home Cosmetology Jack londonmore wolf. "Sea Wolf" Jack London Jack London sea wolf criticism

Jack londonmore wolf. "Sea Wolf" Jack London Jack London sea wolf criticism

Jack London

Sea wolf

Chapter one

I really don't know where to start, although sometimes, as a joke, I blame all the blame on Charlie Faraset. He had a dacha in Mill Valley, in the shadow of Mount Tamalpais, but he lived there only in the winter, when he wanted to rest and read at his leisure Nietzsche or Schopenhauer. With the onset of summer, he preferred to languish from the heat and dust in the city and work tirelessly. If I hadn't been in the habit of visiting him every Saturday and staying until Monday, I wouldn't have to cross San Francisco Bay on this memorable January morning.

This is not to say that the Martinez I sailed was an unreliable vessel; this new steamer was making its fourth or fifth voyage between Sausalito and San Francisco. The danger lurked in the thick fog that enveloped the bay, but I, knowing nothing about sailing, did not even know about it. I well remember how calmly and merrily I sat down on the bow of the steamer, on the upper deck, under the wheelhouse itself, and the mystery of the misty shroud hanging over the sea gradually took possession of my imagination. A fresh breeze was blowing, and for a while I was alone in the damp mist - however, not entirely alone, since I dimly felt the presence of the helmsman and someone else, apparently the captain, in the glassed-in wheelhouse above my head.

I remember thinking how good it is that there is a division of labor and I don't have to study fogs, winds, tides and all of marine science if I want to visit a friend who lives on the other side of the bay. It is good that there are specialists - the helmsman and the captain, I thought, and their professional knowledge serves thousands of people who are no more knowledgeable about the sea and navigation than I am. On the other hand, I do not spend my energy on studying many subjects, but can concentrate it on some special issues, for example, on the role of Edgar Poe in the history of American literature, which, incidentally, was the subject of my article published in the last issue of Atlantic. Climbing on the steamer and looking into the salon, I noted, not without satisfaction, that the number "Atlantic" in the hands of some stout gentleman was revealed just on my article. This was again an advantage of the division of labor: the special knowledge of the helmsman and the captain gave the burly gentleman the opportunity - while he was safely ferried from Sausalito to San Francisco by steamer - to learn the fruits of my special knowledge of Po.

A saloon door slammed behind me, and a red-faced man stomped across the deck, interrupting my thoughts. And I just managed to mentally outline the topic of my future article, which I decided to call “The Need for Freedom. A word in defense of the artist. " The red-faced man glanced at the wheelhouse, looked at the fog around us, hobbled back and forth on the deck — he obviously had artificial limbs — and stopped beside me with his legs wide apart; bliss was written on his face. I was not mistaken in assuming that he spent his entire life at sea.

- It won't take long to turn gray from such disgusting weather! He grumbled, nodding towards the wheelhouse.

- Does this create any special difficulties? - I responded. - After all, the task is as simple as two times two is four. The compass indicates direction, distance and speed are also known. There remains a simple arithmetic calculation.

- Special difficulties! - snorted the interlocutor. - As simple as two times two - four! Arithmetic counting.

Leaning back slightly, he looked me up and down.

- What can you say about the ebb tide that breaks into the Golden Gate? He asked, or rather, he barked. - What is the speed of the current? How does it relate? And what is this - listen! Bell? We climb right onto the buoy with the bell! See - changing course.

From the fog came a mournful ringing, and I saw the helmsman quickly turn the steering wheel. The bell was no longer ringing in front, but from the side. The hoarse whistle of our steamer was heard, and from time to time other beeps were answered.

- Some other steamer! - noticed the red-faced, nodding to the right, from where the beeps were heard. - And this! Do you hear? They just hum on the horn. That's right, some kind of scow. Hey there on the scow, don't yawn! Well, I knew it. Now someone will take a dare!

The invisible steamer sounded honk after whistle, and the horn echoed, it seemed, in terrible confusion.

“Now they have exchanged pleasantries and are trying to disperse,” the red-faced man continued when the alarming beeps died down.

He explained to me what the sirens and horns were shouting to each other, and his cheeks were burning and his eyes were sparkling.

- On the left is a steamer siren, and over there, you hear what a wheeze, it must be a steam schooner; she crawls from the entrance to the bay towards the low tide.

A shrill whistle raged like a man possessed somewhere very close ahead. On the Martinez they answered him with the blows of the gong. The wheels of our steamer stopped, their pulsating blows on the water froze, and then resumed. A piercing whistle, reminiscent of the chirping of a cricket amid the roar of wild beasts, was now coming from the fog, from somewhere on the side, and sounded fainter and fainter. I looked inquiringly at my companion.

