Chapter 28

by Jack London

　　Chapter XXVIII

　　There is no need of going into an extended recital of our sufferingin the small boat during the many days we were driven and drifted,here and there, willy-nilly, across the ocean. The high wind blewfrom the north-west for twenty-four hours, when it fell calm, andin the night sprang up from the south-west. This was dead in ourteeth, but I took in the sea-anchor and set sail, hauling a courseon the wind which took us in a south-south-easterly direction. Itwas an even choice between this and the west-north-westerly coursewhich the wind permitted; but the warm airs of the south fanned mydesire for a warmer sea and swayed my decision.

　　In three hours - it was midnight, I well remember, and as dark as Ihad ever seen it on the sea - the wind, still blowing out of thesouth-west, rose furiously, and once again I was compelled to setthe sea-anchor.

　　Day broke and found me wan-eyed and the ocean lashed white, theboat pitching, almost on end, to its drag. We were in imminentdanger of being swamped by the whitecaps. As it was, spray andspume came aboard in such quantities that I bailed withoutcessation. The blankets were soaking. Everything was wet exceptMaud, and she, in oilskins, rubber boots, and sou'wester, was dry,all but her face and hands and a stray wisp of hair. She relievedme at the bailing-hole from time to time, and bravely she threw outthe water and faced the storm. All things are relative. It was nomore than a stiff blow, but to us, fighting for life in our frailcraft, it was indeed a storm.

　　Cold and cheerless, the wind beating on our faces, the white seasroaring by, we struggled through the day. Night came, but neitherof us slept. Day came, and still the wind beat on our faces andthe white seas roared past. By the second night Maud was fallingasleep from exhaustion. I covered her with oilskins and atarpaulin. She was comparatively dry, but she was numb with thecold. I feared greatly that she might die in the night; but daybroke, cold and cheerless, with the same clouded sky and beatingwind and roaring seas.

　　I had had no sleep for forty-eight hours. I was wet and chilled tothe marrow, till I felt more dead than alive. My body was stifffrom exertion as well as from cold, and my aching muscles gave methe severest torture whenever I used them, and I used themcontinually. And all the time we were being driven off into thenorth-east, directly away from Japan and toward bleak Bering Sea.

　　And still we lived, and the boat lived, and the wind blew unabated.In fact, toward nightfall of the third day it increased a trifleand something more. The boat's bow plunged under a crest, and wecame through quarter-full of water. I bailed like a madman. Theliability of shipping another such sea was enormously increased bythe water that weighed the boat down and robbed it of its buoyancy.And another such sea meant the end. When I had the boat emptyagain I was forced to take away the tarpaulin which covered Maud,in order that I might lash it down across the bow. It was well Idid, for it covered the boat fully a third of the way aft, andthree times, in the next several hours, it flung off the bulk ofthe down-rushing water when the bow shoved under the seas.

　　Maud's condition was pitiable. She sat crouched in the bottom ofthe boat, her lips blue, her face grey and plainly showing the painshe suffered. But ever her eyes looked bravely at me, and ever herlips uttered brave words.

　　The worst of the storm must have blown that night, though little Inoticed it. I had succumbed and slept where I sat in the stern-sheets. The morning of the fourth day found the wind diminished toa gentle whisper, the sea dying down and the sun shining upon us.Oh, the blessed sun! How we bathed our poor bodies in itsdelicious warmth, reviving like bugs and crawling things after astorm. We smiled again, said amusing things, and waxed optimisticover our situation. Yet it was, if anything, worse than ever. Wewere farther from Japan than the night we left the Ghost. Norcould I more than roughly guess our latitude and longitude. At acalculation of a two-mile drift per hour, during the seventy andodd hours of the storm, we had been driven at least one hundred andfifty miles to the north-east. But was such calculated driftcorrect? For all I knew, it might have been four miles per hourinstead of two. In which case we were another hundred and fiftymiles to the bad.

