It was the snap of the whip.His clutch was broken.One hand was torn loose from its hold.The other lingered desperately for a moment, and followed.
His body pitched out and down, but in some way he managed to save himself with his legs.He was hanging by them, head downward.A quick effort brought his hands up to the halyards again; but he was a long time regaining his former position, where he hung, a pitiable object.
"I'll bet he has no appetite for supper," I heard Wolf Larsen's voice, which came to me from around the corner of the galley."Stand from under, you, Johansen! Watch out! Here she comes!"In truth, Harrison was very sick, as a person is seasick; and for a long time he clung to his precarious perch without attempting to move.
Johansen, however, continued violently to urge him on to the completion of his task.
"It is a shame," I heard Johnson growling in painfully slow and correct English.He was standing by the main rigging, a few feet away from me.
"The boy is willing enough.He will learn if he has a chance.But this is -- " He paused awhile, for the word "murder" was his final judgment.
"Hist, will ye!" Louis whispered to him."For the love iv your mother hold your mouth!"But Johnson, looking on, still continued his grumbling.
"Look here," the hunter, Standish, spoke to Wolf Larsen, "that's my boat-puller, and I don't want to lose him.""That's all right, Standish," was the reply."He's your boat- puller when you've got him in the boat; but he's my sailor when I have him aboard, and I'll do what I damn well please with him.""But that's no reason -- " Standish began in a torrent of speech.
"That'll do, easy as she goes," Wolf Larsen counselled back."I've told you what's what, and let it stop at that.The man's mine, and I'll make soup of him and eat it if I want to."There was an angry gleam in the hunter's eye, but he turned on his heel and entered the steerage companionway, where he remained, looking upward.
All hands were on deck now, and all eyes were aloft, where a human life was at grapples with death.The callousness of these men, to whom industrial organization gave control of the lives of other men, was appalling.I, who had lived out of the whirl of the world, had never dreamed that its work was carried on in such fashion.Life had always seemed a peculiarly sacred thing, but here it counted for nothing, was a cipher in the arithmetic of commerce.I must say, however, that the sailors themselves were sympathetic, as instance the case of Johnson; but the masters, (the hunters and the captain), were heartlessly indifferent.Even the protest of Standish arose out of the fact that he did not wish to lose his boat-puller.Had it been some other hunter's boat-puller, he, like them, would have been no more than amused.
But to return to Harrison.It took Johansen, insulting and reviling the poor wretch, fully ten minutes to get him started again.A little later he made the end of the gaff, where, astride the spar itself, he had a better chance for holding on.He cleared the sheet, and was free to return, slightly down-hill now, along the halyards to the mast.But he had lost his nerve.
Unsafe as was his present position, he was loath to forsake it for the more unsafe position on the halyards.
He looked along the airy path he must traverse, and then down to the deck.His eyes were wide and staring, and he was trembling violently.Ihad never seen fear so strongly stamped upon a human face.Johansen called vainly for him to come down.At any moment he was liable to be snapped off the gaff, but he was helpless with fright.Wolf Larsen, walking up and down with Smoke and in conversation, took no more notice of him, though he cried sharply, once, to the man at the wheel: --"You're off your course, my man! Be careful, unless you're looking for trouble!""Ay, ay, sir," the helmsman responded, putting a couple of spokes down.
He had been guilty of running the Ghost several points off her course in order that what little wind there was should fill the foresail and hold it steady.He had striven to help the unfortunate Harrison at the risk of incurring Wolf Larsen's anger.
The time went by, and the suspense, to me, was terrible.Thomas Mugridge, on the other hand, considered it a laughable affair, and was continually bobbing his head out the galley door to make jocose remarks.How I hated him! And how my hatred for him grew and grew, during that fearful time, to cyclopean dimensions.For the first time in my life I experienced the desire to murder -- "saw red," as some of our picturesque writers phrase it.Life in general might still be sacred, but life in the particular case of Thomas Mugridge had become very profane indeed.I was frightened when I became conscious that was seeing red, and the thought flashed through my mind: was I, too, becoming tainted by the brutality of my environment?
-- I, who even in the most flagrant crimes had denied the justice and righteousness of capital punishment?
Fully half an hour went by, and then I saw Johnson and Louis in some sort of altercation.It ended with Johnson flinging off Louis's detaining arm and starting forward.He crossed the deck, sprang into 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.
