Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 117, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 May 1916 — The SEA WOLF [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The SEA WOLF

by JACK LONDON

CHAPTER XXXl—Continued. —22— "Feigning again?" I demanded angrily. He shook hip head, his stern mouth shaping the strangest, twisted smile. It was indeed a twisted smile, tor it was on the left side only, the facial muscles of the right side moving not at aIL "That was the last play of the Wolf.” he said. "I am paralyzed. I shall never walk again. Oh, only on the other side," he added, as though divining the suspicious glance I flung at his left leg, the knee of which had just then drawn up and elevated the blankets. / "It’s unfortunate," he continued. “I’d liked to have done for you first. Hump. And I thought I had that much left in me." "But how can you account for it?" I “Where is the seat of your trouM?” “‘Til brain," he said at once. "It was those cursed headaches brought It on.” “Symptoms," I said. He nodded his head. “There is no accounting for it. I was never sick in my life. Something’s gone wrong with my brain. A cancer, a tumor, or something of that nature —a thing that devours and destroys. It’s attacking my nerve centers, eating them up, bit by bit, cell by cell —from the pain.”

“The motor centers, too,” I suggested. “So it would seem, and the curse of it is that I must lie here, conscious, mentally unimpaired, knowing that the lines are going down, breaking bit by bit communication with the world. I cannot see, hearing and feeling are leaving me, at this rate I shall soon cease to speak; yet all tlje time I shall be here, alive, active and powerless.” “When you say you are here, I’d suggest the likelihood of the soul,” 1 said. “Bosh!" was his retort. ‘lt simply means that in the attack on my brain the higher psychical centers are untouched. I can remember, I can thtnk and reason. When that goes, 1 go. I am not. The soul?” He broke out in mocking laughter, then tujped his left ear to the pillow i as a sign that he wished no further conversation. Maud and I went about our work oppressed by the fearful fate which had overtaken him —how fearful we were yet fully to realize. There was the awfulness of retribution about it Our thoughts were deep and solemn, and we spoke to each other scarcely above whispers. “You might remove the handcuffs,” he said that night, as we stood in consultation over him. “It’s dead safe. I’m a paralytic now. The next thing to watch out for is bed sores.” He smiled his twisted smile and Maud, her eyes wide with horror, was compelled to turn away her head. < “Do you know that your smile Is crooked?’’ I asked him; for I knew that she must attend him, and I wished to save her as much as possible. “Then I shall smile no more,” he said calmly. “I thought something was wrong. My right cheek has been numb all day. Yes, and I’ve had warnings of this for the last three days; by spells, my right side seemed going to sleep, sometimes arm or hand, sometimes leg or foot.” “So my smile is crooked?” he queried a short while after. “Well, consider henceforth that I smile internally, with my soul, if you please, my soul. Consider that I am smiling now.”

And for the space of several minutes he lay there, quiet, indulging his grotesque fancy. The man of him was not changed. It was the old. indomitable, terrible Wolf Larsen, imprisoned somewhere within that flesh which had once been so invincible and splendid. Now it bound him with insentient fetters, walling his soul in darkness and silence. blocking it from the world which to him had been a riot of action. N(j> more would he conjugate the verb “to do” in every mood and tense. “To be” was all that remained to him —to be, as he had defied death, without movement; to will, but not to execute; to think and reason and in the spirit of him to be as alive as ever, but In the flesh to be dead, quite dead. And yet, though I even removed the handcuffs, we could not adjust ourselves to his condition. Our minds Ssvolted. To us he was full of potenality. We knew not what to expect of him next, what fearful thing, rising above the flesh, he might break out and do. Our experience warranted this state of mind, and we went about our work with anxiety always upon us. I had solved the problem which had arisen through the shortness -of the shears. It was the morning of the .third day that I swung the foremast from the deck and proceeded to square its butt to fit the step. Here T was especially awkward. I sawed and chopped and chiseled the weathered wood till it had the appearance of having been gnawed by some gigantic mouse. But it fitted. “It Fill work, I know it will work," I cried.