　　Where we were I did not know, though there was quite a likelihoodthat we were in the vicinity of the Ghost. There were seals aboutus, and I was prepared to sight a sealing-schooner at any time. Wedid sight one, in the afternoon, when the north-west breeze hadsprung up freshly once more. But the strange schooner lost itselfon the sky-line and we alone occupied the circle of the sea.

　　Came days of fog, when even Maud's spirit drooped and there were nomerry words upon her lips; days of calm, when we floated on thelonely immensity of sea, oppressed by its greatness and yetmarvelling at the miracle of tiny life, for we still lived andstruggled to live; days of sleet and wind and snow-squalls, whennothing could keep us warm; or days of drizzling rain, when wefilled our water-breakers from the drip of the wet sail.

　　And ever I loved Maud with an increasing love. She was so many-sided, so many-mooded - "protean-mooded" I called her. But Icalled her this, and other and dearer things, in my thoughts only.Though the declaration of my love urged and trembled on my tongue athousand times, I knew that it was no time for such a declaration.If for no other reason, it was no time, when one was protecting andtrying to save a woman, to ask that woman for her love. Delicateas was the situation, not alone in this but in other ways, Iflattered myself that I was able to deal delicately with it; andalso I flattered myself that by look or sign I gave noadvertisement of the love I felt for her. We were like goodcomrades, and we grew better comrades as the days went by.

　　One thing about her which surprised me was her lack of timidity andfear. The terrible sea, the frail boat, the storms, the suffering,the strangeness and isolation of the situation, - all that shouldhave frightened a robust woman, - seemed to make no impression uponher who had known life only in its most sheltered and consummatelyartificial aspects, and who was herself all fire and dew and mist,sublimated spirit, all that was soft and tender and clinging inwoman. And yet I am wrong. She was timid and afraid, but shepossessed courage. The flesh and the qualms of the flesh she washeir to, but the flesh bore heavily only on the flesh. And she wasspirit, first and always spirit, etherealized essence of life, calmas her calm eyes, and sure of permanence in the changing order ofthe universe.

　　Came days of storm, days and nights of storm, when the oceanmenaced us with its roaring whiteness, and the wind smote ourstruggling boat with a Titan's buffets. And ever we were flungoff, farther and farther, to the north-east. It was in such astorm, and the worst that we had experienced, that I cast a wearyglance to leeward, not in quest of anything, but more from theweariness of facing the elemental strife, and in mute appeal,almost, to the wrathful powers to cease and let us be. What I sawI could not at first believe. Days and nights of sleeplessness andanxiety had doubtless turned my head. I looked back at Maud, toidentify myself, as it were, in time and space. The sight of herdear wet cheeks, her flying hair, and her brave brown eyesconvinced me that my vision was still healthy. Again I turned myface to leeward, and again I saw the jutting promontory, black andhigh and naked, the raging surf that broke about its base and beatits front high up with spouting fountains, the black and forbiddencoast-line running toward the south-east and fringed with atremendous scarf of white.

　　"Maud," I said. "Maud."

　　She turned her head and beheld the sight.

　　"It cannot be Alaska!" she cried.

　　"Alas, no," I answered, and asked, "Can you swim?"

　　She shook her head.

　　"Neither can I," I said. "So we must get ashore without swimming,in some opening between the rocks through which we can drive theboat and clamber out. But we must be quick, most quick - andsure."

　　I spoke with a confidence she knew I did not feel, for she lookedat me with that unfaltering gaze of hers and said:

　　"I have not thanked you yet for all you have done for me but - "

　　She hesitated, as if in doubt how best to word her gratitude.

　　"Well?" I said, brutally, for I was not quite pleased with herthanking me.

　　"You might help me," she smiled.

　　"To acknowledge your obligations before you die? Not at all. Weare not going to die. We shall land on that island, and we shallbe snug and sheltered before the day is done."

　　I spoke stoutly, but I did not believe a word. Nor was I promptedto lie through fear. I felt no fear, though I was sure of death inthat boiling surge amongst the rocks which was rapidly growingnearer. It was impossible to hoist sail and claw off that shore.The wind would instantly capsize the boat; the seas would swamp itthe moment it fell into the trough; and, besides, the sail, lashedto the spare oars, dragged in the sea ahead of us.