“Some desperate boat,” he explained. - It would be worth sinking him! There are many troubles from them, but who needs them? Some donkey will climb onto such a vessel and scamper across the sea, not knowing why, but whistling like a madman. And everyone must keep clear, because, you see, he is walking and he himself does not know how to stand aside! Go ahead, and you look both ways! Duty to give way! Elementary politeness! They have no idea about it.

This inexplicable anger amused me a lot; while my interlocutor waddled up and down indignantly, I again succumbed to the romantic charm of the fog. Yes, this fog undoubtedly had its own romance. Like a gray ghost filled with mystery, he looms over a tiny globe circling in world space. And people, these sparks or specks of dust, driven by an insatiable thirst for activity, raced on their wooden and steel horses through the very heart of mystery, groping their way through the Invisible, and made noise and shouted arrogantly, while their souls died away from uncertainty and fear !

- Hey! Someone is coming to meet us, - said the red-faced. - Do you hear, do you hear? Goes fast and straight at us. He must not hear us yet. The wind is blowing.

A fresh breeze blew in our faces, and I distinctly made out a horn from the side and a little ahead.

- Also a passenger? I asked.

The red-faced man nodded.

- Yes, otherwise he would not have flown like that at breakneck speed. Our people are worried there! He chuckled.

I looked up. The captain stuck his chest out of the wheelhouse and peered intently into the fog, as if trying by willpower to penetrate it. His face was worried. And on the face of my companion, who hobbled to the handrails and gazed intently in the direction of the invisible danger, was also written alarm.

Everything happened with an incomprehensible speed. The fog spread out to the sides, as if cut by a knife, and the bow of the steamer appeared in front of us, dragging wisps of fog behind it, like Leviathan - seaweed. I saw the wheelhouse and a white-bearded old man leaning out of it. He was dressed in a blue uniform, which sat on him very deftly, and, I remember, it struck me with what composure he behaved. His calmness under these circumstances seemed terrible. He submitted to fate, walked towards her and with complete composure awaited the blow. Coldly and as if thoughtfully he looked at us, as if calculating where a collision should take place, and did not pay any attention to the furious cry of our helmsman: "You have distinguished yourself!"

Looking back, I understand that the helmsman's exclamation did not require an answer.

“Grab onto something and hold on tight,” the red-faced man told me.

All his enthusiasm flew away from him, and he seemed to be infected with the same supernatural calm.

A well-known literary critic is shipwrecked. The captain of the schooner Ghost picks up Humphrey Van Weyden from the water and rescues him. The captain was nicknamed Wolf Larsen for his strength and cruelty. Rude and oppressive, Larsen suppresses Humphrey's urge to land him and takes him with him.

Van Weyden learns from the cook about the character of the captain, who is the cruel enslaver of the team.

Humphrey, at the behest of the captain, falls into the submission of a cook, a hypocritical person who immediately begins to humiliate an assistant who is not adapted to physical labor.

While cleaning the captain's cabin, the cabin boy discovers at Larsen a lot of books, including scientific works, which gives him an idea of the developed mind of the tyrant, and helps to find a common language with him. The cowardly cook, constantly pushes Humphrey, but when he sees that he is ready to fight back, he begins to sharpen the knife. He understands that if they grapple hand-to-hand, he will be defeated. Humphrey is also afraid of the meanness of the cook, and in retaliation he also arms himself with a knife, which makes the cook plead in front of him and fear the young man.

Humphrey has a hard time, all his years he lived without touching physical labor and rudeness, and on a schooner he had to wash dishes, peel potatoes, and feel humiliation of his dignity, communicating with a team of uneducated people. With the same ease with which the sailors eat at the same table, sleep in the same cabin, they denounce each other, mock weak people, fight among themselves, even try to get rid of the captain.

Captain Larsen is a man of remarkable physical strength, differs from the team in knowledge in various fields of literature and art, science and technology. He understands mathematics and astronomy, which helps him to improve navigation instruments on a schooner.

Larsen controls the team with the help of his unbridled strength, for the slightest disobedience, anyone will be punished severely and without delay. He has one physical flaw: possessing an athletic figure, having great strength and excellent health, he suffers from bouts of pain, from time to time striking his head.

A man of mental labor, Humphrey, during his stay on the schooner, gets stronger physically, his will also hardens, he becomes more decisive. The captain loyal to him makes him his assistant.

The Ghost crew experienced many difficulties until they reached the final destination of their journey. On them more than once storms and storms fell, but the confidence and determination of the Wolf, with honor allowed the schooner to get out of the alterations. Once they had to take on board a boat in distress with people, among whom was a young woman who turned out to be the famous poet Maud Brewster.

