly left me. Then some deep-water sailor,
from the waist of the ship, lifted a rich tenor voice in the "Song
of the Trade Wind":
"Oh, I am the wind the seamen love--
I am steady, and strong, and true;
They follow my track by the clouds above,
Oer the fathomless tropic blue. * * * * * Through daylight and dark I follow the bark I keep like a hound on her trail; Im strongest at noon, yet under the moon, I stiffen the bunt of her sail." CHAPTER VIII Sometimes I think Wolf Larsen mad, or half-mad at least, what of his strange moods and vagaries. At other times I take him for a great man, a genius who has never arrived. And, finally, I am convinced that he is the perfect type of the primitive man, born a thousand years or generations too late and an anachronism in this culminating century of civilization. He is certainly an individualist of the most pronounced type. Not only that, but he is very lonely. There is no congeniality between him and the rest of the men aboard ship. His tremendous virility and mental strength wall him apart. They are more like children to him, even the hunters, and as children he treats them, descending perforce to their level and playing with them as a man plays with puppies. Or else he probes them with the cruel hand of a vivisectionist, groping about in their mental processes and examining their souls as though to see of what soul-stuff is made. I have seen him a score of times, at table, insulting this hunter or that, with cool and level eyes and, withal, a certain air of interest, pondering their actions or replies or petty rages with a curiosity almost laughable to me who stood onlooker and who understood. Concerning his own rages, I am convinced that they are not real, that they are sometimes experiments, but that in the main they are the habits of a pose or attitude he has seen fit to take toward his fellow-men. I know, with the possible exception of the incident of the dead mate, that I have not seen him really angry; nor do I wish ever to see him in a genuine rage, when all the force of him is called into play. While on the question of vagaries, I shall tell what befell Thomas Mugridge in the cabin, and at the same time complete an incident upon which I have already touched once or twice. The twelve oclock dinner was over, one The Sea Wolf page 29 The Sea Wolf page 31 |