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<html>
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<section class="container">
<p style="text-align: center"><i>Copyright</i>, <i>London</i>, <i>William Heinemann</i>, 1904</p>
<h2>CHAPTER I</h2>
<p>I scarcely know where to begin, though I sometimes facetiously
place the cause of it all to Charley Furuseth’s
credit. He kept a summer cottage in Mill Valley, under the
shadow of Mount Tamalpais, and never occupied it except when he
loafed through the winter months and read Nietzsche and
Schopenhauer to rest his brain. When summer came on, he
elected to sweat out a hot and dusty existence in the city and to
toil incessantly. Had it not been my custom to run up to
see him every Saturday afternoon and to stop over till Monday
morning, this particular January Monday morning would not have
found me afloat on San Francisco Bay.
</p>
<p>Not but that I was afloat in a safe craft, for the
<i>Martinez</i> was a new ferry-steamer, making her fourth or
fifth trip on the run between Sausalito and San Francisco.
The danger lay in the heavy fog which blanketed the bay, and of
which, as a landsman, I had little apprehension. In fact, I
remember the placid exaltation with which I took up my position
on the forward upper deck, directly beneath the pilot-house, and
allowed the mystery of the fog to lay hold of my
imagination. A fresh breeze was blowing, and for a time I
was alone in the moist obscurity—yet not alone, for I was
dimly conscious of the presence of the pilot, and of what I took
to be the captain, in the glass house above my head.
</p>
<p>I remember thinking how comfortable it was, this division of
labour which made it unnecessary for me to study fogs, winds,
tides, and navigation, in order to visit my friend who lived
across an arm of the sea. It was good that men should be
specialists, I mused. The peculiar knowledge of the pilot
and captain sufficed for many thousands of people who knew no
more of the sea and navigation than I knew. On the other
hand, instead of having to devote my energy to the learning of a
multitude of things, I concentrated it upon a few particular
things, such as, for instance, the analysis of Poe’s place
in American literature—an essay of mine, by the way, in the
current <i>Atlantic</i>. Coming aboard, as I passed through
the cabin, I had noticed with greedy eyes a stout gentleman
reading the <i>Atlantic</i>, which was open at my very
essay. And there it was again, the division of labour, the
special knowledge of the pilot and captain which permitted the
stout gentleman to read my special knowledge on Poe while they
carried him safely from Sausalito to San Francisco.
</p>
<p>A red-faced man, slamming the cabin door behind him and
stumping out on the deck, interrupted my reflections, though I
made a mental note of the topic for use in a projected essay
which I had thought of calling “The Necessity for Freedom:
A Plea for the Artist.” The red-faced man shot a
glance up at the pilot-house, gazed around at the fog, stumped
across the deck and back (he evidently had artificial legs), and
stood still by my side, legs wide apart, and with an expression
of keen enjoyment on his face. I was not wrong when I
decided that his days had been spent on the sea.
</p>
<p>“It’s nasty weather like this here that turns
heads grey before their time,” he said, with a nod toward
the pilot-house.
</p>
<p>“I had not thought there was any particular
strain,” I answered. “It seems as simple as A,
B, C. They know the direction by compass, the distance, and
the speed. I should not call it anything more than
mathematical certainty.”
</p>
<p>“Strain!” he snorted. “Simple as A, B,
C! Mathematical certainty!”
</p>
<p>He seemed to brace himself up and lean backward against the
air as he stared at me. “How about this here tide
that’s rushin’ out through the Golden Gate?” he
demanded, or bellowed, rather. “How fast is she
ebbin’? What’s the drift, eh? Listen to
that, will you? A bell-buoy, and we’re a-top of
it! See ’em alterin’ the course!”
</p>
<p>From out of the fog came the mournful tolling of a bell, and I
could see the pilot turning the wheel with great rapidity.
The bell, which had seemed straight ahead, was now sounding from
the side. Our own whistle was blowing hoarsely, and from
time to time the sound of other whistles came to us from out of
the fog.
</p>
<p>“That’s a ferry-boat of some sort,” the
new-comer said, indicating a whistle off to the right.
“And there! D’ye hear that? Blown by
mouth. Some scow schooner, most likely. Better watch
out, Mr. Schooner-man. Ah, I thought so. Now
hell’s a poppin’ for somebody!”
