WATCH Hot Elisha Cuthbert Showing All  CLICK HERE for Instant Access Elisha Cuthbert Photos |
Elisha Cuthbert Photos Books: Martin Eden The Pickwick Papers The Sea Wolf |
It felt much better, the
swelling had materially decreased, and the cap seemed descending
into its proper place. Also, the three days rest brought the
trouble I had foreseen. It was plainly Thomas Mugridges intention
to make me pay for those three days. He treated me vilely, cursed
me continually, and heaped his own work upon me. He even ventured
to raise his fist to me, but I was becoming animal-like myself, and
I snarled in his face so terribly that it must have frightened him
back. It is no pleasant picture I can conjure up of myself,
Humphrey Van Weyden, in that noisome ships galley, crouched in a
corner over my task, my face raised to the face of the creature
about to strike me, my lips lifted and snarling like a dogs, my
eyes gleaming with fear and helplessness and the courage that comes
of fear and helplessness. I do not like the picture. It reminds
me too strongly of a rat in a trap. I do not care to think of it;
but it was elective, for the threatened blow did not descend.
Thomas Mugridge backed away, glaring as hatefully and viciously as
I glared. A pair of beasts is what we were, penned together and
showing our teeth. He was a coward, afraid to strike me because I
had not quailed sufficiently in advance; so he chose a new way to
intimidate me. There was only one galley knife that, as a knife,
amounted to anything. This, through many years of service and
wear, had acquired a long, lean blade. It was unusually cruel-
looking, and at first I had shuddered every time I used it. The
cook borrowed a stone from Johansen and proceeded to sharpen the
knife. He did it with great ostentation, glancing significantly at
me the while. He whetted it up and down all day long. Every odd
moment he could find he had the knife and stone out and was
whetting away. The steel acquired a razor edge. He tried it with
the ball of his thumb or across the nail. He shaved hairs from the
back of his hand, glanced along the edge with microscopic
acuteness, and found, or feigned that he found, always, a slight
inequality in its edge somewhere. Then he would put it on the
stone again and whet, whet, whet, till I could have laughed aloud,
it was so very ludicrous.
It was also serious, for I learned that he was capable of using it,
that under all his cowardice there was a courage of cowardice, like
mine, that would impel him to do the very thing his whole nature
protested against doing and was afraid of doing. "Cookys
sharpening his knife for Hump," was being whispered about among the
sailors, and some of them twitted him about it. This he took in
good part, and was really pleased, nodding his head with direful
foreknowledge and mystery, until George Leach, the erstwhile cabin-
boy, ventured some rough pleasantry on the subject.
Now it happened that Leach was one of the sailors told off to douse
Mugridge after his game of cards with the captain. Leach had
evidently done his task with a thoroughness that Mugridge had not
forgiven, for words followed and evil names involving smirched
ancestries. Mugridge menaced with the knife he was sharpening for
me. Leach laughed and hurled more of his Telegraph Hill
Billingsgate, and before either he or I knew what had happened, his
right arm had been ripped open from elbow to wrist by a quick slash
of the knife. The cook backed away, a fiendish expression on his
face, the knife held before him in a position of defence. But
Leach took it quite calmly, though blood was spouting upon the deck
as generously as water from a fountain.
"Im goin to get you, Cooky," he said, "and Ill get you hard.
And I wont be in no hurry about it. Youll be without that knife
when I come for you."
So saying, he turned and walked quietly forward. Mugridges face
was livid with fear at what he had done and at what he might expect
sooner or later from the man he had stabbed. But his demeanour
toward me was more ferocious than ever. In spite of his fear at
the reckoning he must expect to pay for what he The Sea Wolf page 34 The Sea Wolf page 36 |