Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 101, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 April 1916 — The SEA WOLF [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The SEA WOLF

by JACK LONDON

SYNOPSIS. Humphrey Van Weyden, critic and dilettante, finds himself aboard the sealing schooner Ghost, Captain Wolf Larsen, bound to Japan waters. The captain makes him cabin boy '‘for the good of his aoul.“ The cockney cook. Mugridge steals his money. Cooky is jealous of Hump and hazes him. Wolf hazes a seaman and makes it the basis for a philosophic discussion with Hump. Cooky and Hump whet knives at each other. Hump’s intimacy with Wolf increases. Wolf sketches the story of his life, dlscuaaes the Bible and Omar, and illustrates the instinctive love of life by choking Hump nearly to death. A carnival of brutality breaks loose in the ship. Wolf proves himself the master brute, is knocked overboard and wins clear In a tight in the forecastle. Hump dresses Wolf s wounds and, despite his protest, is .made mate on the hell-ship.- Mr. Van W eyden tries to learn his duties as mate. Van Weyden proves by his conduct in a blow, with all hands out in the boats among the seal herd, that he has learned to stand on his own legs.” Two men desert the vessel in one of the small boats. A young woman and four men, survivors of a steamer wreck, are rescued from a small boat. The deserters are sighted. Ibut Wolf stands away and leaves them to drown. Maude Brewster, the rescued girl, and Van Weyden find they know each other's work. They talk together of a world alien to Wolf.-- Maude sees Mugridge towed overside in a bowline to give him a bath.

CHAPTER XlX—Continued. —r Mugridge had heard the Kanaka s warning cry and was screaming madlly. I could see a black fln cutting the water and making for him with greater swiftness than he was being pulled aboard. It was an even toss whether the shark or we would get him, and it was a matter of moments. When Mugridge was directly beneath us, the stern descended the slope of a passing wave, thus giving the advantage to the shark. Wolf Larsen threw his strength into one tremendous jerk. The cockney’s body left the water; so did part of the shark’s. He drew up his legs, and the man-eater seemed no more than barely to touch one foot, sinking back into the water with a splash. But at the moment of contact Thomas Mugridge cried out Then he came in like a fresh-caught fish on a line, clearing the rail generously and striking the deck in a heap, on hands and knees, and rolling over. But a fountain of blood was gushing forth. The right foot was missing, amputated neatly at the ankle. I looked instantly to Maud Brewster, iHer face waa white, her. eyes dilated with horror. She was gazing, not at Thomas Mugridge, but at Wolf Larsen. And he was aware of it, for he said, with one of his short laughs: “Man-play, Miss Brewster. Somewhat rougher, I warrant, than what you have been used to, but still —manplay. The shark was not in the reckoning. It —” But at this juncture, Mugridge, who had lifted his head and ascertained the extent of his loss, floundered over on the* deck and buried his teeth in Wolf -Larsen’s leg. Wolf Larsen stooped, coolly, to the cockney, and pressed with thumb and finger at the rear of the jaws and below the ears. The jaws opened with reluctance, and Wolf Larsen stepped free. “As I was saying,” he went on, as though nothing unwonted had happened, “the shark was not in the reckoning. It was —ahem —shall we say Providence?”

We walked to the break of the poop, where she turned and faced me. 1 glanced around to see that no one was within hearing distance. “What is it?” I asked gently; but the expression of determination on her face did not relax. “I can readily understand,” she began, “that this morning’s affair was largely an accident; but I have been talking with Mr. Haskins. He tells ; me that the day we were rescued, even while 1 was in the cabin, two mqn were drowned, deliberately drowned — murdered.”. There was a query in her voice, and she faced me accusingly, as though I were guilty of the deed, or at least a party to it. "The information is quite correct,” I answered. “The two men were murdered.’’ ? “And you permitted it!” she cried. “I was unable to prevent it, is a better way of phrasing it,” I replied, etill gently. “But you tried to prevent it?” There was an emphasis on the “tried,” and a pleading little note in her voice. “Oh, but you didn’t,’’ she hurried on, divining my answer. “But why didn’t you?” I shrugged my shoulders. “You must remember, Miss Brewster, that you are a new inhabitant of this little world, and that you do not yet understand the laws which operate within it You bring with you certain fine conceptions of humanity, manhood, conduct, and such things; but here you find them misconceptions. I have found it so,” I added, with an involuntary sigh. She shook her head incredulously. „ “What JMMId you advise, t-hen J asked. “That I should take a knife, or a gun or an ax, and kill this man?” Shs half started back. “No, not that!" “Then what should I do? Kill myself r “You speak in purely materialistic