Having reached the place of fishing, Larsen attacks the boats of his brother, Death of Larsen, and captures them along with the hunters.

Humphrey begins to have tender feelings for Maud. Larsen also has feelings for the girl, and tries to take her by force. He is stopped by an attack of headache, he loses his sight. After that, Humphrey and Maud leave the schooner. Young people stock up on provisions and embark on an unknown journey. After a few weeks of wandering, they land on an island that has turned out to be uninhabited. On the island they find a rookery of seals, store meat and skins of animals, preparing for winter, build a hut.

Humphrey finds a wrecked schooner on the shore, the Ghost, with a blind captain on board alone. It turns out that Death Larsen took his brother's ship to board, and lured his crew to him. The dastardly cook made the ship's equipment unusable, which condemned the captain to the will of the waves.

Maud and Van Weyden begin to tidy up the ship. They manage to fix the schooner and go out to sea. This exit to the sea is the last voyage for Larsen, completely losing all feelings, the proud captain dies.

Young people, having buried the captain, openly confess their love to each other, and find a ship at sea that will take them to the civilized world.

Nobility and determination, dedication and love helped the heroes survive.

Picture or drawing Sea wolf

Chapter I

I don’t know how or where to start. Sometimes, as a joke, I blame Charlie Faraset for everything that happened. In the Mill Valley, in the shadow of Mount Tamalpay, he had a summer house, but he only came there in winter and rested reading Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. And in the summer, he preferred to evaporate in the dusty stuffiness of the city, straining from work.

If it were not for my habit of visiting him every Saturday afternoon and staying with him until the next Monday morning, this extraordinary January Monday morning would not have caught me in the waves of the San Francisco Bay.

And it didn't happen because I got on a bad ship; no, the Martinez was a new steamer and had only made her fourth or fifth voyage between Sausalito and San Francisco. The danger lurked in the thick fog that enveloped the bay and about the treachery of which I, as a land dweller, knew little.

I remember the calm joy with which I sat down on the upper deck, at the pilot's house, and how the fog captured my imagination with its mystery.

A fresh sea breeze was blowing, and for a while I was alone in the damp darkness, however, not entirely alone, since I dimly felt the presence of the pilot and the one whom I took for the captain in the glass house above my head.

I remember how I thought then about the convenience of the division of labor, which made it unnecessary for me to study fogs, winds, currents and all of marine science if I wanted to visit a friend living on the other side of the bay. “It's good that people are divided according to their specialties,” I thought half asleep. The knowledge of the pilot and the captain relieved of the worries of several thousand people who knew no more about the sea and about navigation than I did. On the other hand, instead of spending my energy on studying many things, I could focus it on a little more important, for example, on analyzing the question: What place does the writer Edgar Poe occupy in American literature? - by the way, the topic of my article in the latest issue of the Atlantic magazine.

When, boarding the steamer, I passed through the cabin, I was pleased to see a fat man reading the Atlantic, opened just on my article. Here again there was a division of labor: the special knowledge of the pilot and the captain allowed the complete gentleman, while he was being transported from Sausalito to San Francisco, to get acquainted with my special knowledge of the writer Poe.

Some red-faced passenger, loudly slamming the cabin door behind him and going out on the deck, interrupted my reflections, and I only managed to note in my mind a topic for a future article entitled: “The Need for Freedom. A word in defense of the artist. "

The red-faced man glanced at the pilot's booth, looked intently at the fog, hobbled, stomping loudly back and forth on the deck (he apparently had artificial limbs) and stood next to me, legs wide apart, with an expression of obvious pleasure at face. I was not mistaken when I decided that his whole life was spent at sea.

“Such filthy weather inevitably makes people gray ahead of time,” he said, nodding at the pilot who was standing in his booth.

- And I did not think that special stress is required here, - I replied, - it seems that it’s just like twice two is four. They know compass direction, distance and speed. All this is exactly like mathematics.

- Direction! He objected. - As simple as two and two; exactly like math! - He strengthened himself more firmly on his feet and leaned back to look at me point-blank.

- What do you think about this current, which rushes now through the Golden Gate? Are you familiar with the power of ebb tide? - he asked. - Look how quickly the schooner is being carried away. Hear the buoy ringing, and we go straight to it. Look, they have to change course.

A mournful bell ringing rushed out of the fog, and I saw the pilot quickly turning the steering wheel. The bell, which seemed to be somewhere right in front of us, was now ringing from the side. Our own whistle hummed hoarsely, and from time to time we heard the whistles of other steamers out of the fog.

