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Elisha Cuthbert Photos Books: Martin Eden The Pickwick Papers The Sea Wolf |
but from my lofty perch I looked down as though outside
the Ghost and apart from her, and saw the shape of her outlined
sharply against the foaming sea as she tore along instinct with
life. Sometimes she would lift and send across some great wave,
burying her starboard-rail from view, and covering her deck to the
hatches with the boiling ocean. At such moments, starting from a
windward roll, I would go flying through the air with dizzying
swiftness, as though I clung to the end of a huge, inverted
pendulum, the arc of which, between the greater rolls, must have
been seventy feet or more. Once, the terror of this giddy sweep
overpowered me, and for a while I clung on, hand and foot, weak and
trembling, unable to search the sea for the missing boats or to
behold aught of the sea but that which roared beneath and strove to
overwhelm the Ghost.
But the thought of the men in the midst of it steadied me, and in
my quest for them I forgot myself. For an hour I saw nothing but
the naked, desolate sea. And then, where a vagrant shaft of
sunlight struck the ocean and turned its surface to wrathful
silver, I caught a small black speck thrust skyward for an instant
and swallowed up. I waited patiently. Again the tiny point of
black projected itself through the wrathful blaze a couple of
points off our port-bow. I did not attempt to shout, but
communicated the news to Wolf Larsen by waving my arm. He changed
the course, and I signalled affirmation when the speck showed dead
ahead.
It grew larger, and so swiftly that for the first time I fully
appreciated the speed of our flight. Wolf Larsen motioned for me
to come down, and when I stood beside him at the wheel gave me
instructions for heaving to.
"Expect all hell to break loose," he cautioned me, "but dont mind
it. Yours is to do your own work and to have Cooky stand by the
fore-sheet."
I managed to make my way forward, but there was little choice of
sides, for the weather-rail seemed buried as often as the lee.
Having instructed Thomas Mugridge as to what he was to do, I
clambered into the fore-rigging a few feet. The boat was now very
close, and I could make out plainly that it was lying head to wind
and sea and dragging on its mast and sail, which had been thrown
overboard and made to serve as a sea-anchor. The three men were
bailing. Each rolling mountain whelmed them from view, and I would
wait with sickening anxiety, fearing that they would never appear
again. Then, and with black suddenness, the boat would shoot clear
through the foaming crest, bow pointed to the sky, and the whole
length of her bottom showing, wet and dark, till she seemed on end.
There would be a fleeting glimpse of the three men flinging water
in frantic haste, when she would topple over and fall into the
yawning valley, bow down and showing her full inside length to the
stern upreared almost directly above the bow. Each time that she
reappeared was a miracle.
The Ghost suddenly changed her course, keeping away, and it came to
me with a shock that Wolf Larsen was giving up the rescue as
impossible. Then I realized that he was preparing to heave to, and
dropped to the deck to be in readiness. We were now dead before
the wind, the boat far away and abreast of us. I felt an abrupt
easing of the schooner, a loss for the moment of all strain and
pressure, coupled with a swift acceleration of speed. She was
rushing around on her heel into the wind.
As she arrived at right angles to the sea, the full force of the
wind (from which we had hitherto run away) caught us. I was
unfortunately and ignorantly facing it. It stood up against me
like a wall, filling my lungs with air which I could not expel.
And as I choked and strangled, and as the Ghost wallowed for an
instant, broadside on and rolling straight over and far into the
wind, I beheld a huge sea rise far above my head. I turned aside,
caught my breath, and looked again. The wave over-topped the
Ghost, and I gazed sheer up and into it. The Sea Wolf page 64 The Sea Wolf page 66 |