Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 113, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 May 1916 — The SEA WOLF [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The SEA WOLF

by JACK LONDON

CHAPTER XXVl—Continued. A peep at Wolf Larsen showed me that he had not moved. A bright thought struck me. I stole into his state room and possessed myself of his revolvers. There were no other weapons, though I thoroughly ransacked the three remaining staterooms. To make sure, I returned and went through the steerage and forecastle, and In the galley gathered up all the sharp meat and vegetable knives. Then I bethought me of the great yachtman’s knife he always carried, and I came to him and spoke to him, first softly, then loudly. He did not move. I bent over and took It from his pocket. I breathed more freely. He had no arms with which to attack me from a distance; while I, armed, could always forestall him should he attempt to grapple me with his terrible gorilla arms. Filling a coffee pot and frying pan with part of my plunder, and taking some chinaware from the cabin pantry, I left Wolf Larsen lying in the sun and went ashore. Maud was still asleep. I blew up the embers (we had not yet arranged a winter kitchen) and quite feverishly cooked the breakfast. Toward the end, I heard her moving about within the hut, making her toilet. Just as all was ready and the coffee poured, the door opened and she came forth. "It’s not fair of you,” was her greeting. “You are usurping one of my prerogatives. You know you agreed that the cooking should be mine, and —” “But Just this once," I pleaded. “If you promise not to do it again,” she smiled. “Unless, of course, you have grown tired of my poor efforts." To my delight she never once looked toward the beach, and I maintained the banter with such success that all unconsciously she sipped coffee from the china cup, ate fried evaporated potatoes, and spread marmalade on her biscuit. But it could not last. I saw the surprise that came over her. She had discovered the china plate from which she was eating. She looked over the breakfast, noting detail after detail. Then she looked at me, and her face turned slowly toward the beach. “Humphrey!” she cried. • The old unnamable terror mounted into her eyes. "Is —he —?” she quavered. I nodded my head. CHAPTER XXVII. We waited all day for Wolf Larsen to come ashore. It was an Intolerable period of anxiety. Each moment one or the other of us cast expectant glances toward the Ghost. But he did not come. He did not even appear on deck. “Perhaps it is his headache,” I said. "I left him lying on the poop. He may lie there all night. I think I’ll go and see.” Maud looked entreaty at me. “It is all right,” I assured her. “I shall take the revolvers. You know I collected every weapon on board.” “But there are his arms, bls hands, his terrible, tefrible hands!” she objected. And then she cried, "Oh, Humphrey, lam afraid of him! Don’t go —please don’t go!" She rested her hand appealingly on min&, and sent my pulse fluttering. My heart was surely in my eyes for a moment. The dear and lovely woman! And she was so much the woman, clinging and appealing, sunshine and dew to my manhood, rooting it deeper and sending through it the sap of a new strength. I was for putting my arm around her, as when in the dopr of the hut; but I considered, and refrained. “I shall not take any risks,” I said. “I’ll merely peep over the bow and see." She pressed my hand earnestly and let me go. But. the space on deck where I had left him lying was vacant. He had evidently gone below. That night we stood alternate watches, one of us sleeping at a time; for there was no telling what Wolf Larsen might do. He was certainly capable of anything. The next day we waited, and the next, and still he mad** no sign. “These headaches of hls„ these attacks," Maud said, on the afternoon of the fourth day; “perhaps he is ill, very ill. He may be dead.” I waited, smiling inwardly at the woman of her which compelled a solicitude for Wolf Larsen, of all creatures. Where was her solicitude for me. I thought—for me whom she had been afraid to have merely peep aboard? She was too subtle not to follow the trend of my silence. And she was as direct as she was subtle, . "You must go aboard, Humphrey, and find out,” she said. "And If you want to laugh at me, you have my consent and. forgiveness.” I arose obediently and went down the beach. "Do be careful," she called after me. I waved my arm from the forecastle head and dropped down to the deck. I took off my shoes and went noiseJessly aft la my stocking feet Cau-

