Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 87, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 April 1916 — The SEA WOLF [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The SEA WOLF

B> TALE\ ’ LON- A :a ex- A CE IS TH ALL 7 k i* - - ? V'-.'.-x','.-.. . . ■ ' •' ;

ZT'HE STORYOf\ 1 A MAN WHO , \IN HIS OWN Tittle world/ ABOARD/SfcffP WAS A LAW

SYNOPSIS. —7— Humphrey Van Weyden, critic and dilettante. Is thrown into the water by the sinking of a ferryboat in a fog in San Francisco bay. and becomes unconscious before help reaches him. On coining 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. The captain refuses to put Humphrey ashore and makes him cabin boy "for the good of his soul.” 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. Hump’s quarters are changed aft. Mugridge steals his money and him when accused of it. Later he listens to Wolf give his idea of life—"like yeast, a ferment . . . the big eat the little . . Cooky is jealous of Hump and hazes him. Wolf hazes a seaman and makes it the basis for another philosophic discussion with Hump. Wolf entertains Mugridge in his cabin, wins from him at cards the money he stole from Hump, and then tells Hump it is his. Wolf’s, by right of might Cooky and Hump whet knives at each other.

’ CHAPTER Vlll—Continued. "All right," he said pridelessly, “tyke ft or leave ft, I’ll like yer none the less for it." And to save his face he turned fiercely upon the onlookers. “Get outa my galley doors, you bloomfn’ swabs!” This command was re-enforced by a steaming kettle of water, and at sight of it the sailors scrambled out of the way. This was a sort of victory for Thomas Mugridge, and enabled him to accept more gracefully the defeat I had given him, though, of course, he was too discreet to attempt to drive the hunters away. “I see Cooky’s finish,” I beard Smoke say to Horner. “You bet,” was the reply. "Hump runs the galley from now on, and Cooky pulls in his horns.” Mugridge heard and shot a swift glance at me, but I gave no sign that the conversation had reached me. I had not thought my victory was so far-reaching and complete, but I resolved to let go nothing I had gained. As the days went by, Smoke’s prophecy was verified. The cockney became more humble and slavish to me than even to Wolf Larsen. 1 mistered him and sirred him no longer, washed no more greasy pots, and peeled no more potatoes. I did my own work, and my own work only, and when and in what

TashtonTsaw fit. Also, I carried the dirk in a sheath at my hip, sailorfashion, and maintained toward Thomas Mugridge a constant attitude which was composed of equal parts oi domineering, insult and contempt.

CHAPTER IX. My intimacy with Wolf Larsen increases—if by intimacy may be denoted those relations which exist between master and man, or, better yet. between king and jester. My function is to amuse, and so long as I amuse all goes well; but let him become bored, or let him have one of his black moods come upon him, and at once I am relegated from cabin table to galley, while, at the same time, I am fortunate to escape with iny life and a whole body. The loneliness of the man is slowly being borne in upon me. There is not a man aboard but hates or fears him, nor is there a man whom he does not despise. He seems consuming with the tremendous power that is in him and that seems never to have found adequate expression in works. This loneliness Is bad enough in Itself, but., to make it worse, he is oppressed by the primal melancholy of the racer The frivolity of the laughter-loving Latins is no part of him. When he laughs it is from a humor that is nothlng .less than ferocious. But hp .laughs rarely; he is too often sad. Were he not so terrible a ntan, I could sometimes feel sorry for him, as instance three mornings ago, when I went into his stateroom to fill his water bottle and came unexpectedly upon him.’ lie did not see toe. His head was buried in his hands,sand his shoul-

ders were heaving convulsively as with sobs. He seemed torn by some mighty grief. As I softly withdrew I could hear him groaning, “God! God! God!” Not that he was calling upon God; it was a mere expletive, but it came from his soul. At dinner he asked the hunters for a remedy for headache, and by evening, strong man that he was, he was half blind and reeling about the cabin. “I’ve never been sick in my life. Hump,” he said, as I guided him to his room. “Nor did I ever have a headache except the time my head was healing after having been laid open for six inches by a capstan-bar.” For three days this blinding headache lasted, and he suffered as wild animals suffer, as it seemed the way on ship to suffer, without plaint, without sympathy, utterly alone. This morning, however, on entering his stateroom to make the bed and put things in order, I found him well and hard at worK Table and bunk were littered with designs and calculations. On a large, transparent sheet, compass and square in hand, he was copying what appeared to be a scale of some sort or other. “Hello, Hump,” he greeted me genially. "I’m just finishing the finishing touches. Want to see it work?" “But what is it?” I asked. "A labor-saving device for mariners, navigation reduced to kindergarten simplicity,” he answered gayly. There was a ring of triumph in his voice, and his eyes, clear blue this morning as the sea, were sparkling with light “You must be well up in mathematics,” I said. “Where did you go to

