Chapter 23

by Jack London

　　Chapter XXIII

　　Brave winds, blowing fair, swiftly drove the Ghost northward intothe seal herd. We encountered it well up to the forty-fourthparallel, in a raw and stormy sea across which the wind harried thefog-banks in eternal flight. For days at a time we could never seethe sun nor take an observation; then the wind would sweep the faceof the ocean clean, the waves would ripple and flash, and we wouldlearn where we were. A day of clear weather might follow, or threedays or four, and then the fog would settle down upon us, seeminglythicker than ever.

　　The hunting was perilous; yet the boats, lowered day after day,were swallowed up in the grey obscurity, and were seen no more tillnightfall, and often not till long after, when they would creep inlike sea-wraiths, one by one, out of the grey. Wainwright - thehunter whom Wolf Larsen had stolen with boat and men - tookadvantage of the veiled sea and escaped. He disappeared onemorning in the encircling fog with his two men, and we never sawthem again, though it was not many days when we learned that theyhad passed from schooner to schooner until they finally regainedtheir own.

　　This was the thing I had set my mind upon doing, but theopportunity never offered. It was not in the mate's province to goout in the boats, and though I manoeuvred cunningly for it, WolfLarsen never granted me the privilege. Had he done so, I shouldhave managed somehow to carry Miss Brewster away with me. As itwas, the situation was approaching a stage which I was afraid toconsider. I involuntarily shunned the thought of it, and yet thethought continually arose in my mind like a haunting spectre.

　　I had read sea-romances in my time, wherein figured, as a matter ofcourse, the lone woman in the midst of a shipload of men; but Ilearned, now, that I had never comprehended the deeper significanceof such a situation - the thing the writers harped upon andexploited so thoroughly. And here it was, now, and I was face toface with it. That it should be as vital as possible, it requiredno more than that the woman should be Maud Brewster, who nowcharmed me in person as she had long charmed me through her work.

　　No one more out of environment could be imagined. She was adelicate, ethereal creature, swaying and willowy, light andgraceful of movement. It never seemed to me that she walked, or,at least, walked after the ordinary manner of mortals. Hers was anextreme lithesomeness, and she moved with a certain indefinableairiness, approaching one as down might float or as a bird onnoiseless wings.

　　She was like a bit of Dresden china, and I was continuallyimpressed with what I may call her fragility. As at the time Icaught her arm when helping her below, so at any time I was quiteprepared, should stress or rough handling befall her, to see hercrumble away. I have never seen body and spirit in such perfectaccord. Describe her verse, as the critics have described it, assublimated and spiritual, and you have described her body. Itseemed to partake of her soul, to have analogous attributes, and tolink it to life with the slenderest of chains. Indeed, she trodthe earth lightly, and in her constitution there was little of therobust clay.

　　She was in striking contrast to Wolf Larsen. Each was nothing thatthe other was, everything that the other was not. I noted themwalking the deck together one morning, and I likened them to theextreme ends of the human ladder of evolution - the one theculmination of all savagery, the other the finished product of thefinest civilization. True, Wolf Larsen possessed intellect to anunusual degree, but it was directed solely to the exercise of hissavage instincts and made him but the more formidable a savage. Hewas splendidly muscled, a heavy man, and though he strode with thecertitude and directness of the physical man, there was nothingheavy about his stride. The jungle and the wilderness lurked inthe uplift and downput of his feet. He was cat-footed, and lithe,and strong, always strong. I likened him to some great tiger, abeast of prowess and prey. He looked it, and the piercing glitterthat arose at times in his eyes was the same piercing glitter I hadobserved in the eyes of caged leopards and other preying creaturesof the wild.

　　But this day, as I noted them pacing up and down, I saw that it wasshe who terminated the walk. They came up to where I was standingby the entrance to the companion-way. Though she betrayed it by nooutward sign, I felt, somehow, that she was greatly perturbed. Shemade some idle remark, looking at me, and laughed lightly enough;but I saw her eyes return to his, involuntarily, as thoughfascinated; then they fell, but not swiftly enough to veil the rushof terror that filled them.

　　It was in his eyes that I saw the cause of her perturbation.Ordinarily grey and cold and harsh, they were now warm and soft andgolden, and all a-dance with tiny lights that dimmed and faded, orwelled up till the full orbs were flooded with a glowing radiance.Perhaps it was to this that the golden colour was due; but goldenhis eyes were, enticing and masterful, at the same time luring andcompelling, and speaking a demand and clamour of the blood which nowoman, much less Maud Brewster, could misunderstand.

