Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 83, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 April 1916 — Page 3

THE SEA WOLF

JACK LONON

BYNOPBIS. —4— Humphrey Van Weyden, critic and dilettante. Is thrown Into the water by the •Inking of a ferryboat In a fog In San Francisco bay, and becomes unconscious before help reaches him. On coming to his senses he finds himself aboard the sealing schooner Ghost... Captain Wolf Larsen, bound to Japan waters, witnesses the death of the first mate and hears the captain curse the dead man for presuming to-die at the beginning of the voyage. The captain refuses to put Humphrey ashore and makes him cabin boy "for the good of his soul.” Humphrey sees the body of the mate dnmued into the sea. He begins to learn potato peeling and dish washing under the cockney cook. Mugridge. Is caught by a heavy sea shipped over the quarter as he Is carrying tea aft and his knee is seriously hurt, but no one pays any attention to his injury.

CHAPTER V—Continued. After breakfast I bad another unenviable experience. When I bad finished washing the dishes I cleaned the cabin stove and carried the ashes up on deck to empty them. "Wolf Larsen and Henderson were standing near the wheel, deep In conversation. 1 passed them and flung the ashes over the side to windward. The wind drove them back, and not only over me but over Henderson and Wolf Larsen. The next instant the latter kicked me violently, as a cur is kicked. I reeled away from him and leaned against the aabin in a half-fainting condition. But Wolf Larsen did not follow me up. Brushing the ashes from his clothes, he had resumed his conversation with Henderson. Johansen, who had seen the affair from the break of the poop, sent a couple of sailors, aft to clean up the mess. Later in the morning I received a surprise of a totally different sort. Following the cook’s instructions, I had gone into Wolf Larsen’s stateroom to put It to rights and make the bed. Against the waJl, near the head of the bunk, was a rack filled with books. I glanced over them, noting with astonishment such names as Shakespeare, Tennyson, Poe and De Quincey. There were scientific works, too, among which were represented men such as Tyndall, Proctor and Darwin. Astronomy and physics were represented, and I remarked Bulfinch’s ‘‘Age of Fable,” Shaw’s “History of English and American Literature," and Johnson’s “Natural History" in two large volumes. Then there were a number of grammars, such as Metcalf’s and Reed and Kellogg’s; trad I smiled as I saw a copy of “The Dean's English." I could not reconcile these hooks wltlj the man from what I had seen of him, and I wondered If he could possibly read them. But when I came to make the bed 1 found, between the blankets, dropped apparently as If he had sunk off to sleep, a complete Browning, the Cambridge edition. It was open at “In a Balcony," and I noticed, here and there, passages underlined In pencil. Further, Jetting drop the volume during a lurch of the ship, a sheet of paper fell out. It was scrawled over with geometrical diagrams and calculations of some sort. This glimpse I had caught of his other side must have emboldened me, for I resolved to speak to him about the money I had lost

“I have been robbed." I said to him, a little later, when I found him pacing up and down the poop alone. “Sir," he corrected, not harshly, but sternly. "I have been robbed, sir," I amended. “How did It happen T" he asked. Then I told him the whole circumstance, how my clothes had been left to dry in the galley, and how, later, I was nearly beaten by the cook when I mentioned the matter. He smiled at my recital. "Pickings," he concluded; “Cooky's pickings. And don’t you think your miserable life worth the price? Besides, consider it a lesson. You’ll learn in time how to take care of your money for yourself. I suppose, up to now, your lawyer has done it for you, or your business

agent" I could feel the quiet sneer through his words, but demanded, "How can I get it back again T” --—t“ That’s “That’s your lookout. You haven’t any lawyer or business agent now, so you'll have to depend on yourself. When you get a dollar, hang on to it. A man who leaves his money lying around, the way you did, deserves to lose it, Besides, you have You have no right to put temptations in the way of your fellow-creatures. You tempted Cooky, and he fell. You have placed his immortal soul in jeopardy. By the way, do you believe in the immortal soul?" , His lids lifted lazily as he aßked the question, and it seemed that the deeps were opening to me and that 1 was gazing into his soul. But it was an illusion. Far as it might have seemed, no m»n has ever seen very far into Wolf Larsen’s soul, or seen it at all — pt this lam convinced. It was a very lonely soul, I was to learn, that never unmasked, though at rare moments it player* dolngsT” ••I read immortality to your eyes," 1 answered, dropping the “sir”—an experiment. for I thought the intimacy Si the conversation warranted it. He took no notion.