school?” “Never saw the Inside of one, worse luck,” was the answer. “I had to dig It out for myself.” “And why do you think I have made this thing?” he demanded abruptly. “Dreaming to leave footprints on the sands of time?” He laughed one of his horrible, mocking laughs. “Npt at all. To get It patented, to make money from it, to revel in piggishness with all night In while other men do the work. That’s my purpose. Also, I have enjoyed working it out.” “The creative joy," 1 murmured. “t guess that's what It ought to be called. Which is another way of expressing the joy of life in that It Is alive, the triumph of movement over matter, of the quick over the dead, the pride of the yeast because it is yeast and crawls.” ... I threw up my hands with helpless disapproval of his inveterate materialism and went about making the bed. He continued copying lines and figures upon the transparent scale. It was a task requiring the utmost nicety and precision, and I could not but admire the way he tempered his strength to the fineness and delicacy of the need. When 1 had finished the bed, i caught myself looking at him in a fascinated sort of way. He was certainly a handsome man—beautiful in the masculine sense. And again, with never-filing wonder, I remarked the total lack of viciousness or wickedness or sinfulness in his face. Who was he? What was he? How had he happened to be? All powers seemed his, all potentialities—why, then, was he no more than the obscure master of a seal-hunting schooner with a reputation for frightful brutality among the men who hunted seals? # My curiosity burst from me in a flood of speech. “Why is -it that you have not done great things in this world? With’the power that is yours you ■ might have risen to any height. Unpossessed of conscience or moral instinct, youmight have mastered the world, broken it to your hand. And yet here you are, at the top of your life, where diminishing and dying begin, living an obscure and sordid existence, bunting sea animals for the satisfaction of woman’s vanity and love of decoration. reveling in a piggishness, to use your own words, which is anything and everything except splendid. Why, with all that wonderful strength, have you not done something? There was nothing to stop you, nothing that could stop you. What was wrong? Did you lack ambition? Did you fall under temptation? What was the matter? What was the matter?” He had lifted his eyes to me at the commencement of my outburst, and followed me complacently until I had done and stood before him breathless and dismayed. He waited a moment, as though seeking where to begin, and then said: “Hump, do you know the parable of the sower who went forth to sow? If you will remember, some of the seed fell upon stony places, where there was not much earth, and forthwith they sprung up because they had nd deepness of earth. And when the sun was up they were scorched, and because they W no root they with: ered away. And some fell among thorns, and the thorns sprung up and choked them.” “Wen?” I said. “Well?” he queried, half petulantly. "It was not welt I was one of those seeds.” , He dropped his head to the scale

and resumed the copying. I flnishqji my work and had opened the door to leave, when he spoke to" me. “Hump, if you will look on the west coast of the map of Norway you will see an Indentation called Romsdal fjord. I was born within a hundred miles of that stretch of water. But 1 was not born Norwegian. I am a Dane. My father and mother were Danes, and how they ever came to that bleak bight of land on the west coast I do not know.” I never heard. Outside of that there is nothing mysterious. They were poor people and unlettered. They came of generations of poor, unlettered people—peasants of the sea, who sowed their sons on the waves as has been their custom since time began. There is no more to tell.” “But there is,” I objected. "It is still obscure to me.” “What can I tell you?” he demanded, with a recrudescence of fierceness. “Of the meagerness of a child’s life? of fish diet and coarse living? of going out with the boats from the time I could crawl? of my brothers, who went away one by one to the deep-sea farming and never came back? of my self; unable to read or write, cabin-boy at the mature age of ten on the coastwise, old-country ships? of the rough fare and rougher usage, where kick? and blows were bed and breakfast and took the place of speech, and fear and hatred and pain were my only soul experiences? I do not care to remember. A madness comes up in my brain even now as I think of it. But there were coastwise skippers I would have returned and killed when a man’s

