He threw down the heavy wire brush and leaned back against the wall.
“All cleaned away?” Ghost said.
Jack started. It was the first time he’d seen the captain since morning, and it was now past noon. He stood in the doorway, silent as his namesake, yet his presence was as powerful and obvious as ever. Ghost exuded a gravity over all those around him, pulling them into his orbit. Sometimes Jack was drawn by it, but today he was repulsed.
“I’ve spent the day mopping up blood,” Jack said bitterly.
“Meat salted and stored away?”
“Meat.” Jack was shaking, anger and terror mingling within him.
Ghost blinked softly as he waited for Jack to continue. He sees my rage, Jack thought. He smells my fear. So Jack merely looked away and nodded.
“Good enough,” Ghost said.
“Where is Sabine?”
“We’re heading into a storm,” Ghost said, ignoring the question. “Might be a harsh one. But the men will still need feeding.”
The captain’s jealousy seethed behind a mask of calm, just as the wolf hid behind a human face. “She did nothing wrong,” Jack said. “We … did nothing….” A coolness settled about his heart. How could he really be asking for understanding from this monster?
Ghost frowned as he examined Jack, then waved a hand as if at a fly.
“So what did you discuss all night?” the captain asked.
“I’ve been told not to talk about last night.”
“By whom?”
“Louis.”
Later, Jack would think about that moment before the lunge, before the rage exploded, and whether there had been any signs that he had missed. But no. It was as if Ghost’s will was contained deep inside, driving and steering him, and it projected no outward appearance. Perhaps it was afraid of the light.
The captain leaped across the galley, moving from motionless to surging in the blink of an eye. It seemed effortless—he flowed, barely touching the floor, and his hand closed around Jack’s throat. Ghost hoisted him up and slammed him against the wall, knocking pans and ladles from their hooks and sending them crashing to the floorboards. Though thin, Jack was wiry and muscled, but the effort Ghost expended did not seem to reach his face. Instead, therein lay a simmering fury.
“This is my ship,” he snarled, his voice the guttural grunt of a beast. “Do you understand? I don’t give a damn what Louis said. He’s a mutt. He belongs to me. And you … you answer to me. No one else.”
Jack could not speak. Ghost’s hand closed tighter around his throat, and the pain was excruciating. Black dots speckled his vision, and he struggled to draw breath into his lungs. I’m going to die, he thought, but for some reason the idea seemed distant from him, remote. He considered plunging his thumbs into Ghost’s eyes, kicking him in the crotch, stabbing stiff fingers at his throat … but he knew that none of this would stop the monster. His strength was too great, his brutality too dehumanizing. It could be that he no longer even felt pain at all.
Helpless, Jack hung against the galley wall.
“Do you … understand?” Ghost said again, leaning in close. Jack managed a tiny gasp of air and instantly regretted it. Ghost’s breath smelled of rotten meat and tobacco, and Jack had to force back the urge to vomit. There was nowhere for the stink to go but into his lungs.
Jack nodded, chin pressing against the man’s huge hand. Blinked, to communicate understanding.
Ghost let him go, and Jack dropped to the floor, grabbing his throat and trying not to wheeze or gasp as he drew in a breath. He failed, dragging in ragged sips of air as Ghost withdrew to the doorway once again. But he knew, as he felt the captain’s glare upon him, that this was not weakness. His pain was exactly what Ghost required: an acknowledgment of his superiority. So Jack gasped beyond the receding pain, clutched his chest even after he could breathe again, and did not risk glancing up at Ghost.
“What did you talk about all night in there with my sea witch?”
“The Weyden,” Jack said. “Your plans to attack it.”
“Interesting,” Ghost said calmly, as if they were talking philosophy once again. “I thought she’d keep that from you. She’ll share responsibility for any blood spilled, after all.”
“Will she?” Jack said. “She is yours, like this ship and its crew. Like your pack.”
“Like you?”
Jack pulled himself upright, leaning against the counter opposite the doorway. Ghost was three steps away from him and filled his field of vision. He was smiling at Jack as though the attack had never occurred.