“It must be a passenger one,” said the newcomer, drawing my attention to a dial tone from the right. - And there, do you hear? This is being spoken through a megaphone, probably from a flat-bottomed schooner. Yes, I thought so! Hey you, on a schooner! Look at both! Well, now one of them will crackle.

The unseen ship sounded honk after honk, and the horn sounded as if struck with terror.

“And now they are exchanging greetings and trying to disperse,” the red-faced man continued when the alarmed beeps stopped.

His face shone and his eyes sparkled with excitement as he translated all these horns and sirens into human language.

“And this is the siren of the steamer heading to the left. Do you hear this fellow with a frog in his throat? This steam schooner, as far as I can tell, is creeping upstream.

A shrill, thin whistle, squealing as if it had gone mad, was heard in front, very close to us. The gongs sounded on the Martinez. Our wheels have stopped. Their throbbing beats died away and then began again. A squealing whistle, like the chirping of a cricket amid the roar of large animals, came from the side of the fog, and then began to sound fainter and fainter.

I looked at my interlocutor for clarification.

“This is one of those devilishly desperate launches,” he said. - I even, perhaps, would like to sink this shell. From such and such, there are various troubles. And what is the use of them? Every scoundrel sits on such a longboat, drives it into the tail and into the mane. Desperately whistles, wanting to slip among the others, and squeaks to the whole world to avoid it. He himself cannot save himself. And you have to look both ways. Get out of my way! This is the most basic decency. And they just do not know.

I was amused by his incomprehensible anger, and while he waddled indignantly to and fro, I admired the romantic fog. And he really was romantic, this fog, like a gray ghost of endless mystery - a fog that enveloped the shores in clubs. And people, these sparks, possessed by a crazy craving for work, swept through him on their steel and wooden horses, piercing the very heart of his secrets, blindly making their way through the invisible and echoing in careless chat, while their hearts squeezed with uncertainty and fear. The voice and laughter of my companion brought me back to reality. I, too, groped and stumbled, believing that with open and clear eyes I was going through the mystery.

- Hello! Someone crosses our path, - he said. - You hear? Goes at full steam. Goes right at us. He probably doesn't hear us yet. Blown away by the wind.

A fresh breeze was blowing in our faces, and I could already clearly hear the honk from the side, somewhat ahead of us.

- Passenger? I asked.

- He doesn't really want to click! He grunted derisively. - And we have begun to crawl.

I looked up. The captain stuck his head and shoulders out of the pilot's booth and gazed into the fog as if he could pierce it with willpower. His face expressed the same concern as the face of my companion, who walked up to the railing and looked with strained attention towards the invisible danger.

Then everything happened with an incomprehensible speed. The fog suddenly dissipated, as if split by a wedge, and the skeleton of a steamer emerged from it, pulling wisps of fog behind it from both sides like seaweed on the trunk of a Leviathan. I saw a pilot's booth and a man with a white beard leaning out of it. He was wearing a blue uniform jacket, and I remember that he seemed handsome and calm to me. His calmness under these circumstances was even terrible. He met his fate, walked hand in hand with her, calmly measuring her blow. Bending down, he looked at us without any alarm, with an attentive gaze, as if wishing to determine with precision the place where we were to collide, and paid absolutely no attention when our pilot, pale with rage, shouted:

- Well, rejoice, you have done your job!

Looking back, I see that the remark was so true that one could hardly expect any objections to it.

“Grab onto something and hang,” the red-faced man turned to me. All his fervor disappeared, and he was as if infected with a supernatural calm.

“Listen to the women screaming,” he went on grimly, almost viciously, and it seemed to me that he had once experienced a similar incident.

The steamers collided before I could follow his advice. We must have received a blow to the very center, because I could no longer see anything: the alien steamer had disappeared from my circle of vision. The Martinez lurched abruptly, and then there was a crackle of ripped upholstery. I was thrown backwards onto the wet deck and barely had time to jump to my feet when I heard the plaintive screams of women. I am sure that it was these indescribable, blood-curdling sounds that infected me with general panic. I remembered the lifebelt hidden in my cabin, but at the door I was greeted and thrown back by a wild stream of men and women. What happened in the next few minutes, I absolutely could not figure out, although I perfectly remember that I pulled down the lifebuoys from the upper railing, and the red-faced passenger helped put them on to hysterically screaming women. The memory of this picture has been preserved in me more clearly and distinctly than anything in my entire life.

This is how the scene played out, which I see in front of me to this day.

