The Sea-Wolf quotes

The voice of my companion brought me back to myself with a laugh.

I too had been groping and floundering, the while I thought I rode clear-eyed through the mystery.

“Hello! somebody comin’ our way,” he was saying. “And d’ye hear that? He’s comin’ fast. Walking right along. Guess he don’t hear us yet. Wind’s in wrong direction.”

I could see the pilothouse and a white-bearded man leaning partly out of it, on his elbows. He was clad in a blue uniform, and I remember noting how trim and quiet he was.

His quietness, under the circumstances, was terrible.

He accepted Destiny, marched hand in hand with it, and coolly measured the stroke.

I could see the pilothouse and a white-bearded man leaning partly out of it, on his elbows. He was clad in a blue uniform, and I remember noting how trim and quiet he was. His quietness, under the circumstances, was terrible.

He accepted Destiny, marched hand in hand with it, and coolly measured the stroke.

As he leaned there, he ran a calm and speculative eye over us, as though to determine the precise point of the collision, and took no notice whatever when our pilot, white with rage, shouted, “Now you’ve done it!”

Later—how much later I have no knowledge—I came to myself with a start of fear. I was alone. I could hear no calls or cries—only the sound of the waves, made weirdly hollow and reverberant by the fog.

A panic in a crowd, which partakes of a sort of community of interest, is not so terrible as a panic when one is by oneself; and such a panic I now suffered.

Whither was I drifting? The red-faced man had said that the tide was ebbing through the Golden Gate. Was I, then, being carried out to sea? And the life preserver in which I floated? Was it not liable to go to pieces at any moment?

It was a careless, unpremeditated glance, one of those haphazard things men do when they have no immediate call to do anything in particular, but act because they are alive and must do something.

But life and death were in that glance.

I could see the vessel being swallowed up in the fog; I saw the back of the man at the wheel, and the head of the other man turning, slowly turning, as his gaze struck the water and casually lifted along it toward me.

I should not have been surprised if the wet black beard had frizzled and curled and flared up in smoke and flame. But the dead man was unconcerned. He continued to grin with a sardonic humour, with a cynical mockery and defiance.

He was master of the situation.

“Who earned it? Eh? I thought so. Your father.

You stand on dead men’s legs.

You’ve never had any of your own. You couldn’t walk alone between two sunrises and hustle the meat for your belly for three meals. Let me see your hand.”

“Who earned it? Eh? I thought so. Your father. You stand on dead men’s legs.

You’ve never had any of your own.

You couldn’t walk alone between two sunrises and hustle the meat for your belly for three meals. Let me see your hand.”

Rebuttal was precisely similar. I have related this in order to show the mental calibre of the men with whom I was thrown in contact.

Intellectually they were children, inhabiting the physical forms of men.

And they smoked, incessantly smoked, using a coarse, cheap, and offensive-smelling tobacco. The air was thick and murky with the smoke of it;

So saying, he put up his fists and started for me. To my shame be it, I cowered away from the blow and ran out the galley door. What else was I to do?

Force, nothing but force, obtained on this brute-ship.

Moral suasion was a thing unknown. Picture it to yourself: a man of ordinary stature, slender of build, and with weak, undeveloped muscles, who has lived a peaceful, placid life, and is unused to violence of any sort—what could such a man possibly do?

So saying, he put up his fists and started for me. To my shame be it, I cowered away from the blow and ran out the galley door. What else was I to do? Force, nothing but force, obtained on this brute-ship.

Moral suasion was a thing unknown.

Picture it to yourself: a man of ordinary stature, slender of build, and with weak, undeveloped muscles, who has lived a peaceful, placid life, and is unused to violence of any sort—what could such a man possibly do?

When you get a dollar, hang on to it. A man who leaves his money lying around, the way you did, deserves to lose it. Besides, you have sinned. You have no right to put temptation in the way of your fellow creatures.

You tempted Cooky, and he fell.

You have placed his immortal soul in jeopardy. By the way, do you believe in the immortal soul?”

A man who leaves his money lying around, the way you did, deserves to lose it. Besides, you have sinned. You have no right to put temptation in the way of your fellow creatures. You tempted Cooky, and he fell.

