Chapter 27

by Jack London

　　Chapter XXVII

　　Day broke, grey and chill. The boat was close-hauled on a freshbreeze and the compass indicated that we were just making thecourse which would bring us to Japan. Though stoutly mittened, myfingers were cold, and they pained from the grip on the steering-oar. My feet were stinging from the bite of the frost, and I hopedfervently that the sun would shine.

　　Before me, in the bottom of the boat, lay Maud. She, at least, waswarm, for under her and over her were thick blankets. The top oneI had drawn over her face to shelter it from the night, so I couldsee nothing but the vague shape of her, and her light-brown hair,escaped from the covering and jewelled with moisture from the air.

　　Long I looked at her, dwelling upon that one visible bit of her asonly a man would who deemed it the most precious thing in theworld. So insistent was my gaze that at last she stirred under theblankets, the top fold was thrown back and she smiled out on me,her eyes yet heavy with sleep.

　　"Good-morning, Mr. Van Weyden," she said. "Have you sighted landyet?"

　　"No," I answered, "but we are approaching it at a rate of six milesan hour."

　　She made a moue of disappointment.

　　"But that is equivalent to one hundred and forty-four miles intwenty-four hours," I added reassuringly.

　　Her face brightened. "And how far have we to go?"

　　"Siberia lies off there," I said, pointing to the west. "But tothe south-west, some six hundred miles, is Japan. If this windshould hold, we'll make it in five days."

　　"And if it storms? The boat could not live?"

　　She had a way of looking one in the eyes and demanding the truth,and thus she looked at me as she asked the question.

　　"It would have to storm very hard," I temporized.

　　"And if it storms very hard?"

　　I nodded my head. "But we may be picked up any moment by asealing-schooner. They are plentifully distributed over this partof the ocean."

　　"Why, you are chilled through!" she cried. "Look! You areshivering. Don't deny it; you are. And here I have been lyingwarm as toast."

　　"I don't see that it would help matters if you, too, sat up andwere chilled," I laughed.

　　"It will, though, when I learn to steer, which I certainly shall."

　　She sat up and began making her simple toilet. She shook down herhair, and it fell about her in a brown cloud, hiding her face andshoulders. Dear, damp brown hair! I wanted to kiss it, to rippleit through my fingers, to bury my face in it. I gazed entranced,till the boat ran into the wind and the flapping sail warned me Iwas not attending to my duties. Idealist and romanticist that Iwas and always had been in spite of my analytical nature, yet I hadfailed till now in grasping much of the physical characteristics oflove. The love of man and woman, I had always held, was asublimated something related to spirit, a spiritual bond thatlinked and drew their souls together. The bonds of the flesh hadlittle part in my cosmos of love. But I was learning the sweetlesson for myself that the soul transmuted itself, expresseditself, through the flesh; that the sight and sense and touch ofthe loved one's hair was as much breath and voice and essence ofthe spirit as the light that shone from the eyes and the thoughtsthat fell from the lips. After all, pure spirit was unknowable, athing to be sensed and divined only; nor could it express itself interms of itself. Jehovah was anthropomorphic because he couldaddress himself to the Jews only in terms of their understanding;so he was conceived as in their own image, as a cloud, a pillar offire, a tangible, physical something which the mind of theIsraelites could grasp.

　　And so I gazed upon Maud's light-brown hair, and loved it, andlearned more of love than all the poets and singers had taught mewith all their songs and sonnets. She flung it back with a suddenadroit movement, and her face emerged, smiling.

　　"Why don't women wear their hair down always?" I asked. "It is somuch more beautiful."

　　"If it didn't tangle so dreadfully," she laughed. "There! I'velost one of my precious hair-pins!"

　　I neglected the boat and had the sail spilling the wind again andagain, such was my delight in following her every movement as shesearched through the blankets for the pin. I was surprised, andjoyfully, that she was so much the woman, and the display of eachtrait and mannerism that was characteristically feminine gave mekeener joy. For I had been elevating her too highly in my conceptsof her, removing her too far from the plane of the human, and toofar from me. I had been making of her a creature goddess-like andunapproachable. So I hailed with delight the little traits thatproclaimed her only woman after all, such as the toss of the headwhich flung back the cloud of hair, and the search for the pin.She was woman, my kind, on my plane, and the delightful intimacy ofkind, of man and woman, was possible, as well as the reverence andawe in which I knew I should always hold her.