The jagged edges of a hole in the side of the cabin, through which the gray fog rushed in swirling clouds; empty soft seats, on which were scattered evidence of a sudden escape: bags, handbags, umbrellas, parcels; a fat gentleman who read my article, and now wrapped in cork and canvas, still holding the same magazine, asking me with monotonous persistence if I think there is a danger; a red-faced passenger, hobbling bravely on his artificial legs and throwing life belts on everyone who passes by, and finally, in bedlam, howling in despair of women.

The screaming of the women got on my nerves the most. The same, apparently, depressed the red-faced passenger, because there is another picture in front of me, which, too, will never be erased from my memory. The fat gentleman shoves the magazine into the pocket of his coat and looks around strangely, as if with curiosity. The thronging crowd of women with distorted pale faces and open mouths screams like a chorus of lost souls; and the red-faced passenger, now with a face crimson with anger and with his hands raised above his head, as if he was about to throw thunder arrows, shouts:

- Shut up! Stop it, finally!

I remember that this scene caused a sudden laugh in me, and in the next instant I realized that I was getting hysterical; these women, full of fear of death and unwilling to die, were as close to me as my mother, as my sisters.

And I remember that the screams they uttered reminded me suddenly of the pigs under the butcher's knife, and this resemblance with its brightness horrified me. Women, capable of the most beautiful feelings and the most tender affection, now stood with their mouths open and shouted at the top of their lungs. They wanted to live, they were as helpless as rats caught in a trap, and they all screamed.

The horror of this scene drove me to the upper deck. I felt sick and sat down on the bench. I dimly saw and heard people screaming past me to the lifeboats, trying to lower them on their own. It was exactly what I read in books when such scenes were described. Blocks broke down. Everything was out of order. We managed to lower one boat, but it turned out to be a leak; overloaded with women and children, it filled with water and turned over. Another boat was lowered at one end and the other got stuck on a block. There was no trace of someone else's steamer that had caused the misfortune: I heard it being said that, in any case, he must send his boats for us.

I went down to the lower deck. The Martinez was sinking rapidly, and it was clear that the end was near. Many passengers began to throw themselves overboard into the sea. Others, in the water, begged to be accepted back. Nobody paid any attention to them. There were shouts that we were drowning. Panic began, which seized me too, and I, with a whole stream of other bodies, threw myself over the side. How I flew over it, I positively do not know, although I understood at the same moment why those who threw themselves into the water before me so badly wanted to return to the top. The water was excruciatingly cold. When I plunged into it, I was as if burned by fire, and at the same time the cold penetrated me to the marrow of my bones. It was like a fight with death. I gasped from the sharp pain in my lungs underwater until the lifebelt carried me back to the surface of the sea. I tasted salt in my mouth and something squeezed my throat and chest.

But the worst thing was the cold. I felt that I could only live for a few minutes. People fought for life around me; many went to the bottom. I heard them cry for help, and I heard the splash of oars. Obviously, the strange steamer had lowered its boats after all. Time passed, and I was amazed that I was still alive. In the lower half of my body, I did not lose sensitivity, but a chilling numbness enveloped my heart and crept into it.

Small waves with viciously foaming combs rolled over me, filled my mouth and more and more caused attacks of suffocation. The sounds around me became dim, although I still heard the last, desperate cry of the crowd in the distance: now I knew that the Martinez was going down. Later - how much later, I don't know - I came to myself from the terror that had announced me. I was alone. I heard no more cries for help. There was only the sound of waves, fantastically heaving and flickering in the fog. Panic in a crowd, united by some common interest, is not as terrible as fear in loneliness, and this is the kind of fear I felt now. Where did the current take me? The red-faced passenger said that the tide was rushing through the Golden Gate. So I was carried away to the open ocean? And the lifebelt in which I was swimming? Couldn't he burst and fall apart every minute? I have heard that belts are sometimes made of plain paper and dry reeds, soon become soaked in water and lose their ability to stay on the surface. And I couldn't swim even one foot without him. And I was alone, rushing somewhere among the gray primitive elements. I confess that I was possessed by madness: I began to scream loudly, as women had screamed before, and pounded on the water with my numb hands.

How long this went on, I do not know, for a forgetfulness came to the rescue, from which no more memories remain than from a disturbing and painful sleep. When I came to my senses, it seemed to me that whole centuries had passed. Almost over my head, the bow of a ship was floating out of the fog, and three triangular sails, one above the other, were blowing tightly in the wind. Where the bow cut the water, the sea boiled with foam and gurgled, and it seemed that I was in the very path of the ship. I tried to scream, but from weakness I could not make a sound. The nose dived down, almost touching me, and doused me with a stream of water. Then the long black side of the ship began to slide so close that I could touch it with my hand. I tried to reach him, with an insane determination to cling to the tree with my nails, but my hands were heavy and lifeless. Again I tried to scream, but as unsuccessfully as the first time.

