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Show TTTthis tale i ( 1 JACK LON- I ; t DON'S SEA EX- J Iperience is used with all j THEOWEJjpF -his-virTle .PEN - "''V'?' !--" ':'.' 'i'" v ;,. " '"' -1 . ' SYNOPSIS. 3 Humphrey Van Weyden. critic and dilettante. dilet-tante. I.s thrown Into the water ny the sinkliiK of a ferryboat In a fog In San Kt anci.iro bay. and becomes unconselrts before help reaches him. On corning to his senses he finds himself aboard the seallni; schooner Ghost. Captain Wolf I-arsen. bound to Japan waters, witnesses the death of the (list mate and hears the captain curse the dead man for presuming to die al the neHinnlrii: of the voyage. The captain refuses to put Humphrey ashore and makes him cabin boy "for the good of his soul." CHAPTER III Continued. 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 for-'ard?" for-'ard?" Wolf Larsen asked. "Yes, sir," came the answer of a spirit cowed. "And you?" I was asked. "I'll give you a thousand " I began, be-gan, 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?" What was I to do? To be brutally beaten, to be killed perhaps, would not help my cause. 1 looked steadily Into the cruel, gray eyes. One may eee the soul stir in some men's eyes, but his were bleak and cold and gray as the sea Itself. "Well?" "Yes," I said. "Say ' Yes, sir.' " "Yes, sir," 1 corrected. "What is your name?" "Humphrey, sir; Humphrey Van Weyden." "That'll 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, don't go yet." 1 stopped obediently in my walk -toward the galley. "Johansen, call all hands. Now that we've everything cleaned up, we'll bave the funeral and get the decks cleared of useless lumber." While Johansen was summoning the watch below, a couple of sailors, under the captain's 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 The Dead Man Slid Feet First Into the Sea. rpicked 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. Wolf Larsen 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. The sailors, in the main, were English and Scandinavian, Scan-dinavian, 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 noticed it at once. Wolf Larsen's features showed no such evil stamp. There seemed nothing vicious in them. I could hardly believe until the next incident occurred that it was the face of a man who could behave be-have as he had behaved to the cabin-boy. cabin-boy. "I only remember one part of the service," he said, "and that is, 'And the body shall be cast into the sea.' o cast it in." He ceased speaking. The men holding the hatch-cover seemed perplexed, per-plexed, puzzled no doubt by the briefness brief-ness of the ceremony. He burst upon them in a fury. "Lift up that end there, damn you! What the hell's the matter with you?" fix -'W 1 1 - . copyRiGHr a jack icvjrjorr- J 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 brisk-ly to the new mate, "keep all hands on deck now they're here. Get In the topsails and jibs and make a good job of it. We're in for a sou'easter. Better Bet-ter reef the jib and mainsail, too, white you're about it. 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 inar-ticulate 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 foam-ing waves to the low-lying fog-banks that hid San Francisco and the California Cali-fornia coast. Rain squalls were driving driv-ing 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 southwest, 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 mat-ters 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 domi-neering and bellicose. In truth, I was no longer the fine gentleman with a skin soft as a "lydy's," but only an ordinary and very worthless cabin-boy. He absurdly insisted upon my addressing ad-dressing him as Mr. Mugridge, and his behavior and carriage were insufferable insuffer-able as he showed me my duties. Be sides my work in the cabin, with its four small staterooms, 1 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. This first day was made more difficult diffi-cult for me from the fact that the Ghost, under close reefs (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 rough-weather trays In place, and then carried car-ried the tea and cooked food down from the galley. "Look sharp or you'll get doused," was Mr. Mugridge's parting injunction, as I left the galley with a big teapot in one hand, and in the hollow of the other arm several loaves of fresh-baked fresh-baked bread. One of the hunters, a tall, loosely jointed chap named Henderson, Hen-derson, was going aft at the time from the steerage (the name the hunters facetiously gave their midships sleeping sleep-ing quarters), to the cabin. Wolf Larsen Lar-sen was on the poop, smoking his everlasting ever-lasting 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 1 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 di-rectly 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!" 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. 1 was beneath be-neath the water, suffocating and drowning. Several times I collided against hard objects, once striking my right knee a terrible blow. Then the flood seemed suddenly to subside, and 1 was breathing the good air again. I had been swept against the galley and around the steerage companionway from the weather side into the lee scuppers. The pain from my hurt knee was agonizing. But the cook was after me, shouting through the lee galley door: "'Ere, you!- Don't tyke all night about it! Where's 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 consuming with indignation, real or feigned. "Gawd blime me If you ain't a slob. Wot're you good for anyw'y? Cawn't even carry a bit of tea aft without losin' it. Now I'll 'ave to boil some more." Two things I had acquired by my accident an Injured kneecap that went undressed and from which 1 suffered suf-fered for weary months, and the name of "Hump," which Wolf Lar3en 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 identi-fied it with myself, thought of myself as Hump, as though Hump were I and had always been I. It was no easy task, waiting on the cabin table, where sat Wolf Larsen, Johansen and the six hunters. The cabin was small, to begin with, and to move around, as I was compelled to, was not made easier by the schooner's violent pitching and wallowing. But what struck me most forcibly was the total lack of sympathy on the part of the men whom I served. I could feel my knee through my clothes swelling and swelling, and I was sick and faint from the pain of it I could catch glimpses of my face, white and ghastly, distorted with pain, in the cabin mirror. All the men must have seen my condition, but not one spoke or took