Part 4 (1/2)
At this moment, as he opened his mouth to speak, puff after puff struck the schooner and pressed her side under The wind shrieked a wild song through the rigging Solanced anxiously aloft The lee rail, where the dead man lay, was buried in the sea, and as the schooner lifted and righted the water swept across the deck wetting us above our shoe-tops A shower of rain drove down upon us, each drop stinging like a hailstone As it passed, Wolf Larsen began to speak, the bare-headed e of the deck
”I only remember one part of the service,” he said, ”and that is, 'And the body shall be cast into the sea' So cast it in”
He ceased speaking Thethe hatch-cover seemed perplexed, puzzled no doubt by the briefness of the ceremony He burst upon them in a fury
”Lift up that end there, damn you! What the hell's the matter with you?”
They elevated the end of the hatch-cover with pitiful haste, and, like a dog flung overside, the dead ed hione
”Johansen,” Wolf Larsen said briskly to the new mate, ”keep all hands on deck now they're here Get in the topsails and jibs and ood job of it We're in for a sou'-easter Better reef the jib and mainsail too, while you're about it”
In aorders and the o ropes of various sorts-all naturally confusing to a landsman such as myself But it was the heartlessness of it that especially struck me The dead man was an episode that was past, an incident that was dropped, in a canvas covering with a sack of coal, while the shi+p sped along and her ent on nobody had been affected The hunters were laughing at a fresh story of S aloft; Wolf Larsen was studying the clouding sky to ard; and the deaddown, down-
Then it was that the cruelty of the sea, its relentlessness and awfulness, rushed upon me Life had beco, a soulless stirring of the ooze and sliazed out across the desolate foa-banks that hid San Francisco and the California coast Rain-squalls were driving in between, and I could scarcely see the fog And this strange vessel, with its terribleup and out, was heading away into the south-west, into the great and lonely Pacific expanse
CHAPTER IV
What happened to -schooner Ghost, as I strove to fit into my new environment, are matters of humiliation and pain The cook, as called ”the doctor” by the crew, ”Tomed person The difference worked indifference in treat as he had been before, he was now as doentleman with a skin soft as a ”lydy's,” but only an ordinary and very worthless cabin-boy
He absurdly insisted upon e, and his behaviour and carriage were insufferable as he showed me my duties Besides my work in the cabin, with its four small state-rooalley, andpotatoes or washi+ng greasy pots was a source of unending and sarcastic wonder to him He refused to take into consideration what I was, or, rather, what s I was accustomed to had been This was part of the attitude he chose to adopt toward me; and I confess, ere the day was done, that I hated his than I had ever hated any one in my life before
This first day was made more difficult for me from the fact that the Ghost, under close reefs (ter through what Mr Mugridge called an ”'owlin' sou'-easter” At half-past five, under his directions, I set the table in the cabin, with rough-weather trays in place, and then carried the tea and cooked food down frosea
”Look sharp or you'll get doused,” was Mr Mugridge's parting injunction, as I left the galley with a big tea-pot in one hand, and in the hollow of the other arm several loaves of fresh-baked bread One of the hunters, a tall, loose-jointed chap nae (the na quarters) to the cabin Wolf Larsen was on the poop, s yer 'ook!” the cook cried
I stopped, for I did not knoas co Then I saw Henderson leaping like a , up which he shot, on the inside, till he was reat wave, curling and foa, poised far above the rail I was directly under it My e I grasped that I was in danger, but that was all I stood still, in trepidation Then Wolf Larsen shouted fro, you-you Hu, to which Iwall of water What happened after that was very confusing I was beneath the water, suffocating and drowning My feet were out fro swept along I knew not where Several tiht knee a terrible blow Then the flood seeain I had been swept against the galley and around the steerage companion-way from the weather side into the lee scuppers The pain froht on it, or, at least, I thought I could not putwas broken But the cook was after alley door:
”'Ere, you! Don't tyke all night about it! Where's the pot? Lost overboard? Serve you bloody well right if yer neck was broke!”
I reat tea-pot was still in alley and handed it to hined
”Gawd bliood for anyw'y, I'd like to know? Eh? Wot 're you good for any'wy? Cawn't even carry a bit of tea aft without losin' it Now I'll 'ave to boil some more
”An' wot 're you snifflin' about?” he burst out at , pore little hfrom the pain But I called up all alley to cabin and cabin to galley without further s I had acquired by my accident: an injured knee-cap that went undressed and from which I suffered for weary months, and the name of ”Hump,” which Wolf Larsen had called me from the poop Thereafter, fore and aft, I was known by no other naht-processes and I identified it with h Hump were I and had always been I
It was no easy task, waiting on the cabin table, where sat Wolf Larsen, Johansen, and the six hunters The cabin was sin with, and to move around, as I was compelled to, was notBut what struck me most forcibly was the total lack of sympathy on the part of the h , and I was sick and faint frolihastly, distorted with pain, in the cabin mirror All the men must have seen my condition, but not one spoke or took notice of rateful to Wolf Larsen, later on (I ashi+ng the dishes), when he said: