London, Jack, 1876-1916 / 2008-11-04 00:00:00

' So cast it in."
He ceased speaking. The men holding the hatch-cover seemed
perplexed, puzzled no doubt by the briefness of the ceremony. He
burst upon them in a fury.
"Lift up that end there, damn you! What the hell's the matter with
you?"
They elevated the end of the hatch-cover with pitiful haste, and,
like a dog flung overside, the dead man slid feet first into the
sea. The coal at his feet dragged him down. He was gone.
"Johansen," Wolf Larsen said briskly to the new mate, "keep all
hands on deck now they're here. Get in the topsails and jibs and
make a good job of it. We're in for a sou'-easter. Better reef
the jib and mainsail too, while you're about it."
In a moment the decks were in commotion, Johansen bellowing orders
and the men pulling or letting go ropes of various sorts--all
naturally confusing to a landsman such as myself. But it was the
heartlessness of it that especially struck me. The dead man was an
episode that was past, an incident that was dropped, in a canvas
covering with a sack of coal, while the ship sped along and her
work went on. Nobody had been affected. The hunters were laughing
at a fresh story of Smoke's; the men pulling and hauling, and two
of them climbing aloft; Wolf Larsen was studying the clouding sky
to windward; and the dead man, dying obscenely, buried sordidly,
and sinking down, down--
Then it was that the cruelty of the sea, its relentlessness and
awfulness, rushed upon me.
Read more


Parts: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20