"What, without asking, hither hurried Whence?
And, without asking, Whither hurried hence!
Oh, many a Cup of this forbidden Wine Must drown the memory of that insolence!"
"Great!" Wolf La.r.s.en cried. "Great! That"s the keynote. Insolence! He could not have used a better word."
In vain I objected and denied. He deluged me, overwhelmed me with argument.
"It"s not the nature of life to be otherwise. Life, when it knows that it must cease living, will always rebel. It cannot help itself. The Preacher found life and the works of life all a vanity and vexation, an evil thing; but death, the ceasing to be able to be vain and vexed, he found an eviler thing. Through chapter after chapter he is worried by the one event that cometh to all alike. So Omar, so I, so you, even you, for you rebelled against dying when Cooky sharpened a knife for you. You were afraid to die; the life that was in you, that composes you, that is greater than you, did not want to die. You have talked of the instinct of immortality. I talk of the instinct of life, which is to live, and which, when death looms near and large, masters the instinct, so called, of immortality. It mastered it in you (you cannot deny it), because a crazy c.o.c.kney cook sharpened a knife.
"You are afraid of him now. You are afraid of me. You cannot deny it. If I should catch you by the throat, thus,"-his hand was about my throat and my breath was shut off,-"and began to press the life out of you thus, and thus, your instinct of immortality will go glimmering, and your instinct of life, which is longing for life, will flutter up, and you will struggle to save yourself. Eh? I see the fear of death in your eyes. You beat the air with your arms. You exert all your puny strength to struggle to live. Your hand is clutching my arm, lightly it feels as a b.u.t.terfly resting there. Your chest is heaving, your tongue protruding, your skin turning dark, your eyes swimming. "To live! To live! To live!" you are crying; and you are crying to live here and now, not hereafter. You doubt your immortality, eh? Ha! ha! You are not sure of it. You won"t chance it. This life only you are certain is real. Ah, it is growing dark and darker. It is the darkness of death, the ceasing to be, the ceasing to feel, the ceasing to move, that is gathering about you, descending upon you, rising around you. Your eyes are becoming set. They are glazing. My voice sounds faint and far. You cannot see my face. And still you struggle in my grip. You kick with your legs. Your body draws itself up in knots like a snake"s. Your chest heaves and strains. To live! To live! To live-"
I heard no more. Consciousness was blotted out by the darkness he had so graphically described, and when I came to myself I was lying on the floor and he was smoking a cigar and regarding me thoughtfully with that old familiar light of curiosity in his eyes.
"Well, have I convinced you?" he demanded. "Here take a drink of this. I want to ask you some questions."
I rolled my head negatively on the floor. "Your arguments are too-er-forcible," I managed to articulate, at cost of great pain to my aching throat.
"You"ll be all right in half-an-hour," he a.s.sured me. "And I promise I won"t use any more physical demonstrations. Get up now. You can sit on a chair."
And, toy that I was of this monster, the discussion of Omar and the Preacher was resumed. And half the night we sat up over it.
CHAPTER XII
The last twenty-four hours have witnessed a carnival of brutality. From cabin to forecastle it seems to have broken out like a contagion. I scarcely know where to begin. Wolf La.r.s.en was really the cause of it. The relations among the men, strained and made tense by feuds, quarrels and grudges, were in a state of unstable equilibrium, and evil pa.s.sions flared up in flame like prairie-gra.s.s.
Thomas Mugridge is a sneak, a spy, an informer. He has been attempting to curry favour and reinstate himself in the good graces of the captain by carrying tales of the men forward. He it was, I know, that carried some of Johnson"s hasty talk to Wolf La.r.s.en. Johnson, it seems, bought a suit of oilskins from the slop-chest and found them to be of greatly inferior quality. Nor was he slow in advertising the fact. The slop-chest is a sort of miniature dry-goods store which is carried by all sealing schooners and which is stocked with articles peculiar to the needs of the sailors. Whatever a sailor purchases is taken from his subsequent earnings on the sealing grounds; for, as it is with the hunters so it is with the boat-pullers and steerers-in the place of wages they receive a "lay," a rate of so much per skin for every skin captured in their particular boat.
But of Johnson"s grumbling at the slop-chest I knew nothing, so that what I witnessed came with a shock of sudden surprise. I had just finished sweeping the cabin, and had been inveigled by Wolf La.r.s.en into a discussion of Hamlet, his favourite Shakespearian character, when Johansen descended the companion stairs followed by Johnson. The latter"s cap came off after the custom of the sea, and he stood respectfully in the centre of the cabin, swaying heavily and uneasily to the roll of the schooner and facing the captain.
"Shut the doors and draw the slide," Wolf La.r.s.en said to me.
As I obeyed I noticed an anxious light come into Johnson"s eyes, but I did not dream of its cause. I did not dream of what was to occur until it did occur, but he knew from the very first what was coming and awaited it bravely. And in his action I found complete refutation of all Wolf La.r.s.en"s materialism. The sailor Johnson was swayed by idea, by principle, and truth, and sincerity. He was right, he knew he was right, and he was unafraid. He would die for the right if needs be, he would be true to himself, sincere with his soul. And in this was portrayed the victory of the spirit over the flesh, the indomitability and moral grandeur of the soul that knows no restriction and rises above time and s.p.a.ce and matter with a surety and invincibleness born of nothing else than eternity and immortality.
