The Duel (26 page)

The time went by, and the suspense, to me, was terrible. Thomas Mugridge, on the other hand, considered it a laughable affair, and was continually bobbing his head out the galley door to make jocose remarks. How I hated him! And how my hatred for him grew and grew, during that fearful time, to cyclopean dimensions. For the first time in my life I experienced the desire to murder—“saw red,” as some of our picturesque writers phrase it. Life in general might still be sacred, but life in the particular case of Thomas Mugridge had become very profane indeed.
I was frightened when I became conscious that I was seeing red, and the thought flashed through my mind: was I, too, becoming tainted by the brutality of my environment?—I, who even in the most flagrant crimes had denied the justice and righteousness of capital punishment?

Fully half-an-hour went by, and then I saw Johnson and Louis in some sort of altercation. It ended with Johnson flinging off Louis’s detaining arm and starting forward. He crossed the deck, sprang into the fore rigging, and began to climb. But the quick eye of Wolf Larsen caught him.

“Here, you, what are you up to?” he cried.

Johnson’s ascent was arrested. He looked his captain in the eyes and replied slowly:

“I am going to get that boy down.”

“You’ll get down out of that rigging, and damn lively about it! D’ye hear? Get down!”

Johnson hesitated, but the long years of obedience to the masters of ships overpowered him, and he dropped sullenly to the deck and went on forward.

At half after five I went below to set the cabin table, but I hardly knew what I did, for my eyes and my brain were filled with the vision of a man, white-faced and trembling, comically like a bug, clinging to the thrashing gaff. At six o’clock, when I served supper, going on deck to get the food from the galley, I saw Harrison, still in the same position. The conversation at the table was of other things. Nobody seemed interested in the wantonly imperilled life. But making an extra trip to the galley a little later, I was gladdened by the sight of Harrison staggering weakly from the rigging to the forecastle scuttle. He had finally summoned the courage to descend.

Before closing this incident, I must give a scrap of conversation I had with Wolf Larsen in the cabin, while I was washing the dishes.

“You were looking squeamish this afternoon,” he began. “What was the matter?”

I could see that he knew what had made me possibly as sick as Harrison, that he was trying to draw me, and I answered, “It was because of the brutal treatment of that boy.”

He gave a short laugh. “Like sea-sickness, I suppose. Some men are subject to it, and others are not.”

“Not so,” I objected.

“Just so,” he went on. “The earth is as full of brutality as the sea is full of motion. And some men are made sick by the one, and some by the other. That’s the only reason.”

“But you, who make a mock of human life, don’t you place any value upon it whatever?” I demanded.

“Value? What value?” He looked at me, and though his eyes were steady and motionless, there seemed a cynical smile in them. “What kind of value? How do you measure it? Who values it?”

“I do,” I made answer.

“Then what is it worth to you? Another man’s life, I mean. Come now, what is it worth?”

The value of life? How could I put a tangible value upon it? Somehow, I, who have always had expression, lacked expression when with Wolf Larsen. I have since determined that a part of it was due to the man’s personality, but that the greater part was due to his totally different outlook. Unlike other materialists I had met and with whom I had something in common to start on, I had nothing in common with him. Perhaps, also, it was the elemental simplicity of his mind that baffled me. He drove so directly to the core of the matter, divesting a question always of all superfluous details, and with such an air of finality, that I seemed to find myself struggling in deep water, with no footing under me. Value of life? How could I answer the question on the spur of the moment? The sacredness of life I had accepted as axiomatic. That it was intrinsically valuable was a truism I had never questioned. But when he challenged the truism I was speechless.

“We were talking about this yesterday,” he said. “I held that life was a ferment, a yeasty something which
devoured life that it might live, and that living was merely successful piggishness. Why, if there is anything in supply and demand, life is the cheapest thing in the world. There is only so much water, so much earth, so much air; but the life that is demanding to be born is limitless. Nature is a spendthrift. Look at the fish and their millions of eggs. For that matter, look at you and me. In our loins are the possibilities of millions of lives. Could we but find time and opportunity and utilize the last bit and every bit of the unborn life that is in us, we could become the fathers of nations and populate continents. Life? Bah! It has no value. Of cheap things it is the cheapest. Everywhere it goes begging. Nature spills it out with a lavish hand. Where there is room for one life, she sows a thousand lives, and it’s life eats life till the strongest and most piggish life is left.”

“You have read Darwin,” I said. “But you read him misunderstandingly when you conclude that the struggle for existence sanctions your wanton destruction of life.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “You know you only mean that in relation to human life, for of the flesh and the fowl and the fish you destroy as much as I or any other man. And human life is in no wise different, though you feel it is and think that you reason why it is. Why should I be parsimonious with this life which is cheap and without value? There are more sailors than there are ships on the sea for them, more workers than there are factories or machines for them. Why, you who live on the land know that you house your poor people in the slums of cities and loose famine and pestilence upon them, and that there still remain more poor people, dying for want of a crust of bread and a bit of meat (which is life destroyed), than you know what to do with. Have you ever seen the London dockers fighting like wild beasts for a chance to work?”