"Then to what endT” he demanded. “If 1 am immortal —why?" I faltered. How could I explain my idealism to this man? How could 1 put into speech a something felt, a something like the strains of music heard in sleep, a something that convinced yet transcended utterance? "What do you believe, then?" 1 countered. "I’believe that life Is a mess.” he answered promptly. "It is like a yeast, a ferment, a thing that moves and may move for a minute, an hour, a year, or a hundred years, but that in the end will cease to move. The big eat the little that they may continue to move, the strong eat the weak that they may retain their strength. The lucky eat the most and move the longest that is all. What do you make of those things?” He swept his arm in an impatient gesture toward a number of the sailors who were working on some kind of rope stuff amidships. “They move; so does the jellyfish move. They move in order to eat in order that they (nay keep moving. There you have it They live for their belly's sake, and the belly Is for their sake. It’s a circle; you get nowhere. Neither do they. In the end they come to a standstill. They move no more. They are dead.” “They have dreams,” I Interrupted, ‘‘radiant, flashing dreams —” “Of grub,” he concluded sententiously. “And of more— ’’

“Grub. Of a larger appetite and more luck in satisfying it.” His voice sounded harsh. There was no levity in it “You and I are just like them. There is no difference, except, that we have eaten more and better. I am eating them now, and you, too. But in the past you have eaten more than I have. You wear the warm clothes. They made the clothes, but they shiver in rags and ask you, the lawyer, or the business agent who handles your money, for a Job.” “But that is beside the matter." I cried. “Not at all." He was speaking rapidly, now, and his eyes were flashing. “It is piggishness, and it is life. Of what use or sense is an immortality of piggishness? What is the end? What is it all about? To be piggish as you and I have, been all our llvea does not seem to be Just the thing for immortals to be doing. Again, what’s It all about? Why have I kept you here? —" “Because you are stronger,” 1 managed to blurt out “But why stronger?" he went on at once with his perpetual queries. “Because I am a bigger bit of the ferment than you? Don’t you see? Don’t you see?” “But the hopelessness of it,” I protested. “I agree with you," he answered. “Then why move at all, since moving is living? Without moving and being part of the yeast there would be no hopelessness. But —and here it is—we want to live and move, though we have no reason to, because it happens that it is the nature of life to live and move, to want to live and move. If it were not for this, life would be dead. It is because of this life that is in you that you dream of your immortality. The life that is in you is alive and wants to go on being alive forever. Bahl An eternity of piggishness!” He abruptly turned on his heel and started forward. He stopped at the break of the poop and called me to him. “By the way, how much was it that Cooky got away with?” he asked. “One hundred and eighty-five dollars, sir," 1 answered. He nodded his head. A moment later, as I started down the companion stairs to lay the table for dinner, 1 heard him loudly cursing some men amidships. ,

CHAPTER VI. By the following morning the storm had blown itself quite out and the Ghost was rolling slightly on a calm sea without a breath of wind. The men were aU on deck and busy preparing their various boats for the season’s hunting. There are seven boats aboard, the captain’s dinghy, the six which the hunters will use. Three, a hunter, a boat puller, and a boat ateerer, compose a boat’s crew. On board the schooner the boat pullers and steerers are the crew. The hunters, too, are supposed to be in command of the watches, subject, always, to the orders of Wolf Larsen. All this, and mojre, I have learned. The Ghost is considered the fastest schooner in both the San Francisco and Victoria fleets. In fact, she was once a private yacht, and was built for speed. Johnson was telling me about her in a short chat 1 had with him during yesterday’s second dog watch. He spoke enthusiastically, with the love for a fine craft such as menfeelfor horses.— man aboard, with the exception of Johahaen, who is rather overcome by his promotion, seems to have an, excuse for having sailed da the Ghost. Half of the men forward are deep-water sailors, and their excuse is S. - «V\- ■' - 1 '■*

THE EVENING REPUBLICAN, RENSSELAER, IND.

/pHESTOR y§f\ I ( 1 A MAN WHO ) | UN ,HIS OWN II 'Little world/ I AeoAßrysitfp WAS A LAW I

that tney did not know anything about -her or her captain. And those who do know whisper that the hunters, while excellent shots, were so notorious for their quarrelsome and rascally proclivities that they could not sign on any decent schooner. I have made the acquaintance of another one of the crew —Louis, he Is called, a rotund and jovial-faced Nova Scotia' Irishman, and a very sociable fellow, prone to talk as long as he can find a listener. In .the afternoon, while the cook was below and asleep and I was peeling the everlasting potatoes, Louis dropped into the galley for a “yarn." His excuse for being aboard was that he was drunk when he signed. He i’s accounted" one of the two or three very best boat steerers in both fleets.