　　Her own terror rushed upon me, and in that moment of fear - themost terrible fear a man can experience - I knew that ininexpressible ways she was dear to me. The knowledge that I lovedher rushed upon me with the terror, and with both emotions grippingat my heart and causing my blood at the same time to chill and toleap riotously, I felt myself drawn by a power without me andbeyond me, and found my eyes returning against my will to gaze intothe eyes of Wolf Larsen. But he had recovered himself. The goldencolour and the dancing lights were gone. Cold and grey andglittering they were as he bowed brusquely and turned away.

　　"I am afraid," she whispered, with a shiver. "I am so afraid."

　　I, too, was afraid, and what of my discovery of how much she meantto me my mind was in a turmoil; but, I succeeded in answering quitecalmly:

　　"All will come right, Miss Brewster. Trust me, it will comeright."

　　She answered with a grateful little smile that sent my heartpounding, and started to descend the companion-stairs.

　　For a long while I remained standing where she had left me. Therewas imperative need to adjust myself, to consider the significanceof the changed aspect of things. It had come, at last, love hadcome, when I least expected it and under the most forbiddingconditions. Of course, my philosophy had always recognized theinevitableness of the love-call sooner or later; but long years ofbookish silence had made me inattentive and unprepared.

　　And now it had come! Maud Brewster! My memory flashed back tothat first thin little volume on my desk, and I saw before me, asthough in the concrete, the row of thin little volumes on mylibrary shelf. How I had welcomed each of them! Each year one hadcome from the press, and to me each was the advent of the year.They had voiced a kindred intellect and spirit, and as such I hadreceived them into a camaraderie of the mind; but now their placewas in my heart.

　　My heart? A revulsion of feeling came over me. I seemed to standoutside myself and to look at myself incredulously. Maud Brewster!Humphrey Van Weyden, "the cold-blooded fish," the "emotionlessmonster," the "analytical demon," of Charley Furuseth'schristening, in love! And then, without rhyme or reason, allsceptical, my mind flew back to a small biographical note in thered-bound Who's Who, and I said to myself, "She was born inCambridge, and she is twenty-seven years old." And then I said,"Twenty-seven years old and still free and fancy free?" But howdid I know she was fancy free? And the pang of new-born jealousyput all incredulity to flight. There was no doubt about it. I wasjealous; therefore I loved. And the woman I loved was MaudBrewster.

　　I, Humphrey Van Weyden, was in love! And again the doubt assailedme. Not that I was afraid of it, however, or reluctant to meet it.On the contrary, idealist that I was to the most pronounced degree,my philosophy had always recognized and guerdoned love as thegreatest thing in the world, the aim and the summit of being, themost exquisite pitch of joy and happiness to which life couldthrill, the thing of all things to be hailed and welcomed and takeninto the heart. But now that it had come I could not believe. Icould not be so fortunate. It was too good, too good to be true.Symons's lines came into my head:

　　"I wandered all these years among

　　A world of women, seeking you."

　　And then I had ceased seeking. It was not for me, this greatestthing in the world, I had decided. Furuseth was right; I wasabnormal, an "emotionless monster," a strange bookish creature,capable of pleasuring in sensations only of the mind. And though Ihad been surrounded by women all my days, my appreciation of themhad been aesthetic and nothing more. I had actually, at times,considered myself outside the pale, a monkish fellow denied theeternal or the passing passions I saw and understood so well inothers. And now it had come! Undreamed of and unheralded, it hadcome. In what could have been no less than an ecstasy, I left mypost at the head of the companion-way and started along the deck,murmuring to myself those beautiful lines of Mrs. Browning:

　　"I lived with visions for my company

　　Instead of men and women years ago,

　　And found them gentle mates, nor thought to know

　　A sweeter music than they played to me."

　　But the sweeter music was playing in my ears, and I was blind andoblivious to all about me. The sharp voice of Wolf Larsen arousedme.

　　"What the hell are you up to?" he was demanding.

　　I had strayed forward where the sailors were painting, and I cameto myself to find my advancing foot on the verge of overturning apaint-pot.

　　"Sleep-walking, sunstroke, - what?" he barked.

　　"No; indigestion," I retorted, and continued my walk as if nothinguntoward had occurred.