terms,” sho objected. “There is such a thing as moral courage, and moral courage is never without effect.” “Ah,” I smiled, “you advise me to kill neithep him nor myself, but to let him kill me.” I held up my hand as she was about to speak. “For moral courage is a worthless asset on this little floating world. Leach, Bho of the men who were murdered, had moral courage to an unusual degree. So had the other man, Johnson. Not only did it not stand them in good stead, but it destroyed them. And so with me if I should exercise what little moral courage I may possess. “You must understand, Miss Brewster, and understand clearly, that this man is a monster. He is without conscience. Nothing is sacred to him, nothing is too terrible for him to do. It was due to his whim that I was detained aboard in the first place. It Is due to his whim that I am still alive. I do nothing, can do nothing, because I am a slave to this monster, as you are now a him; because I desire to live, as you will desire to live; because I cannot fight and overcome him, just as you will not be able to fight and overcome him." She waited for me to go on. “Dispense with all the moral courage you can," I said briskly. “Don’t arouse animosity. Be quite friendly with him, talk with him, discuss literature and art with him —he is fond of such things. You will find him an Interested listener and no fool. And for your own sake try to avoid witnessing, as much as you can, the brutalities of the ship. It will make it easier for you to act your part.” “I am to lie,” she said in steady, rebellious tones, “by speech and actidn to He." Wolf Larsen had separated from Latimer and was coming toward us. I was desperate. “Please, please understand me," I said hurriedly, lowering my voice. “All your experience of men and things is worthless here. You have already managed me with your eyes, commanded me with them. But don t try it on Wolf Larsen. You could as easily control a lion, while he would make a mock of you. He would— I have always been proud of the fact that I discovered him," I- said, turningthe conversation as Wolf Larsen stepped on the poop and joined us. “The editors were afraid of him and the publishers would have none of him. But I knew, and his genius and my Judgment were vindicated when he made that magnificent hit with his ‘Forge.’ ” “And it was a newspaper poem,” she said glibly. “It did happen to see the light in a newspaper, ’ I replied, “but not because the magazine editors had been denied a glimpse at it.” “We were talking of Harris," I said to Wolf Larsen. “Oh, yes,” he acknowledged. “I remember the ‘Forge.’ Filled with pret-

ty sentiments and an almighty faith in human illusions. By the way, Mr. Van Weyden, you’d better look in on Cooky. He’s complaining and restless.” Thus was I bluntly dismissed from the poop, only to find Mugridge sleeping soundly from the morphine I had given him. I made no haste to return on deck, and when I did I was gratified to see Miss Brewster in animated conversation with Wolf Larsen. As I say, the sight gratified me. She was following my advice. And yet I was conscious pf a slight shock or hurt in that she was able to do the thing I had begged her to do and which she had notably disliked-

CHAPTER XX.

Brave winds, blowing fair, swiftly drove the Ghost northward into the seal herd-.- The hunting was perilous; but the boats, lowered day after day. were swallowed up in the gray obscurity, and were seen no more till nightfall, and often not till long after,

when they would creep in like sea wraiths, one by one, out of the gray Wainwright, the hunter whom Wolf Larsen had stolen with boat and men. took advantage of the veiled sea and escaped. He disappeared one morning in the encircling fog with his two men, and we never saw them again, though it was not many days when we learned that they had passed from schooner to schooner until they finally regained their own. I had read sea romances tn my time, wherein figured, as a matter of course, the lone woman in the midst of a shipload of men; but I learned, now, that I had never comprehended the deeper significance of such a situation —the thing the writers harped upon and exploited so thoroughly. And here it was, how, and I was face to face with it. That it should be as vital as possible, it required no more than that the woman should be Maud Brewster, who now charmed me in person as she had long charmed me through her work. _ She was in striking contrast to Wolf Larsen. Each was nothing that the other was, everything that the other was not. I noted them walking the deck together one morning, and I likened them to the extreme ends of the human ladder of evolution —the one the culmination of all savagery, the other the finished product of the finest civilization. But this day, as I noted them pacing up and down, I saw that it was she who terminated the walk. It was in his eyes that I saw the cause of her perturbation. Ordinarily gray and cold and harsh, they were now warm and soft and golden, and all adance with the tiny lights that dimmed an<T faded, or welled up till the full orbs were flooded with a glowing radiance. Perhaps it was to this that the golden color was due; but golden his eyes were, enticing and masterful, at the same time luring and compelling, and speaking a demand and clamor of the blood which no woman, much less Maud Brewster, could misunderstand. Her own terror rushed upon me, and in that moment of fear, the most, terrible fear a man can experience, I knew that in Inexpressible ways she was dear to me. The knowledge that I loved her rushed upon me with the terror, and with both emotions gripping at my heart and causing my blood at the same time to chill and leap riotously, I felt myself drawn by a power without me and beyond me, and found my eyes returning against my will to gaze into the eyes of Wolf Larsen. But he had recovered himself. The golden color and the dancing lights were gone. Cold and gray and glittering they were as he bowed brusquely and turned away. “I am afraid," she whispered, with a shiver. “I am so afraid." I, too, was afraid, and what of my discovery of how much she meant to me my mind was in a turmoil; but I succeeded in answering quite calmly: “All will come right, Miss Brewster. Trust me, it will come right."

