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Elisha Cuthbert Gallery Books: Martin Eden The Pickwick Papers The Sea Wolf |
but running aloft to the crosstrees and swinging my whole
weight by my arms when I left the ratlines and climbed still
higher, was more difficult. This, too, I learned, and quickly, for
I felt somehow a wild desire to vindicate myself in Wolf Larsens
eyes, to prove my right to live in ways other than of the mind.
Nay, the time came when I took joy in the run of the masthead and
in the clinging on by my legs at that precarious height while I
swept the sea with glasses in search of the boats.
I remember one beautiful day, when the boats left early and the
reports of the hunters guns grew dim and distant and died away as
they scattered far and wide over the sea. There was just the
faintest wind from the westward; but it breathed its last by the
time we managed to get to leeward of the last lee boat. One by
one--I was at the masthead and saw--the six boats disappeared over
the bulge of the earth as they followed the seal into the west. We
lay, scarcely rolling on the placid sea, unable to follow. Wolf
Larsen was apprehensive. The barometer was down, and the sky to
the east did not please him. He studied it with unceasing
vigilance.
"If she comes out of there," he said, "hard and snappy, putting us
to windward of the boats, its likely therell be empty bunks in
steerage and focsle."
By eleven oclock the sea had become glass. By midday, though we
were well up in the northerly latitudes, the heat was sickening.
There was no freshness in the air. It was sultry and oppressive,
reminding me of what the old Californians term "earthquake
weather." There was something ominous about it, and in intangible
ways one was made to feel that the worst was about to come. Slowly
the whole eastern sky filled with clouds that over-towered us like
some black sierra of the infernal regions. So clearly could one
see canon, gorge, and precipice, and the shadows that lie therein,
that one looked unconsciously for the white surf-line and bellowing
caverns where the sea charges on the land. And still we rocked
gently, and there was no wind.
"Its no square" Wolf Larsen said. "Old Mother Natures going to
get up on her hind legs and howl for all thats in her, and itll
keep us jumping, Hump, to pull through with half our boats. Youd
better run up and loosen the topsails."
"But if it is going to howl, and there are only two of us?" I
asked, a note of protest in my voice.
"Why weve got to make the best of the first of it and run down to
our boats before our canvas is ripped out of us. After that I
dont give a rap what happens. The sticks ll stand it, and you
and I will have to, though weve plenty cut out for us."
Still the calm continued. We ate dinner, a hurried and anxious
meal for me with eighteen men abroad on the sea and beyond the
bulge of the earth, and with that heaven-rolling mountain range of
clouds moving slowly down upon us. Wolf Larsen did not seem
affected, however; though I noticed, when we returned to the deck,
a slight twitching of the nostrils, a perceptible quickness of
movement. His face was stern, the lines of it had grown hard, and
yet in his eyes--blue, clear blue this day--there was a strange
brilliancy, a bright scintillating light. It struck me that he was
joyous, in a ferocious sort of way; that he was glad there was an
impending struggle; that he was thrilled and upborne with knowledge
that one of the great moments of living, when the tide of life
surges up in flood, was upon him.
Once, and unwitting that he did so or that I saw, he laughed aloud,
mockingly and defiantly, at the advancing storm. I see him yet
standing there like a pigmy out of the Arabian Nights before the
huge front of some malignant genie. He was daring destiny, and he
was unafraid.
He walked to the galley. "Cooky, by the time youve finished pots
and pans youll be wanted on deck. Stand ready for a call."
"Hump," he said, becoming cognizant of the fascinated gaze I bent
upon him, "this beats whisky and is where your Omar The Sea Wolf page 62 The Sea Wolf page 64 |