You have placed his immortal soul in jeopardy.

By the way, do you believe in the immortal soul?”

I halted. How could I explain my idealism to this man?

How could I put into speech a something felt, a something like the strains of music heard in sleep, a something that convinced yet transcended utterance?

“What do you believe, then?” I countered.

“I believe that life is a mess,” he answered promptly. “It is like yeast, a ferment, a thing that moves and may move for a minute, an hour, a year, or a hundred years, but that in the end will cease to move.

The big eat the little that they may continue to move, the strong eat the weak that they may retain their strength.

The lucky eat the most and move the longest, that is all. What do you make of those things?”

“They move, so does the jellyfish move. They move in order to eat in order that they may keep moving. There you have it. They live for their belly’s sake, and the belly is for their sake.

It’s a circle; you get nowhere.

Neither do they. In the end they come to a standstill. They move no more. They are dead.”

I am eating them now, and you too. But in the past you have eaten more than I have. You have slept in soft beds, and worn fine clothes, and eaten good meals. Who made those beds? and those clothes? and those meals? Not you.

You never made anything in your own sweat.

You live on an income which your father earned. You are like a frigate bird swooping down upon the boobies and robbing them of the fish they have caught.

“I agree with you,” he answered. “Then why move at all, since moving is living? Without moving and being part of the yeast there would be no hopelessness.

But⁠—and there it is⁠—we want to live and move, though we have no reason to, because it happens that it is the nature of life to live and move, to want to live and move.

If it were not for this, life would be dead. It is because of this life that is in you that you dream of your immortality. The life that is in you is alive and wants to go on being alive forever. Bah!

Nor was my knee any better. The swelling had not gone down, and the cap was still up on edge. Hobbling about on it from morning till night was not helping it any. What I needed was rest, if it were ever to get well.

Rest! I never before knew the meaning of the word.

I had been resting all my life and did not know it. But now, could I sit still for one half hour and do nothing, not even think, it would be the most pleasurable thing in the world.

But it is a revelation, on the other hand. I shall be able to appreciate the lives of the working people hereafter.

I did not dream that work was so terrible a thing.

From half past five in the morning till ten o’clock at night I am everybody’s slave, with not one moment to myself, except such as I can steal near the end of the second dogwatch.

Rest! I never before knew the meaning of the word.

I had been resting all my life and did not know it.

But now, could I sit still for one half hour and do nothing, not even think, it would be the most pleasurable thing in the world. But it is a revelation, on the other hand.

“Just so,” he went on. “

The earth is as full of brutality as the sea is full of motion.

And some men are made sick by the one, and some by the other. That’s the only reason.”

Why, if there is anything in supply and demand, life is the cheapest thing in the world. There is only so much water, so much earth, so much air; but the life that is demanding to be born is limitless.

Nature is a spendthrift.

Look at the fish and their millions of eggs. For that matter, look at you and me. In our loins are the possibilities of millions of lives.

Life? Bah! It has no value. Of cheap things it is the cheapest.

Everywhere it goes begging.

Nature spills it out with a lavish hand. Where there is room for one life, she sows a thousand lives, and it’s life eats life till the strongest and most piggish life is left.”

Life? Bah! It has no value. Of cheap things it is the cheapest. Everywhere it goes begging.

Nature spills it out with a lavish hand.

Where there is room for one life, she sows a thousand lives, and it’s life eats life till the strongest and most piggish life is left.”

… is passion, adoration, in his eyes, and he goes about in a sort of trance, gazing in ecstasy at the swelling sails, the foaming wake, and the heave and the run of her over the liquid mountains that are moving with us in stately procession.

The days and nights are “all a wonder and a wild delight,” and though I have little time from my dreary work, I steal odd moments to gaze and gaze at the unending glory of what I never dreamed the world possessed.

Above, the sky is stainless blue—blue as the sea itself, which under the forefoot is of the colour and sheen of azure satin. All around the horizon are pale, fleecy clouds, never changing, never moving, like a silver setting for the flawless turquoise sky.

this joy of living? this exultation of life? this inspiration, I may well call it? It is what comes when there is nothing wrong with one’s digestion, when his stomach is in trim and his appetite has an edge, and all goes well.