　　She found the pin with an adorable little cry, and I turned myattention more fully to my steering. I proceeded to experiment,lashing and wedging the steering-oar until the boat held on fairlywell by the wind without my assistance. Occasionally it came uptoo close, or fell off too freely; but it always recovered itselfand in the main behaved satisfactorily.

　　"And now we shall have breakfast," I said. "But first you must bemore warmly clad."

　　I got out a heavy shirt, new from the slop-chest and made fromblanket goods. I knew the kind, so thick and so close of texturethat it could resist the rain and not be soaked through after hoursof wetting. When she had slipped this on over her head, Iexchanged the boy's cap she wore for a man's cap, large enough tocover her hair, and, when the flap was turned down, to completelycover her neck and ears. The effect was charming. Her face was ofthe sort that cannot but look well under all circumstances.Nothing could destroy its exquisite oval, its well-nigh classiclines, its delicately stencilled brows, its large brown eyes,clear-seeing and calm, gloriously calm.

　　A puff, slightly stronger than usual, struck us just then. Theboat was caught as it obliquely crossed the crest of a wave. Itwent over suddenly, burying its gunwale level with the sea andshipping a bucketful or so of water. I was opening a can of tongueat the moment, and I sprang to the sheet and cast it off just intime. The sail flapped and fluttered, and the boat paid off. Afew minutes of regulating sufficed to put it on its course again,when I returned to the preparation of breakfast.

　　"It does very well, it seems, though I am not versed in thingsnautical," she said, nodding her head with grave approval at mysteering contrivance.

　　"But it will serve only when we are sailing by the wind," Iexplained. "When running more freely, with the wind astern abeam,or on the quarter, it will be necessary for me to steer."

　　"I must say I don't understand your technicalities," she said, "butI do your conclusion, and I don't like it. You cannot steer nightand day and for ever. So I shall expect, after breakfast, toreceive my first lesson. And then you shall lie down and sleep.We'll stand watches just as they do on ships."

　　"I don't see how I am to teach you," I made protest. "I am justlearning for myself. You little thought when you trusted yourselfto me that I had had no experience whatever with small boats. Thisis the first time I have ever been in one."

　　"Then we'll learn together, sir. And since you've had a night'sstart you shall teach me what you have learned. And now,breakfast. My! this air does give one an appetite!"

　　"No coffee," I said regretfully, passing her buttered sea-biscuitsand a slice of canned tongue. "And there will be no tea, no soups,nothing hot, till we have made land somewhere, somehow."

　　After the simple breakfast, capped with a cup of cold water, Maudtook her lesson in steering. In teaching her I learned quite adeal myself, though I was applying the knowledge already acquiredby sailing the Ghost and by watching the boat-steerers sail thesmall boats. She was an apt pupil, and soon learned to keep thecourse, to luff in the puffs and to cast off the sheet in anemergency.

　　Having grown tired, apparently, of the task, she relinquished theoar to me. I had folded up the blankets, but she now proceeded tospread them out on the bottom. When all was arranged snugly, shesaid:

　　"Now, sir, to bed. And you shall sleep until luncheon. Tilldinner-time," she corrected, remembering the arrangement on theGhost.

　　What could I do? She insisted, and said, "Please, please,"whereupon I turned the oar over to her and obeyed. I experienced apositive sensuous delight as I crawled into the bed she had madewith her hands. The calm and control which were so much a part ofher seemed to have been communicated to the blankets, so that I wasaware of a soft dreaminess and content, and of an oval face andbrown eyes framed in a fisherman's cap and tossing against abackground now of grey cloud, now of grey sea, and then I was awarethat I had been asleep.

　　I looked at my watch. It was one o'clock. I had slept sevenhours! And she had been steering seven hours! When I took thesteering-oar I had first to unbend her cramped fingers. Hermodicum of strength had been exhausted, and she was unable even tomove from her position. I was compelled to let go the sheet whileI helped her to the nest of blankets and chafed her hands and arms.

　　"I am so tired," she said, with a quick intake of the breath and asigh, drooping her head wearily.

　　But she straightened it the next moment. "Now don't scold, don'tyou dare scold," she cried with mock defiance.

　　"I hope my face does not appear angry," I answered seriously; "forI assure you I am not in the least angry."

　　"N-no," she considered. "It looks only reproachful."

　　"Then it is an honest face, for it looks what I feel. You were notfair to yourself, nor to me. How can I ever trust you again?"

　　She looked penitent. "I'll be good," she said, as a naughty childmight say it. "I promise - "

　　"To obey as a sailor would obey his captain?"

