[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
the fore rigging, and began to climb. But the quick eye of Wolf Larsen caught
him.
"Here, you, what are you up to?" he cried.
Johnson's ascent was arrested. He looked his captain in the eyes and replied
slowly:
"I am going to get that boy down."
"You'll get down out of that rigging, and damn lively about it!
D'ye hear? Get down!"
Johnson hesitated, but the long years of obedience to the masters of ships
overpowered him, and he dropped sullenly to the deck and went on forward.
At half after five I went below to set the cabin table, but I
hardly knew what I did, for my eyes and my brain were filled with the vision
of a man, white-faced and trembling, comically like a bug, clinging to the
Page 35
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
thrashing gaff. At six o'clock, when I served supper, going on deck to get
the food from the galley, I saw
Harrison, still in the same position. The conversation at the table was of
other things. Nobody seemed interested in the wantonly imperilled life. But
making an extra trip to the galley a little later, I was gladdened by the
sight of Harrison staggering weakly from the rigging to the forecastle
scuttle. He had finally summoned the courage to descend.
Before closing this incident, I must give a scrap of conversation I
had with Wolf Larsen in the cabin, while I was washing the dishes.
"You were looking squeamish this afternoon," he began. "What was the matter?"
I could see that he knew what had made me possibly as sick as
Harrison, that he was trying to draw me, and I answered, "It was because of
the brutal treatment of that boy."
He gave a short laugh. "Like sea-sickness, I suppose. Some men are subject
to it, and others are not."
"Not so," I objected.
"Just so," he went on. "The earth is as full of brutality as the sea is full
of motion. And some men are made sick by the one, and some by the other.
That's the only reason."
"But you, who make a mock of human life, don't you place any value upon it
whatever?" I demanded.
"Value? What value?" He looked at me, and though his eyes were steady and
motionless, there seemed a cynical smile in them. "What kind of value? How
do you measure it? Who values it?"
"I do," I made answer.
"Then what is it worth to you? Another man's life, I mean. Come now, what is
it worth?"
The value of life? How could I put a tangible value upon it?
Somehow, I, who have always had expression, lacked expression when with Wolf
Larsen. I have since determined that a part of it was due to the man's
personality, but that the greater part was due to his totally different
outlook. Unlike other materialists I had met and with whom I had something in
common to start on, I had nothing in common with him. Perhaps, also, it was
the elemental simplicity of his mind that baffled me. He drove so directly to
the core of the matter, divesting a question always of all superfluous
details, and with such an air of finality, that I seemed to find myself
struggling in deep water, with no footing under me. Value of life?
How could I answer the question on the spur of the moment? The sacredness of
life I had accepted as axiomatic. That it was intrinsically valuable was a
truism I had never questioned. But when he challenged the truism I was
speechless.
"We were talking about this yesterday," he said. "I held that life was a
ferment, a yeasty something which devoured life that it might
live, and that living was merely successful piggishness. Why, if there is
Page 36
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
anything in supply and demand, life is the cheapest thing in the world. There
is only so much water, so much earth, so much air; but the life that is
demanding to be born is limitless.
Nature is a spendthrift. Look at the fish and their millions of eggs. For
that matter, look at you and me. In our loins are the possibilities of
millions of lives. Could we but find time and opportunity and utilize the
last bit and every bit of the unborn life that is in us, we could become the
fathers of nations and populate continents. Life? Bah! It has no value. Of
cheap things it is the cheapest. Everywhere it goes begging. Nature spills
it out with a lavish hand. Where there is room for one life, she sows a
thousand lives, and it's life eats life till the strongest and most piggish
life is left."
"You have read Darwin," I said. "But you read him misunderstandingly when you
conclude that the struggle for existence sanctions your wanton destruction of
life."
He shrugged his shoulders. "You know you only mean that in relation to human
life, for of the flesh and the fowl and the fish you destroy as much as I or
any other man. And human life is in no wise different, though you feel it is
and think that you reason why it is. Why should I be parsimonious with this
life which is cheap and without value? There are more sailors than there are
ships on the sea for them, more workers than there are factories or machines
for them. Why, you who live on the land know that you house your poor people
in the slums of cities and loose famine and pestilence upon them, and that
there still remain more poor people, dying for want of a crust of bread and a
bit of meat (which is life destroyed), than you know what to do with. Have
you ever seen the
London dockers fighting like wild beasts for a chance to work?"
He started for the companion stairs, but turned his head for a final word.
"Do you know the only value life has is what life puts upon itself? And it is
of course over-estimated since it is of necessity prejudiced in its own
favour. Take that man I had aloft.
He held on as if he were a precious thing, a treasure beyond diamonds or
rubies. To you? No. To me? Not at all. To himself?
Yes. But I do not accept his estimate. He sadly overrates himself. There is
plenty more life demanding to be born. Had he fallen and dripped his brains
upon the deck like honey from the
comb, there would have been no loss to the world. He was worth nothing to the
world. The supply is too large. To himself only was he of value, and to show
how fictitious even this value was, being dead he is unconscious that he has
lost himself. He alone rated himself beyond diamonds and rubies. Diamonds
and rubies are gone, spread out on the deck to be washed away by a bucket of
sea-
water, and he does not even know that the diamonds and rubies are gone. He
does not lose anything, for with the loss of himself he loses the knowledge of
loss. Don't you see? And what have you to say?"
"That you are at least consistent," was all I could say, and I went on washing
the dishes.
CHAPTER VII
Page 37
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
At last, after three days of variable winds, we have caught the north-east
trades. I came on deck, after a good night's rest in spite of my poor knee,
to find the Ghost foaming along, wing-and-
wing, and every sail drawing except the jibs, with a fresh breeze astern. Oh,
the wonder of the great trade-wind! All day we sailed, and all night, and the
next day, and the next, day after day, the wind always astern and blowing
steadily and strong. The schooner sailed herself. There was no pulling and
hauling on sheets and tackles, no shifting of topsails, no work at all for the
sailors to do except to steer. At night when the sun went down, the sheets
were slackened; in the morning, when they yielded up the damp of the dew and
relaxed, they were pulled tight again - and that was all.
Ten knots, twelve knots, eleven knots, varying from time to time, is the speed
we are making. And ever out of the north-east the brave wind blows, driving
us on our course two hundred and fifty miles between the dawns. It saddens me
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]