“Ah. my boy”—be shook his head ominously at me —“ ’tis the worst schooner ye could iv selected, nor were ye drunk at the time as was I. Don't I remember him in Hakodate two years gone, when he had a row an’ shot four iv bis men? An* there was a man the same year he killed with a blow iv his fist. An' wasn’t there the governor of Kura island, an’ the chief iv police. Japanese gentlemen, sir, an’ didn’t they come aboard the Ghost as his guests, a-bringin’ their wives along—wee an’ pretty little bits of things like you see ’em painted on fans. An’ as he was a-get-tin’ under way, didn’t the fond husbands get left astern-like in their sampan, as it might be by accident? An’ wasn’t it a week later that the poor little ladies was put ashore on the other side of the island, with nothin’ before ’em but to walk home acrost the mountains on their weeny-teeny little straw sandals, which wouldn’t hang together a mile? Don’t I know? ’Tis the beast he is, this Wolf Larsen—the great, big beast mentioned in Revelation; an’ no good end will he ever come to. But I’ve said nothin' to ye, mind ye. I’ve whispered never a word; for old, fat Louis’ll live the voyage out if the last mother’s son of yez go to the fishes." “But if he is so well known for what he is,” 1 queried, “how is it that he can get men to ship with him?” ’’An’ how is it ye cah get men to do anything on God’s earth an’ sea?” Louis demanded with Celtic fire. “There’s th«m that can’t Bail with better men, like the hunters, and them that don’t know, like the poor devils of wind-jammers for’ard there." “Them hunters is the wicked boys,”, he broke forth again, for he'suffered from a constitutional plethora of Bpeech. "But wait till they get to cutting up iv jinks and rowin’ ’round. He’s the boy’ll fix ’em. Look at that hunter iv mine, Horner. Didn’t he kill his boat steerer last year? An’ there’s

“They Live for Their Belly’s Bake.”

Smoke, the black little devil—didn’t the Roosians have him for three years in the salt mines of Siberia, for poachin’ on Copper island, which is a Roosian preserve? Shackled he was, hand an’ foot, with his mate. An’ didn’t they have words or a ruction of some kind? —for ’twas the other fellow Smoke sent up in the buckets to the top of the mine; an’ a piece at the time he went up. a leg today, an’ tomorrow an arm, the next day the head, an’ so on.’’ "But you can’t mean If!" I cried out, overcome with the horror of it. "Mean what?” he demanded, quick as a flash. “ 'Tis nothin’ I’ve said. Deef I am, and dumb, as *ye should be for the sake iv your mother; an' never once have I opened me lips but to say fine things iv them an’ him. God curse his soul, an’ may he rot in purgatory ten thousand years, and then go down to the last an’ deepest hell iv all!" , Johnson-seemed the least equivocal of the men forward or aft. He seemed to have the courage of his convictions, the certainty of his manhood. It was this that made him protest, at the commencement of stif acquaintance, against being called Yonsoa. And

upon this, and him. Loula (waned Judgment and prophecy. “ ’Tis a fine chap, that aqnarehaad Johnson we've for'ard with us," he said. "The beet aailorman In the fo’c’sle. He’s my boat puller. But It’s to trouble he'll come with Wolf Larsen, as the sparks fly upward. The Wolf is strong, and It’s the way of a wolf to hate strength, an’ strength It is he'll see in Johnson —no knucklin’ under, and a ‘Yes. sir’ thank ye kindly, sif,’ for a curse or a blow." Thomas Mugridge Is becoming unendurable. I am compelled to Mister him and Sir him with every speech. One reason for this is that Wolf Larsen seems to have taken a fancy to him. It Is an unprecedented thing. 1 take it, for a captain to be chummy with the cook; but this is certainly what Wolf Larsen is doing. Two or three times he put bis head into the galley and chaffed Mugridge goodnaturedly, and once, this afternoon, he stood by the break of the poop and chatted with him for fully fifteen minutes. When it was over, and Mugridge was back fn the galley, he became greasily radiant, and went about his work, humming the coster songs in a nerve-racking and discordant falsetto.

“I always get along with the officers,” he remarked to me in a confidential tone. “I know the w’y, I do. to myke myself uppreci-yted. There was my last skipper. ‘Mugridge.’ sez ’e to me. ’Mugridge,’ sez 'e, ‘you’ve missed yer vokytion.' ‘An’ ’ow’s that? sez I. ‘Yes should ‘a’ been born a gentleman, an’ never ’ad to work for yer livin'.' God strike me dead, ’Ump, if that ayn’t wot ’e sez, an’ me a-aittin’ there in ’is own cabin, Jolly-like an' comfortable, a-smokin’ ’is cigars an’ drinkin' 'is rum.” • This chitter-chatter drove me to distraction. I never heard a voice I hated so. Positively, he was the most disgusting and loathsome person I have ever met. The filth of his cooking was indescribable, and, as he cooked everything that was eaten aboard, I was compelled to select what 1 ate with great circumspection, choosing from the least dirty of his concoctions.