He started for the companion stairs, but turned his head for a final word. “Do you know the only value life has is what life puts upon itself? And it is of course over-estimated since it is of necessity prejudiced in its own favour. Take that man I had aloft. He held on as if he were a precious thing, a treasure beyond diamonds or rubies. To you? No. To me? Not at all. To himself? Yes. But I do not accept his estimate. He sadly overrates himself. There is plenty more life demanding to be born. Had he fallen and dripped his brains upon the deck like honey from the comb, there would have been no loss to the world. He was worth nothing to the world. The supply is too large. To himself only was he of value, and to show how fictitious even this value was, being dead he is unconscious that he has lost himself. He alone rated himself beyond diamonds and rubies. Diamonds and rubies are gone, spread out on the deck to be washed away by a bucket of sea-water, and he does not even know that the diamonds and rubies are gone. He does not lose anything, for with the loss of himself he loses the knowledge of loss. Don’t you see? And what have you to say?”

“That you are at least consistent,” was all I could say, and I went on washing the dishes.

—from Chapter VI of
The Sea Wolf
by
Jack London
.
Of this psychologically intense novel’s most unique invention, that of the character Wolf Larsen, Ambrose Bierce once wrote
, “The great thing—and it is among the greatest of things—is that tremendous creation, Wolf Larsen … the hewing out and setting up of such a figure is enough for a man to do in one lifetime …”
London’s 1904 novel was a direct response to the growing popularity of social applications of Darwin’s theory of evolution as well as Herbert Spencer’s misunderstood concept of “Survival of the fittest.” Both Darwin’s and Spencer’s books are sighted in Captain Wolf Larsen’s cabin. In many ways, Larsen is a malevolent, and therefore less humorous, analogue to Von Koren’s role in
The Duel.

“People are judged by their deeds,” continued Von Koren. “So Deacon, judge for yourself … I’m talking to you now, Deacon. Mister Laevsky’s actions have candidly been laid out before you, like a long Chinese scroll, and you may read it from beginning to end. What’s he done in the two years since he’s been living here? Let’s use our fingers to count. First of all, he’s taught the residents of the town to play Vint, two years ago the game was unknown here, now, everyone plays Vint from morning to night, even the women and adolescents. Second, he’s taught the locals to drink beer, which was also unknown here. The locals are also obliged to him for their knowledge of different types of vodka, so that they can now distinguish between Kosheleva and Smirnov No. 21 blindfolded. Third, in the past living with another man’s wife was a covert affair here, for the same motivates that thieves steal covertly, and not overtly. Adultery was considered the sort of thing that was shameful to display in public. Laevsky’s attitude toward all this is a schoolboy’s. He openly lives with another man’s wife. Fourth.”

—from
The Duel
by
Anton Chekhov
.

While this game is by some persons thought to be the forerunner of bridge, and might be classed as one of the whist family, it is at present so little known outside of Russia, where it is the national game, that the author has thought it best to group it with other games which are distinctly national in character.

Vint has been variously described as bridge without a Dummy and as auction whist. It resembles bridge in the making of the trump, and whist in the manner of play.

Cards
. Vint is played with the full pack of fifty-two cards, which rank from the A K Q down to the deuce. Two packs are generally used.

Players
. A table is complete with four players, and if there are more than four candidates for play the selection must be made by cutting. All the rules for formation of tables, cutting, ties, etc., are the same as at bridge. The lowest cut takes the deal. Partners sit opposite each other.

Dealing
. The dealer presents the pack to be cut, and then gives thirteen cards to each player, one at a time. No trump is turned. The deal passes to the left. All irregularities are governed by the same laws as bridge.

Making the trump
. Each player in turn, beginning with the dealer, bids to make a certain number of tricks, from seven to thirteen, with a suit of his own choosing, which he names when he makes his bid. The suits outrank one another in the order of hearts, diamonds, clubs, and spades, hearts being the best. No trumps are higher than hearts. A bid of seven tricks is usually called “one” in hearts, or whatever the suit may be. A bid of “two” means to win eight tricks, or two over the book.

Bidding
. If a player wishes to go over the first offer made, he must either bid the same number of tricks. No player can increase his own bid unless he is overbid in the interval, but there is no limit to the number of times that players may outbid one another. Observe that the dealer may bid or pass, and each player after him in turn may bid or pass. The highest bidder must abide by his announcement both as to the number of tricks and the suit.

The Play
. No matter who dealt the cards, the player to the left of the highest bidder always leads for the first trick. Each player in turn must follow suit if he can, and the highest card played, if of the suit led, wins the trick, trumps winning all other suits. The winner of one trick leads for the next, and so on. There is no Dummy hand as in bridge.

Scoring
. Although the bidding is for so many “odd” tricks, or tricks over the book, every trick taken is counted when it comes to the scoring; but it is the number of tricks bid, and not the rank of the suit, that determines the value. Every trick won by the same partners—

Both sides score. If the highest bid was “two in diamonds,” and the bidder’s side won nine tricks, they would score 9 times 20, or 180; while their adversaries would score 4 times 20 or 80.

As soon as either side reaches 500, they win the game, even if it is in the middle of a hand; but the hand must be played out in order to see how many points are won by each side. It should be observed that although the bidder’s side may make nine or ten tricks the adversaries can win the game if they get enough to count out before the bidder, by reaching 500 first.