　　As I say, I was not afraid to meet my own death, there, a fewhundred yards to leeward; but I was appalled at the thought thatMaud must die. My cursed imagination saw her beaten and mangledagainst the rocks, and it was too terrible. I strove to compelmyself to think we would make the landing safely, and so I spoke,not what I believed, but what I preferred to believe.

　　I recoiled before contemplation of that frightful death, and for amoment I entertained the wild idea of seizing Maud in my arms andleaping overboard. Then I resolved to wait, and at the lastmoment, when we entered on the final stretch, to take her in myarms and proclaim my love, and, with her in my embrace, to make thedesperate struggle and die.

　　Instinctively we drew closer together in the bottom of the boat. Ifelt her mittened hand come out to mine. And thus, without speech,we waited the end. We were not far off the line the wind made withthe western edge of the promontory, and I watched in the hope thatsome set of the current or send of the sea would drift us pastbefore we reached the surf.

　　"We shall go clear," I said, with a confidence which I knewdeceived neither of us.

　　"By God, we will go clear!" I cried, five minutes later.

　　The oath left my lips in my excitement - the first, I do believe,in my life, unless "trouble it," an expletive of my youth, beaccounted an oath.

　　"I beg your pardon," I said.

　　"You have convinced me of your sincerity," she said, with a faintsmile. "I do know, now, that we shall go clear."

　　I had seen a distant headland past the extreme edge of thepromontory, and as we looked we could see grow the interveningcoastline of what was evidently a deep cove. At the same timethere broke upon our ears a continuous and mighty bellowing. Itpartook of the magnitude and volume of distant thunder, and it cameto us directly from leeward, rising above the crash of the surf andtravelling directly in the teeth of the storm. As we passed thepoint the whole cove burst upon our view, a half-moon of whitesandy beach upon which broke a huge surf, and which was coveredwith myriads of seals. It was from them that the great bellowingwent up.

　　"A rookery!" I cried. "Now are we indeed saved. There must be menand cruisers to protect them from the seal-hunters. Possibly thereis a station ashore."

　　But as I studied the surf which beat upon the beach, I said, "Stillbad, but not so bad. And now, if the gods be truly kind, we shalldrift by that next headland and come upon a perfectly shelteredbeach, where we may land without wetting our feet."

　　And the gods were kind. The first and second headlands weredirectly in line with the south-west wind; but once around thesecond, - and we went perilously near, - we picked up the thirdheadland, still in line with the wind and with the other two. Butthe cove that intervened! It penetrated deep into the land, andthe tide, setting in, drifted us under the shelter of the point.Here the sea was calm, save for a heavy but smooth ground-swell,and I took in the sea-anchor and began to row. From the point theshore curved away, more and more to the south and west, until atlast it disclosed a cove within the cove, a little land-lockedharbour, the water level as a pond, broken only by tiny rippleswhere vagrant breaths and wisps of the storm hurtled down from overthe frowning wall of rock that backed the beach a hundred feetinshore.

　　Here were no seals whatever. The boat's stern touched the hardshingle. I sprang out, extending my hand to Maud. The next momentshe was beside me. As my fingers released hers, she clutched formy arm hastily. At the same moment I swayed, as about to fall tothe sand. This was the startling effect of the cessation ofmotion. We had been so long upon the moving, rocking sea that thestable land was a shock to us. We expected the beach to lift upthis way and that, and the rocky walls to swing back and forth likethe sides of a ship; and when we braced ourselves, automatically,for these various expected movements, their non-occurrence quiteovercame our equilibrium.

　　"I really must sit down," Maud said, with a nervous laugh and adizzy gesture, and forthwith she sat down on the sand.

　　I attended to making the boat secure and joined her. Thus welanded on Endeavour Island, as we came to it, land-sick from longcustom of the sea.