Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 95, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 April 1916 — Page 2

/TTTthis tale\ ( 1 JACK LON- } DON S SEA EX- J Iperience is \jgED WITH ALL . -MS-VIRILELEEN-

SYNOPSIS. —ll— Van Weyd»n, critic and dllet|ant«. Is thrown Into the water by the nkin| of a ferryboat- On coming to hla senses he finds himself aboard the seehng schooner Ohoet, Captain Wolf Larsen, bound to Japan waters. The captatn refuses to put Humphrey ashore and makes him cabin hoy “for the good of hlB soul." He begins to learn potato peeling and dish wash! ing under the cockney cook, Mugrldge. Hump’s quarters are changed gfL lfugrldge steals his money and -hasee hits when accused of It. Later he listens te lVolf give his idea of life—“like yeast, a ferment . . . the big eat the litlle . . Cooky is jealous of Hump and hazes him. Wolf bases a seaman and makes It the basts for another philosophic discussion with Hump. Wolf entertains Mufridge 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 othbr. Hump’s intimacy with Wolf Increases, and Wolf sketches the story of Ills life to Hump. Wolf discusses the Bible, and Omar with Hump and Illustrates the Instinctive love of life by choking Hump nearly to death. A carnival of brutality breaks louse in the ship and Wolf proves himself the master brute. Wolf Is knocked overboard at night, comes back aboard by the logline and wins clear In a light In the forecastle. Hump dresses Wolf's wounds and, despite his protest, Is made mate on the hell-ship Mr. Van Weyden tries to learn his duties as mate. Wolf hazes the men who tried to kill him.

CHAPTER XlV—Continued. ■t • I had cherished a hope that his victims would find an opportunity to escape while filling our water barrels, but Wolf Larsen had selected his spot welL The Ghost lay half beyond the Burt line of a lonely beach. Here debouched a deep gorge, with precipitous, volcanic walls which no man could scale. And here, under his direct supervision—for he went ashore himself—Leach and Johnson filled the small casks and rolled them down to the beach. They had no chance to make a break for liberty in one of the boats. •' ' Late that afternoon we hove up anchor and got away. Nothing was before us but the three or four months’ banting on the sealing grounds. The outlook was black Indeed, and I went about my work with a heavy heart. An almost funereal gloom seemed to have descended upon the Ghost. Wolf Larsen had taken to his bank with one of his strange, splitting headaches. Johnson I found lying full length on the forecastle head, staring at the troubled churn of the forefoot, and I remembered -with horror the suggestion Wolf Larsen bad made. It seemed likely to bear fruit. I tried to break In ,on the man’s morbid thoughts by calling him away, but he smiled sadly at me and refused to obey.

Leach approached me as I returned aft. "I want to ask a favor, Mr. Van Weyden," he said. “If It’s yer luck to ever make ’Frisco once more, vjill you hunt up Matt McCarthy? He’s nay old man. He lives on the hill, back of the Mayfair bakery, runnin' a cobbler’s shop that everybody knows, and you’ll have no trouble. Tell him I lived to be sorry for the trouble I brought him and the things I done, and —and just tell him ‘God bless him,’ for me.” I nodded my head, but said, ‘‘We’ll all win back to San Francisco, Leach, and you’ll be with me when I go to see Matt McCarthy.” “I’d like to believe you,” he answered, shaking my hand, “but I can’t. Wolf Larsen’ll do for me, I know it; and all I can hope is he’ll do it quick.” 4nd as he left me I was aware of the same desire at my heart. Since it was to be done, let it be done with dispatch. It was a cheap and sordid thing after all, this life, and the sooner over the better. Over and done with! I, too, leaned upon the rail and gazed longingly into the sea, with the certainty that sooner or later I should be sinking down, down, through the cool, green depths of its oblivion.

..CHAPTER XV. Strange to say, in spite of the general foreboding, nothing of especial moment happened on the Ghost. We ran on to the north and west till we raised the coast of Japan and picked up with the great seal herd. Coming from no man knew where in the illimitable Pacific, it was traveling north on its annual migration to the rookeries of Bering sea. And north we traveled with it, ravaging and destroying, flinging the naked carcasses to the shark and salting down the skins so that they might later adorn the fair shoulders of the women of the cities. - ' ■ - ■ -—- i i saw more of Wolf Larsen than ever when we had "gained the grounds. For when the weather was fair and iwn were In the midst of the herd, all fcands were away In the boats, and left Ob board were only he and I and Thomas Mngridge, who did not count. It was our duty to sail the Ghost well tor leeward of the last lee boat, so that all the boats should have fair wind to ran for us in case of squalls threatening weather. “ It is no slight matter for two men. particnlarly when a stiff wind has Ghost, steering, keeping lookout for the and setting or taking sail; •e It devolved upon me to learn and

