The Sea Wolf | Page 5

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.
"That'll do, Yonson," one of the men said. "Carn't yer see you've
bloomin' well rubbed all the gent's skin orf?"

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.
"An' 'ow yer feelin' now, sir?" he asked, with the subservient smirk
which comes only of generations of tip-seeking ancestors.
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.
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.
"Thank you, Mr. Yonson," I said; "but don't you think your measures
were rather heroic?"
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.
"My name is Johnson, not Yonson," he said, in very good, though slow,
English, with no more than a shade of accent to it.
There was mild protest in his pale blue eyes, and withal a timid
frankness and manliness that quite won me to him.

"Thank you, Mr. Johnson," I corrected, and reached out my hand for
his.
He hesitated, awkward and bashful, shifted his weight from one leg to
the other, then blunderingly gripped my hand in a hearty shake.
"Have you any dry clothes I may put on?" I asked the cook.
"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."
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.
"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?"
"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 Ghost, bound
seal-hunting to Japan."
"And who is the captain? I must see him as soon as I am dressed."
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