The Sea-Wolf

that peopled my flight among the suns. As I reached the limit of my swing and prepared to rush back on the counter-swing, a great gong struck, and thundered and

ping sands, white and hot in the sun. This gave place to a sense of intolerable anguish. My skin was scorching in the torment of fire. The gong clanged and knelled. The sparkling points of light flashed past me in an interminable stream, as though the whole sidereal system were dropping into the void. I gasped, caught my breath painfully, and opened my eyes. Two men were kneeling beside me, working over me. My migh

said. 'Carn't yer see you've bloomin

rly a Cockney, with the clean lines and weakly pretty, almost effeminate, face of the man who has absorbed the sound of Bow Bells with his mother's milk. A d

with the subservient smirk which comes on

ly on my nerves. I could not collect my thoughts. Clutching the woodwork of the galley for support,- and I confess the grease with which it was sc

rves, and thrust into my hand a steaming

as revivifying. Between gulps of the molten stuff I glanced do

aid; 'but don't you think you

d up his palm for inspection. It was remarkably calloused. I passed my hand over the horny p

id in very good, though slow, English, w

e eyes, and, withal, a timid frankness

,' I corrected, and reac

his weight from one leg to the other, then b

clothes I may put o

. 'I'll run down an' tyke a look over my kit, if

it that struck me as being not so much cat-like as oily. In fact, this oiliness, or greasi

ook, and rightly, to be one of the sailors.

hodically, as though groping for his best English, and rigidly observing

in? I must see him as

and framed a complete answer. 'The cap'n is Wolf Larsen, or so men call him. I never hea

finish. The co

he said. 'The Old Man'll be wantin' yer on dec

r, favoring me with an amazingly solemn and portentous wink, as though to emphasi

loose and crumpled array of evil-

ed explanation. 'But you'll 'ave to make t

anaged to slip into a rough woolen undershirt. On the instant my flesh was creeping and cra

you've got a bloomin' soft skin, that you 'ave, more like a lydy's than any I kno

hrank from his hand; my flesh revolted. And between this and the smells arising from various pots boiling and bubbling on the galley fire, I was in

comment. A pair of workman's brogans incased my feet, and for trousers I was furnished with a pair of pale-blue, washed-out overalls, one leg of which was fully

yed, a tiny boy's cap on my head, and for coat a dirty, striped cotton jacket which

ds on the Atlantic liners at the end of the voyage, I could have sworn he was waiting for his tip. From my fuller kno

te features running into a greasy smile.

id. 'I shall not forget yo

gh somewhere in the deeps of his being his ancestors had quicken

said very gratefully a

ng into the long Pacific roll. If she were heading southwest, as Johnson had said, the wind, then, I calculated, was blowing nearly from the south. The fog was gone, and in its place the sun sparkled crisply on the surface of the water. I turned to the east, where I knew California must lie, but could see nothing save low-lying fog-b

t a man who had come through a collision and rubbed shoulders with death merited more attention than I received.

e the furry coat of a dog. His face and neck were hidden beneath a black beard, intershot with gray, which would have been stiff and bushy had it not been limp and draggled and dripping with water. His eyes were closed, and he was apparently unconscious; but his mouth was wide open, his b

, I could not characterize his strength as massive. It was what might be termed a sinewy, knotty strength, of the kind we ascribe to lean and wiry men, but which, in him, because of his heavy build, partook more of the enlarged gorilla order. Not that in appearance he seemed in the least gorilla-like. What I am striving to express is this strength itself, more as a thing

oulders to the tightening of the lips about the cigar, was decisive and seemed to come out of a strength that was excessive and overwhelming. In fact, though this strength pervaded every action of his, it seemed but the adv

the cook's vernacular, the person whom I must interview and put to the trouble of somehow getting me ashore. I had half started forward, to get over with what I was certain would be a stormy quarter of an hour, when a more violent suffocating paroxysm sei

d and dripping its contents to the deck. The dying man beat a tattoo on the hatch with his heels, straightened out his legs, stiffened in one great, tense effort, and rolled his head from side to side. Then the muscles relaxed, the head stopped rolling, and

ed and crackled like electric sparks. I had never heard anything like it in my life, nor could I have conceived it possible. With a turn for literary expression myself, and a penchant for forcible figures and phrases, I appreciated as no other listener, I dare say, the peculiar vividness

. To me death had always been invested with solemnity and dignity. It had been peaceful in its occurrence, sacred in its ceremonial. But death in its more sordid and terrible aspects was a thing with which I had been unacquainted till now. As I say, while