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of Wolf Larsen, who seemed not to see him. But the Cockney was unabashed,
though mad, stark mad. He
turned to Leach, saying:
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"Such langwidge! Shockin'!"
Leach's rage was no longer impotent. Here at last was something ready to
hand. And for the first time since the stabbing the
Cockney had appeared outside the galley without his knife. The words had
barely left his mouth when he was knocked down by Leach.
Three times he struggled to his feet, striving to gain the galley, and each
time was knocked down.
"Oh, Lord!" he cried. "'Elp! Elp! Tyke 'im aw'y, carn't yer?
Tyke 'im aw'y!"
The hunters laughed from sheer relief. Tragedy had dwindled, the farce had
begun. The sailors now crowded boldly aft, grinning and shuffling, to watch
the pummelling of the hated Cockney. And even
I felt a great joy surge up within me. I confess that I delighted in this
beating Leach was giving to Thomas Mugridge, though it was as terrible,
almost, as the one Mugridge had caused to be given to
Johnson. But the expression of Wolf Larsen's face never changed.
He did not change his position either, but continued to gaze down with a great
curiosity. For all his pragmatic certitude, it seemed as if he watched the
play and movement of life in the hope of discovering something more about it,
of discerning in its maddest writhings a something which had hitherto escaped
him, - the key to its mystery, as it were, which would make all clear and
plain.
But the beating! It was quite similar to the one I had witnessed in the
cabin. The Cockney strove in vain to protect himself from the infuriated boy.
And in vain he strove to gain the shelter of the cabin. He rolled toward it,
grovelled toward it, fell toward it when he was knocked down. But blow
followed blow with bewildering rapidity. He was knocked about like a
shuttlecock, until, finally, like Johnson, he was beaten and kicked as he lay
helpless on the deck. And no one interfered. Leach could have killed him,
but, having evidently filled the measure of his vengeance, he drew away from
his prostrate foe, who was whimpering and wailing in a puppyish sort of way,
and walked forward.
But these two affairs were only the opening events of the day's programme. In
the afternoon Smoke and Henderson fell foul of each
other, and a fusillade of shots came up from the steerage, followed by a
stampede of the other four hunters for the deck. A column of thick, acrid
smoke - the kind always made by black powder - was arising through the open
companion-way, and down through it leaped
Wolf Larsen. The sound of blows and scuffling came to our ears.
Both men were wounded, and he was thrashing them both for having disobeyed his
orders and crippled themselves in advance of the hunting season. In fact,
they were badly wounded, and, having thrashed them, he proceeded to operate
upon them in a rough surgical fashion and to dress their wounds. I served as
assistant while he probed and cleansed the passages made by the bullets, and
I saw the two men endure his crude surgery without anaesthetics and with no
more to uphold them than a stiff tumbler of whisky.
Then, in the first dog-watch, trouble came to a head in the forecastle. It
took its rise out of the tittle-tattle and tale-
bearing which had been the cause of Johnson's beating, and from the noise we
heard, and from the sight of the bruised men next day, it was patent that half
the forecastle had soundly drubbed the other half.
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The second dog-watch and the day were wound up by a fight between
Johansen and the lean, Yankee-looking hunter, Latimer. It was caused by
remarks of Latimer's concerning the noises made by the mate in his sleep, and
though Johansen was whipped, he kept the steerage awake for the rest of the
night while he blissfully slumbered and fought the fight over and over again.
As for myself, I was oppressed with nightmare. The day had been like some
horrible dream. Brutality had followed brutality, and flaming passions and
cold-blooded cruelty had driven men to seek one another's lives, and to strive
to hurt, and maim, and destroy.
My nerves were shocked. My mind itself was shocked. All my days had been
passed in comparative ignorance of the animality of man.
In fact, I had known life only in its intellectual phases.
Brutality I had experienced, but it was the brutality of the intellect - the
cutting sarcasm of Charley Furuseth, the cruel epigrams and occasional harsh
witticisms of the fellows at the
Bibelot, and the nasty remarks of some of the professors during my
undergraduate days.
That was all. But that men should wreak their anger on others by
the bruising of the flesh and the letting of blood was something strangely and
fearfully new to me. Not for nothing had I been called "Sissy" Van Weyden, I
thought, as I tossed restlessly on my bunk between one nightmare and another.
And it seemed to me that my innocence of the realities of life had been
complete indeed. I
laughed bitterly to myself, and seemed to find in Wolf Larsen's forbidding
philosophy a more adequate explanation of life than I
found in my own.
And I was frightened when I became conscious of the trend of my thought. The
continual brutality around me was degenerative in its effect. It bid fair to
destroy for me all that was best and brightest in life. My reason dictated
that the beating Thomas
Mugridge had received was an ill thing, and yet for the life of me
I could not prevent my soul joying in it. And even while I was oppressed by
the enormity of my sin, - for sin it was, - I chuckled with an insane delight.
I was no longer Humphrey Van Weyden. I
was Hump, cabin-boy on the schooner Ghost. Wolf Larsen was my captain, Thomas
Mugridge and the rest were my companions, and I was receiving repeated
impresses from the die which had stamped them all.
CHAPTER XIII
For three days I did my own work and Thomas Mugridge's too; and I
flatter myself that I did his work well. I know that it won Wolf
Larsen's approval, while the sailors beamed with satisfaction during the brief
time my REGIME lasted.
"The first clean bite since I come aboard," Harrison said to me at the galley
door, as he returned the dinner pots and pans from the forecastle. "Somehow
Tommy's grub always tastes of grease, stale grease, and I reckon he ain't
changed his shirt since he left
'Frisco."
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"I know he hasn't," I answered.
"And I'll bet he sleeps in it," Harrison added.
"And you won't lose," I agreed. "The same shirt, and he hasn't had it off
once in all this time."
But three days was all Wolf Larsen allowed him in which to recover from the
effects of the beating. On the fourth day, lame and sore, scarcely able to
see, so closed were his eyes, he was haled from his bunk by the nape of the
neck and set to his duty. He sniffled and wept, but Wolf Larsen was pitiless.
"And see that you serve no more slops," was his parting injunction.
"No more grease and dirt, mind, and a clean shirt occasionally, or you'll get
a tow over the side. Understand?"
Thomas Mugridge crawled weakly across the galley floor, and a short lurch of
the Ghost sent him staggering. In attempting to recover himself, he reached
for the iron railing which surrounded the stove and kept the pots from sliding
off; but he missed the railing, and his hand, with his weight behind it,
landed squarely on the hot surface. There was a sizzle and odour of burning
flesh, and a sharp cry of pain.
"Oh, Gawd, Gawd, wot 'ave I done?" he wailed; sitting down in the coal-box and [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]