tiously descending, I found the cabin deserted. The door to his stateroom was closed. At first I - thought of knocking, then I remembered my os tenslble errand and resolved to carry It out. Carefully avoiding noise, I lifted the trapdoor in the floor and set it to one side. The slop chest, as well as the provisions, was stored in the lazaretto, and I took advantage of the opportunity to lay in a stock of underclothing. As I emerged from the lazaretto I heard sounds in Wolf Larsen’s stateroom. I crouched and listened. The doorknob rattled. Furtively, instinctively, I slunk back behind the table and drew and cocked my revolver. The door swung- open and he came forth. Never had I seen so profound a despair as that which I saw on his sac face of Wolf Larsen the fighter, the strong man, the indomitable one. For all the world like a woman.wringing her hands, he raised his clenched fists and groaned. One fist unclosed, and the open palm swept across his eyes as though brushing away cobwebs. “God! God!” he groaned, and the clenched fists were raised again to the infinite despair with which his throat vibrated. It was horrible. I was trembling all over, and I could feel the shivers running up and down my spine and the sweat standing out on my forehead. Surely there can be little in this world more awful than the spectacle of a strong man in the moment when he is utterly weak and broken. But Wolf Larsen regained control of himself by an exertion of his remarkable will. And it was exertion. His whole frame shook with the struggle. He caught his breath once or twice and sobbed. Then he was successful. I could have thought him the old Wolf Larsen, and yet there was in his movements a vague suggestion of weakness and indecision. He started for the compaqionway, and stepped forward quite as I had been accustomed to see him do; and yet again, in his very walk, there seemed that suggestion of weakness and indecision. I rose swiftly to my feet, and, I know, quite unconsciously assumed a defiant attitude. He took no notice of me. Nor did lie notice the open trap. Before I could grasp the situation, or act, he had walked right into the trap. One foot was descending into the opening, while the other foot was Just on the verge of beginning the uplift. But when the descending foot

missed the solid flooring and felt vacancy beneath, it was the old Wolf Larsen and the tiger muscles that made the falling body spring across the opening, even as it fell, so that he struck on his chest and stomach, with arms outstretched, on the floor of the opposite side. The next instant he had drawn up his legs and rolled clear. But he rolled into my marmalade and underclothes and against the trapdoor. The expression on his face was one of complete comprehension. But before I could guess what he had comprehended, he had dropped the trapdoor into place, closing the lazaretto. Then I understood. He thought he had me inside. Also, he was blind, blind as a bat. I watched him, breathing carefully so that he should not hear me. He stepped quickly to his stateroom. I saw his hand miss the doorknob by an inch, quickly fumble for it, and find IL This was my chance. I tiptoed across the cabin and to the top of the stairs. He came back, dragging a heavy sea chest, which he deposited on top of the trap. Not content with this, he fetched a second chest and placed it on top of the first. Then he gathered up the marmalade and underclothes and put them on the table. When he started up the companionway, I retreated; silently rolling over on top of the cabin. He shoved the slide part way back and rested his arms on it, his body

still in the companionway. His attitude was of one looking forward the length of the schooner, or staring, rather, for his eyes were fixed and unblinking. I was only five feet away and directly in what should have been bis line of vision. It was uncanny. I felt myself a ghost, what of my invisibility. I waved my hand back and forth, of course without effect; but when the moving shadow fell across his face I saw at once that he was susceptible to the impression. His face became more expectant and tense as he tried to analyze and identify the impression. Giving over hiq attempt to determine the shadow, he stepped on deck and started forward, walking with a swiftness and confidence which surprised me. And still there was that hint of the feebleness of the blind in his walk. I knew it now for what it was. To my amused chagrin, he discovered my shoes on the forecastle head and brought them back with him into the galley. I watched him build the fire and set about cooking food for himself; then I stole into the cabin for my marmalade and underclothes, slipped back past the galley, and climbed down to the beach to deliver my barefoot report CHAPTER XXVIII. "It’s too bad the Ghost has lost her masts. Why, we could sail away in her. Don’t you think we could, Humphrey?” I sprang excitedly to my feet “I wonder, I wonder," I repeated, pacing up and down. Maud’s eyes were shining with anticipation as they followed me. She had such faith in me! And the thought of it was so much added power. I remembered Michelet’s “To man, woman is as the earth .was to her legendary son; he has but to fall down and kiss her breast and he is strong again.” For the first time I knew the wonderful truth of his words. Why, I was living them. Maud was all this to me, an unfailing source of strength and courage. I had but to look at her, or think of her, and be strong again. "It can be done, it can be done,” I was thinking and asserting aloud. “What men have done, I can do; and if they have never done this before, still I can do it" "What? for goodness sake," Maud demanded. “Do be merciful. What is it you can do?” “We can do it," I amended. “Why, nothing else than put the masts back into the Ghost and sail away.” "Humphrey!" she exclaimed. And I felt as proud of my conception as if it were already a fact accomplished. “But how is it possible to be done?" she asked. “I don’t know," was my answer. "I know only that I am capable of doing anything these days.” I smiled proudly at her—too proudly, for she dropped her eyes and was for the moment silent. “But there is Captain Larsen," she objected. “ - “Blind and helpless," I answered promptly, waving him aside as a straw. "But those terrible hands of hist You know how he leaped across the opening of the lazaretto." “And you know also how I crept about and avoided him,’’ I contended gayly. “And lost your shoes.” “You’d hardly expect them to avoid Wolf Larsen without my feet inside of them.” We both laughed, and then went seriously to work constructing the plan whereby we were to step the masts of the Ghost and return to the world. Maud stood silently by my side, while I evolved In my mind the contrivance known among sailors as “shears.” But, though known to sailors, I Invented it there on Endeavor island. By crossing and lashing the ends of two spars, and then elevating them in the air like an inverted “V,” I could get a point above the deck to which to make fast my hoisting tackle. To this hoisting tackle I could. If necessary, attach a second hoisting tackle. And then there was the windlass! Maud saw that I had achieved a solution and her eyes warmed sympathetically. “What are you going to do?” she asked. “Clear that raffle,” I answered, pointing to the tangled wreckage overside. Ah, the decisiveness, the very sound of the words, was good in my ears. “Clear that raffle!” Imagine so salty a phrase on the lips of the Humphrey Van Weyden of a few months gone! There must have been a touch of the melodramatic In my pose and voice, for Maud smiled. Her sense of humor was really the artist’s instinct for proportion. “I’m sure I’ve heard.it before, somewhere, in books," she murmured gleefully. I had an instinct for proportion myself, and I collapsed forthwith, descending from the dominant pose of a master of matter to a state of humble confusion which was, to say the least, very, miserable. ' I___ Her hand leaped out at once to mine. ' i “I’m so sorry," she said. “No need to be,” I gulped. “It does me good. There’s too much of the , schoelboy in me. All of which is neither here nor there. What we’ve got to do is actually and literally to clear that raffle. If yen’ll come with me in the boat, we’ll get to work and straighten things out.” ‘"When the topmen clear the raffle with their claspknives in their

