Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 109, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 May 1916 — The SEA WOLF [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The SEA WOLF

by JACK LONDON

cotyrtiewtr <*v JACK LONDON

SYNOPSIS. —lB— 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 soul,” Wolf hazes a seaman and makes it the basis for a philosophic discussion with Hump. Hump's Intimacy with Wolf Increases. A carnival of brutality breaks loose «ln the ship. Wolf proves himself the master brute. Hump is made mate on the hell-ship and proves 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, but Wolf stands away and leaves them to drown. Maude Brewster, the rescued girl, sees the cook towed overside to give him a bath and his foot bitten off by a shark as ‘he Is hauled aboard. She begins to realize her danger at the hands of Wolf. Van Weyden realizes that he loves Maude. Wolf’s brother. ‘Death Larsen, comes on the sealing grounds in the steam sealer Macedonia, “hogs” the sea, and Wolf captures several of his boats. The Ghost runs away in a fog. Wolf furnishes liquor to the prisoners. He attacks Maude. Van Weyden attempts to kill him and fails. Wolf Is suddenly stricken helpless by the return of a blinding head trouble, and with all hands drunk and asleep Van Weyden and Maude escape In a small boat together. CHAPTER XXlV—Continued. I had had no sleep for forty-eight hours. I -was wet and chilled to the marrow, till I felt more dead than alive. My body was stiff from exertion as well as from cold, and my aching muscles gave me the severest torture whenever I used them, and I used them continually. And all the time we were being driven off into the northwest, directly away from Japan toward bleak Bering sea. Maud’s condition was pitiable. She sat crouched in the bottom of the boat, her lips blue, her face gray and plainly showing the pain she suffered. But ever her eyes looked bravely at me, and ever her lips uttered brave words. The worst of the storm must have blown that night, though little I noticed it. I had succumbed and slept where I sat in the stern-sheets. The morning of the fourth day found the wind diminished to a gentle whisper, the sea dying down and the sun shining upon us. Oh, the blessed sun! How we bathed our poor bodies in its delicious warmth, reviving like bugs -and crawling things after a storm. We smiled again, said amusing things and waxed optimistic over our situation, Yet it was, if -anything, worse than ever. Came days of storm, days and nights of storm, when the ocean menaced us with its roaring whiteness, and the wind smote our struggling boat with a Titan’s buffets. It was in such a storm, and the worst we had experienced, that what I saw I could not at first believe. Days and nights of sleeplessness and anxiety had doubtless turned my head. I looked back at Maud, to identify myself, as it were, in time and space. Again I turned my face to leeward, and again I saw the jutting promontory, black and high and naked, the raging surf that broke about its base and beat its front high up with spouting fountains, the black and forbidding coast line running toward the southeast and fringed with a tremendous scarf of white. "Maud,” I said. “Maud.” She turned her head and beheld the sight. “It cannot be Alaska!" she cried. “Alas, no,” I answered, and asked, “Can you swim?" She shook her head. “Neither can I,” I said. “So we must get ashore without swimming in some opening between the rocks through which we can drive the boat and clamber out. But we must be quick—and sure." I spoke with a confidence she knew I did not feel, for she looked at me with that unfaltering gaze of hers and said: “I have not thanked you yet for all you have done for me, but —” She hesitated, as if in doubt how best to word her gratitude. “Well?” I said, brutally, for was not quite pleased with her thanking me. "You might help me,” she smiled. “To acknowledge your obligations before you die? Not at all. We are not going to die. We shall land on that island, and we shall be snug and sheltered before the day is done.” I spoke stoutly, but I did not believe a word. Nor was I prompted to lie through fear. I felt no fear, though I was sure of death in that boiling surge amongs the rocks which was rapidly growing nearer. It was impossible to claw off that shore. The wind would instantly capsize the boat; the seas would swamp it the moment it fell into the trough; and, besides, the sail, lashed to the spare oars, dragged in the sea ahead of us, as a sea-anchor. Instinctively we drew closer together in the bottom of the boat. I ifelt her mittened hand come out to mine. And thus, without speech, we waited the end. We,were not far off the line the wind made with the western ( edge of the promontory, and I watched in the hope that gome set of the current or send of the sea would drift us past before we reached the surf. . “We shall go clear," I said, with a