</p>
<p>The unseen ferry-boat was blowing blast after blast, and the
mouth-blown horn was tooting in terror-stricken fashion.
</p>
<p>“And now they’re payin’ their respects to
each other and tryin’ to get clear,” the red-faced
man went on, as the hurried whistling ceased.
</p>
<p>His face was shining, his eyes flashing with excitement as he
translated into articulate language the speech of the horns and
sirens. “That’s a steam-siren a-goin’ it
over there to the left. And you hear that fellow with a
frog in his throat—a steam schooner as near as I can judge,
crawlin’ in from the Heads against the tide.”
</p>
<p>A shrill little whistle, piping as if gone mad, came from
directly ahead and from very near at hand. Gongs sounded on
the <i>Martinez</i>. Our paddle-wheels stopped, their
pulsing beat died away, and then they started again. The
shrill little whistle, like the chirping of a cricket amid the
cries of great beasts, shot through the fog from more to the side
and swiftly grew faint and fainter. I looked to my
companion for enlightenment.
</p>
<p>“One of them dare-devil launches,” he said.
“I almost wish we’d sunk him, the little rip!
They’re the cause of more trouble. And what good are
they? Any jackass gets aboard one and runs it from hell to
breakfast, blowin’ his whistle to beat the band and
tellin’ the rest of the world to look out for him, because
he’s comin’ and can’t look out for
himself! Because he’s comin’! And
you’ve got to look out, too! Right of way!
Common decency! They don’t know the meanin’ of
it!”
</p>
<p>I felt quite amused at his unwarranted choler, and while he
stumped indignantly up and down I fell to dwelling upon the
romance of the fog. And romantic it certainly was—the
fog, like the grey shadow of infinite mystery, brooding over the
whirling speck of earth; and men, mere motes of light and
sparkle, cursed with an insane relish for work, riding their
steeds of wood and steel through the heart of the mystery,
groping their way blindly through the Unseen, and clamouring and
clanging in confident speech the while their hearts are heavy
with incertitude and fear.
</p>
<p>The voice of my companion brought me back to myself with a
laugh. I too had been groping and floundering, the while I
thought I rode clear-eyed through the mystery.
</p>
<p>“Hello! somebody comin’ our way,” he was
saying. “And d’ye hear that? He’s
comin’ fast. Walking right along. Guess he
don’t hear us yet. Wind’s in wrong
direction.”
</p>
<p>The fresh breeze was blowing right down upon us, and I could
hear the whistle plainly, off to one side and a little ahead.
</p>
<p>“Ferry-boat?” I asked.</p>
<p>He nodded, then added, “Or he wouldn’t be
keepin’ up such a clip.” He gave a short
chuckle. “They’re gettin’ anxious up
there.”
</p>
<p>I glanced up. The captain had thrust his head and
shoulders out of the pilot-house, and was staring intently into
the fog as though by sheer force of will he could penetrate
it. His face was anxious, as was the face of my companion,
who had stumped over to the rail and was gazing with a like
intentness in the direction of the invisible danger.
</p>
<p>Then everything happened, and with inconceivable
rapidity. The fog seemed to break away as though split by a
wedge, and the bow of a steamboat emerged, trailing fog-wreaths
on either side like seaweed on the snout of Leviathan. I
could see the pilot-house and a white-bearded man leaning partly
out of it, on his elbows. He was clad in a blue uniform,
and I remember noting how trim and quiet he was. His
quietness, under the circumstances, was terrible. He
accepted Destiny, marched hand in hand with it, and coolly
measured the stroke. As he leaned there, he ran a calm and
speculative eye over us, as though to determine the precise point
of the collision, and took no notice whatever when our pilot,
white with rage, shouted, “Now you’ve done
it!”
</p>
<p>On looking back, I realize that the remark was too obvious to
make rejoinder necessary.
</p>
<p>“Grab hold of something and hang on,” the
red-faced man said to me. All his bluster had gone, and he
seemed to have caught the contagion of preternatural calm.
“And listen to the women scream,” he said
grimly—almost bitterly, I thought, as though he had been
through the experience before.