“You want to kill me,” the captain said. “You hate me. You want to tear me apart for what I do. What I am. The killing. The consuming.” He watched Jack carefully. “Keeping her prisoner.”
“No,” Jack said. “You fascinate me.”
Ghost raised one eyebrow, then shrugged. “No matter. The wild heart of you is set deep, but I can draw it out.”
“I’m not an animal. I’m not like you.” Jack relished the risk of stating as much.
“Yes, Jack. You are. The beast is there, down inside, just waiting to be set free.”
Jack scowled. “You think I’m a wolf-man? The moon was full last night, but I remained who I am. Just Jack London.”
Ghost’s eyes glinted with merriment and dark purpose. “Bitten by one of us, any man will become the wolf. But most would be nothing but curs, whining in a corner, killed by the pack at the first moon. Some are different. Some are already beasts, and wild parts of them howl for freedom.”
Ghost left, and for a moment Jack wanted to pursue him, to argue his humanity. But the ship jarred sideways and Jack staggered against the galley counter, almost falling across the hot plate of scorching coals. Pots and cutlery skittered across the floor.
Sailors called out and laughed, and from somewhere more distant he heard a cheerful whistle. So here comes the storm, he thought. The Larsen’s crew sounded almost excited, and for the life of him Jack didn’t know what the hell to expect next.
Jack London had believed himself something of a sailor. He’d prowled the oyster beds beyond San Francisco Bay, steamed up the western coastlin e of the USA on the Umatilla, and built his first boat deep in the wilds of the Yukon. But his first experience of a deep ocean storm blew away all his preconceptions.
For the rest of that day and the following night, the Larsen was tossed upon the sea like a cork. It was rocked from side to side, tipped forward and back, and the deck creaked and groaned as it was put under immense pressure. The sea seemed to penetrate the hull and seep between boards, and the air inside the cabin was heavy with damp and stinging with salt. In the early hours of the storm Jack heard the pirates on deck, gathering the sails and preparing the vessel for the punishment it was about to endure. But as the storm progressed, and Jack remained huddled away in his tiny sleeping space at the rear of the galley, the Larsen began to feel more and more deserted. Whereas before it had been a ship under control—though the control of monsters, not men—the storm stole that away. Nature’s fury denied any pretense of control, and Jack realized that the crew was hiding away as well. It pleased him to know that there was at least one thing the wolves feared.
His stomach rolled in sympathy with the ship. He felt his insides massaged by the storm’s fury, pulled this way and that as if grasped in invisible hands. But he retained his composure, did not vomit, and even managed to drift into fitful sleep.
He quickly lost track of time. The storm had been raging for hours—perhaps as much as half a day—when Louis appeared in the galley’s doorway. He was soaked to the skin and bleeding from a ragged cut across his forehead.
“Sleeping on the job, Cooky?” Louis asked.
“You’re bleeding,” Jack said.
“That’s because I’ve been working.” A wave struck the ship and tipped it onto its side, forcing it over until the decks felt almost vertical. Louis’s fingers clasped the doorframe to prevent himself from falling across the galley, a
nd Jack heard the crinkle of splintering wood, and saw the holes pressed into the frame by the man’s nails.
As the ship righted itself with a thunderous boom, Louis nodded at the cold coals.
“Fire it up.”
“What? Are you mad? I can’t cook anything in this—the coals will scatter and—”
“Well, me and the boys have been working hard, and we’re hungry,” Louis said. He leaned into the galley, squatting so that he could look directly into Jack’s eyes. “Hungry for something warm.”
So in the height of the worst storm he had ever experienced on land or sea, Jack lit the coals and cooked a dry meal of meat and fried potatoes, liberally spiced, and softened with gravy moments before he plated it. Several times he had to pick up spilled coals, fingers protected by a cloth soaked in the brine swilling back and forth along the gangway floor beyond the galley. By the time he’d finished cooking, he was hungry enough to eat something himself. Even though he knew it to be only pork, he stayed away from the meat. After the work he’d done following the slaughter, he wondered if he would ever be able to eat meat again.