confidence which 1 knew deceived neither of us. “By God, we will go clear!” I cried, five minutes later. The oath left my lips in my excitement —the first, I do believe, in my ljfe, unless "trouble it," an expletive of my youth, be accounted an oath. “I beg your pardon,” I said. "You have convinced me of your sincerity,” she said, with a faint smile. “I do know, now, that we shall go clear.” I had seen a distant headland past the extreme edge of the promontory, and as we looked we could see grow the intervening coastline of what was evidently a deep cove. At the same time there broke upon our ears a continuous and mighty bellowing. It par took of the magnitude and volume of distant thunder, and it came to us directly from leeward, rising above the crash of the surf and traveling directly in the teeth of the storm. As we passed the point the whole cove burst upon our view, a half-moon of white sandy beach which broke a huge surf, and which was covered with myriads of seals. It was from them that the great bellowing went up. rookery 1" I cried. 'Now are we indeed saved. There must be men and cruisers to protect them from the seal-hunters. Possibly there is a station ashore." But as I studied the surf which beat upon the beach, I said, “Still bad, but not so bad. And now, if the gods be truly kind, we shall drift by that next headland and come upon a perfectly sheltered beach, where we may land without wetting our feet." And the gods were kind. The first and second headlands were directly in line with the southwest wind; but once around the second —and we went perilously near—we picked up the third headland, still in line with the wind and with the other two. But the cove that intervened! It penetrated deep into the land, and the tide, setting in, drifted us under the shelter of the point. Here the sea was calm, save for a heavy but smooth groundswell, and I took in the seaanchor and began to row— __ Here were no seals whatever. The boat’s stem touched the hard shingle. I sprang out, extending my hand to "Maud - . The hext mdment she was side me. As my fingers released hers, she clutched for my arm hastily. At the name moment I swayed, as about to fall, to the sand. This was the startling effect of the cessation of motion. We had been' so long upon the moving, rocking sea that the stable land'was a shock to us. We expected the beach to lift up this way and that, and the rocky walls to swing back and forth like the sides of a ship; and when we braced ourselves, automatically, for these various expected movements, their non-occurrence quite overcame, our equilibrium. “I really must sit down,” Maud said, with a nervous laugh and a dizzy gesture, and forthwith she sat down on the sand. I attended to making the boat secure and joined her. Thus we landed on Endeavor island, as we came to it, landsick from long custom of the sea. CHAPTER XXV. I boiled the water, but it was Maud who made the coffee. And how good it was! My contribution was canned beef fried with (crumbled sea biscuit and water. The breakfast was a success, and we sat about the fire much longer than enterprising explorers should have done, sipping the hot black coffee and talking over opr situation. I was confident that we should find a station in some one of the coves, for I knew that the rookeries of Bering sea were thus guarded; but Maud advanced the theory—to prepare me for disappointment, I do believe, if disappointment were to come —that we had discovered an unknown rookery. She was in very good spirits, however, and made quite merry in accepting our plight as a grave one. “If you are right,” I said, “then we must prepare to winter here. Our food will not last, but there are the seals. They go away In the fall, so I must soon begin to lay In a supply of meat. Then there will be huts to build and driftwood to gather. Also, we shall try out seal fat for lighting purposes. Altogether, we’ll have our hands full if we find the island is uninhabited. Which we shall not, I know.” But she was right. We sailed with a beam wind along the Bhore, searching the coves with our glasses And landing occasionally, without finding a sign of human life. There were no beaches on the southern shore, and by early afternoon we rounded the black promontory and completed the circumnavigation of the island. I estimated its circumference at twenty-five miles, its width varying from two tQ five mises; while my most conservative calculation placed on its beaches two hundred thousand seals. This brief description is all that Endeavor island merits. Damp and soggy where it was not sharp and rocky, buffeted by storm winds and lashed

by the sea, with the air continually a-tremble with the bellowing of two hundred thousand amphibians, it was a melancholy and miserable sojourning place. Maud, who had prepared me for disappointment, and who had been sprightly and vivacious all day. broke down as we landed in our own little cove. She strove bravely to hide it from me, but while I was kindling another fire I knew she was stifling her sobs in the blankets under the sail-tent. It was my turn to be cheerful, and I played the part to the best of my ability, and with such success that I brought the laughter back into her dear eyes, and song on her lips; for she sang to me before she went to an early bed. It was tne first time I had heard her sing, and I lay by the fire, listening and transported, for she was nothing if not an artist in everything she did, and her voice, though not strong, was wonderfully sweet and expressive. I slept to the boat, and I lay awake long that night, gazing up at the first stars I had seen in many nights and pondering the situation. Responsibility of this sort was a new thing to me. Wolf Larsen had been quite right. I had stood on my father’s legs. My lawyers and agents had taken care of my money for me. I had had no responsibilities at all. Then, on the Ghost I had learned to be responsible for myself. And now, for the first time in my life, 1 found myself responsible for someone else. And it was required of me that this should be the gravest of responsibilities, for she was the one woman in the world —the one small woman, as I loved to think of her. No wonder we called it Endeavor island. For two weeks we toiled at bulding a hut. Maud insisted on helping, and I could have wept over her bruised and bleeding hands. And still, I was proud of lifer because of it. There was something heroic about this gently bred woman enduring our terrible hardship and with her pit-