But to return. I noticed the anxious light in Johnson"s eyes, but mistook it for the native shyness and embarra.s.sment of the man. The mate, Johansen, stood away several feet to the side of him, and fully three yards in front of him sat Wolf La.r.s.en on one of the pivotal cabin chairs. An appreciable pause fell after I had closed the doors and drawn the slide, a pause that must have lasted fully a minute. It was broken by Wolf La.r.s.en.
"Yonson," he began.
"My name is Johnson, sir," the sailor boldly corrected.
"Well, Johnson, then, d.a.m.n you! Can you guess why I have sent for you?"
"Yes, and no, sir," was the slow reply. "My work is done well. The mate knows that, and you know it, sir. So there cannot be any complaint."
"And is that all?" Wolf La.r.s.en queried, his voice soft, and low, and purring.
"I know you have it in for me," Johnson continued with his unalterable and ponderous slowness. "You do not like me. You-you-"
"Go on," Wolf La.r.s.en prompted. "Don"t be afraid of my feelings."
"I am not afraid," the sailor retorted, a slight angry flush rising through his sunburn. "If I speak not fast, it is because I have not been from the old country as long as you. You do not like me because I am too much of a man; that is why, sir."
"You are too much of a man for ship discipline, if that is what you mean, and if you know what I mean," was Wolf La.r.s.en"s retort.
"I know English, and I know what you mean, sir," Johnson answered, his flush deepening at the slur on his knowledge of the English language.
"Johnson," Wolf La.r.s.en said, with an air of dismissing all that had gone before as introductory to the main business in hand, "I understand you"re not quite satisfied with those oilskins?"
"No, I am not. They are no good, sir."
"And you"ve been shooting off your mouth about them."
"I say what I think, sir," the sailor answered courageously, not failing at the same time in ship courtesy, which demanded that "sir" be appended to each speech he made.
It was at this moment that I chanced to glance at Johansen. His big fists were clenching and unclenching, and his face was positively fiendish, so malignantly did he look at Johnson. I noticed a black discoloration, still faintly visible, under Johansen"s eye, a mark of the thrashing he had received a few nights before from the sailor. For the first time I began to divine that something terrible was about to be enacted,-what, I could not imagine.
"Do you know what happens to men who say what you"ve said about my slop-chest and me?" Wolf La.r.s.en was demanding.
"I know, sir," was the answer.
"What?" Wolf La.r.s.en demanded, sharply and imperatively.
"What you and the mate there are going to do to me, sir."
"Look at him, Hump," Wolf La.r.s.en said to me, "look at this bit of animated dust, this aggregation of matter that moves and breathes and defies me and thoroughly believes itself to be compounded of something good; that is impressed with certain human fictions such as righteousness and honesty, and that will live up to them in spite of all personal discomforts and menaces. What do you think of him, Hump? What do you think of him?"
"I think that he is a better man than you are," I answered, impelled, somehow, with a desire to draw upon myself a portion of the wrath I felt was about to break upon his head. "His human fictions, as you choose to call them, make for n.o.bility and manhood. You have no fictions, no dreams, no ideals. You are a pauper."
He nodded his head with a savage pleasantness. "Quite true, Hump, quite true. I have no fictions that make for n.o.bility and manhood. A living dog is better than a dead lion, say I with the Preacher. My only doctrine is the doctrine of expediency, and it makes for surviving. This bit of the ferment we call "Johnson," when he is no longer a bit of the ferment, only dust and ashes, will have no more n.o.bility than any dust and ashes, while I shall still be alive and roaring."
"Do you know what I am going to do?" he questioned.
I shook my head.
"Well, I am going to exercise my prerogative of roaring and show you how fares n.o.bility. Watch me."
Three yards away from Johnson he was, and sitting down. Nine feet! And yet he left the chair in full leap, without first gaining a standing position. He left the chair, just as he sat in it, squarely, springing from the sitting posture like a wild animal, a tiger, and like a tiger covered the intervening s.p.a.ce. It was an avalanche of fury that Johnson strove vainly to fend off. He threw one arm down to protect the stomach, the other arm up to protect the head; but Wolf La.r.s.en"s fist drove midway between, on the chest, with a crushing, resounding impact. Johnson"s breath, suddenly expelled, shot from his mouth and as suddenly checked, with the forced, audible expiration of a man wielding an axe. He almost fell backward, and swayed from side to side in an effort to recover his balance.
I cannot give the further particulars of the horrible scene that followed. It was too revolting. It turns me sick even now when I think of it. Johnson fought bravely enough, but he was no match for Wolf La.r.s.en, much less for Wolf La.r.s.en and the mate. It was frightful. I had not imagined a human being could endure so much and still live and struggle on. And struggle on Johnson did. Of course there was no hope for him, not the slightest, and he knew it as well as I, but by the manhood that was in him he could not cease from fighting for that manhood.
It was too much for me to witness. I felt that I should lose my mind, and I ran up the companion stairs to open the doors and escape on deck. But Wolf La.r.s.en, leaving his victim for the moment, and with one of his tremendous springs, gained my side and flung me into the far corner of the cabin.
"The phenomena of life, Hump," he girded at me. "Stay and watch it. You may gather data on the immortality of the soul. Besides, you know, we can"t hurt Johnson"s soul. It"s only the fleeting form we may demolish."
It seemed centuries-possibly it was no more than ten minutes that the beating continued. Wolf La.r.s.en and Johansen were all about the poor fellow. They struck him with their fists, kicked him with their heavy shoes, knocked him down, and dragged him to his feet to knock him down again. His eyes were blinded so that he could not see, and the blood running from ears and nose and mouth turned the cabin into a shambles. And when he could no longer rise they still continued to beat and kick him where he lay.