It is the bribe for living, the champagne of the blood, the effervescence of the ferment⁠—that makes some men think holy thoughts, and other men to see God or to create him when they cannot see him.

That is all, the drunkenness of life, the stirring and crawling of the yeast, the babbling of the life that is insane with consciousness that it is alive. And—bah! Tomorrow I shall pay for it as the drunkard pays.

His tremendous virility and mental strength wall him apart. They are more like children to him, even the hunters, and as children he treats them, descending perforce to their level and playing with them as a man plays with puppies.

Or else he probes them with the cruel hand of a vivisectionist, groping about in their mental processes and examining their souls as though to see of what soul-stuff is made.

I have seen him a score of times, at table, insulting this hunter or that, with cool and level eyes and, withal, a certain air of interest, pondering their actions or replies or petty rages with a curiosity almost laughable to me who stood onlooker …

When I finished, he had me read it over a second time, and a third. We fell into discussion—philosophy, science, evolution, religion. He betrayed the inaccuracies of the self-read man, and, it must be granted, the sureness and directness of the primitive mind.

The very simplicity of his reasoning was its strength, and his materialism was far more compelling than the subtly complex materialism of Charley Furuseth.

Not that I—a confirmed and, as Furuseth phrased it, a temperamental idealist—was to be compelled; but that Wolf Larsen stormed the last strongholds of my faith with a vigour that received respect, while not accorded conviction.

“Cooky, you’ve got to hustle tonight. I’m busy with Hump, and you’ll do the best you can without him.”

And again the unprecedented was established.

That night I sat at table with the captain and the hunters, while Thomas Mugridge waited on us and washed the dishes afterward—a whim, a Caliban-mood of Wolf Larsen’s, and one I foresaw would bring me trouble.

I am to him no more than a toy, and he values me no more than a child values a toy.

My function is to amuse, and so long as I amuse all goes well; but let him become bored, or let him have one of his black moods come upon him, and at once I am relegated from cabin table to galley, while, at the same time, I am fortunate to escape with my life and a whole body.

The loneliness of the man is slowly being borne in upon me. There is not a man aboard but hates or fears him, nor is there a man whom he does not despise.

“And history tells of opportunities that came to the slaves who rose to the purple,” he answered grimly. “

No man makes opportunity.

All the great men ever did was to know it when it came to them. The Corsican knew. I have dreamed as greatly as the Corsican. I should have known the opportunity, but it never came. The thorns sprung up and choked me.

“And history tells of opportunities that came to the slaves who rose to the purple,” he answered grimly. “No man makes opportunity.

All the great men ever did was to know it when it came to them.

The Corsican knew. I have dreamed as greatly as the Corsican. I should have known the opportunity, but it never came. The thorns sprung up and choked me.

And even while I was oppressed by the enormity of my sin—for sin it was—I chuckled with an insane delight.

I was no longer Humphrey Van Weyden.

I was Hump, cabin boy on the schooner Ghost. Wolf Larsen was my captain, Thomas Mugridge and the rest were my companions, and I was receiving repeated impresses from the die which had stamped them all.

And I was frightened when I became conscious of the trend of my thought.

The continual brutality around me was degenerative in its effect.

It bid fair to destroy for me all that was best and brightest in life. My reason dictated that the beating Thomas Mugridge had received was an ill thing, and yet for the life of me I could not prevent my soul joying in it.

There is no balance in their lives. Their masculinity, which in itself is of the brute, has been overdeveloped. The other and spiritual side of their natures has been dwarfed—atrophied, in fact.

They are a company of celibates, grinding harshly against one another and growing daily more calloused from the grinding.

It seems to me impossible sometimes that they ever had mothers. It would appear that they are a half-brute, half-human species, a race apart, wherein there is no such thing as sex;

They are a company of celibates, grinding harshly against one another and growing daily more calloused from the grinding.

It seems to me impossible sometimes that they ever had mothers.

It would appear that they are a half-brute, half-human species, a race apart, wherein there is no such thing as sex; that they are hatched out by the sun like turtle eggs, or receive life in some similar and sordid fashion;

A sinewy hand, dripping with water, was clutching the rail. A second hand took form in the darkness beside it. I watched, fascinated.

