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Updated: June 5, 2025
Also, at the moment of delivering each kick, he called the Kanaka a black heathen. "For two centimes I'd come over there and drown you, you white beast!" I yelled. The only reason I did not go was that I felt too tired. The very thought of the effort to swim over was nauseating. So I called to the Kanaka to come to me, and proceeded to share the hatch-cover with him.
Some did, and others, disbelieving, hung around the hatch-cover, sniffing and peering to discover traces of smoke. But the sailors had done their work well, and a stranger would not have known that a fire was in the hold. The captain had spoken truly, and in the morning the fire was completely out, a few charred bales of cotton being the only things damaged.
Now that we've everything cleaned up, we'll have the funeral and get the decks cleared of useless lumber." While Johansen was summoning the watch below, a couple of sailors, under the captain's direction, laid the canvas-swathed corpse upon a hatch-cover. On either side the deck, against the rail and bottoms up, were lashed a number of small boats.
Not twenty feet away from me on another hatch-cover, were Captain Oudouse and the heathen. They were fighting over the possession of the cover at least, the Frenchman was. "Paien noir!" I heard him scream, and at the same time I saw him kick the kanaka. Now, Captain Oudouse had lost all his clothes, except his shoes, and they were heavy brogans.
"Lift up that end there, damn you! What the hell's the matter with you?" They elevated the end of the hatch-cover with pitiful haste, and, like a dog flung overside, the dead man slid feet first into the sea. The coal at his feet dragged him down. He was gone. "Johansen," Wolf Larsen said briskly to the new mate, "keep all hands on deck now they're here.
But I am running ahead of my yarn. We shared the hatch-cover between us. We took turn and turn about, one lying flat on the cover and resting, while the other, submerged to the neck, merely held on with his hands. For three days and nights, spell and spell, on the cover and in the water, we drifted over the ocean.
The mate took a step backward, and mumbled an apology. "Go on, Drew," ordered the captain. "When did you lose sight of Mr. Parmalee?" "I slipped on the deck and struck my head on the corner of the hatch-cover. Mr. Parmalee was with me at the time. I lost my senses from the blow, and when I came to, Parmalee wasn't there.
They are hewing the hatch-cover with their axes. Hera preserve us! The wood splinters. We die.” “We have no time to die,” called the athlete, “but only to save Hellas.” A dozen blows beat the frail hatch-cover to splinters. A dark face with grinning teeth showed itself.
As I learned afterward, he had got the hatch-cover first, and, after some time, encountering Captain Oudouse, had offered to share it with him, and had been kicked off for his pains. And that was how Otoo and I first came together. He was no fighter. He was all sweetness and gentleness, a love-creature though he stood nearly six feet tall and was muscled like a gladiator.
We were the sole survivors of the Petite Jeanne. Captain Oudouse must have succumbed to exhaustion, for several days later his hatch-cover drifted ashore without him. Otoo and I lived with the natives of the atoll for a week, when we were rescued by a French cruiser and taken to Tahiti. In the meantime, however, we had performed the ceremony of exchanging names.
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