No, sir,
Well, never mind; youre mate just the same. Get your traps aft into the mates berth.
Ay, ay, sir, was the cheery response, as Johansen started forward.
In the meantime the erstwhile cabin-boy had not moved. What are you waiting for? Wolf Larsen demanded.
I didnt sign for boat-puller, sir, was the reply. I signed for cabin-boy. An I dont want no boat-pullin in mine.
Pack up and go forard.
This time Wolf Larsens command was thrillingly imperative. The boy glowered sullenly, but refused to move.
Then came another stirring of Wolf Larsens tremendous strength. It was utterly unexpected, and it was over and done with between the ticks of two seconds[25]. He had sprung fully six feet across the deck and driven his fist into the others stomach. At the same moment, as though I had been struck myself, I felt a sickening shock in the pit of my stomach. I instance this to show the sensitiveness of my nervous organization at the time, and how unused I was to spectacles of brutality. The cabin-boy and he weighed one hundred and sixty-five at the very least crumpled up. His body wrapped limply about the fist like a wet rag about a stick. He lifted into the air, described a short curve, and struck the deck alongside the corpse on his head and shoulders, where he lay and writhed about in agony.
Well? Larsen asked of me. Have you made up your mind?
I had glanced occasionally at the approaching schooner, and it was now almost abreast of us and not more than a couple of hundred yards away. It was a very trim and neat little craft. I could see a large, black number on one of its sails, and I had seen pictures of pilot-boats.
What vessel is that? I asked.
The pilot-boat Lady Mine, Wolf Larsen answered grimly. Got rid of her pilots and running into San Francisco. Shell be there in five or six hours with this wind.
Will you please signal it, then, so that I may be put ashore.
Sorry, but Ive lost the signal book overboard, he remarked, and the group of hunters grinned.
I debated a moment, looking him squarely in the eyes. I had seen the frightful treatment of the cabin-boy, and knew that I should very probably receive the same, if not worse. As I say, I debated with myself, and then I did what I consider the bravest act of my life. I ran to the side, waving my arms and shouting:
Lady Mine ahoy! Take me ashore! A thousand dollars if you take me ashore!
I waited, watching two men who stood by the wheel, one of them steering. The other was lifting a megaphone to his lips. I did not turn my head, though I expected every moment a killing blow from the human brute behind me. At last, after what seemed centuries, unable longer to stand the strain, I looked around. He had not moved. He was standing in the same position, swaying easily to the roll of the ship and lighting a fresh cigar.
What is the matter? Anything wrong?
This was the cry from the Lady Mine.
Yes! I shouted, at the top of my lungs. Life or death! One thousand dollars if you take me ashore!
Too much Frisco tanglefoot for the health of my crew![26] Wolf Larsen shouted after. This one indicating me with his thumb fancies sea-serpents and monkeys just now!
The man on the Lady Mine laughed back through the megaphone. The pilot-boat plunged past.
Give him hell for me! came a final cry, and the two men waved their arms in farewell.
I leaned despairingly over the rail, watching the trim little schooner swiftly increasing the bleak sweep of ocean between us. And she would probably be in San Francisco in five or six hours! My head seemed bursting. There was an ache in my throat as though my heart were up in it. A curling wave struck the side and splashed salt spray on my lips. The wind puffed strongly, and the Ghost heeled far over, burying her lee rail. I could hear the water rushing down upon the deck.
When I turned around, a moment later, I saw the cabin-boy staggering to his feet. His face was ghastly white, twitching with suppressed pain. He looked very sick.
Well, Leach, are you going forard? Wolf Larsen asked.
Yes, sir, came the answer of a spirit cowed.
And you? I was asked.
Ill give you a thousand I began, but was interrupted.
Stow that! Are you going to take up your duties as cabin-boy? Or do I have to take you in hand?[27]
What was I to do? To be brutally beaten, to be killed perhaps, would not help my case. I looked steadily into the cruel grey eyes. They might have been granite for all the light and warmth of a human soul they contained. One may see the soul stir in some mens eyes, but his were bleak, and cold, and grey as the sea itself.
Well?
Yes, I said.
Say yes, sir.
Yes, sir, I corrected.
What is your name?
Van Weyden, sir.
First name?
Humphrey, sir; Humphrey Van Weyden.
Age?
Thirty-five, sir.
Thatll do. Go to the cook and learn your duties.