tance of strength bending to the tasks of a peasant woman. She gathered many of the stones which I built into the walls of the hut; also, she turned a deaf ear to my' entreaties when I begged her to desist. She compromised, however, by taking upon herself the lighter labors of cooking and gathering driftwood and moss for our winter’s supply. The hut’s walls rose without difficulty, and everything went smoothly until the problem of a roof confronted me. “Winters -used walrus skins on his hut,” I said. “There are the seals," she suggested. So next day the hunting began. I did not know how to shoot, but I proceeded to learn. And when I had expended some thirty shells for three seals, I decided that the ammunition would be exhausted before I acquired the ■ necessary knowledge. “We must club the seals,” I am nounced, when convinced of my poor marksmanship. “I have heard the sealers talk about clubbipg them.” “They are so pretty,” she objected. "I cannot bear to think of it being done. It is so directly brutal, you know; so different from shooting them." “That roof must go on,” I answered grimly. “Winter is almost here. It is our lives against theirs. It is unfortunate we haven’t plenty of ammunition, but I think, anyway, that they suffer less from being clubbed than from being all shot up. Besides, I shall do the clubbing." The upshot of the affair was that she accompanied me next morning. I rowed into the adjoining cove and up to the edge of the beach. There were seals all about ns in the water, and the bellowing thousands on the beach compelled us to shout at each other to make ourselves heard. “I know men club them," I - said, trying to reassure myself and gazing doubtfully at a large bull, not thirty feet away, upreared on, his fore-flip-pers and regarding me intently. “But the question is. How do they club them?" “It Just comes to me," she said, “that Captain Larsen was telling me how the men raided the rookeries. They drive the seals, in small herds, a short distance inland before they killthem." • A “1 don’t care to undertake the herding of one of thbse harems," I objected. i ———- — “But there are the holluschickie,“ she said. “The nolluschickie haul out by themselves, and Doctor Jordan

says that paths are lelt between the harems, and that as long as the holtoachickie keep strictly tc th» V*<h they are unmolested by the masters of the harem." "There’s one now,” t said, pointing to a young bull in the water. “Let s watch him, and follow him if he hauls out." He swam directly to the beach and clambered out into a small opening between two harems, the masters of which made warning noises but did not attack him. We watched him travel slowly inward, threading about among the harem* along what must have been the path. - A quarter of a mile inland we came upon the holluschickie —sleek young bulls, living out the loneliness of their bachelorhood and gathering strength against the day when they would fight their way into the ranks of the benedicts. Everything now went smoothly. I seemed to know just what to do and how to do it. Shouting, making threatening gestures with my club, and even prodding the lazy ones* I quickly cut out a score of the young bachelors from their companions. Whenever one made an attempt to break back toward the water, I headed it off. Maud took an active part in the drive, and with her cries and flourishings of the broken oar was of considerable assistance. I noticed, though, that whenever one looked tired and lagged, she let it slip past. But I noticed, also, whenever one with a show of fight, tried to break past, that her eyes glinted and showed bright, and she rapped it smartly with her club. “My, it’s exciting!” she cried, pausing from sheer weakness. “I think I’ll sit down.” I drove the little herd (a dozen strong, now, what of the escapes she had permitted) a hundred yards farther on; and by the time she joined, me I had finished the slaughter and was beginning to skin. An hour later we went proudly back along the path between the harems. And twice again we came down the path burdened with skins, till I thought we had enough to roof the hut. I set the sail, laid one tack out of the cove, and on the other tack made our own little inner cove. “It’s just like home-coming," Maud said, as I ran the boat ashore. I heard her words with a responsive thrill, it was all so dearly intimate and natural, and I said: "It seems as though I have lived this life always. The world of books and bookish folk.is very vague, more like a dream memory than an actuality. I surely have hunted and forayed and fought all the days of my life. And you, too, seem a part of it. You are _- i was on the verge of saying, “my woman, my mate,' but glibly changed it to— “standing the hardship well.” But her ear had cdught the flaw. She reGOgnized a flight that midmost broke. She gave me a quick look. “Not that. You were saying—?" “That the American Mrs. Meynell was living the life of a savage and living it quite successfully," I said easily (TO BE CONTINUED.)

And Thus, Without Speech, We Awaited the End.