“Do you know Doctor Jordan’s final test of truth?” Maud asked. I shook my head and paused In the act of dislodging the shavings which had drifted down my neck. “‘Can we make it work? Can we trust our lives to it?’ is the test.” "He is a favorite of yours," I said. "When I dismantled my old Pantheon and cast out Napoleon and Caesar and their fellows, I straightway erected a new Pantheon,” she answered gravely, “and the first I installed was Doctor Jordan.” "A modern hero.” "And a greater because modern.” she added. ‘How can the Old World heroes compare with ours!” I shook my head. We were too much alike in many things for argument. Our point of view and outlook on life at least were very like. “For a pair of critics we agree famously,” I laughed. "And as shipwright and able assistant,” she ldughed back. But there was little time for laughter in those days, what of our heavy work and of the awfulness of Wolf Larsen’s living death. He had received another stroke. He had lfist his voice, or he was losing it. He had only intermittent use of it. As he phrased it, the wires were like the stock market, now up, now down. Occasionally the wires were up and he spoke as well as ever, though slowly and heavily. Then speech would suddenly desert him, in the middle of a sentence perhaps, and for hours, sometimes. we would wait for the connec-

tion to be reestablished. He complained of great pain in his head, and it was during this period that he arranged a system of communication against the time when speech should leave him altogether—one pressure of the hand for “yes,” two for “no.” It was well that it was arranged, for by evening his voice had gone from him. By hand pressures, after that*, he answered our questions, and when he wished to speak he scrawled his thoughts with his left hand, quite legibly, on a sheet of paper. The fierce winter had now descended upon us. Gale followed gale, with snow and sleet and rain. The seals had started on their great southern migration, and the rookery was practically deserted. I worked feverishly. In spite of the bad weather, and of the wind which especially hindered me, I was on deck from daylight till dark and made substantial progress. I profited by my lesson learned through raising the shears and then climbing them to attach the guys. To the top of the foremast, Which was just lifted conveniently from the deck, I attached the rigging, stays and throat and peak halyards. As usual. I had underrated the amount of work involved in this portion of the taslC and two long days were necessary to complete it. And there was so much yet to be dope—the sails, for instance, which practically had to be made over.

While I toiled at rigging the foremast, Maud sewed on canvas, ready always to drop everything and come to my assistance when more hands than two were required. The canvas was heavy and hard, and she sewed with the sailor’s palm and three-cornered sail-needle. Her hands were soon sadly blistered, but she struggled bravely on, and in addition doing the cooking and taking care of the sick man. ' “A ng for superstition.” I said on Friday morning. “That mast goes in today." Everything was ready for the attempt. Carrying the boom-tackle to the windlass, I hoisted the mast nearly clear of the deck. Making this tackle fast, I took to the windlass the shears-tackle (which was connected with the .end of the boom) and with a few turns had the mast perpendicular and clear. . Maud clapped hands the Instant

she was relieved from bolding the turn, crying: “It works! It works! We'll trust our lives to it!” Then she assumed a rueful expression. “It’s not over the hole,” she said. "Will you have to begin all over?” I' smiled in superior fashion, and slacking away on the boom-tackle. I brought the butt of the mast into position directly over the hole in the deck. Then I gave Maud careful instructions for lowering away and went tnto'tha hold to the step on the schooner’s bottom. I called to her, and the mast moved easily and accurately. Square fitted into square. The mast wap stepped. 1 raised a shout, and she ran down to Bee. in the yellow lantern light we peered at what we had accomplished. We looked at each other, and our hands felt their way and clasped. The eyes of both of us, I think, were moist with the Joy of success. “It was done so easily after all,” I remarked. “All the work was in the preparation." “Ana all the wonder in the completion,” Maud add»»d. “I can scarcely bring myself to realize that that great mast is really up and in; that you have lifted it from the water, swung it through the air, and deposited it here where it belongs. It is a Titan's task.” “And they made themselves many Inventions,” 1 began merrily, then paused to snifT the air. I looked hastily at the lantern. It was not smoking. Again I sniffed. “Something is burning," Maud said, with sudden conviction. We sprang together for the ladder, but 1 raced past her to the deck. A dense volume of smoke was pouring out the steerage companionway. “The Wolf is not yet dead," I muttered to myself as I sprang down through the smoke. The source of the smoke must be very close to Wolf Larsen—my mind was made up to this, and I went straight to his bunk. As I felt about among his blankets, something hot fell on the back of my hand. It burned me, and I jerked my hand away. Then I understood. Through the cracks in the bottom of the upper bunk he had set fire to the mattress. He still retained suflßcient use of his left arm to do this. The damp straw of the mattress, fired from beneath and denied air, had been smouldering all the while.

