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London, Jack

"The Sea-Wolf"

I looked at Maud Brewster and knew that she was similarly affected. Then I looked at Wolf Larsen, but there was nothing subjective about his state of consciousness. His whole concern was with the immediate, objective present. He still held the wheel, and I felt that he was timing Time, reckoning the passage of the minutes with each forward lunge and leeward roll of the Ghost.


? ? ? ? 'Go for'ard and hard alee without any noise,' he said to me in a low voice. 'Clew up the topsails first. Set men at all the sheets. Let there be no rattling of blocks, no sound of voices. No noise, understand, no noise.'


? ? ? ? When all was ready, the word, 'Hard alee,' was passed forward to me from man to man; and the Ghost heeled about on the port tack with virtually no noise at all. And what little there was- the slapping of a few reef-points and the creaking of a sheave in a block or two- was ghostly under the hollow echoing pall in which we were swathed.


? ? ? ? We had scarcely filled away, it seemed, when the fog thinned abruptly and we were again in the sunshine, the wide-stretching sea breaking before us to the skyline.


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