Then the stern of the ship swept past me, now sinking, now rising in the hollows between the waves, and I saw a man standing at the helm, and another who seemed to be doing nothing and only smoking a cigar. I saw smoke coming out of his mouth as he slowly turned his head and looked over the water in my direction. It was a careless, aimless look - this is how a person looks in moments of complete rest, when no next task awaits him, and thought lives and works by itself.

But in this look there was life and death for me. I saw that the ship was about to sink in the fog, I saw the back of a sailor at the helm, and the head of another man slowly turning in my direction, saw his gaze fall on the water and accidentally touched me. There was such an absent expression on his face, as though he were busy with some deep thought, and I was afraid that if his eyes glided over me, he would still not see me. But his gaze suddenly stopped right on me. He looked intently and noticed me, because he immediately jumped to the steering wheel, pushed the helmsman away and began to turn the wheel with both hands, shouting some command. It seemed to me that the ship changed direction, hiding in the fog.

I felt that I was losing consciousness, and tried to exert all my willpower so as not to succumb to the dark oblivion that enveloped me. A little later I heard the blows of the oars on the water, coming closer and closer, and someone's exclamations. And then very close I heard someone shouting: "But why the hell are you not responding?" I realized that this applies to me, but oblivion and darkness swallowed me up.

Chapter II

It seemed to me that I was swinging in the majestic rhythm of the world space. Glittering points of light darted around me. I knew that these were stars and a bright comet that accompanied my flight. As I reached the limit of my reach and prepared to fly back, the sound of a large gong was heard. For an immeasurable period, in the stream of calm centuries, I enjoyed my terrible flight, trying to comprehend it. But some change happened in my dream - I told myself that it must have been a dream. Swings became shorter and shorter. I was thrown with an annoying speed. I could hardly catch my breath, so fiercely I was thrown across the sky. The gong thundered more and more loudly. I was already waiting for him with indescribable fear. Then I began to feel as if I was being dragged along the white sand, heated by the sun. This caused unbearable torment. My skin burned as if it were being burned in a fire. The gong hummed with a death knell. Luminous points streamed in an endless stream, as if the entire star system was pouring out into the void. I gasped, gasping for air painfully, and suddenly opened my eyes. Two people, kneeling, did something to me. The mighty rhythm that rocked me hither and thither was the raising and lowering of the vessel into the sea while heaving. The scarecrow gong was a frying pan hanging on the wall. She rumbled and strummed with every shake of the ship on the waves. The rough and tearing sand of the body turned out to be the hard male hands rubbing my bare chest. I cried out in pain and raised my head. My chest was peeled and red, and I saw droplets of blood on the inflamed skin.

“All right, Jonsson,” one of the men said. “Can't you see how we peeled this gentleman's skin?

The man named Ionson, a heavy Scandinavian type, stopped rubbing me and clumsily got to his feet. The one who spoke to him was obviously a genuine Londoner, a real Cockney, with pretty, almost feminine features. He, of course, sucked in the sound of the bells of the Bow church with his mother's milk. A filthy linen hat on his head and a filthy sack tied to his thin thighs instead of an apron suggested that he was a cook in that filthy ship's kitchen where I regained consciousness.

- How do you feel, sir, now? - He asked with a searching smile, which is developed in a number of generations, tipped.

Instead of answering, I sat up with difficulty and, with the help of Ionson, tried to get to my feet. The rumbling and banging of the frying pan scratched my nerves. I could not collect my thoughts. Leaning on the wood cladding of the kitchen - I must confess that the layer of fat that covered it made me grit my teeth - I walked past a row of boiling cauldrons, reached a restless frying pan, unhooked it, and happily tossed it into the charcoal box.

The cook grinned at this nervousness and thrust a steaming mug into my hands.

“Here, sir,” he said, “it will do you good.

There was a nauseating concoction in the mug — ship's coffee — but its warmth was invigorating. Swallowing the brew, I looked at my skinned and bleeding chest, then turned to the Scandinavian:

“Thank you, Mr. Ionson,” I said, “but don’t you find that your measures were somewhat heroic?”

He understood my reproach more from my movements than from words, and, raising his palm, began to examine it. She was all covered with calluses. I ran my hand over the horny ridges, and my teeth clenched again as I felt their terrifying hardness.

“My name is Johnson, not Jonsson,” he said in very good, albeit sluggish, English, with a barely audible accent.

A slight protest flashed in his light blue eyes, and they also shone with straightforwardness and masculinity, which immediately endeared me in his favor.