What visitant from the gloom of the deep was I to behold?

Whatever it was, I knew that it was climbing aboard by the log line. I saw a head, the hair wet and straight, shape itself, and then the unmistakable eyes and face of Wolf Larsen.

This was greeted with whoops of joy, and from then on Wolf Larsen had seven strong men on top of him, Louis, I believe, taking no part in it.

The forecastle was like an angry hive of bees aroused by some marauder.

“What ho! below there!” I heard Latimer shout down the scuttle, too cautious to descend into the inferno of passion he could hear raging beneath him in the darkness.

“I really do not care to sit in the high places,” I objected. “I find life precarious enough in my present humble situation. I have no experience.

Mediocrity, you see, has its compensations.

”

“It gives a thrill to life,” he explained to me, “when life is carried in one’s hand. Man is a natural gambler, and life is the biggest stake he can lay.

The greater the odds, the greater the thrill.

Why should I deny myself the joy of exciting Leach’s soul to fever pitch? For that matter, I do him a kindness. The greatness of sensation is mutual. He is living more royally than any man for’ard, though he does not know it.

“It gives a thrill to life,” he explained to me, “when life is carried in one’s hand.

Man is a natural gambler, and life is the biggest stake he can lay.

The greater the odds, the greater the thrill. Why should I deny myself the joy of exciting Leach’s soul to fever pitch? For that matter, I do him a kindness. The greatness of sensation is mutual.

Bah! I play the braver part. I do no sin, for I am true to the promptings of the life that is in me.

I am sincere with my soul at least, and that is what you are not.

”

The general gloom had gathered me into its folds. The worst appeared inevitable; and as I paced the deck, hour after hour, I found myself afflicted with Wolf Larsen’s repulsive ideas. What was it all about?

Where was the grandeur of life that it should permit such wanton destruction of human souls?

It was a cheap and sordid thing after all, this life, and the sooner over the better. Over and done with!

And north we travelled with it, ravaging and destroying, flinging the naked carcasses to the shark and salting down the skins so that they might later adorn the fair shoulders of the women of the cities.

It was wanton slaughter, and all for woman’s sake.

No man ate of the seal meat or the oil. After a good day’s killing I have seen our decks covered with hides and bodies, slippery with fat and blood, the scuppers running red; masts, ropes, and rails spattered with the sanguinary colour;

Once, and unwitting that he did so or that I saw, he laughed aloud, mockingly and defiantly, at the advancing storm. I see him yet standing there like a pygmy out of the Arabian Nights before the huge front of some malignant genie.

He was daring destiny, and he was unafraid.

He walked to the galley. “Cooky, by the time you’ve finished pots and pans you’ll be wanted on deck. Stand ready for a call.”

And oh, the marvel of it! the marvel of it!

That tiny men should live and breathe and work, and drive so frail a contrivance of wood and cloth through so tremendous an elemental strife.

As before, the Ghost swung out of the trough, lifting her deck again out of the sea, and dashed before the howling blast.

As for Wolf Larsen and myself, we got along fairly well; though I could not quite rid myself of the idea that right conduct, for me, lay in killing him.

He fascinated me immeasurably, and I feared him immeasurably.

And yet, I could not imagine him lying prone in death. There was an endurance, as of perpetual youth, about him, which rose up and forbade the picture. I could see him only as living always, and dominating always, fighting and destroying, himself surviving.

“Bravo!” he cried. “You do me proud, Hump! You’ve found your legs with a vengeance. You’re quite an individual.

You were unfortunate in having your life cast in easy places, but you’re developing, and I like you the better for it.

”

“Stand by? ’Tis old fat Louis I stand by, an’ trouble enough it’ll be.

We’re at the beginnin’ iv things, I’m tellin’ ye, the bare beginnin’ iv things.

”

He was splendidly muscled, a heavy man, and though he strode with the certitude and directness of the physical man, there was nothing heavy about his stride.

The jungle and the wilderness lurked in the uplift and downput of his feet.

He was cat-footed, and lithe, and strong, always strong. I likened him to some great tiger, a beast of prowess and prey.