My hands bothered me a great deal, unused as they were to work. Nor was my knee any better. The swelling had not gone down, and the cap was still up on edge. Hobbling about on it from morning to night was not helping it any. What 1 needed was rest, if it were ever to* get well. Rest! I never before knew the meaning of the word. I had been resting all my life and did not know it But now, from half past five in the morning till ten o’clock at night I am everybody’s slave, with not one moment to myself, except such as I can steal near the end of the second dog watch. Let me pause for a minute to look out over the sea sparkling in the sun, or to gaze at a sailor going aloft to the gaff-topsails, or running out the bowsprit, and I am sure to hear the hateful voice, “’Ere, you. ’Ump, no sodgerin’. I’ve got my peepers on yer.” There are signs of rampant bad temper in the steerage, and the gossip Is going around that Smoke and Henderson have had a fight Henderson seems the best of the hunters, a slowgoing fellow, and hard to rouse; but roused he must have been, for Smoke had a' bruised and discolored eye, and looked particularly vicious when he came into the cabin for supper. (TO BE CONTINUED.!

MAY RECLAIM WASTE SPOT

Efforts Are to Be Made to Restore »• Fertility the Famous Roman Campagna. No book on. Italy is complete without some reference to the Campagna di Roma, a district upon which a curse seems to have fallen. It is a grassy plain, something like an American prairie, about forty by seventy miles in area, Rome being near its center. This district was once the province of Latium, and was then the richest and most populous country in the world, but it is now nearly destitute of inhabitants. For a part of the year shepherds and herdsmen make it their home, but even they do not linger longer than absolutely necessary. in fact, the Campagna is the ‘home of malaria, so deadly that strangers dare not to pass a single night exposed to its influence. The trouble with the Campagna arises from its being underlaid by a bed of stone impervious to water. The spring rains fill the soil, a vast quantity of vegetable matter is accumulated, and the summer sun evaporates this foul water, filling the air with malaria of the most deadly sort. The ancient Romans knew the danger, and averted it with extensive drains; but tife modems suffered the drains to become choked, and the finest portion of Italy became a wilderness. The soil ie very rich, and it is pleasant to hear that aft effort is being made to reclaim the Champagne for the uses of man.

Novel Atomizer Size of Watch.

A recent novelty is a pocket atomizer in the shape of a watch. The head or top has a small orifice, and the spray is produced by pressing on the flexible metal sides. A miniature funnel is provided for the filling, which is done by unscrewing the head. Another atomizer consists of a small cylindrical pump mounted on a cork so as to fit Into any bottle and thus avoid handling of the perfume from one bottle to another. A plunger at the top serves to produce the sparse from a side orifice. The tube which descends into the liquid has a second or telescoping end so that the tube can be extended down as far as the bottom of the bottle and thus take up ail the liquid. 4

TWO OLD DALMATIAN PORTS

DALMATIA belongs to Austria, but Austrian —no, that it is not, after a hundred years of possession. Its native language is Serb, with much Italian also spoken on the coast, but German one scarcely hears at all, except in the shops frequented by Austrian visitors. Its people are simple and ignorant, very tenacious to old ways, customs and costumes, and not easily to be converted into a commercial and modern people. It was In search, first of all, of warmth and sunshine that we northerners set out' - for Ragusa, the most southerly of Dalmatian ports, writes V. Clutterbuck in Country Life. Also we hoped to find less of the monotonous luxuries prepared for travelers in France and Italy. In this hope we were not disappointed, for with the exception of one very good and very expensive hotel at Ragusa, full to overflowing of Austrian visitors, there was no accommodation to be found, with, any pretensions to comfort. We were at once face to face with primitive notions.

The coming of the steamer seemed to be the great event of the day, or possibly of several days, if one can judge by the eager, jabbering crowds flocking to the quayside to glean all possible news of the world outside their island home, and to comment on the strange travelers leaning over the steamer’s rail. As evening fell the setting sun turned the bare, brown hills and distant high range of mountains into peaks of coral and garnet, and kept us late on deck wondering as to the unknown inland country, its fine, hardy people and how they lived —apparently on stones, nothing being visible but rock and stone, no green valleys, no wooden hills, only small, gray trees, shrubs, and again stones. Ragusa Enchanting and Unspoiled.

