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Elisha Cuthbert Photos Books: Martin Eden The Pickwick Papers The Sea Wolf |
it.
Our boats hunted across the two or three miles of water between
them and the point where the Macedonias had been dropped, and then
headed for home. The wind had fallen to a whisper, the ocean was
growing calmer and calmer, and this, coupled with the presence of
the great herd, made a perfect hunting day--one of the two or three
days to be encountered in the whole of a lucky season. An angry
lot of men, boat-pullers and steerers as well as hunters, swarmed
over our side. Each man felt that he had been robbed; and the
boats were hoisted in amid curses, which, if curses had power,
would have settled Death Larsen for all eternity--"Dead and damned
for a dozen iv eternities," commented Louis, his eyes twinkling up
at me as he rested from hauling taut the lashings of his boat.
"Listen to them, and find if it is hard to discover the most vital
thing in their souls," said Wolf Larsen. "Faith? and love? and
high ideals? The good? the beautiful? the true?"
"Their innate sense of right has been violated," Maud Brewster
said, joining the conversation.
She was standing a dozen feet away, one hand resting on the main-
shrouds and her body swaying gently to the slight roll of the ship.
She had not raised her voice, and yet I was struck by its clear and
bell-like tone. Ah, it was sweet in my ears! I scarcely dared
look at her just then, for the fear of betraying myself. A boys
cap was perched on her head, and her hair, light brown and arranged
in a loose and fluffy order that caught the sun, seemed an aureole
about the delicate oval of her face. She was positively
bewitching, and, withal, sweetly spirituelle, if not saintly. All
my old-time marvel at life returned to me at sight of this splendid
incarnation of it, and Wolf Larsens cold explanation of life and
its meaning was truly ridiculous and laughable.
"A sentimentalist," he sneered, "like Mr. Van Weyden. Those men
are cursing because their desires have been outraged. That is all.
What desires? The desires for the good grub and soft beds ashore
which a handsome pay-day brings them--the women and the drink, the
gorging and the beastliness which so truly expresses them, the best
that is in them, their highest aspirations, their ideals, if you
please. The exhibition they make of their feelings is not a
touching sight, yet it shows how deeply they have been touched, how
deeply their purses have been touched, for to lay hands on their
purses is to lay hands on their souls."
"You hardly behave as if your purse had been touched," she said,
smilingly.
"Then it so happens that I am behaving differently, for my purse
and my soul have both been touched. At the current price of skins
in the London market, and based on a fair estimate of what the
afternoons catch would have been had not the Macedonia hogged it,
the Ghost has lost about fifteen hundred dollars worth of skins."
"You speak so calmly--" she began.
"But I do not feel calm; I could kill the man who robbed me," he
interrupted. "Yes, yes, I know, and that man my brother--more
sentiment! Bah!"
His face underwent a sudden change. His voice was less harsh and
wholly sincere as he said:
"You must be happy, you sentimentalists, really and truly happy at
dreaming and finding things good, and, because you find some of
them good, feeling good yourself. Now, tell me, you two, do you
find me good?"
"You are good to look upon--in a way," I qualified.
"There are in you all powers for good," was Maud Brewsters answer.
"There you are!" he cried at her, half angrily. "Your words are
empty to me. There is nothing clear and sharp and definite about
the thought you have expressed. You cannot pick it up in your two
hands and look at it. In point of fact, it is not a thought. It
is a feeling, a sentiment, a something based upon illusion and not
a product of the intellect at all."
As he went on his voice again grew soft, and a confiding note came
into it. "Do you know, I sometimes catch myself wishing that I,
too, were blind to the facts of life and only knew its fancies and
illusions. Theyre wrong, all wrong, of course, The Sea Wolf page 87 The Sea Wolf page 89 |