</p>
<p>The vessels came together before I could follow his
advice. We must have been struck squarely amidships, for I
saw nothing, the strange steamboat having passed beyond my line
of vision. The <i>Martinez</i> heeled over, sharply, and
there was a crashing and rending of timber. I was thrown
flat on the wet deck, and before I could scramble to my feet I
heard the scream of the women. This it was, I am
certain,—the most indescribable of blood-curdling
sounds,—that threw me into a panic. I remembered the
life-preservers stored in the cabin, but was met at the door and
swept backward by a wild rush of men and women. What
happened in the next few minutes I do not recollect, though I
have a clear remembrance of pulling down life-preservers from the
overhead racks, while the red-faced man fastened them about the
bodies of an hysterical group of women. This memory is as
distinct and sharp as that of any picture I have seen. It
is a picture, and I can see it now,—the jagged edges of the
hole in the side of the cabin, through which the grey fog swirled
and eddied; the empty upholstered seats, littered with all the
evidences of sudden flight, such as packages, hand satchels,
umbrellas, and wraps; the stout gentleman who had been reading my
essay, encased in cork and canvas, the magazine still in his
hand, and asking me with monotonous insistence if I thought there
was any danger; the red-faced man, stumping gallantly around on
his artificial legs and buckling life-preservers on all comers;
and finally, the screaming bedlam of women.
</p>
<p>This it was, the screaming of the women, that most tried my
nerves. It must have tried, too, the nerves of the
red-faced man, for I have another picture which will never fade
from my mind. The stout gentleman is stuffing the magazine
into his overcoat pocket and looking on curiously. A
tangled mass of women, with drawn, white faces and open mouths,
is shrieking like a chorus of lost souls; and the red-faced man,
his face now purplish with wrath, and with arms extended overhead
as in the act of hurling thunderbolts, is shouting, “Shut
up! Oh, shut up!”
</p>
<p>I remember the scene impelled me to sudden laughter, and in
the next instant I realized I was becoming hysterical myself; for
these were women of my own kind, like my mother and sisters, with
the fear of death upon them and unwilling to die. And I
remember that the sounds they made reminded me of the squealing
of pigs under the knife of the butcher, and I was struck with
horror at the vividness of the analogy. These women,
capable of the most sublime emotions, of the tenderest
sympathies, were open-mouthed and screaming. They wanted to
live, they were helpless, like rats in a trap, and they
screamed.
</p>
<p>The horror of it drove me out on deck. I was feeling
sick and squeamish, and sat down on a bench. In a hazy way
I saw and heard men rushing and shouting as they strove to lower
the boats. It was just as I had read descriptions of such
scenes in books. The tackles jammed. Nothing
worked. One boat lowered away with the plugs out, filled
with women and children and then with water, and capsized.
Another boat had been lowered by one end, and still hung in the
tackle by the other end, where it had been abandoned.
Nothing was to be seen of the strange steamboat which had caused
the disaster, though I heard men saying that she would
undoubtedly send boats to our assistance.
</p>
<p>I descended to the lower deck. The <i>Martinez</i> was
sinking fast, for the water was very near. Numbers of the
passengers were leaping overboard. Others, in the water,
were clamouring to be taken aboard again. No one heeded
them. A cry arose that we were sinking. I was seized
by the consequent panic, and went over the side in a surge of
bodies. How I went over I do not know, though I did know,
and instantly, why those in the water were so desirous of getting
back on the steamer. The water was cold—so cold that
it was painful. The pang, as I plunged into it, was as
quick and sharp as that of fire. It bit to the
marrow. It was like the grip of death. I gasped with
the anguish and shock of it, filling my lungs before the
life-preserver popped me to the surface. The taste of the
salt was strong in my mouth, and I was strangling with the acrid
stuff in my throat and lungs.
</p>
<p>But it was the cold that was most distressing. I felt
that I could survive but a few minutes. People were
struggling and floundering in the water about me. I could
hear them crying out to one another. And I heard, also, the
sound of oars. Evidently the strange steamboat had lowered
its boats. As the time went by I marvelled that I was still
alive. I had no sensation whatever in my lower limbs, while
a chilling numbness was wrapping about my heart and creeping into
it. Small waves, with spiteful foaming crests, continually
broke over me and into my mouth, sending me off into more
strangling paroxysms.
</p>
<p>The noises grew indistinct, though I heard a final and
despairing chorus of screams in the distance, and knew that the
<i>Martinez</i> had gone down. Later,—how much later
I have no knowledge,—I came to myself with a start of
fear. I was alone. I could hear no calls or
cries—only the sound of the waves, made weirdly hollow and
reverberant by the fog. A panic in a crowd, which partakes
of a sort of community of interest, is not so terrible as a panic
when one is by oneself; and such a panic I now suffered.
