Part 41 (2/2)
”Do you know that your smile is crooked?” I asked him; for I knew that she must attend him, and I wished to save her as much as possible
”Then I shall s My right cheek has been nus of this for the last three days; by spells,to sleep, so or foot”
”So my smile is crooked?” he queried a short while after ”Well, consider henceforth that I smile internally, withnow”
And for the space of several rotesque fancy
The ed It was the old, indomitable, terrible Wolf Larsen, imprisoned somewhere within that flesh which had once been so invincible and splendid Now it bound hi his soul in darkness and silence, blocking it from the world which to hiate the verb ”to do in every mood and tense” ”To be” was all that remained to him-to be, as he had defined death, without movement; to will, but not to execute; to think and reason and in the spirit of him to be as alive as ever, but in the flesh to be dead, quite dead
And yet, though I even removed the handcuffs, we could not adjust ourselves to his condition Our minds revolted To us he was full of potentiality We knew not what to expect of hiht break out and do Our experience warranted this state of mind, and ent about our ith anxiety always upon us
I had solved the probleh the shortness of the shears By means of the watch-tackle (I had made a new one), I heaved the butt of the foremast across the rail and then lowered it to the deck Next, by means of the shears, I hoisted the th would supply the height necessary properly to swing the mast By means of a secondary tackle I had attached to the shears, I swung the boom to a nearly perpendicular position, then lowered the butt to the deck, where, to prevent slipping, I spiked great cleats around it The single block of inal shears-tackle I had attached to the end of the boo this tackle to the windlass, I could raise and lower the end of the boo stationary, and, bythe booged a hoisting tackle; and when the whole arrangement was completed I could not but be startled by the power and latitude it gave me
Of course, two days' as required for the accomplish of the third day that I swung the foremast from the deck and proceeded to square its butt to fit the step Here I was especially aard I sawed and chopped and chiselled the weathered wood till it had the appearance of having been gnawed by soantic mouse But it fitted
”It ork, I knoork,” I cried
”Do you know Dr Jordan's final test of truth?” Maud asked
I shook s which had drifted down my neck
”Can we make it work? Can we trust our lives to it? is the test”
”He is a favourite of yours,” I said
”When I dismantled my old Pantheon and cast out Napoleon and Caesar and their fellows, I straightway erected a new Pantheon,” she answered gravely, ”and the first I installed as Dr Jordan”
”A reater because modern,” she added ”How can the Old World heroes compare with ours?”
I shook ument Our points of view and outlook on life at least were very alike
”For a pair of critics we agree faht and able assistant,” she laughed back
But there was little tihter in those days, what of our heavy work and of the awfulness of Wolf Larsen's living death
He had received another stroke He had lost his voice, or he was losing it He had only intermittent use of it As he phrased it, the wires were like the stock market, now up, non Occasionally the wires were up and he spoke as well as ever, though slowly and heavily Then speech would suddenly desert him, in the middle of a sentence perhaps, and for hours, sometimes, ould wait for the connection to be re-established He co this period that he arranged a systeainst the tiether-one pressure of the hand for ”yes,” two for ”no” It ell that it was arranged, for by evening his voice had gone from him By hand pressures, after that, he answered our questions, and when he wished to speak he scrawled his thoughts with his left hand, quite legibly, on a sheet of paper