The SEA WOLF

by JACK LONDON

learn quickly. Steering I picked up easily, but running aloft to the crosstrees and swinging my whole weight by my arms when I left the ratlines and climbed still higher, was more difficult. This, too. I learned, and quickly, for I felt somehow a wild desire to vindicate myself In Wolf Larsen’s eyes, to prove my right to live in ways other than of the mind. Nay, the time came when I took Joy in the run of the masthead and in the clinging by my legs at that precarious height while I swept the sea with glasses in search of the boats. I remember one beautiful day, when the boats left early and the reports of the hunters’ guns grew dim and distant and died away as they scattered far and wide over the sea. There was just the faintest wind from the westward; but it breathed its last by the time we managed to gpt to lee-, ward of the last lee boat’’ One by one—l was at the masthead and saw — the six boats disappeared over the bulge of the earth as they followed the seal Into the west. We lay, scarcely rolling on the placid sea, unable to follow. Wolf Larsen was apprehensive. The barometer was down, and the sky to the east did not please him. He studied it with unceasing vigilance. “If she comes out of there,” he sAid, “hard and snappy, putting us to windward of the boats it’s likely there’ll be empty bunks In steerage and fo’c’sle.” By eleven o’clock the sea had become glass. Slowly the whole eastern sky was filled with clouds that overtowered us like some black sierra of the Infernal regions. And still we rocked gently, and there was no wind. We ate dinner, a hurried and anxious meal for me with eighteen men abroad on the sea and beyond the bulge of the earth and with that heav-en-rolling mountain range of clouds

He Laughed Aloud Mockingly and Defiantly at the Advancing Storm.

moving slowly down upon us. Wolf Larsen did not seem affected, however, though I noticed, when we returned to the deck, a slight twitching of the nostrils, a perceptible quickness of movement. Once, and unwitting that he did so or that I saw, he laughed aloud, mockingly and defiantly, at the advancing storm. I see him yet, standing there like a pygmy out of the “Arabian Nights” before the huge front of some malignant genie. He was daring destiny, and he was unafraid. The whispers of wind became puffs, the sails filled, the Ghost moved. Wolf Larsen put the wheel hard up, to port, and we began to pay oft. The wind was now dead astern, muttering and puffing stronger and stronger, and my head-sails were pounding lustily. My hands were full with the fly-ing-jib, Jib, and staysail; and by the time this part of my task was accomplished the Ghost was leaping into the southwest, the wind on her quarter and all her sheets to starboard. Without paus(|ig for breath, though my heart was beating like a trip-hammer from my exertions, I sprang to the topsails, and before the wind had become too strong we had them fairly set and were colling down. Then I went aft for orders. Wolf Larsen nodded approval and relinquished the wheel to me. The wind was strengthening steadily and the sea rising. For an hour I steered, each moment becoming more difficult. I had not the experience to steer at the gait we were going on a quartering course. “ ” Now take a run up with the glasses and raise some of the boatsr. We’ve made at least ten knots, and we’re going twelve or iiirteen now. The old girl knows ho\r to walk.” ~ I contented myself with the fore crosstrees, some seventy feet above the deck. As I searched the vacant stretch of water before me, I comprehended thoroughly the need for haste If we were to recover any of our men.

THE EVENING REPUBLICAN, RENSSELAER, IND.

Indeed, as I gazed at the heavy sea through which we were running, I doubted that there was a boat afloat. It did not seem possible that such frail craft could survive such stress of wind and water. 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 specif thrust skyward for an instant and swallowed up. 1 waited patiently. Again the tiny point of black projected itself through the wrathful blaze a couple of points off our port-bow. 1 did not attempt to shout, but communicated the news to Wolf Larsen by waving my arm. He changed the course, and I signaled 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 loosed” he cautioned me, “but don’t mind it. Yours is to do your own work and to have Cooky stand by the fore-sheet.” 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 j were bailing. Each rolling mountain whelmed them from view. 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. The Ghost suddenly changed her course, keeping away. Wolf Larsen was preparing to heave to. I felt an abrupt easing of the schooner, a loss for the moment of all strain and pressure, coupled with a swift tion of speed. She was rushing abound on her heel into the wind. Ab 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. It descended, pandemonium broke loose, everything happened at once. I was struck a crushing, stunning blow, nowhere In particular and yet everywhere. My hold had been broken loose, I was under water, and the thought passed through my mind that this was the terrible thing of which I had heard, the being swept in the trough of the sea. I brought up violently against what I took to be the rail, breathed, and breathed the sweet air again. As I scrambled out on all fours I passed over the body of Thomas Mugridge, who lay In a groaning heap. There was no time to investigate. I must get the Jib backed over.

On all sides there was a rending and trashing of wood and steel and canvas. The Ghost was being wrenched knd torn to fragments. The foresail knd foretopsail were thundering into -ribbons, the heavy boom threshing knd splintering from rail to rail. The tlir was thick with flying wreckage, ropes and stays were hissing and coiling like snakes, and down through it all crashed the gaff of the foresail. The soar could not have missed me by many inches, while It spurred me to action. Perhaps the situation was not hopeless. I remembered Wolf Larsen's caution. He had expected all hell to break loose, and here It was. And where was he? I caught sight of him toiling at the main sheet, heaving it in and flat with his tremendous muscles, the stern of the schooner lifted high in the air and his body outlined against a white surge of sea sweeping past. All this, and more a whole world of chaos and wreck—ln possibly fifteen seconds I had seen and heard and grasped.

I did not stop to see what had become of the small boat, but sprang to the jib-sheet. The jib itself was beginning to slap, partially filling and emptying with sharp reports; but with a turn of the sheet and the application of my whole strength each time it slapped, I slowly backed It. This I know; I did my best. I pulled till I burst open the ends of all my fingers; and while I pulled, the flying Jib and staysail spilt their cloths apart and thundered into nothingness. Still I pulled, holding what I gained each time with a double turn until the next slap gave me more. Then the sheet gave with greater ease, and Wolf Larsen was beside me, heaving in alone while I was busied taking up the slack. “Make fast!” he shouted. “And come on!” As I followed him I noted that In spite of rack and ruin a rough order obtained. The Ghost was hove to. She was still In working order, and she was still working. Though the rest of her sails were gone, the Jib, backed to windward, and the mainsail hauled down flat, were themselves holding, and holding her how to the furiouasea £LB well. I looked for the boat, and, while Wolf Larsen cleared the boat tackles, saw it lift to leeward on a big sea and not a score of feet away. And, so nicely had be made bis calculation,

/-THE STORY§F\ ( 1 A MAN WH(i> j \IN HIS OWN IITTLE WORLD/ AESOARD/SktfP WAS A LAW

we drifted fairly down upon it. so that nothing remained to do but book the tackles to either end and hoist it aboard. I noticed blood spouting from Kerfoot’s left hand. In some way the third finger had been crushed to * pulp. But he gave no Bign of pain, and with his single right hand helped us lash the boat in Its place. Then we raced, and wildly, across the wild sea, the while I hung like a fly in the crosstrees and searched for the other boats. In half an hour I sighted the second one, swamped and bottom up, to which were despeTately clinging Jock Horner, fat Louis and Johnson. This time I remained aloft, and Wolf Larsen succeeded Hi heaving to without being swept. As before, we drifted down upon it. Tackles were made fast and lines flung to the men, who scrambled aboard like monkeys. As before, the Ghost swung out of the trough, lifting her deck again out of the sea. and dashed before the howling blast. It was now half-past five, and half an hour when the last of the day lostdtself In a dim and furious twilight, I sighted a third boat. It was bottom up, and there was no sign of its crew. Wolf Larsen repeated his maneuver, holding off and then rounding up to windward and drifting down upon it. But this time he missed by forty feet, the boat passing astern. •‘Number four boat!” Oofty-Oofty cried, his keen eyes reading Its number in the one second when it lifted clear of the foam and upside down. It was Henderson’s boat, and with him had been lost Holyoak and Williams. another of the deep-water crowd. Lost they indubitably were: but the boat remained, and Wolf Larsen made one more reckless effort to recover It.

And when he put the wheel hard over and the Ghost’s bow swung off, I was once more buried beneath the pounding seas and clinging for life to the pinrail at the foot of the foremast. When the Ghost finally emerged Kelly, who had come forward at~tbelast moment, was missing. This time, having missed the boat and not being in the same position as in the previous instances. Wolf Larsen was compelled to resort to a different maneuver. Running off before the wind with everything to starboard, he came about and returned closehauled on the port tack. Though we were continually half-burled, there was no trough In which to be swept, and we drifted squarely down upon the upturned boat, badly smashing it as It was heaved inboard. (TO BE CONTINUED.)

