[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

third shot made another hole in our mainsail.
Then we entered the fog. It was about us, veiling and hiding us in its dense
wet gauze.
The sudden transition was startling. The moment before we had been leaping
through the sunshine, the clear sky above us, the sea breaking and rolling
wide to the horizon, and a ship, vomiting smoke and fire and iron missiles,
rushing madly upon us. And at once, as in an instant's leap, the sun was
blotted out, there was no sky, even our mastheads were lost to view, and our
horizon was such as tear-blinded eyes may see. The grey mist drove by us like
a rain. Every woollen filament of our garments, every hair of our heads and
faces, was jewelled with a crystal globule. The shrouds were wet with
moisture; it dripped from our rigging overhead; and on the underside of our
booms drops of water took shape in long swaying lines, which were detached and
flung to the deck in mimic showers at each surge of the schooner. I was aware
of a pent, stifled feeling. As the sounds of the ship thrusting herself
Page 127
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
through the waves were hurled back upon us by the fog, so were one's thoughts.
The mind recoiled from contemplation of a world beyond this wet veil which
wrapped us around. This was the world, the universe itself, its bounds so
near one felt impelled to reach out both arms and push them back. It was
impossible, that the rest could be beyond these walls of grey. The rest was a
dream, no more than the memory of a dream.
It was weird, strangely weird. I looked at Maud Brewster and knew that she
was similarly affected. Then I looked at Wolf Larsen, but there was nothing
subjective about his state of consciousness. His whole concern was with the
immediate, objective present. He still held the wheel, and I felt that he was
timing Time, reckoning the passage of the minutes with each forward lunge and
leeward roll of the Ghost.
"Go for'ard and hard alee without any noise," he said to me in a low voice.
"Clew up the topsails first. Set men at all the sheets. Let there be no
rattling of blocks, no sound of voices.
No noise, understand, no noise."
When all was ready, the word "hard-a-lee" was passed forward to me from man to
man; and the Ghost heeled about on the port tack with practically no noise at
all. And what little there was, - the slapping of a few reef-points and the
creaking of a sheave in a block or two, - was ghostly under the hollow echoing
pall in which we were swathed.
We had scarcely filled away, it seemed, when the fog thinned abruptly and we
were again in the sunshine, the wide-stretching sea breaking before us to the
sky-line. But the ocean was bare. No wrathful Macedonia broke its surface
nor blackened the sky with her smoke.
Wolf Larsen at once squared away and ran down along the rim of the fog-bank.
His trick was obvious. He had entered the fog to windward of the steamer, and
while the steamer had blindly driven on into the fog in the chance of catching
him, he had come about and out of his shelter and was now running down to
re-enter to leeward. Successful in this, the old simile of the needle in the
haystack would be mild indeed compared with his brother's chance of finding
him. He did not run long. Jibing the fore- and main-sails and setting the
topsails again, we headed back into the bank. As we entered I could have
sworn I saw a vague bulk emerging to windward. I looked quickly at Wolf
Larsen. Already we were ourselves buried in the fog, but he nodded his head.
He, too, had seen it - the Macedonia, guessing his manoeuvre and failing by a
moment in anticipating it. There was no doubt that we had escaped unseen.
"He can't keep this up," Wolf Larsen said. "He'll have to go back for the
rest of his boats. Send a man to the wheel, Mr. Van
Weyden, keep this course for the present, and you might as well set the
watches, for we won't do any lingering to-night."
"I'd give five hundred dollars, though," he added, "just to be aboard the
Macedonia for five minutes, listening to my brother curse."
"And now, Mr. Van Weyden," he said to me when he had been relieved from the
wheel, "we must make these new-comers welcome. Serve out plenty of whisky to
the hunters and see that a few bottles slip for'ard. I'll wager every man
Jack of them is over the side to-
morrow, hunting for Wolf Larsen as contentedly as ever they hunted for Death
Larsen."
Page 128
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
"But won't they escape as Wainwright did?" I asked.
He laughed shrewdly. "Not as long as our old hunters have anything to say
about it. I'm dividing amongst them a dollar a skin for all the skins shot by
our new hunters. At least half of their enthusiasm to-day was due to that.
Oh, no, there won't be any escaping if they have anything to say about it.
And now you'd better get for'ard to your hospital duties. There must be a
full ward waiting for you."
CHAPTER XXVI
Wolf Larsen took the distribution of the whisky off my hands, and the bottles
began to make their appearance while I worked over the fresh batch of wounded
men in the forecastle. I had seen whisky drunk, such as whisky-and-soda by
the men of the clubs, but never as these men drank it, from pannikins and
mugs, and from the bottles - great brimming drinks, each one of which was in
itself a debauch. But they did not stop at one or two. They drank and drank,
and ever the bottles slipped forward and they drank more.
Everybody drank; the wounded drank; Oofty-Oofty, who helped me, drank. Only
Louis refrained, no more than cautiously wetting his lips with the liquor,
though he joined in the revels with an abandon equal to that of most of them.
It was a saturnalia. In loud voices they shouted over the day's fighting,
wrangled about details, or waxed affectionate and made friends with the men
whom they had fought. Prisoners and captors hiccoughed on one another's
shoulders, and swore mighty oaths of respect and esteem. They wept over the
miseries of the past and over the miseries yet to come under the iron rule of
Wolf Larsen. And all cursed him and told terrible tales of his brutality.
It was a strange and frightful spectacle - the small, bunk-lined space, the
floor and walls leaping and lurching, the dim light, the
swaying shadows lengthening and fore-shortening monstrously, the thick air
heavy with smoke and the smell of bodies and iodoform, and the inflamed faces
of the men - half-men, I should call them.
I noted Oofty-Oofty, holding the end of a bandage and looking upon the scene,
his velvety and luminous eyes glistening in the light like a deer's eyes, and
yet I knew the barbaric devil that lurked in his breast and belied all the
softness and tenderness, almost womanly, of his face and form. And I noticed
the boyish face of
Harrison, - a good face once, but now a demon's, - convulsed with passion as
he told the newcomers of the hell-ship they were in and shrieked curses upon
the head of Wolf Larsen.
Wolf Larsen it was, always Wolf Larsen, enslaver and tormentor of men, a male
Circe and these his swine, suffering brutes that grovelled before him and
revolted only in drunkenness and in secrecy. And was I, too, one of his
swine? I thought. And Maud
Brewster? No! I ground my teeth in my anger and determination till the man I
was attending winced under my hand and Oofty-Oofty looked at me with
curiosity. I felt endowed with a sudden strength. What of my new-found love,
I was a giant. I feared nothing. I would work my will through it all, in
spite of Wolf
Larsen and of my own thirty-five bookish years. All would be well.
I would make it well. And so, exalted, upborne by a sense of power, I turned
Page 129 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

zanotowane.pl

doc.pisz.pl

pdf.pisz.pl

razem.keep.pl