He nodded his head. “Quite right, quite right.

Your error is that you failed to expect the worst.

”

“Cutting our purses,” he answered. “

Man is so made these days that his capacity for living is determined by the money he possesses.

”

They’re wrong, all wrong, of course, and contrary to reason; but in the face of them my reason tells me, wrong and most wrong, that to dream and live illusions gives greater delight.

And after all, delight is the wage for living.

Without delight, living is a worthless act. To labour at living and be unpaid is worse than to be dead.

They’re wrong, all wrong, of course, and contrary to reason; but in the face of them my reason tells me, wrong and most wrong, that to dream and live illusions gives greater delight. And after all, delight is the wage for living.

Without delight, living is a worthless act.

To labour at living and be unpaid is worse than to be dead. He who delights the most lives the most, and your dreams and unrealities are less disturbing to you and more gratifying than are my facts to me.”

but in the face of them my reason tells me, wrong and most wrong, that to dream and live illusions gives greater delight. And after all, delight is the wage for living. Without delight, living is a worthless act.

To labour at living and be unpaid is worse than to be dead.

He who delights the most lives the most, and your dreams and unrealities are less disturbing to you and more gratifying than are my facts to me.”

And after all, delight is the wage for living. Without delight, living is a worthless act. To labour at living and be unpaid is worse than to be dead.

He who delights the most lives the most, and your dreams and unrealities are less disturbing to you and more gratifying than are my facts to me.

”

“

I often doubt, I often doubt, the worthwhileness of reason.

Dreams must be more substantial and satisfying. Emotional delight is more filling and lasting than intellectual delight; and, besides, you pay for your moments of intellectual delight by having the blues. Emotional delight is followed by no more than jaded senses which speedily recuperate.

“It’s from my brain I envy you, take notice, and not from my heart. My reason dictates it. The envy is an intellectual product.

I am like a sober man looking upon drunken men, and, greatly weary, wishing he, too, were drunk.

”

“Whether you do or think you do, it’s the same thing.

You spend what you haven’t got, and in return you get greater value from spending what you haven’t got than I get from spending what I have got, and what I have sweated to get.

”

This was the world, the universe itself, its bounds so near one felt impelled to reach out both arms and push them back. It was impossible, that the rest could be beyond these walls of grey.

The rest was a dream, no more than the memory of a dream.

It was weird, strangely weird. I looked at Maud Brewster and knew that she was similarly affected. Then I looked at Wolf Larsen, but there was nothing subjective about his state of consciousness. His whole concern was with the immediate, objective present.

I was aware of a pent, stifled feeling. As the sounds of the ship thrusting herself through the waves were hurled back upon us by the fog, so were one’s thoughts.

The mind recoiled from contemplation of a world beyond this wet veil which wrapped us around.

This was the world, the universe itself, its bounds so near one felt impelled to reach out both arms and push them back. It was impossible, that the rest could be beyond these walls of grey.

“That both of you are hairsplitting,” I said. “

The man’s soul is his desires. Or, if you will, the sum of his desires is his soul.

Therein you are both wrong. You lay the stress upon the desire apart from the soul, Miss Brewster lays the stress on the soul apart from the desire, and in point of fact soul and desire are the same thing.

Why was he beaten out of heaven? Because he was less brave than God? less proud? less aspiring? No! A thousand times no! God was more powerful, as he said, Whom thunder hath made greater. But Lucifer was a free spirit.

To serve was to suffocate.

He preferred suffering in freedom to all the happiness of a comfortable servility. He did not care to serve God. He cared to serve nothing. He was no figurehead. He stood on his own legs. He was an individual.”

And still, it was not a bad night, I mused—nothing to the nights I had been through on the Ghost; nothing, perhaps, to the nights we should go through in this cockleshell. 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 death which Wolf Larsen and even Thomas Mugridge had made me fear, I no longer feared. The coming of Maud Brewster into my life seemed to have transformed me.

And yet, I aver it, and I aver it again, I was unafraid. The death which Wolf Larsen and even Thomas Mugridge had made me fear, I no longer feared. The coming of Maud Brewster into my life seemed to have transformed me.