And thus it was that I passed into a state of involuntary servitude to Wolf Larsen. He was stronger than I, that was all. But it was very unreal at the time. It is no less unreal now that I look back upon it. It will always be to me a monstrous, inconceivable thing, a horrible nightmare.
Hold on, dont go yet.
I stopped obediently in my walk toward the galley.
Johansen, call all hands[28]. Now that weve everything cleaned up, well have the funeral and get the decks cleared of useless lumber.
While Johansen was summoning the watch below, a couple of sailors, under the captains direction, laid the canvas-swathed corpse upon a hatch-cover. On either side the deck, against the rail and bottoms up, were lashed a number of small boats. Several men picked up the hatch-cover with its ghastly freight, carried it to the lee side, and rested it on the boats, the feet pointing overboard. To the feet was attached the sack of coal which the cook had fetched.
I had always conceived a burial at sea to be a very solemn and awe-inspiring event, but I was quickly disillusioned, by this burial at any rate. One of the hunters, a little dark-eyed man whom his mates called Smoke, was telling stories, liberally intersprinkled with oaths and obscenities; and every minute or so the group of hunters gave mouth to a laughter that sounded to me like a wolf-chorus or the barking of hell-hounds. The sailors trooped noisily aft, some of the watch below rubbing the sleep from their eyes, and talked in low tones together. There was an ominous and worried expression on their faces. It was evident that they did not like the outlook of a voyage under such a captain and begun so inauspiciously. From time to time they stole glances at Wolf Larsen, and I could see that they were apprehensive of the man.
He stepped up to the hatch-cover, and all caps came off. I ran my eyes over them twenty men all told; twenty-two including the man at the wheel and myself. I was pardonably curious in my survey, for it appeared my fate to be pent up with them on this miniature floating world for I knew not how many weeks or months. The sailors, in the main, were English and Scandinavian, and their faces seemed of the heavy, stolid order. The hunters, on the other hand, had stronger and more diversified faces, with hard lines and the marks of the free play of passions. Strange to say, and I noted it all once, Wolf Larsens features showed no such evil stamp. There seemed nothing vicious in them. True, there were lines, but they were the lines of decision and firmness. It seemed, rather, a frank and open countenance, which frankness or openness was enhanced by the fact that he was smooth-shaven. I could hardly believe until the next incident occurred that it was the face of a man who could behave as he had behaved to the cabin-boy.
At this moment, as he opened his mouth to speak, puff after puff struck the schooner and pressed her side under. The wind shrieked a wild song through the rigging. Some of the hunters glanced anxiously aloft. The lee rail, where the dead man lay, was buried in the sea, and as the schooner lifted and righted the water swept across the deck wetting us above our shoe-tops. A shower of rain drove down upon us, each drop stinging like a hailstone. As it passed, Wolf Larsen began to speak, the bareheaded men swaying in unison, to the heave and lunge of the deck.
I only remember one part of the service, he said, and that is, And the body shall be cast into the sea. So cast it in.
He ceased speaking. The men holding the hatch-cover seemed perplexed, puzzled no doubt by the briefness of the ceremony. He burst upon them in a fury.
Lift up that end there, damn you! What the hells the matter with you?
They elevated the end of the hatch-cover with pitiful haste, and, like a dog flung overside, the dead man slid feet first into the sea. The coal at his feet dragged him down. He was gone.
Johansen, Wolf Larsen said briskly to the new mate, keep all hands on deck now theyre here. Get in the topsails and jibs[29] and make a good job of it. Were in for a sou-easter. Better reef the jib and mainsail[30] too, while youre about it.
In a moment the decks were in commotion, Johansen bellowing orders and the men pulling or letting go ropes of various sorts all naturally confusing to a landsman such as myself. But it was the heartlessness of it that especially struck me. The dead man was an episode that was past, an incident that was dropped, in a canvas covering with a sack of coal, while the ship sped along and her work went on. Nobody had been affected. The hunters were laughing at a fresh story of Smokes; the men pulling and hauling, and two of them climbing aloft; Wolf Larsen was studying the clouding sky to windward; and the dead man, dying obscenely, buried sordidly, and sinking down, down
Then it was that the cruelty of the sea, its relentlessness and awfulness, rushed upon me. Life had become cheap and tawdry, a beastly and inarticulate thing, a soulless stirring of the ooze and slime. I held on to the weather rail, close by the shrouds, and gazed out across the desolate foaming waves to the low-lying fog-banks that hid San Francisco and the California coast. Rain-squalls were driving in between, and I could scarcely see the fog. And this strange vessel, with its terrible men, pressed under by wind and sea and ever leaping up and out, was heading away into the south-west, into the great and lonely Pacific expanse.