PECULIAR SPECIMEN OF WASP

In.-.ect That Is Becoming More Com mon in England Not Pretty Thing to Look At. The other day a fearsome Insect made Its appearance In the window of a local chemist’s shop, relates ths London Chronicle. The chemist, placing a little chloroform wad near the invader, soon reduced it to a comatose condition. In color and shape it was much like a giant hornet, with a very long sting. It was a specimen of the giant-tailed wasp (Sirex gigans), which is getting much more common than it was some years ago. The larva is a wood-feeder, and is supposed to have been introduced to Great Britain in foreign timber. The perfect insect is about two inches in length, has four membra, nous wings, and long, yellow antennae. The body is blueblack, with yellow stripes, and the long boring apparatus used by the insect for piercing a hole into the timber in which to deposit its eggs has, to the uninitiated, the appearance of a terrible sting. When hatched, the grub bores its way into the interior of the timber, where it enjoys itself for years, or even longer.

Luck In Wall Street.

The case of the former Wall street messenger boy who has just paid $72,000 for a stock exchange seat out of his winnings In “war stocks” will long serve to point a moral -and adorn a tale of the magic possibilities of stock speculation. As against this concrete example of successful get-rich-quck finance, all the hard-luck experiences of the less fortunate and all the warnings about the snares and pitfalls of stock gambling will be as nothing. There was the unlucky case a few months ago of the bank'teller whose faith in war stock profits proved his ruin. But that is another Btory, and as opposed to it here is the more agreeable instance of the youth who has made good, and at thirty-one from the humblest of beginnings has reached the cherished role of all stock brokers' clerks. But it is to be noted that he mad* his fortune operating from the lnsid* and- not-from-the outside.—

Large Sum for Holstein Bull.

Oliver Gabana, the "Holstein king,’ paid $25,000 for a bull at an* tion sale. He has the greatest col lection of Holsteins In ths world.

LAND of ROMANCE and TRAGEDY

AMONG all the historic spots In the Southwest none Is quite so thrilling and entrancing as that along the old Santa Fe trail. Among those towering granite hills, buried In the silence of the Rockies, are to be found the ruins of Spanish palaces spacious and stately in their day. Here lie the bones of daring scouts like Kit Carson. Here lingering tribes cling to pueblos and till the fertile valleys in the most primitive fashion. Here live the clifT-dwellers — a remnant still wandering through rough-hewn granite halls deserted by their fathers in the long ago. Pages might be filled with the stories of the pioneers and frontiersmen of the mighty Southwest. No more picturesque character ever traversed this wilderness than Augustiniani—the Hermit of Old Baldy. John Mary Augustinianl was a hermit because of pious inclination. A nobleman by birth —the product of Italian aristocracy—he was, born of the nobility in Sizzario, Lombardy, Italy, in 1801. Under the impulse of religious zeal, he turned his back upon ■all the wealth and luxury of his Italian home, only to become a wanderer in strange and distant lands. Of this there is a legend, common in some fashion to the beginning of every reformer’s life. One day he was strolling in the garden of the estate. Suddenly he saw an apparition —the finger of the Virgin pointing toward regions far away. He must therefore lead a solitary life in life far from his native home. No cave-dweller In the Orient ever more certainly followed the path of destiny. After three years of earnest meditation, and at the age of twenty, with only staff in hand, he set out on foot to Rome. Seven long years he dwelt in the caves of Italy, and for five more years he wandered on foot all over Europe. About this time his thought turned toward a new continent, and he lan'ded on the shores of Venezuela. Here, still afoot, he traversed the Brazilian, .Chilean and Argentine countries. He then sought out his abode near the dangerous Orizaba volcano in Old Mexico. * In all these wanderings he became famous as a doctor and a priest among the wildest Indian tribes. Banished to Cuba. While doing his priestly work around the city of Orizaba, he was arrested by the civil authorities. A charge was trumped up against him and conviction followed. He was banished to the island of Cuba. From these shores he set sail for New York. He reached St. Louis in the opening of the sixties. These were the opening days when the intrepid pioneer blazed out the Santa Fe trail. Augustinianl began to dream of priesthood among the Indians in the distant West. He walked to Kansas City and on to Westport. By invitation of Gonzales, a wagon-train king of the historic trail, he found his way to Las Vegas, N. M. On reaching Las Vegas, he found a cave-home in Kearney’s Gap, west of town. The people thought him superhuman, but their coming broke the quietude he so much longed for. With only his .bag of meal, his books and his staff, he began his long journey toward the Owl mountains. There is a wellworn path on the very summit of Old Baldy about which there gathers a legend of the hermit priest: From breast to breast the story has passed, and to this day they say this is the path of the pious patriarch as he walked to and fro in hiß devout meditations. Amidst the snows of this immense altitude Augustiniana lived in pious solitude until the last tragic hour of l*is life in the summer of 1867. About the base of this famous peak lay the trading station of the Santa Fe. traiL Old Baldy overlooked the vast outstretching leagues of the BaubienMaxwell land grant, equal to three states the size of Rhode Island. In the very shadow of these heights, piled in such wondrous beauty, stood the Maxwell place* Where frontiersmen like Kit’ Carson, Dick Wootton, Don Jesus Abreau, Colonel St. Vrain and ex-Gov-ernor Boggs made their rendezvous for years. Amidst Old Baldy’s fastnesses were the famous hiding places of such desperate outlaws as Griego, Poncha, Clay Allison, Chunk, Coal Oil Jimmy, "Dong” Taylor, and scores of other bandits equally wild and fierce. Thus was Augustinianl environed by a motley and reckless citizenship. Story of the Hermit Near, the summit of Old Baldy there Is a perennial spring whose <?o!d and sparkling waters leap from beneath

