The Sea Wolves (15 page)

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, and 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 watched 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.

“There's always a choice,” Jack said.

“There are over a hundred people on that ship,” Sabine said. “Most, if not all, will die today. But if I refuse Ghost's demands, then he will kill me.”