Chapter IV
What happened to me next on the sealing-schooner Ghost, as I strove to fit into my new environment, are matters of humiliation and pain. The cook, who was called the doctor by the crew, Tommy by the hunters, and Cooky by Wolf Larsen, was a changed person. The difference worked in my status brought about a corresponding difference in treatment from him. Servile and fawning as he had been before, he was now as domineering and bellicose. In truth, I was no longer the fine gentleman with a skin soft as a lydys, but only an ordinary and very worthless cabin-boy.
He absurdly insisted upon my addressing him as Mr. Mugridge, and his behaviour and carriage were insufferable as he showed me my duties. Besides my work in the cabin, with its four small state-rooms, I was supposed to be his assistant in the galley, and my colossal ignorance concerning such things as peeling potatoes or washing greasy pots was a source of unending and sarcastic wonder to him. He refused to take into consideration what I was, or, rather, what my life and the things I was accustomed to had been. This was part of the attitude he chose to adopt toward me; and I confess, ere the day was done, that I hated him with more lively feelings than I had ever hated any one in my life before.
This first day was made more difficult for me from the fact that the Ghost, under close reefs[31] (terms such as these I did not learn till later), was plunging through what Mr. Mugridge called an owlin sou-easter. At half-past five, under his directions, I set the table in the cabin, with rough-weather trays in place, and then carried the tea and cooked food down from the galley. In this connection I cannot forbear relating my first experience with a boarding sea.
Look sharp or youll get doused, was Mr. Mugridges parting injunction, as I left the galley with a big tea-pot in one hand, and in the hollow of the other arm several loaves of fresh-baked bread. One of the hunters, a tall, loose-jointed chap named Henderson, was going aft at the time from the steerage (the name the hunters facetiously gave their midships sleeping quarters) to the cabin. Wolf Larsen was on the poop, smoking his everlasting cigar.
Ere she comes. Sling yer ook! the cook cried. I stopped, for I did not know what was coming, and saw the galley door slide shut with a bang. Then I saw Henderson leaping like a madman for the main rigging, up which he shot, on the inside, till he was many feet higher than my head. Also I saw a great wave, curling and foaming, poised far above the rail. I was directly under it. My mind did not work quickly, everything was so new and strange. I grasped that I was in danger, but that was all. I stood still, in trepidation. Then Wolf Larsen shouted from the poop:
Grab hold something, you you Hump[32]!
But it was too late. I sprang toward the rigging, to which I might have clung, and was met by the descending wall of water. What happened after that was very confusing. I was beneath the water, suffocating and drowning. My feet were out from under me, and I was turning over and over and being swept along I knew not where. Several times I collided against hard objects, once striking my right knee a terrible blow. Then the flood seemed suddenly to subside and I was breathing the good air again. I had been swept against the galley and around the steerage companion-way from the weather side into the lee scuppers[33]. The pain from my hurt knee was agonizing. I could not put my weight on it, or, at least, I thought I could not put my weight on it; and I felt sure the leg was broken. But the cook was after me, shouting through the lee galley door:
Ere, you! Dont tyke all night about it! Wheres the pot? Lost overboard? Serve you bloody well right if yer neck was broke!
I managed to struggle to my feet. The great teapot was still in my hand. I limped to the galley and handed it to him. But he was consumed with indignation, real or feigned.
Gawd blime me if you aynt a slob. Wot re you good for anywy, Id like to know? Eh? Wot re you good for anywy? Cawnt even carry a bit of tea aft without losin it. Now Ill ave to boil some more.
An wot re you snifflin about? he burst out at me, with renewed rage. Cos youve urt yer pore little leg, pore little mammas darlin.
I was not sniffling, though my face might well have been drawn and twitching from the pain. But I called up all my resolution, set my teeth, and hobbled back and forth from galley to cabin and cabin to galley without further mishap. Two things I had acquired by my accident: an injured kneecap that went undressed and from which I suffered for weary months, and the name of Hump, which Wolf Larsen had called me from the poop. Thereafter, fore and aft, I was known by no other name, until the term became a part of my thought-processes and I identified it with myself, thought of myself as Hump, as though Hump were I and had always been I.