notice of me, till I was almost grateful to Wolf Larsen, later on (1 was washing the dishes), when he said: "Don't let a little thing like that bother you. You'll get used to such things in time. It may cripple you some, but all the same you'll be learning learn-ing to walk. "That's what you call a paradox isn't it?" he added. He seemed pleased when I nodded my head with the customary "Yes. sir." "I suppose you know a bit about literary lit-erary things? Eh? Good. I'll have some talks with you sometime." And then, taking no further account of me, he turned his back and went up on deck. That night, when I had finished an endless amount of work, I was sent to sleep In the steerage, where I made up a spare bunk. I was glad to get out of the detestable presence of the cook and to be off my feet. To my surprise, my clothes had dried on me and there seemed no indications of catching cold, either from the last soaking or from the prolonged soaking from the foundering foun-dering of the Martinez. Under ordinary ordi-nary circumstances, after all that I had undergone, I should have been fit for bed and a trained nurse. But my knee was bothering me terribly. ter-ribly. As well as I could make out. the kneecap seemed turned up on edge in the midst of the swelling. As I sat in my bunk examining it (the six hunters were all in the steerage, smoking and talking in loud voices), Henderson took a passing glance at it. "Looks nasty," he commented. "Tie a rag around it and it'll be all right." Like the savage, the attitude of these men was stoical in great things, childish In little things. I remember, later in the voyage, seeing Kerfoot, another of the hunters, lose a finger by having it smashed to a jelly, and he did not even murmur or change the expression on his face. Yet I have seen the same man, time and again, fly into the most outrageous passion over a trifle. He was doing it now, vociferating, bellowing, waving his arms, and cursing curs-ing like a fiend, and all because of a disagreement with another hunter as to whether a seal pup knew instinctively instinc-tively how to swim. For the most part, the remaining four hunters leaned on the table or lay In their bunks and left the discussion to the two antagonists. And they smoked. Incessantly smoked, using a coarse, cheap and offensive-smelling tobacco. The air was thick and murky with the smoke of it, and this, combined with the vio lent movement of the ship as she struggled through the storm, would surely have made me seasick, had I been a victim to that malady. As It was, it made me quite squeamish, though this nausea might have been due to the pain of my leg and exhaustion. exhaus-tion. As I lay there thinking. 1 naturally dwelt upon myself and my situation It was unparalleled, undreamed-of. that I, Humphrey Van Weyden, a scholar and a dilettante, if you please, in things artistic and literary, should be lying here on a Bering sea seal-hunting schooner. Cabin-boy! 1 had never done any hard manual labor, or scul lion labor, in my life. My muscles were small and soft, like a woman's, or so the doctors had said time and again in the course of their attempts to per suade me to go in for physical culture fads. But 1 had preferred to use my head rather than my body, and here I was. in no fit condition for the rough life in prospect. These are merely a few of the things that went through my mind and are related for the sake of vindicating myself my-self in advance in the weak and helpless help-less role I was destined to play. But I thought, also, of my mother and sisters, sis-ters, and pictured their grief. I was among the missing dead of the Mar tinez disaster, an unrecovered body. I could see the headlines in the pa pers; the fellows at the University club and the Bibelot shaking their heads and saying. "Poor chap!" And I could see Charley Furuseth. as I had said good by to him that morning, lounging in a dressing gown oa the be-pillowec window couch and delivering himself of oracular and pessimistic epigrams. And all the while, rolling, plunging, climbing the moving mountains and falling and wallowing in the foaming valleys, the schooner Ghost was fighting fight-ing her way farther and farther into the heart of the Pacific and 1 was on her. CHAPTER V. But my first night in the hunter's steerage was also my last. Next day Johansen, the new mate, was routed from the cabin by Wolf Larsen, and sent into the steerage to sleep thereafter, there-after, while I took possession of the tiny cabin stateroom, which, on the first day of the voyage, had already had two occupants. The reason for this change was quickly learned by the hunters, and became the cause of a great deal of grumbling on their part. It seemed that Johansen, in his sleep, lived over each night the events of the day. His incessant talking and shouting and bellowing of orders had been too much for Wolf Larsen, who had accordingly foisted the nuisance upon his hunters. After a sleepless night, I arose, weak and in agony, to hobble through my second day on the Ghost. . The day was filled with miserable variety. I had taken my dried clothes down from the galley the night before, be-fore, and the flsat thing I did was to exchange the cook's garments for them. I looked for my purse. In addition ad-dition to some small change (and I have a good memory for such things), it had contained $185 in gold and paper. pa-per. The purse I found, but its contents, con-tents, with the exception of the small silver, had been abstracted. 1 spoke to the cook about it, when I went on deck to take up my duties in the galley, gal-ley, and though I had looked forward to a surly answer, I had not expected the belligerent harangue I received. "Look 'ere, 'Ump," he began, a malicious ma-licious light in his eyes and a snarl in his throat, "d'ye want yer nose punched? Strike me blind if this ayn't gratitude for yer! 'Ere you come, a pore, mis'rable specimen of 'uman scum, an' I tykes yer into my galley an' treats yer 'ansom, an' this is wot I get for it. Nex' time you can go to 'ell, say I, an' I've a good mind to give you what-for anyw'y." So saying, he put up his fists and started for me. To my shame be it, I cowered away from the blow and ran out the galley door. The speed with which I ran caused excruciating pain in my knee, and I sank down helplessly helpless-ly at the break of the poop. But the cockney had not pursued me. "Look at 'im run! Look at 'im run!" I could hear him crying. "An' with a gyme leg at that! Come on back, you pore little mamma's darling. I won't 'it yer; no, I won't." I came back and went on with my work; and here the episode ended for the time. (TO BE CONTINUED.) |