INDIAN CLIFF DWELLINGS

its very crown. About these gUßhlng mountain waters there lingers the story of the hermit. It is said that when he first reached the Bummit, searching for a cave in which to he was almost famished on account of thirst. With his staff he smote a rock and from it sprang thiß beautiful stream that has not ceased to flow Bince that day. Though many thousands of feet above the valley, numbers sought his cave. Augustinianl erected fourteen huge crosses, the ruins of which still stand as silent monuments of his devotion and zeal. From among his curious and devout visitors he formed a society called the Brotherhood of the Holy Cross. His only exaction was a pilgrimage in May and September. They must ascend the peak and say prayer around these crosses. In the May pilgrimage of 1867, he made a farewell speech that crushed the hearts of his followers. It was then he-revealed to them the hand of destiny in his call to the land of Old Mexico. Before his departure he visited Father Baca of Las Cruces, who presented him with gold for his long journey. He sought meditation for the night in the Oregon mountains. Taking his farewell of Father Baca, he said: “Tofflght I will be in my cave and will build my last fire on the peak to tell you good-by. I will pray the rosary and I want you to do likewise with your people on the roofs of your houses. If you do not see the fire you may know that I am dead and may come tomorrow and get my books and property.- 1 - No fire was kindled on the peak that night. The next day a company ascended the heights. Amid the very clouds they found the body of the good old hermit, stricken through with many an arrow flung from the bows of the bloody Navajos.

APPLAUSE OF VARIOUS KINDS

Always Easy to Distinguish the Genuine From the Perfunctory or the Manufactured. j. , With nearly every successful address applause plays a leading part. There are several varieties of applause. The common variety is the perfunctory handclap—a poor, weak contribution which makes a butterfly look long-lived in comparison. A second variety is the charity offering of an audience to the oratorial beggar. The speaker ends a profound declaration with a pause which is next door to an open declaration of war if the audience doesn’t come across. Or he works himself up in a series of mental paroxysms which impels the auditors to rush to his rescue before, it is too late. All spellbinders pocket this variety of applause as real coin. Of course it is nothing of the kind. The genuine issue in laudation is a spontaneous and volcanic eruption of approval and delight. It blows out violently from the subterranean fires of folk, and when it has reached its climax there comes, suddenly and gorgeously from the midst of it second and more terrific explosion, and as this is reaching its highest point a • third and seismic spasm rockets up through bedlam and overwhelms everything and everybody. This is the real thing. It cannot be made to order and it cannot be counterfeited. The prearranged outbursts at> national political conventions following the nominations are pitiable attempts to manufacture it. Claques and coteries of devotees try occasionally to produce it mechanically. They never do successfully.—Victor Murdock in Collier’s Weekly.

"Now,” said the lawyer to a rag picker who had been arrested for stealing some fruit of a vender, “they have a sure case on you, and we must play safe. Have you any money?" "Ten dollars, boss.” “That’s good. I will get v you out of this. Ta-©very question, mind, every one* they ask you, Blmply answer 'Spoons.’ ” The pilferer complied perfectly, and as a result the judge angrily ordered the supposed fool released. Of course the. lawyer eagerly followed him from the courtroom. “My man, you played-dt fine. But for my smartness you’d be in the works. Where’s that ten dollars?” "Spoons,” said the thief, and hurried away.—R. H. Martin, Ohio.

Followed Instructions.