She answered with a grateful little smile that sent my heart pounding, and started to descend the companion stairs. For a long while I remained standing where she had left me. There was imperative need to adjust myself, to consider the significance of the changed aspect of things. It had come, at last, love had come, when I least expected it and under the most forbidding conditions. Of course, my philosophy had always recognized the Inevitableness of the love call sooner or later; but long years of bookish silence had made me inattentive and unprepared. And now it had come! In what could have been no less than an ecstasy, I left my post at the head of the companionway and started along the deck, murmuring to myself those beautiful lines of Mrs. Browning:

I lived with visions for my company Instead of men and women years ago. And found them gentle mates, nor thought to know A sweeter music than they played to me. But the sweeter music was playing in my ears, and I was blind and oblivious to all about me. The sharp voice of Wolf Larsen aroused me. “What the hell are you up to?” he was demanding. I had strayed forward where the sailors were painting, and I came to myself to find my advancing foot on the verge of overturning a paint pot. “Sleep-walking, sunstroke, what?” he barked. “No; indigestion," I retorted, and continued my walk as if nothing untoward had occurred. At the midday dinner, Wolf Larsen informed the hunters that they were to eat henceforth in the steerage. It was an unprecedented thing on sealing schooners, where it is the custom for the hunters to rank unofficially as officers. He gave no reason, but his motive was obvious- enough. Horner and Smoke had been displaying a gallantry toward Maud Brewster, ludicrous in itself and inoffensive to her, but to him evidently distasteful. 9 The announcement was received with black silence, though the other four hunters glanced significantly at the two who had been the cause of their banishment. Jock Horner, quiet as was his way, gave no sign; but the blood surged darkly across Smoke's forehead, and he half opened his mouth to speak. Wolf Larsen was watching him, waiting for him, the steely glitter in his eyes. "Apythlng-toeay?” fee demanded aggressively. - -- - It was a challenge, but Smoke refused to accept it. o “About what?” he asked, so innocently that Wolf Larsen was disconcerted, while the others smiled. “Oh, nothing,” Wolf Larsen said

lamely. *1 just thought you might want to register a kick.” “About what?” asked the imperturbable Smoke’s mates were now smiling broadly. His captain could have killed him/ and I doubt not that blood would have flowed had not Maud Brewster been present. For that matter, it was her presence which enabled Smoke to act as he did. -He was too discreet and cautious a man to incur Larsen’s anger at a time when that anger could be expressed in terms stronger than words. I was in fear that a struggle might take place, but a cry from the helmsman made it easy for the situation to save itself. "Smoke ho!" the cry came down the open companionway. “How’s it bear?” Wolf Larsen called up. “Dead astern, sir.” “Maybe it’s a Russian,” suggested Latimer. His words brought anxiety into the faces of the other hunters. A Russian could mean but one thing— a cruiser. The hunters, never more than roughly aware of the position of the ship, nevertheless knew that we were close to the boundaries of the forbidden sea. while Wolf Larsen’s record as a poacher was notorious. All eyes centered upon him. “We’re dead safe,” he assured them with a laugh. “No salt mines this

time, Smoke. But I’ll tell you what— I’ll lay odds of five to one it’s the Macedonia.” No one accepted his offer and he went on. “In which event, I’ll lay ten to one there’s trouble breezing up." “No, thank you,” Latimer spoke up. ‘Tdoh’tobjectto losing my money, bitt I like to get a run for it, anyway. There never was a time when there wasn’t trouble when you and that brother of yours got together, and I’ll lay twenty to one on that." _____ (TO BE CONTINUED.)

Wolf Larsen Had Separated From Latimer and Was Coming Toward Us.

"Anything to Say?” He Demanded Aggressively.