Early morning found us anchored at Gravosa, the excellent protected harbor at Ragusa, about a mile away, and here, unfortunately, in a dismal downpour of rain we first made acquaintance with the natives of the near East, the porters and cab drivers in their partly eastern dress of baggy blue knickerbockers, embroidered white stockings, embroidered coat and waistcoat and scarlet fez. Ragusa is enchanting, unspoilt by its overflowing garrison, or even by its fashionable Austrian visitors. It seems part of the great rocky hills themselves, so cunningly is it built up ledge upon ledge of the selfsame stone. The town covers as well a tiny peninsula at the foot of the hills, like a landslide of stone, kept in its place and guarded from the sea by massive encircling walls. The walls creep on upward up the mountain side, and clasp the little town firmly, so firmly that she withstood many a siege and sheltered many a trembling refugee; she even defied proud Venice. Ragusans have the pride of a nation, a tiny one certainly, but of ancient lineage. It is claimed that Ragusa was a republic from A. D. 663, and lasted so with intervals of varying length, during which the. territory was under the protection of Hungary, Constantinople, Venice and France, to 1814, when Austria finally took possession. Thanks to the courtesy of the commander of the garrison, we, with other visitors, walked round, the top of the great walls, so wide that they contain prisons, steres,-barfaeks —a world of activity, ’hidden from the view of all except seagulls and friendly swallows, maybe, who can peer into the loopholes. From the walls one gets the best idea of the crowded town, its carefully protected gateways (now without portcullis or drawbridge), its broad, paved, centfhl street forming a valley through the town, and from It innumerable lanes becoming stair-

The PORT OF RAGUSA

ways climbing to the brow of the cliffs on one hand and to the mountainside on the other, but all within the great walls. Many buildings stand out prominently, churches, palaces, monasteries, but the general impression is of a crowd of old, irregular, pinkish-tiled roofs. Early Morning in the Market. Now let us go and walk in the town early in the morning. One must be an early bird to catch the worm here, for everyone is astir with the aim, and business is most brisk in the market before 8 a. m.; by 9 a. m. all is over. Some of the country people come many hours' tramp over the mountains to Ragusa market from Herzegovina, and occasionally from Montenegro. They start in the night and arrive with the dawn —these stalwart, handsome men and women, not white and tired, footsore and weary, but strong, gay and ready for many hours yet of strenuous activity. They have carried heavy loads of farm produce on their heads in big round baskets, walking over sharp, loose stones, or have driven laden ponies. Now all their goods must be sold and good bargains made, and then the baskets must once more be filled with town goods needed at the distant farm, and by ten o’clock work, gossip, refreshment must be over and the homeward climb begun. What manner of men and women are they who work so hard and look so hardy? They are tall, muscular, brown, very Jovial with each others but shy of strangers, and shyer still of a camera. It is a crowd full of color, blue and red predominating, but all wearing his or her national dress, so that those who understand know at a glance what district each comes from.

On Sundays the town was thronged again with peasants come to spend a gay and sociable day, first attending mass gt Greek or Roman Catholic churches (as many of one as of the other), then endlessly strolling up and down the main street and chatting volubly. Trau Is Btill Medieval. Of the many fascinating old towns on the coast and Islands of Dalmatia perhaps the most Interesting is Trau, near Spalato. It is scarcely changed at all since medieval times, and though it is full of subjects for brush and camera, but few travelers dare test its accommodation and, therefore, never come to know it. It was only by a lucky chance that we found a new and clean house outside the walls where we could picnic with enjoyment. Trau has no street wider than twelve or fourteen feet All its buildings are of' massive stone, all the lower windows barred, its piazza pgved with great flags, its cathedral porch one of the richest in carved stonework in the world. The cathedral was built in the early thirteenth century, the glorious west door being dated 1240, and is indeed the pride of all Dalmatia. It is also signed . with a Slav name —“Raduahus,” or “Radovan” in native speech.; At Trau the people were smaller and darker than at Ragutja, dressed in brown homespun, and the men wore the queerest little fed caps on the side of the head. One cannot imagine any headdress less useful or ornamental, and only great antiquity can explain its use. Towards the open sea Trau was guarded in olden days b;. a castle, now in ruins. The busy town of Spalato near by has more history than a book would hold. There stand yet the massive walls of Diocletian's palace, the lower tiers being now shops and houses. His mausoleum is the cathedral, bis temple the baptistery. The great black marble pillars of the octagonal cathedral are worn by worshipers of differing creeds, the friese of pagan dancers smiling down on all site