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Elisha Cuthbert Photos Books: Martin Eden The Pickwick Papers The Sea Wolf |
primitive that he was
of the type that came into the world before the development of the
moral nature. He was not immoral, but merely unmoral.
As I have said, in the masculine sense his was a beautiful face.
Smooth-shaven, every line was distinct, and it was cut as clear and
sharp as a cameo; while sea and sun had tanned the naturally fair
skin to a dark bronze which bespoke struggle and battle and added
both to his savagery and his beauty. The lips were full, yet
possessed of the firmness, almost harshness, which is
characteristic of thin lips. The set of his mouth, his chin, his
jaw, was likewise firm or harsh, with all the fierceness and
indomitableness of the male--the nose also. It was the nose of a
being born to conquer and command. It just hinted of the eagle
beak. It might have been Grecian, it might have been Roman, only
it was a shade too massive for the one, a shade too delicate for
the other. And while the whole face was the incarnation of
fierceness and strength, the primal melancholy from which he
suffered seemed to greaten the lines of mouth and eye and brow,
seemed to give a largeness and completeness which otherwise the
face would have lacked.
And so I caught myself standing idly and studying him. I cannot
say how greatly the man had come to interest me. Who was he? What
was he? How had he happened to be? All powers seemed his, all
potentialities--why, then, was he no more than the obscure master
of a seal-hunting schooner with a reputation for frightful
brutality amongst the men who hunted seals?
My curiosity burst from me in a flood of speech.
"Why is it that you have not done great things in this world? With
the power that is yours you might have risen to any height.
Unpossessed of conscience or moral instinct, you might have
mastered the world, broken it to your hand. And yet here you are,
at the top of your life, where diminishing and dying begin, living
an obscure and sordid existence, hunting sea animals for the
satisfaction of womans vanity and love of decoration, revelling in
a piggishness, to use your own words, which is anything and
everything except splendid. Why, with all that wonderful strength,
have you not done something? There was nothing to stop you,
nothing that could stop you. What was wrong? Did you lack
ambition? Did you fall under temptation? What was the matter?
What was the matter?"
He had lifted his eyes to me at the commencement of my outburst,
and followed me complacently until I had done and stood before him
breathless and dismayed. He waited a moment, as though seeking
where to begin, and then said:
"Hump, do you know the parable of the sower who went forth to sow?
If you will remember, some of the seed fell upon stony places,
where there was not much earth, and forthwith they sprung up
because they had no deepness of earth. And when the sun was up
they were scorched, and because they had no root they withered
away. And some fell among thorns, and the thorns sprung up and
choked them."
"Well?" I said.
"Well?" he queried, half petulantly. "It was not well. I was one
of those seeds."
He dropped his head to the scale and resumed the copying. I
finished my work and had opened the door to leave, when he spoke to
me.
"Hump, if you will look on the west coast of the map of Norway you
will see an indentation called Romsdal Fiord. I was born within a
hundred miles of that stretch of water. But I was not born
Norwegian. I am a Dane. My father and mother were Danes, and how
they ever came to that bleak bight of land on the west coast I do
not know. I never heard. Outside of that there is nothing
mysterious. They were poor people and unlettered. They came of
generations of poor unlettered people--peasants of the sea who
sowed their sons on the waves as has been their custom since time
began. There is no more to tell."
"But there is," I objected. "It is still obscure to me."
"What can I tell you?" he demanded, with a recrudescence of
fierceness. "Of the meagreness of a The Sea Wolf page 39 The Sea Wolf page 41 |