Nature raged through the night, and then close to dawn the storm abated, and the silence that fell was haunted.
The ship seemed to be moaning in pain. The sailors swarmed across the deck and up into the rigging, surprisingly quiet as they went about their post-storm activities, and it was Ghost’s loud shout that brought Jack up on deck for the first time in more than twenty-four hours.
“Young Jack!” he called from above, voice thundering through the mess and gangways much as the storm’s had. “On deck now. Something for you to see.”
Jack exited the galley, glancing back at Ghost’s closed stateroom door. Is Sabine still in there? he wondered, but there was no way he could find out. Not yet. The mess was empty, but in greater disarray than he’d ever seen it, with plates scattered across the floor and remnants of the meal spattered across all surfaces—walls, floor, ceiling, tables, benches. He’d have a busy time with the scrubbing brush later.
On deck, he breathed in deeply, realizing how much he’d missed this fresh air. There was a cool breeze blowing spray across the deck, but the sea was much calmer now, the swell wide and more forgiving. Behind them to the north and east, the sky was dark and angry.
The wolves were busy making sail and repairing damage wrought by the storm. A length of railing had been ripped away, and several lengths of rigging flapped in the breeze, rope ends frayed. One of the small boats—Jack had learned that they were used for boarding other ships, or going ashore, or hunting seals in northern climes—had vanished, smashed from its mooring. Jack caught his breath. One less chance to escape.
Ghost stood at the bow, looking back over his shoulder as he waited for Jack to join him. He was motionless amid this chaos. An island in the storm. Jack went to him, wondering what he would see.
“Did you enjoy the storm?” Ghost asked.
“No,” Jack said.
“I did.”
“I’m surprised. Confronted by an energy greater than your own, I thought your ego would take a battering.”
“Ego?” Ghost said with obvious surprise. “You truly believe I suffer from that affliction?”
“Perceptive as you are, I’m astonished you don’t see it,” Jack said. “Except that you’re not the one who suffers. That’s left to everyone around you.”
“Ego is comparative,” Ghost said. “I place myself in comparison to no one. I exist for myself and am comfortable with my own thoughts and considerations. That does not give me an ego. It gives me sense and logic. It’s only you, Jack, who apply the concerns of society and civility to me.”
“Maybe,” Jack said. “But if you’re so damned immune to anything outside yourself, why do you care what I think of you?”
Ghost leaned on the bow railing and looked down at where the ship sliced through the waves. He seemed contemplative, and for a moment Jack thought that he had reached the captain somehow. Perhaps it was not being ignored that would trouble the man, but being pitied.
“What makes you think I care?” Ghost asked at last, and Jack felt a shiver pass through him. It had nothing to do with the cool breeze, nor the fact that they had survived an incredible storm. But the man before him was cold as ice. At the heart of him must exist a void, the darkest of places, and these conversations were fireflies circling that void, mere distractions that would soon be swallowed by his dense, impenetrable heart.
But could any man truly be so distant? Even a creature like Ghost, who existed balanced somewhere between human and beast?
“You spend a night as a monster, and yet you crave the sort of conversation”—Jack waved a hand behind him at the rest of the ship—“no one else here can give you. You’re a man of contradictions.”
“I know my own mind.”
“As well as you think?”
“Of course. I have my needs, and they are many and varied. The meaning of life is to live, not to exist. Surely you’re a young man who will agree with that.”
“Yes, but not at the expense of others.”
“Others!” Ghost snorted. “I only live the life that most men crave. I’m true to myself, because I know that I am most important. Why live a lie? I’ll quote you Hawthorne, and you tell me if this is false: ‘No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.’”
Jack nodded, wondering how any man, beast or not, could have spent so much time pondering the philosophies of humanity and still remain so inhuman. And even as he wondered, he knew the answer: Ghost worked hard at it. The real question was, why? Why did he want to rid himself of any shred of compassion or empathy? Was it only so that he could live with the horrors he had committed, or was there some deeper purpose?