teeth,”’ she quoted at me; and for the rest of the afternoon we made merry over our labor. Her task was to hold the boat in position while I worked at the tangle. And such a tangle—halyards, sheets, guys, downbauls, shrouds, stays, all washed about and back and forth and through, and twined and knotted by the sea. I cut no more than was necessary, and what with passing the long ropes under and around the booms and masts, of unreeving the halyards and sheets, or coiling down in the boat and uncoiling in order to pass through another knot in the bight, I was soon wet to the skin. The sails did require some cutting, and the canvas, heavy with water, tried my strength severely; but I succeeded before nightfall in getting it all spread out on the beach to dry. We were both very tired when we knocked off for supper, and we had done good work, too, though to the eye it appeared insignificant. Next morning, with Maud as able assistant, I went into the hold of the Ghost to clear the steps of the mast

butts. We had no more than begun work when the sound of my knocking and hammering brought Wolf Larsen. “Hello below!” he cried down the open hatch. The sound of his voice made Maud quickly draw close to me, as for protection, and she rested one hand on my arm while we parleyed. "Hello on deck,” I replied. "Good morning to you.” “What are you doing down there?” he demanded. “Trying to scuttle my ship for me?” “Quite the opposite; I’m repairing her,” was my answer. "But what in thunder are you repairing?” There was puzzlement in his voice. "Why. I’m getting everything ready for restepping the masts,” I replied easily, as though it were the simplest project imaginable. “It seems as though you’re standing on your own legs at last, Hump, ’ we heard him say; and then for some time he was silent. “But I say, Hump,” he called down, “you can’t do it." “Oh, yes I can,” I retorted. "I’m doing it now.” “But this is my vessel, my particular property. What if I forbid you?” “You forget,” I replied. “You are no longer the biggest bit of the ferment. You were, once, and able to eat me, as you were pleased to phrase it, but there has been a diminishing, and I am now able to eat you. The yeast has grown stale." He gave a short, disagreeable laugh. “I see you’re working my philosophy back on me for all it is worth. But don’t make the mistake of underestimating me. For your own good I warn you.” “Since when have you become a philanthropist?” I queried. “Confess, now, in warning me for my own good, that you are very inconsistent” He Ignored my sarcasm, saying, “Suppose I clap the hatch on, now? You won’t fool me as you did in the lazaretto." (TO BE CONTINUED.)

He Shoved the Slide Part Way Back and Rested His Arms In It.

The Sound of His Voice Made Maud Quickly Draw Close to Me.