Whither was I drifting? The red-faced man had said that the
tide was ebbing through the Golden Gate. Was I, then, being
carried out to sea? And the life-preserver in which I
floated? Was it not liable to go to pieces at any
moment? I had heard of such things being made of paper and
hollow rushes which quickly became saturated and lost all
buoyancy. And I could not swim a stroke. And I was
alone, floating, apparently, in the midst of a grey primordial
vastness. I confess that a madness seized me, that I
shrieked aloud as the women had shrieked, and beat the water with
my numb hands.
</p>
<p>How long this lasted I have no conception, for a blankness
intervened, of which I remember no more than one remembers of
troubled and painful sleep. When I aroused, it was as after
centuries of time; and I saw, almost above me and emerging from
the fog, the bow of a vessel, and three triangular sails, each
shrewdly lapping the other and filled with wind. Where the
bow cut the water there was a great foaming and gurgling, and I
seemed directly in its path. I tried to cry out, but was
too exhausted. The bow plunged down, just missing me and
sending a swash of water clear over my head. Then the long,
black side of the vessel began slipping past, so near that I
could have touched it with my hands. I tried to reach it,
in a mad resolve to claw into the wood with my nails, but my arms
were heavy and lifeless. Again I strove to call out, but
made no sound.
</p>
<p>The stern of the vessel shot by, dropping, as it did so, into
a hollow between the waves; and I caught a glimpse of a man
standing at the wheel, and of another man who seemed to be doing
little else than smoke a cigar. I saw the smoke issuing
from his lips as he slowly turned his head and glanced out over
the water in my direction. It was a careless,
unpremeditated glance, one of those haphazard things men do when
they have no immediate call to do anything in particular, but act
because they are alive and must do something.
</p>
<p>But life and death were in that glance. I could see the
vessel being swallowed up in the fog; I saw the back of the man
at the wheel, and the head of the other man turning, slowly
turning, as his gaze struck the water and casually lifted along
it toward me. His face wore an absent expression, as of
deep thought, and I became afraid that if his eyes did light upon
me he would nevertheless not see me. But his eyes did light
upon me, and looked squarely into mine; and he did see me, for he
sprang to the wheel, thrusting the other man aside, and whirled
it round and round, hand over hand, at the same time shouting
orders of some sort. The vessel seemed to go off at a
tangent to its former course and leapt almost instantly from view
into the fog.
</p>
<p>I felt myself slipping into unconsciousness, and tried with
all the power of my will to fight above the suffocating blankness
and darkness that was rising around me. A little later I
heard the stroke of oars, growing nearer and nearer, and the
calls of a man. When he was very near I heard him crying,
in vexed fashion, “Why in hell don’t you sing
out?” This meant me, I thought, and then the
blankness and darkness rose over me.
</p>
<h2>CHAPTER II</h2>
<p>I seemed swinging in a mighty rhythm through orbit
vastness. Sparkling points of light spluttered and shot
past me. They were stars, I knew, and flaring comets, 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. For an immeasurable period,
lapped in the rippling of placid centuries, I enjoyed and
pondered my tremendous flight.
</p>
<p>But a change came over the face of the dream, for a dream I
told myself it must be. My rhythm grew shorter and
shorter. I was jerked from swing to counter swing with
irritating haste. I could scarcely catch my breath, so
fiercely was I impelled through the heavens. The gong
thundered more frequently and more furiously. I grew to
await it with a nameless dread. Then it seemed as though I
were being dragged over rasping 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 mighty rhythm was the lift and forward plunge of a
ship on the sea. The terrific gong was a frying-pan,
hanging on the wall, that rattled and clattered with each leap of
the ship. The rasping, scorching sands were a man’s
hard hands chafing my naked chest. I squirmed under the
pain of it, and half lifted my head. My chest was raw and
red, and I could see tiny blood globules starting through the
torn and inflamed cuticle.
</p>
<p>“That’ll do, Yonson,” one of the men
said. “Carn’t yer see you’ve
bloomin’ well rubbed all the gent’s skin
orf?”
</p>
<p>The man addressed as Yonson, a man of the heavy Scandinavian
type, ceased chafing me, and arose awkwardly to his feet.