“Thank you, Mr. Johnson,” I corrected myself and held out my hand to shake.

He hesitated, awkward and shy, shifted from one foot to the other, and then shook my hand warmly and cordially.

- Do you have any dry clothes that I could wear? - I turned to the cook.

“There will be,” he replied with cheerful liveliness. - Now I run downstairs and rummage in my dowry, if you, sir, of course, do not hesitate to put on my things.

He jumped out of the kitchen door, or rather, slipped out of it with feline dexterity and gentleness: he slid silently, as if smeared with oil. These gentle movements, as I later noticed, were the most characteristic feature of his person.

- Where I am? I asked Johnson, who I correctly thought was a sailor. - What is this ship, and where is it going?

“We have moved away from the Farallon Islands, going approximately to the southwest,” he replied slowly and methodically, as if feeling for expressions in the best English and trying not to get lost in the order of my questions. - The schooner "Ghost" follows the seals in the direction of Japan.

- Who is the captain? I have to see him as soon as I change.

Johnson looked embarrassed and looked worried. He did not dare to answer until he mastered his vocabulary and composed a complete answer in his mind.

- Captain - Wolf Larsen, so at least everyone calls him. I have never heard of it being called otherwise. But you talk to him more kindly. He is not himself today. His assistant ...

But he didn’t graduate. The cook slipped into the kitchen as if on skates.

“Would you mind getting out of here as soon as possible, Ionson,” he said. “Perhaps the old man will miss you on deck. Don't make him angry today.

Johnson obediently went to the door, encouraging me behind the chef's back with an amusingly solemn and somewhat ominous wink, as if emphasizing his interrupted remark that I needed to be softer with the captain.

On the cook's arm was a crumpled and worn-out robe of a rather disgusting look, which gave off a sour odor.

“They put the dress down wet, sir,” he deigned to explain. “But you’ll manage somehow until I dry your clothes on the fire.”

With the help of the cook, I put on a coarse woolen jersey, leaning against the wooden cladding, every now and then stumbling from the ship's rolling, with the help of the cook. At that very moment my body shrank and ached from the prickly touch. The cook noticed my involuntary twitches and grimaces and grinned.

“I hope you never have to wear such clothes again, sir. You have amazingly delicate skin, softer than a lady's; such as yours, I have never seen. I immediately realized that you are a real gentleman, the first minute I saw you here.

I didn't like him from the beginning, and as he helped me dress, my antipathy towards him grew. There was something repulsive about his touch. I shivered under his arms, my body was indignant. And therefore, and especially because of the smells from various pots that boiled and gurgled on the stove, I was in a hurry to get out into the fresh air as soon as possible. In addition, it was necessary to see the captain to discuss with him how to disembark me ashore.

A cheap paper shirt with a tattered collar and faded chest and something else that I took for old traces of blood was put on me in the midst of an incessant stream of apologies and explanations. My feet were in rough work boots, and my trousers were pale blue, faded, and one leg was ten inches shorter than the other. The cropped leg made you think that the devil was trying to snatch the soul of the cook through it and caught the shadow instead of the essence.

- Whom should I thank for this courtesy? - I asked, pulling on all these rags. I wore a tiny boy's hat on my head, and instead of a jacket there was a dirty striped jacket, ending above the waist, with sleeves to the elbows.

The cook drew himself up respectfully with a searching smile. I could have sworn that he expected to get a tip from me. Subsequently, I became convinced that this posture was unconscious: it was servility inherited from ancestors.

“Mugridge, sir,” he scowled, and his feminine features blurred into an oily smile. “Thomas Mugridge, sir, at your service.

“All right, Thomas,” I continued, “when my clothes are dry, I will not forget you.

A soft light spilled over his face, and his eyes glittered, as if, somewhere in the depths, his ancestors stirred in him vague memories of tips received in previous existence.

“Thank you, sir,” he said respectfully.

The door swung open noiselessly, he deftly slid to the side - and I went out onto the deck.

I still felt weak after taking a long bath. A gust of wind blew over me, and I hobbled along the swinging deck to the corner of the cabin and clung to it so as not to fall. Tilting heavily, the schooner sank and then rose on a long Pacific wave. If the schooner was sailing, as Johnson said, to the southwest, then the wind blew, in my opinion, from the south. The fog disappeared and the sun appeared, sparkling on the rippling surface of the sea. I glanced east, where I knew California was, but I saw nothing but low layers of fog, the very fog that no doubt caused the Martinez to crash and plunge me into my present state. To the north, not very far from us, a group of bare rocks towered over the sea; I noticed a lighthouse on one of them. In the southwest, almost in the same direction as we were going, I saw the faint outline of the triangular sails of a ship.

