I was thunderstruck.I looked for his instant annihilation.But it was not Wolf Larsen's whim to annihilate him.He sauntered slowly forward to the break of the poop, and, leaning his elbow on the corner of the cabin, gazed down thoughtfully and curiously at the excited boy.
And the boy indicted Wolf Larsen as he had never been indicted before.
The sailors assembled in a fearful group just outside the forecastle scuttle and watched and listened.The hunters piled pell- mell out of the steerage, but as Leach's tirade continued I saw that there was no levity in their faces.Even they were frightened, not at the boy's terrible words, but at his terrible audacity.It did not seem possible that any living creature could thus beard Wolf Larsen in his teeth.I know for myself that I was shocked into admiration of the boy, and I saw in him the splendid invincibleness of immortality rising above the flesh and the fears of the flesh, as in the prophets of old, to condemn unrighteousness.
And such condemnation! He haled forth Wolf Larsen's soul naked to the scorn of men.He rained upon it curses from God and High Heaven, and withered it with a heat of invective that savored of a mediaeval excommunication of the Catholic Church.He ran the gamut of denunciation, rising to heights of wrath that were sublime and almost Godlike, and from sheer exhaustion sinking to the vilest and most indecent abuse.
His rage was a madness.His lips were flecked with a soapy froth, and sometimes he choked and gurgled and became inarticulate.And through it all, calm and impassive, leaning on his elbow and gazing down, Wolf Larsen seemed lost in a great curiosity.This wild stirring of yeasty life, this terrific revolt and defiance of matter that moved, perplexed and interested him.
Each moment I looked, and everybody looked, for him to leap upon the boy and destroy him.But it was not his whim.His cigar went out, and he continued to gaze silently and curiously.
Leach had worked himself into an ecstasy of impotent rage.
"Pig! Pig! Pig!" he was reiterating at the top of his lungs."Why don't you come down and kill me, you murderer? You can do it! ain't afraid! There's no one to stop you! Damn sight better dead and outa your reach than alive and in your clutches! Come on, you coward! Kill me! Kill me! Kill me!"It was at this stage that Thomas Mugridge's erratic soul brought him into the scene.He had been listening at the galley door, but he now came out, ostensibly to fling some scraps over the side, but obviously to see the killing he was certain would take place.He smirked greasily up into the face of Wolf Larsen, who seemed not to see him.But the Cockney was unabashed, though mad, stark mad.He turned to Leach, saying:
"Such langwidge! Shockin'!"
Leach's rage was no longer impotent.Here at last was something ready to hand.And for the first time since the stabbing the Cockney had appeared outside the galley without his knife.The words had barely left his mouth when he was knocked down by Leach.Three times he struggled to his feet, striving to gain the galley, and each time was knocked down.