The man who had spoken to him was clearly 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 draggled muslin cap on his head and a dirty
gunny-sack about his slim hips proclaimed him cook of the
decidedly dirty ship’s galley in which I found myself.
</p>
<p>“An’ ’ow yer feelin’ now, sir?”
he asked, with the subservient smirk which comes only of
generations of tip-seeking ancestors.
</p>
<p>For reply, I twisted weakly into a sitting posture, and was
helped by Yonson to my feet. The rattle and bang of the
frying-pan was grating horribly 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
scummed put my teeth on edge,—I reached across a hot
cooking-range to the offending utensil, unhooked it, and wedged
it securely into the coal-box.
</p>
<p>The cook grinned at my exhibition of nerves, and thrust into
my hand a steaming mug with an “’Ere, this’ll
do yer good.” It was a nauseous
mess,—ship’s coffee,—but the heat of it was
revivifying. Between gulps of the molten stuff I glanced
down at my raw and bleeding chest and turned to the
Scandinavian.
</p>
<p>“Thank you, Mr. Yonson,” I said; “but
don’t you think your measures were rather
heroic?”
</p>
<p>It was because he understood the reproof of my action, rather
than of my words, that he held up his palm for inspection.
It was remarkably calloused. I passed my hand over the
horny projections, and my teeth went on edge once more from the
horrible rasping sensation produced.
</p>
<p>“My name is Johnson, not Yonson,” he said, in very
good, though slow, English, with no more than a shade of accent
to it.
</p>
<p>There was mild protest in his pale blue eyes, and withal a
timid frankness and manliness that quite won me to him.
</p>
<p>“Thank you, Mr. Johnson,” I corrected, and reached
out my hand for his.
</p>
<p>He hesitated, awkward and bashful, shifted his weight from one
leg to the other, then blunderingly gripped my hand in a hearty
shake.
</p>
<p>“Have you any dry clothes I may put on?” I asked
the cook.
</p>
<p>“Yes, sir,” he answered, with cheerful
alacrity. “I’ll run down an’ tyke a look
over my kit, if you’ve no objections, sir, to wearin’
my things.”
</p>
<p>He dived out of the galley door, or glided rather, with a
swiftness and smoothness of gait that struck me as being not so
much cat-like as oily. In fact, this oiliness, or
greasiness, as I was later to learn, was probably the most
salient expression of his personality.
</p>
<p>“And where am I?” I asked Johnson, whom I took,
and rightly, to be one of the sailors. “What vessel
is this, and where is she bound?”
</p>
<p>“Off the Farallones, heading about sou-west,” he
answered, slowly and methodically, as though groping for his best
English, and rigidly observing the order of my queries.
“The schooner <i>Ghost</i>, bound seal-hunting to
Japan.”
</p>
<p>“And who is the captain? I must see him as soon as
I am dressed.”
</p>
<p>Johnson looked puzzled and embarrassed. He hesitated
while he groped in his vocabulary and framed a complete
answer. “The cap’n is Wolf Larsen, or so men
call him. I never heard his other name. But you
better speak soft with him. He is mad this morning.
The mate—”
</p>
<p>But he did not finish. The cook had glided in.</p>
<p>“Better sling yer ’ook out of ’ere,
Yonson,” he said. “The old man’ll be
wantin’ yer on deck, an’ this ayn’t no
d’y to fall foul of ’im.”
</p>
<p>Johnson turned obediently to the door, at the same time, over
the cook’s shoulder, favouring me with an amazingly solemn
and portentous wink as though to emphasize his interrupted remark
and the need for me to be soft-spoken with the captain.
</p>
<p>Hanging over the cook’s arm was a loose and crumpled
array of evil-looking and sour-smelling garments.
</p>
<p>“They was put aw’y wet, sir,” he vouchsafed
explanation. “But you’ll ’ave to make
them do till I dry yours out by the fire.”
</p>
<p>Clinging to the woodwork, staggering with the roll of the
ship, and aided by the cook, I managed to slip into a rough
woollen undershirt. On the instant my flesh was creeping
and crawling from the harsh contact. He noticed my
involuntary twitching and grimacing, and smirked:
</p>
<p>“I only ’ope yer don’t ever ’ave to
get used to such as that in this life, ’cos you’ve
got a bloomin’ soft skin, that you ’ave, more like a
lydy’s than any I know of. I was bloomin’ well
sure you was a gentleman as soon as I set eyes on yer.”
