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Elisha Cuthbert Photos Books: Martin Eden The Pickwick Papers The Sea Wolf |
a couple of men, the miserable Cockney
fled wildly out of the galley and dodged and ducked about the deck
with the grinning crew in pursuit. Few things could have been more
to their liking than to give him a tow over the side, for to the
forecastle he had sent messes and concoctions of the vilest order.
Conditions favoured the undertaking. The Ghost was slipping
through the water at no more than three miles an hour, and the sea
was fairly calm. But Mugridge had little stomach for a dip in it.
Possibly he had seen men towed before. Besides, the water was
frightfully cold, and his was anything but a rugged constitution.
As usual, the watches below and the hunters turned out for what
promised sport. Mugridge seemed to be in rabid fear of the water,
and he exhibited a nimbleness and speed we did not dream he
possessed. Cornered in the right-angle of the poop and galley, he
sprang like a cat to the top of the cabin and ran aft. But his
pursuers forestalling him, he doubled back across the cabin, passed
over the galley, and gained the deck by means of the steerage-
scuttle. Straight forward he raced, the boat-puller Harrison at
his heels and gaining on him. But Mugridge, leaping suddenly,
caught the jib-boom-lift. It happened in an instant. Holding his
weight by his arms, and in mid-air doubling his body at the hips,
he let fly with both feet. The oncoming Harrison caught the kick
squarely in the pit of the stomach, groaned involuntarily, and
doubled up and sank backward to the deck.
Hand-clapping and roars of laughter from the hunters greeted the
exploit, while Mugridge, eluding half of his pursuers at the
foremast, ran aft and through the remainder like a runner on the
football field. Straight aft he held, to the poop and along the
poop to the stern. So great was his speed that as he curved past
the corner of the cabin he slipped and fell. Nilson was standing
at the wheel, and the Cockneys hurtling body struck his legs.
Both went down together, but Mugridge alone arose. By some freak
of pressures, his frail body had snapped the strong mans leg like
a pipe-stem.
Parsons took the wheel, and the pursuit continued. Round and round
the decks they went, Mugridge sick with fear, the sailors hallooing
and shouting directions to one another, and the hunters bellowing
encouragement and laughter. Mugridge went down on the fore-hatch
under three men; but he emerged from the mass like an eel, bleeding
at the mouth, the offending shirt ripped into tatters, and sprang
for the main-rigging. Up he went, clear up, beyond the ratlines,
to the very masthead.
Half-a-dozen sailors swarmed to the crosstrees after him, where
they clustered and waited while two of their number, Oofty-Oofty
and Black (who was Latimers boat-steerer), continued up the thin
steel stays, lifting their bodies higher and higher by means of
their arms.
It was a perilous undertaking, for, at a height of over a hundred
feet from the deck, holding on by their hands, they were not in the
best of positions to protect themselves from Mugridges feet. And
Mugridge kicked savagely, till the Kanaka, hanging on with one
hand, seized the Cockneys foot with the other. Black duplicated
the performance a moment later with the other foot. Then the three
writhed together in a swaying tangle, struggling, sliding, and
falling into the arms of their mates on the crosstrees.
The aerial battle was over, and Thomas Mugridge, whining and
gibbering, his mouth flecked with bloody foam, was brought down to
deck. Wolf Larsen rove a bowline in a piece of rope and slipped it
under his shoulders. Then he was carried aft and flung into the
sea. Forty,--fifty,--sixty feet of line ran out, when Wolf Larsen
cried "Belay!" Oofty-Oofty took a turn on a bitt, the rope
tautened, and the Ghost, lunging onward, jerked the cook to the
surface.
It was a pitiful spectacle. Though he could not drown, and was
nine-lived in addition, he was suffering all the agonies of half-
drowning. The Ghost was going very slowly, and when her stern
lifted on a wave and she slipped forward she pulled the wretch to
the surface and gave him a moment in which to breathe; but between
each lift the stern fell, and while the bow lazily climbed the next
wave the The Sea Wolf page 79 The Sea Wolf page 81 |