After all, I thought, it is better and finer to love than to be loved, if it makes something in life so worth while that one is not loath to die for it.

I forget my own life in the love of another life; and yet, such is the paradox, I never wanted so much to live as right now when I place the least value upon my own life.

After all, I thought, it is better and finer to love than to be loved, if it makes something in life so worth while that one is not loath to die for it.

I forget my own life in the love of another life; and yet, such is the paradox, I never wanted so much to live as right now when I place the least value upon my own life.

I never had so much reason for living, was my concluding thought;

She relieved me at the bailing hole from time to time, and bravely she threw out the water and faced the storm.

All things are relative.

It was no more than a stiff blow, but to us, fighting for life in our frail craft, it was indeed a storm.

And yet I am wrong.

She was timid and afraid, but she possessed courage.

The flesh and the qualms of the flesh she was heir to, but the flesh bore heavily only on the flesh.

But I was too occupied to acknowledge her delight.

The feeble flame must be cherished tenderly if it were to gather strength and live.

I fed it, shaving by shaving, and sliver by sliver, till at last it was snapping and crackling as it laid hold of the smaller chips and sticks.

“I’m afraid, and I’m not afraid,” she chattered with shaking jaws.

“It’s my miserable body, not I.”

“It’s all right, it’s all right,” I reassured her, my arm passing instinctively and protectingly around her.

I shall never forget, in that moment, how instantly conscious I became of my manhood.

The primitive deeps of my nature stirred.

I felt myself masculine, the protector of the weak, the fighting male. And, best of all, I felt myself the protector of my loved one.

“It seems as though I have lived this life always.

The world of books and bookish folk is very vague, more like a dream memory than an actuality.

I surely have hunted and forayed and fought all the days of my life. And you, too, seem a part of it. You are—” I was on the verge of saying, “my woman, my mate,” but glibly changed it to—“standing the hardship well.”

I cleared my throat of a huskiness which prevented speech. “Hump,” he said slowly, “you can’t do it. You are not exactly afraid. You are impotent.

Your conventional morality is stronger than you.

You are the slave to the opinions which have credence among the people you have known and have read about.

I cleared my throat of a huskiness which prevented speech. “Hump,” he said slowly, “you can’t do it. You are not exactly afraid. You are impotent. Your conventional morality is stronger than you.

You are the slave to the opinions which have credence among the people you have known and have read about.

Their code has been drummed into your head from the time you lisped, and in spite of your philosophy, and of what I have taught you, it won’t let you kill an unarmed, unresisting man.”

“It can be done, it can be done,” I was thinking and asserting aloud.

“What men have done, I can do; and if they have never done this before, still I can do it.”

“What? for goodness’ sake,” Maud demanded. “Do be merciful. What is it you can do?”

The serious critic, with the sense of humour and the power of expression, must inevitably command the world’s ear. And so it was that she had commanded.

Her sense of humour was really the artist’s instinct for proportion.

“I’m sure I’ve heard it before, somewhere, in books,” she murmured gleefully.

And had her eyes so spoken to me? What else could that expression have meant—that dancing, tremulous light, and a something more which words could not describe. And yet it could not be. It was impossible.

Besides, I was not skilled in the speech of eyes.

I was only Humphrey Van Weyden, a bookish fellow who loved. And to love, and to wait and win love, that surely was glorious enough for me.

And yet it could not be. It was impossible. Besides, I was not skilled in the speech of eyes. I was only Humphrey Van Weyden, a bookish fellow who loved.

And to love, and to wait and win love, that surely was glorious enough for me.

And thus I thought, even as we chaffed each other’s appearance, until we arrived ashore and there were other things to think about.

“I never used to be,” she answered.

“I was never brave till I knew you. It is you who have made me brave.”

“Nor I, until I knew you,” I answered.

The next day we did no work. In fact, we slept till three in the afternoon, or at least I did, for I awoke to find Maud cooking dinner. Her power of recuperation was wonderful.

There was something tenacious about that lily-frail body of hers, a clutch on existence which one could not reconcile with its patent weakness.

“You know I was travelling to Japan for my health,” she said, as we lingered at the fire after dinner and delighted in the movelessness of loafing. “I was not very strong. I never was.