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The Sea Wolf: Maude

Day by day, with not a gleam of graciousness to break the orgy of brutishness, this tragic drama went on. Humphrey despaired of even a gleam of sunshine. Suddenly fate intervened in the person of Maude Brewster. Like Humphrey, she came to the Ghost from the sea, saved from a wrecked liner. Like Humphrey, she expected to be put aboard a passing vessel. But no! The Sea Wolf had other plans. She was added to the crew as Humphrey was, and likewise "for the good of her soul."

Maude received the news in wonderment. What kind of a man was this mocking master of the Ghost? She was soon to find out.

The cook had offended Larsen. A rope was coiled around the offender and he was cast overboard in the wake of the ship. A shark rushed for him and Larsen ordered him pulled in. Despite the maddened haste, the shark in the final rush tore away the foot of the victim. "The shark was not in the reckoning, Miss Brewster," said the Sea Wolf, smilingly. "It was--shall we say--an act of Providence." This scene convinced Humphrey that he must kill Wolf Larsen. His courage flared up so brightly that he actually threatened to murder him. The Sea Wolf barked a whimsical guffaw: "Bravo, Hump! You do me proud. I like you the better for it."

Humphrey winced. He confided his resolution to Maude, with whom he had fallen in love. She counseled against it, protesting that moral courage always defeats brute force, but she failed to convince him. He knew the Sea Wolf too well.

The dancing lights in Wolf Larsen's eyes when he looked into Maude's warned Humphrey that some day the storm would break. And it did. In the midst of the night he rushed into Maude's cabin to find her in the crushing embrace of Wolf Larsen.

Humphrey flung himself on the monster, to be tossed aside like a chip. He rushed again, drawing his knife, plunging the blade into the Sea Wolf's shoulder. Larsen staggered back and Maude seized Humphrey, begging him not to kill. Suddenly the Wolf collapsed, not from his wound, but as if from some uncanny spell that paralyzed him. The giant was helpless. Humphrey carried him to his berth and realized that opportunity for escape was at hand. Maude and he put off in a small boat, hoping that they might make Japan, six hundred miles away. But the winds and creeping drift of the Pacific intervened and finally the grim adventure ended for a time on a little Arctic island. Here they prepared to remain for the winter.

Suddenly one morning, weeks after, Humphrey saw on the beach the wreck of a vessel, and it was strangely familiar. It could not be--yes it was--the Ghost. The blood chilled in his veins. Wild thoughts of flight or the sudden ending of both their lives entered his mind. Then a wondering cunning succeeded such fears. He would kill Wolf Larsen, kill him as he slept, for all on board were doubtless sleeping. With knife and gun he climbed to the deck. He saw no one. Was the ship deserted, after all?

But as he rounded the poop there burst on his gaze the Sea Wolf. Humphrey raised his gun; the trigger clicked sharply. Then silence. "Why don't you shoot?" coolley remarked the Wolf.

Humphrey could not speak. "Hump," said the Sea Wolf, slowly, "you can't do it. And after all I have taught you. You know that I would kill an unarmed man as readily as I would smoke a cigar. Bah! I had expected the better things of you, Hump." Humphrey slowly lowered the gun.

The Ghost's presence was explained calmly by the Sea Wolf. He was caught in a net he had set for his hated brother, "Death" Larsen, his crew were taken away and he was left alone. Pacific storms did the rest.

A strange weariness in the Sea Wolf's bearing, a hesitant, preoccupied air about him, puzzled Humphrey. A few days later he again summoned courage to put him out of the way. But this time he saw Wolf Larsen slowly making his way down the deck, his quivering finger-tips groping for the hand-rails. Wolf Larsen was blind! No need to kill him.

Maude and Humphrey determined to escape by repairing the Ghost, but the Sea Wolf willed otherwise. Blind and helpless as he was, he craftily contrived to ruin Humphrey's work, determined they should all die together, so his grim revenge would be complete. Fiendish cunning and instinct to kill still remained.

A final reckoning was to come. Scorning precaution because he felt the Sea Wolf physically powerless from the suspected pressure of a tumor on the brain, Humphrey ventured too near one day. Suddenly the Sea Wolf's stupor passed. The steel-like fingers gripped Humphrey's throat. The trap had sprung. Maude leaped into action, tearing at Larsen's hands. But for once the Sea Wolf's tremendous will could not spur his weakened body. His fingers twitched and then relapsed and Humphrey was released. "That was the last play of the Wolf," said Larsen with his twisted smile. "I'd like to have done for you first, Hump. I thought I had that much left in me." And so Wolf Larsen faded into unconsciousness, a pitiful ending for this grim sea murderer who pictured himself roaring to death in a blaze of tumult and evil splendor.

Soon the restored Ghost embraced the waves again, freighted with happiness. Then a trail of smoke on the horizon, a rescue, and the lovers' kiss as the cutter went dancing over the waves on the long road home. STEVENSON ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON called himself an idler. He was a natural vagabond who loved to go in old clothes upon his own way through the strange city haunts of the disinherited or out upon the open road. He despised smug society, but talked eagerly with all sorts of men and women. Yet even as a boy he always carried a note-book and a pencil and constantly put into words what he saw and thought and felt. He wrote until his health gave way, again and again, and then he wrote of that.

Between 1873 and 1879 he produced many of the most inspiriting essays of the "Virginibus Puerisque" series. The magazines published "A Lodging for the Night," "Will o' the Mill," the fantastic "New Arabian Nights," and other stories.

In 1879 he made the journey to California in steerage and emigrant-train, determined to "learn for himself the pinch of life as it is felt by the unprivileged and poor." The hardships injured his health, but did not deter him from making the first draft of "The Amateur Emigrant." He recuperated on a goat-ranch near Monterey and managed to teach some neglected children. In Monterey afterward he planned his romantic comedy, "Prince Otto." He completed the breakdown of his health by living on starvation rations in a workman's lodging in San Francisco and working feverishly. After a dangerous illness, he married and lived in the mining-camp of "The Silverado Squatters." Thus did Stevenson the idler dig his material and his power out of life itself.