</p>
<p>I had taken a dislike to him at first, and as he helped to
dress me this dislike increased. There was something
repulsive about his touch. I shrank 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
haste to get out into the fresh air. Further, there was the
need of seeing the captain about what arrangements could be made
for getting me ashore.
</p>
<p>A cheap cotton shirt, with frayed collar and a bosom
discoloured with what I took to be ancient blood-stains, was put
on me amid a running and apologetic fire of comment. A pair
of workman’s brogans encased my feet, and for trousers I
was furnished with a pair of pale blue, washed-out overalls, one
leg of which was fully ten inches shorter than the other.
The abbreviated leg looked as though the devil had there clutched
for the Cockney’s soul and missed the shadow for the
substance.
</p>
<p>“And whom have I to thank for this kindness?” I
asked, when I stood completely arrayed, a tiny boy’s cap on
my head, and for coat a dirty, striped cotton jacket which ended
at the small of my back and the sleeves of which reached just
below my elbows.
</p>
<p>The cook drew himself up in a smugly humble fashion, a
deprecating smirk on his face. Out of my experience with
stewards on the Atlantic liners at the end of the voyage, I could
have sworn he was waiting for his tip. From my fuller
knowledge of the creature I now know that the posture was
unconscious. An hereditary servility, no doubt, was
responsible.
</p>
<p>“Mugridge, sir,” he fawned, his effeminate
features running into a greasy smile. “Thomas
Mugridge, sir, an’ at yer service.”
</p>
<p>“All right, Thomas,” I said. “I shall
not forget you—when my clothes are dry.”
</p>
<p>A soft light suffused his face and his eyes glistened, as
though somewhere in the deeps of his being his ancestors had
quickened and stirred with dim memories of tips received in
former lives.
</p>
<p>“Thank you, sir,” he said, very gratefully and
very humbly indeed.
</p>
<p>Precisely in the way that the door slid back, he slid aside,
and I stepped out on deck. I was still weak from my
prolonged immersion. A puff of wind caught me,—and I
staggered across the moving deck to a corner of the cabin, to
which I clung for support. The schooner, heeled over far
out from the perpendicular, was bowing and plunging into the long
Pacific roll. If she were heading south-west 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-banks—the same fog, doubtless, that had brought about
the disaster to the <i>Martinez</i> and placed me in my present
situation. To the north, and not far away, a group of naked
rocks thrust above the sea, on one of which I could distinguish a
lighthouse. In the south-west, and almost in our course, I
saw the pyramidal loom of some vessel’s sails.
</p>
<p>Having completed my survey of the horizon, I turned to my more
immediate surroundings. My first thought was that a man who
had come through a collision and rubbed shoulders with death
merited more attention than I received. Beyond a sailor at
the wheel who stared curiously across the top of the cabin, I
attracted no notice whatever.
</p>
<p>Everybody seemed interested in what was going on amid
ships. There, on a hatch, a large man was lying on his
back. He was fully clothed, though his shirt was ripped
open in front. Nothing was to be seen of his chest,
however, for it was covered with a mass of black hair, in
appearance like the furry coat of a dog. His face and neck
were hidden beneath a black beard, intershot with grey, 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 breast,
heaving as though from suffocation as he laboured noisily for
breath. A sailor, from time to time and quite methodically,
as a matter of routine, dropped a canvas bucket into the ocean at
the end of a rope, hauled it in hand under hand, and sluiced its
contents over the prostrate man.
</p>
<p>Pacing back and forth the length of the hatchways and savagely
chewing the end of a cigar, was the man whose casual glance had
rescued me from the sea. His height was probably five feet
ten inches, or ten and a half; but my first impression, or feel
of the man, was not of this, but of his strength. And yet,
while he was of massive build, with broad shoulders and deep
chest, 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 apart from his physical
semblance. It was a strength we are wont to associate with
things primitive, with wild animals, and the creatures we imagine
our tree-dwelling prototypes to have been—a strength
savage, ferocious, alive in itself, the essence of life in that
it is the potency of motion, the elemental stuff itself out of
which the many forms of life have been moulded; in short, that
which writhes in the body of a snake when the head is cut off,
and the snake, as a snake, is dead, or which lingers in the
shapeless lump of turtle-meat and recoils and quivers from the
prod of a finger.
</p>
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