"Hump, if you will look on the west coast of the map of Norway you will see an indentation called Romsdal Fiord.I was born within a hundred miles of that stretch of water.But I was not born Norwegian.I am a Dane.My father and mother were Danes, and how they ever came to that bleak bight of land on the west coast I do not know.I never heard.Outside of that there is nothing mysterious.They were poor people and unlettered.They came of generations of poor unlettered people -- peasants of the sea who sowed their sons on the waves as has been their custom since time began.
There is no more to tell."
"But there is," I objected."It is still obscure to me.""What can I tell you?" he demanded, with a recrudescence of fierceness.
"Of the meagreness of a child's life? of fish diet and coarse living? of going out with the boats from the time I could crawl? of my brothers, who went away one by one to the deep-sea farming and never came back? of myself, unable to read or write, cabin-boy at the mature age of ten on the coastwise, old-country ships? of the rough fare and rougher usage, where kicks and blows were bed and breakfast and took the place of speech, and fear and hatred and pain were my only soul- experiences? I do not care to remember.
A madness comes up in my brain even now as I think of it.But there were coastwise skippers I would have returned and killed when a man's strength came to me, only the lines of my life were cast at the time in other places.
I did return, not long ago, but unfortunately the skippers were dead, all but one, a mate in the old days, a skipper when I met him, and when I left him a cripple who would never walk again.""But you who read Spencer and Darwin and have never seen the inside of a school, how did you learn to read and write?" I queried.
"In the English merchant service.Cabin-boy at twelve, ship's boy at fourteen, ordinary seaman at sixteen, able seaman at seventeen, and cock of the fo'c'sle, infinite ambition and infinite loneliness, receiving neither help nor sympathy, I did it all for myself -- navigation, mathematics, science, literature, and what not.And of what use has it been? Master and owner of a ship at the top of my life, as you say, when I am beginning to diminish and die.Paltry, isn't it? And when the sun was up I was scorched, and because I had no root withered away.""But history tells of slaves who rose to the purple," I chided.
"And history tells of opportunities that came to the slaves who rose to the purple," he answered grimly."No man makes opportunity.All the great men ever did was to know it when it came to them.The Corsican knew.
I have dreamed as greatly as the Corsican.I should have known the opportunity, but it never came.The thorns sprung up and choked me.And, Hump, I can tell you that you know more about me than any living man, except my own brother.""And what is he? And where is he?"
"Master of the steamship Macedonia , seal-hunter," was the answer.
"We will meet him most probably on the Japan coast.Men call him `Death'
Larsen."
"Death Larsen!" I involuntarily cried."Is he like you?""Hardly.He is a lump of an animal without any head.He has all my --my -- "
"Brutishness," I suggested.
"Yes, -- thank you for the word, -- all my brutishness, but he can scarcely read or write.""And he has never philosophized on life," I added.
"No," Wolf Larsen answered, with an indescribable air of sadness."And he is all the happier for leaving life alone.He is too busy living it to think about it.My mistake was in ever opening the books."