　　"Yes," she answered. "It was stupid of me, I know."

　　"Then you must promise something else," I ventured.

　　"Readily."

　　"That you will not say, 'Please, please,' too often; for when youdo you are sure to override my authority."

　　She laughed with amused appreciation. She, too, had noticed thepower of the repeated "please."

　　"It is a good word - " I began.

　　"But I must not overwork it," she broke in.

　　But she laughed weakly, and her head drooped again. I left the oarlong enough to tuck the blankets about her feet and to pull asingle fold across her face. Alas! she was not strong. I lookedwith misgiving toward the south-west and thought of the six hundredmiles of hardship before us - ay, if it were no worse thanhardship. On this sea a storm might blow up at any moment anddestroy us. And yet I was unafraid. I was without confidence inthe future, extremely doubtful, and yet I felt no underlying fear.It must come right, it must come right, I repeated to myself, overand over again.

　　The wind freshened in the afternoon, raising a stiffer sea andtrying the boat and me severely. But the supply of food and thenine breakers of water enabled the boat to stand up to the sea andwind, and I held on as long as I dared. Then I removed the sprit,tightly hauling down the peak of the sail, and we raced along underwhat sailors call a leg-of-mutton.

　　Late in the afternoon I sighted a steamer's smoke on the horizon toleeward, and I knew it either for a Russian cruiser, or, morelikely, the Macedonia still seeking the Ghost. The sun had notshone all day, and it had been bitter cold. As night drew on, theclouds darkened and the wind freshened, so that when Maud and I atesupper it was with our mittens on and with me still steering andeating morsels between puffs.

　　By the time it was dark, wind and sea had become too strong for theboat, and I reluctantly took in the sail and set about making adrag or sea-anchor. I had learned of the device from the talk ofthe hunters, and it was a simple thing to manufacture. Furling thesail and lashing it securely about the mast, boom, sprit, and twopairs of spare oars, I threw it overboard. A line connected itwith the bow, and as it floated low in the water, practicallyunexposed to the wind, it drifted less rapidly than the boat. Inconsequence it held the boat bow on to the sea and wind - thesafest position in which to escape being swamped when the sea isbreaking into whitecaps.

　　"And now?" Maud asked cheerfully, when the task was accomplishedand I pulled on my mittens.

　　"And now we are no longer travelling toward Japan," I answered."Our drift is to the south-east, or south-south-east, at the rateof at least two miles an hour."

　　"That will be only twenty-four miles," she urged, "if the windremains high all night."

　　"Yes, and only one hundred and forty miles if it continues forthree days and nights."

　　"But it won't continue," she said with easy confidence. "It willturn around and blow fair."

　　"The sea is the great faithless one."

　　"But the wind!" she retorted. "I have heard you grow eloquent overthe brave trade-wind."

　　"I wish I had thought to bring Wolf Larsen's chronometer andsextant," I said, still gloomily. "Sailing one direction, driftinganother direction, to say nothing of the set of the current in somethird direction, makes a resultant which dead reckoning can nevercalculate. Before long we won't know where we are by five hundredmiles."

　　Then I begged her pardon and promised I should not be disheartenedany more. At her solicitation I let her take the watch tillmidnight, - it was then nine o'clock, but I wrapped her in blanketsand put an oilskin about her before I lay down. I slept only cat-naps. The boat was leaping and pounding as it fell over thecrests, I could hear the seas rushing past, and spray wascontinually being thrown aboard. And still, it was not a badnight, I mused - nothing to the nights I had been through on theGhost; nothing, perhaps, to the nights we should go through in thiscockle-shell. Its planking was three-quarters of an inch thick.Between us and the bottom of the sea was less than an inch of wood.

　　And yet, I aver it, and I aver it again, I was unafraid. The deathwhich Wolf Larsen and even Thomas Mugridge had made me fear, I nolonger feared. The coming of Maud Brewster into my life seemed tohave transformed me. After all, I thought, it is better and finerto love than to be loved, if it makes something in life so worthwhile that one is not loath to die for it. I forget my own life inthe love of another life; and yet, such is the paradox, I neverwanted so much to live as right now when I place the least valueupon my own life. I never had so much reason for living, was myconcluding thought; and after that, until I dozed, I contentedmyself with trying to pierce the darkness to where I knew Maudcrouched low in the stern-sheets, watchful of the foaming sea andready to call me on an instant's notice.