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Elisha Cuthbert Photos Books: Martin Eden The Pickwick Papers The Sea Wolf |
not want to die. You have talked of the instinct of
immortality. I talk of the instinct of life, which is to live, and
which, when death looms near and large, masters the instinct, so
called, of immortality. It mastered it in you (you cannot deny
it), because a crazy Cockney cook sharpened a knife.
"You are afraid of him now. You are afraid of me. You cannot deny
it. If I should catch you by the throat, thus,"--his hand was
about my throat and my breath was shut off,--"and began to press
the life out of you thus, and thus, your instinct of immortality
will go glimmering, and your instinct of life, which is longing for
life, will flutter up, and you will struggle to save yourself. Eh?
I see the fear of death in your eyes. You beat the air with your
arms. You exert all your puny strength to struggle to live. Your
hand is clutching my arm, lightly it feels as a butterfly resting
there. Your chest is heaving, your tongue protruding, your skin
turning dark, your eyes swimming. To live! To live! To live!
you are crying; and you are crying to live here and now, not
hereafter. You doubt your immortality, eh? Ha! ha! You are not
sure of it. You wont chance it. This life only you are certain
is real. Ah, it is growing dark and darker. It is the darkness of
death, the ceasing to be, the ceasing to feel, the ceasing to move,
that is gathering about you, descending upon you, rising around
you. Your eyes are becoming set. They are glazing. My voice
sounds faint and far. You cannot see my face. And still you
struggle in my grip. You kick with your legs. Your body draws
itself up in knots like a snakes. Your chest heaves and strains.
To live! To live! To live--"
I heard no more. Consciousness was blotted out by the darkness he
had so graphically described, and when I came to myself I was lying
on the floor and he was smoking a cigar and regarding me
thoughtfully with that old familiar light of curiosity in his eyes.
"Well, have I convinced you?" he demanded. "Here take a drink of
this. I want to ask you some questions."
I rolled my head negatively on the floor. "Your arguments are too-
-er--forcible," I managed to articulate, at cost of great pain to
my aching throat.
"Youll be all right in half-an-hour," he assured me. "And I
promise I wont use any more physical demonstrations. Get up now.
You can sit on a chair."
And, toy that I was of this monster, the discussion of Omar and the
Preacher was resumed. And half the night we sat up over it.
CHAPTER XII The last twenty-four hours have witnessed a carnival of brutality. From cabin to forecastle it seems to have broken out like a contagion. I scarcely know where to begin. Wolf Larsen was really the cause of it. The relations among the men, strained and made tense by feuds, quarrels and grudges, were in a state of unstable equilibrium, and evil passions flared up in flame like prairie- grass. Thomas Mugridge is a sneak, a spy, an informer. He has been attempting to curry favour and reinstate himself in the good graces of the captain by carrying tales of the men forward. He it was, I know, that carried some of Johnsons hasty talk to Wolf Larsen. Johnson, it seems, bought a suit of oilskins from the slop-chest and found them to be of greatly inferior quality. Nor was he slow in advertising the fact. The slop-chest is a sort of miniature dry-goods store which is carried by all sealing schooners and which is stocked with articles peculiar to the needs of the sailors. Whatever a sailor purchases is taken from his subsequent earnings on the sealing grounds; for, as it is with the hunters so it is with the boat-pullers and steerers--in the place of wages they receive a "lay," a rate of so much per skin for every skin captured in their particular boat. But of Johnsons grumbling at the slop-chest I knew nothing, so that what I witnessed came with a shock of sudden surprise. I The Sea Wolf page 43 The Sea Wolf page 45 |