Having completed my survey of the horizon, I turned my eyes to what was around me close by. My first thought was that a person who suffered a crash and touched death shoulder to shoulder deserves more attention than I was given here. Except the sailor at the steering wheel, who was looking at me curiously through the roof of the cabin, no one paid any attention to me.

Everyone seemed to be interested in what was happening in the middle of the schooner. There, on the hatch, a heavy man was lying on his back. He was dressed, but his shirt was torn in the front. However, his skin was not visible: his chest was almost completely covered with a mass of black hair, similar to the fur of a dog. His face and neck were hidden under a black and gray beard, which probably would have seemed stiff and thick if it had not been stained with something sticky and if water had not dripped from it. His eyes were closed, and he apparently lay unconscious; the mouth was open wide, and the chest was lifting heavily, as if it were out of breath; breath came out noisily. One sailor from time to time, methodically, as if doing the most familiar thing, lowered a canvas bucket on a rope into the ocean, pulled it out, intercepting the rope with his hands, and poured water onto a person who was lying motionless.

Back and forth across the deck, fiercely chewing on the tip of a cigar, walked the very man whose casual gaze saved me from the depths of the sea. His height was, apparently, five feet ten inches, or half an inch more, but he was striking not by his height, but by the extraordinary strength that you felt at the first glance at him. Although he had broad shoulders and a high chest, I would not call him massive: he felt the strength of hardened muscles and nerves that we tend to attribute to people who are lean and lean; and in him this strength, thanks to his heavy build, resembled something like the strength of a gorilla. And at the same time, in appearance, he did not at all resemble a gorilla. I want to say that his strength was something beyond his physical characteristics. It was the power that we attribute to ancient, simplified times, which we used to combine with primitive creatures that lived in trees and were akin to us; it is a free, ferocious force, a mighty quintessence of life, a primal power that gives rise to movement, that primary essence that sculpts life forms - in short, that vitality that makes the snake's body wriggle when its head is cut off and the snake is dead, or which languishes in the awkward body of a turtle, making it jump and tremble at the light touch of a finger.

Such a force I felt in this man who walked back and forth. He stood firmly on his feet, his feet confidently stepping on the deck; every movement of his muscles, no matter what he did, whether he shrugged his shoulders or tightly squeezed the lips that held the cigar, was determined and seemed to be born out of excessive and overpowering energy. However, this force, permeating his every movement, was just a hint of another, even greater force, which dormant in him and only moved from time to time, but could wake up at any moment and be terrible and impetuous, like the fury of a lion or the destructive rush of a storm.

The chef stuck his head out of the kitchen doors, grinned encouragingly, and pointed his finger at a man walking up and down the deck. It was given to me to understand that this was the captain, or, in the language of the cook, the "old man", exactly the person that I needed to disturb with a request to land me ashore. I had already stepped forward to put an end to what, according to my assumptions, should have caused a storm for five minutes, but at that moment a terrible paroxysm of suffocation took possession of the unfortunate man lying on his back. He flexed and convulsed. The chin with the wet black beard protruded even more upward, the back curved, and the chest bulged in an instinctive effort to grab as much air as possible. The skin under his beard and all over his body - I knew it, although I could not see it - took on a crimson hue.

The captain, or Wolf Larsen, as those around him called him, stopped walking and looked at the dying man. This last battle of life with death was so fierce that the sailor interrupted the dousing and stared curiously at the dying man, while the tarpaulin bucket half shrank and the water poured out of him onto the deck. The dying man, knocking out the dawn on the hatch with his heels, stretched out his legs and froze in the last great tension; only the head was still moving from side to side. Then the muscles weakened, the head stopped moving, and a sigh of deep calm escaped from his chest. The jaw dropped and the upper lip lifted to reveal two rows of tobacco-darkened teeth. His features seemed to be frozen in a devilish grin at the world he had left behind and fooled.

Float made of wood, iron or copper, spheroidal or cylindrical. The buoys enclosing the fairway are equipped with a bell.

Leviathan - in Hebrew and medieval legends, a demonic creature, wriggling in a ring-like manner.

The ancient church of St. Mary-Bow, or simply Bow-church, in central London - City; all who were born in the block near this church, where the sound of its bells can be heard, are considered the most authentic Londoners, who in England are mockingly called "sospeu".

Jack londonmore wolf. "Sea Wolf" Jack London Jack London sea wolf criticism

Picture or drawing Sea wolf

Other retellings and reviews for the reader's diary

Chapter I

Chapter II