As I dragged the mattress out of the bunk it seemed to disintegrate in mid-air, at the same time bursting into flames. I beat out the burning remnants of straw in the bunk, then made a dash for the deck for fresh air. Several buckets of water sufficed to put out the burning mattress in the middle of the steerage floor; and ten mTnutes tater. when the smoke trad fairly cleared, I allowed Maud to come below. Wolf Larsen was unconscious, but it was a matter of minutes for the fresh air to restore him. We were working over him, however, when he sighed for paper and pencil. “Pray do not interrupt me,” he wrote. “I am smiling.” “T am still a bit of the ferment, yon see,” he wrote a little later. “I am glad you are as small a bit as you are,” I said. “Thank you,” he wrote. “But just think of how much smaller I shall be before I die.” “And yet 1 am all here, Hump,” he wrote with a final flourish. “1 can think more clearly than ever in my lif9 before* Nothing to disturb me. Concentration is perfect. I am all here and more than here.” It was like a message from the night of the grave; for this man’s body had become his mausoleum. And there, in so strange sepulture, his spirit fluttered and li v ed. It would flutter and live till the last line of communication was broken, and after that who was to say how much longer it might continue to flutter and live’'

CHAPTER XXXII. “I think my left side is going,” Wolf Larsen wrote, the morning after his attempt to fire the ship. “The numbness is growing. I can hardly move my hand. You will have to speak louder. The last lines are going down." “Are you in pain?” I asked. I was compelled to repeat my question loudly before ho answered. “Not all the time.” The left hand stumbled slowly and painfully across the paper, and it was with extreme difficulty that we deciphered the scrawl. It was like a "spirit message,” such as are delivered at seances v t>f spiritualists for a dollar admission. "But I am still here, ail here,” the hand scrawled more slowly and painfully than ever. The pencil dropped, and we had to replace it in the hand. “When there is no pain I have perfect peace and quiet. I have never thought so clearly, 1 can ponder life and death like a Hindu sage.” “And immortality?” Maud queried loudly in the ear. Three times the hand essayed to write but fumbled hopelessly. The pencil Jell. In vain we tried to replace itr The .fingers could not close on it. Then Maud pressed and held the fingers about the pencil with her own hand, and the hand wrote, in large letters, arid so slowly that the minutes ticked off to each letter: “B-O-S-H.” 4t was Wolf Larsen’s last word, “bosh,” skeptical and invincible to the end. The arm and hand relaxed. The trunk of the body moved slightly. Then there was no movement. Maud

released the hand. The fingers spread slightly, falling apart of their own weight, and the pencil rolled away. "Do you still hear?" I shouted, holding the fingers and waiting for the single pressure which would signify “Yes." There was no response. The hand was dead. “1 noticed the lips slightly move,” Maud said. I repeated the question. The lips moved. She placed the tips of her Ungers on them. Again I repeated

the question. “Yes,” Maud announced. We looked at each other expectantly. “What good is it?" I asked. "What can we say now?” “Oh, ask him—” She hesitated. “Ask him something that requires ‘no’ for an answer," I suggested. "Then we will know with certainty.” “Are you hungry?" she cried. The lips moved under her fingers, and she answered, “Yes.” “Will you have some beef?” was her next query. “No,” she announced. “Beef-tea?” “Yes, he will have some beef-tea,” she said quietly, looking up at me. “Until his hearing goes we shall be able to communicate with him. And after that —” She looked at me queerly. I saw her lips trembling and the tears swimming up in her eyes. She 3wayed toward me and I caught heF in my arms. "Oh, Humphrey,” she sobbed, “when will it all end? I am so tired, so tired.” She buried her head on my shoulder, her frail form shaken with a storm of weeping. She was like a feather in my arms, so slender, so ethereal. "She has —broken —down at last?” I thought. “What can Ido without her help?” But I soothed and comforted her, till she pulled herself bravely together and recuperated mentally as quickly as she was wont to do ptiysicaily. “I ought to be ashamed of myself,” she said. Then added, with the whimsical smile I adored, “but I am only one small woman.” (TO BE CONTINUED.)

While I toiled at Rigging the Foremast Maud Sewed on Canvas.

I Dragged the Mattress Out of the Bunk.