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 |
but to be devilish. Were he not so terrible a man, I
could sometimes feel sorry for him, as instance three mornings ago,
when I went into his stateroom to fill his water-bottle and came
unexpectedly upon him. He did not see me. His head was buried in
his hands, and his shoulders were heaving convulsively as with
sobs. He seemed torn by some mighty grief. As I softly withdrew I
could hear him groaning, "God! God! God!" Not that he was
calling upon God; it was a mere expletive, but it came from his
soul.
At dinner he asked the hunters for a remedy for headache, and by
evening, strong man that he was, he was half-blind and reeling
about the cabin.
"Ive never been sick in my life, Hump," he said, as I guided him
to his room. "Nor did I ever have a headache except the time my
head was healing after having been laid open for six inches by a
capstan-bar."
For three days this blinding headache lasted, and he suffered as
wild animals suffer, as it seemed the way on ship to suffer,
without plaint, without sympathy, utterly alone.
This morning, however, on entering his state-room to make the bed
and put things in order, I found him well and hard at work. Table
and bunk were littered with designs and calculations. On a large
transparent sheet, compass and square in hand, he was copying what
appeared to be a scale of some sort or other.
"Hello, Hump," he greeted me genially. "Im just finishing the
finishing touches. Want to see it work?"
"But what is it?" I asked.
"A labour-saving device for mariners, navigation reduced to
kindergarten simplicity," he answered gaily. "From to-day a child
will be able to navigate a ship. No more long-winded calculations.
All you need is one star in the sky on a dirty night to know
instantly where you are. Look. I place the transparent scale on
this star-map, revolving the scale on the North Pole. On the scale
Ive worked out the circles of altitude and the lines of bearing.
All I do is to put it on a star, revolve the scale till it is
opposite those figures on the map underneath, and presto! there you
are, the ships precise location!"
There was a ring of triumph in his voice, and his eyes, clear blue
this morning as the sea, were sparkling with light.
"You must be well up in mathematics," I said. "Where did you go to
school?"
"Never saw the inside of one, worse luck," was the answer. "I had
to dig it out for myself."
"And why do you think I have made this thing?" he demanded,
abruptly. "Dreaming to leave footprints on the sands of time?" He
laughed one of his horrible mocking laughs. "Not at all. To get
it patented, to make money from it, to revel in piggishness with
all night in while other men do the work. Thats my purpose.
Also, I have enjoyed working it out."
"The creative joy," I murmured.
"I guess thats what it ought to be called. Which is another way
of expressing the joy of life in that it is alive, the triumph of
movement over matter, of the quick over the dead, the pride of the
yeast because it is yeast and crawls."
I threw up my hands with helpless disapproval of his inveterate
materialism and went about making the bed. He continued copying
lines and figures upon the transparent scale. It was a task
requiring the utmost nicety and precision, and I could not but
admire the way he tempered his strength to the fineness and
delicacy of the need.
When I had finished the bed, I caught myself looking at him in a
fascinated sort of way. He was certainly a handsome man--beautiful
in the masculine sense. And again, with never-failing wonder, I
remarked the total lack of viciousness, or wickedness, or
sinfulness in his face. It was the face, I am convinced, of a man
who did no wrong. And by this I do not wish to be misunderstood.
What I mean is that it was the face of a man who either did nothing
contrary to the dictates of his conscience, or who had no
conscience. I am inclined to the latter way of accounting for it.
He was a magnificent atavism, a man so purely The Sea Wolf page 38 The Sea Wolf page 40 |