strength came to me, only the lines of my life were cast at the time in other places. I did return, not long ago, but unfortunately the skippers were dead, all but one, a mate in the old days, a skipper when I met him. and when I left him a cripple who would never walk again.” “But you who read Spencer and Darwin and have never seen the inside of a school, how did you learn to read and write?” I queried. “In the English merchant service. Cabin-boy at twelve, ship’s boy at fourteen, ordinary seaman at sixteen, able seaman at seventeen, and cock of the fo’c*ale, tnflnite ambition and infinite loneliness, receiving neither help nor sympathy, 1 did it all for myself—navigation, mathematics, science, literature, and what not. And of what use has it been? Master and owner of a ship at the top of my life, as you say, when I am beginning to diminish and die. Paltry, isn’t it? And when the sun was up 1 was scorched, and because I had no root I withered away." “But history tells of slaves who rose to the purple." I chided. “And history tells of opportunities that came to the slaves who rose to the purple,” he answered grimly. "No man makes opportunity. All the great men ever did was to know it when it came to them. The Corsican knew. 1 have dreamed as greatly as the Corsican. I should have known the opportunity, but it never came. The thorns sprung up and choked me. And. Hump, I can tell you that you know more about me than any living man, except my own brother.” “And what is he? And where is he?”

“Master of the steamship Macedonia, seal hunter,” was the answer. “We will meet nim most probably on the Japan coast. Men call him ‘Death’ Larsen.” “Death Larsen!" I involuntarily cried. “Is he like you?” “Hardly. He is a lump of an animal without any head. He has all my—my —" “Brutishness,” I suggested. “Yes—thank you for the word —all my brutishness, but he can scarcely read or write.” “And he has never phlosophized on life," I added. “No,” Wolf Larsen answered, with an indescribable air of sadness. “And he is all the happier for leaving life alone. He is too busy living it to think about it. My mistake was in ever opening the books.”

CHAPTER X. The Ghost has attained the southernmost point of the arc she Is describing across the Pacific, and is already beginning to edge away to the west and north toward some lime Island, it is rumored, where she will fill her water casks before proceeding to the season’s hunt along the coast of Japan. The hunters have experimented and practiced with their rifles and shotguns till they are satisfied, and put their boats in apple-pie order —to use Leach’s homely phrase. His arm, by the way, has healed nicely, though the scar will remain all his life. Thomas Mugridge lives in mortal fear of him, and is afraid to _ygpture on deck after dark. Louis shakes his head dubiously over the outlook for the man Johnson, who has collided two or three times with Wolf Larsen over the pronunciation of his name. Johansen he thrashed on the amidships deck the other night, since which time the mate has called him by his proper name. But of course it

is out of the question that Johnson should thrash Wolf Larsen. Louis has also given me additional information about Death Larsen, which tallies with the captain’s brief description. We may expect to meet Death Larsen on the Japan coast. “And look out for squalls," is Louis' prophecy, "for they hate one another like the wolf whelps they are.” Death Larsen is In command of the only sealing steamer in the fleet, the Macedonia. which carries fourteen boats, whereas the rest of the schooners carry only six. As it is forward and in the galley, so it is in the steerage and aft. on this veritable hell-ship. Men fight and struggle ferociously for one another’s lives. Jhe hunters are looking for a shooting scrape at any moment between Smoke and Henderson, whose old quarrel has not healed, while Wolf Larsen says positively that he will kill the survivor of the affair, if such affair comes off. I think even the hunters are appalled at his cold-blooded-ness. Wicked men though they be, they are certainly very much afraid of him. _ - Thomas Mugridge is curlike in his subjection to me, while I go about in secret dread of him. His is the courage of sea strange thing I know well of myself—and at any moment it may master the fear and impel him to the taking of my life. My knee is much better, though it often aches for long periods, and the stiffness is gradually leaving the arm which Wolf Larsen squeezed. I was amused, a couple of evenings back, by seeing Wolf Larsen reading the Bible, a copy of which had been found in the dead mate’s sea-chest. I wondered what Wolf Larsen could get from it, and he read aloud to me from Ecclesiastes. I can hear him now, as I shall always hear him, the primal melancholy vibrant in his voice as he read. £ “There you, have it. Hump,” he said, closing the book upon his finger and looking up at me. "The Preacher who was king over Israel in Jerusalem thought as I think. ‘All is vanity and vexation of spirit,’ ’There is no profit under the sun,’ ’There is one event unto all,’ to the fool and the wise, the clean and the unclean, the sinner and the saint, and that event is death, and an evil thing, he says. For the Preacher loved life, and did not want to die. saying, ‘For a living dog is better than a dead Hon.’ He preferred the vanity and vexation to the silence and unmovableness of the grave. And so L To crawl is piggish; but to not crawl, to be as the clod and rock, is loathsome to contemplate Life itself is unsatisfaction, but to look ahead to death is greater unsatisfaction." (TO BE CONTINUED.) ,)

As I Softly Withdrew I Could Hear Him Groaning.