“You see!” Ghost said. “I’m at peace with who I am, and wear no false mask, however much your precious civilization says I should.”
“And yet aren’t you the ultimate two-faced man?”
“Ah, young Jack,” Ghost said, “you’re assuming the two faces are dissimilar.” He lit his pipe and leaned on the bow rail again, looking forward rather than back. His eyes glittered. He seemed to be focused on something ahead.
Ghost was trying to bend Jack to his philosophy of humanity, to draw out the wild he saw in his young captive. And if Sabine had been correct, he wanted Jack as some kind of mirror, so he could be certain he was everything Jack was not. But if Ghost wanted to draw out the beast in Jack, then Jack thought the opposite might also be possible—some trace of human emotion remained in Ghost.
“I can reach you,” Jack said, and Ghost glanced back, perhaps thinking for a moment that his prisoner planned to topple him over the bow. Ghost’s slightly startled expression—a quick blink, a falling of his smile—was Jack’s greatest victory yet.
“You can continue to try,” Ghost said, “but it will have to wait for another day.” He took a small telescope from his pocket and extended it, handing it to Jack. “South-southwest.”
Jack looked, sweeping the telescope slowly from the south toward the west. He missed it the first time and had to turn back before he saw the faint smudge of smoke on the horizon.
“The Weyden,” he said.
“Indeed,” Ghost said. He stood back from the railing, took a deep breath, and then clapped his hands. “Fresh sport. A good day for it!” He turned and shouted down the length of the Larsen, and Jack had no doubt that every crewman heard his voice. “Barely hours away, lads! Make haste.”
Jack’s heart fell. Barely hours.
“Fortuitous that the storm should pass before you found your quarry,” Jack said.
“We might’ve been lost in that storm, but she guided us through,” Ghost said, enjoying talking about Sabine. “Stayed in my cabin the whole time, reading the charts, scrying the wind and waves. Kept her starved, because that way she sees clearer. She’s quite hungry.”
He wa
tched Jack for any reaction, but Jack bit down his anger. Now was not the time.
“I’d best get below,” Jack said.
“Aye, young Jack,” Ghost said. As Jack walked away, he heard the captain’s soft chuckle behind him, and it sounded like claws on wood.
He could set fire to the Larsen. It would be easy enough. Spread the cooking coals, encourage the flames with some of the fat stored in the galley. It would send a signal to the Weyden. It would cost him his life and possibly Sabine’s—either burning or drowning, or at Ghost’s hands—but if he could save the hundred or more lives on board the other ship, it would be a worthy sacrifice. But as soon as the idea presented itself, he rejected it. The flames would draw the other ship in, not drive it away. The code of the sea and basic decency would bring the captain of the Weyden to the aid of the burning Larsen. Ghost’s wolves would abandon their sinking vessel and take over the other. His sacrifice would be wasted.
He could steal one of the remaining skiffs, try to sail on ahead of the Larsen to warn the others. But that was foolishness, and he knew it. There was no way he could lower the boat overboard without being noticed, and it would be difficult to sail it on his own even if he did. They’d be down on him, and though he’d fight, they’d tear him apart in moments.
Some other signal, then. Some way to warn the Weyden that they were about to be attacked. He remembered seeing the Larsen appearing from the fog and slipping alongside the Umatilla, but this attack would be different, because it would be in broad daylight. And Sabine had said that they could change themselves at will. With such a brazen assault, would they need the added speed and savagery of their monstrous forms? Jack thought they might.
As he worked in the galley, agonizing about how he could warn the innocents aboard the Weyden about what was to come, he breathed in and caught her scent.
“You’ve led them to another day of murder,” he said softly.
“I have no choice.” Her voice was weak, wretched, and Jack turned around in surprise. Sabine stood in the galley doorway, her skin incredibly pale and her sunken eyes dark with exhaustion. She looked drawn and sick. She clung to the doorframe, so sad that his heart broke for her and belonged to her completely. Her malady was far more than physical.
The Secret Journeys of Jack London, Book Two: The Sea Wolves Page 10
