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The
Sea Wolf
I scarcely know
where to begin, though I sometimes facetiously
place the cause of it all to Charley Furuseth’s
credit. He kept a summer cottage in Mill Valley,
under the shadow of Mount Tamalpais, and never
occupied it except when he loafed through the
winter months and read Nietzsche and
Schopenhauer to rest his brain. When summer came
on, he elected to sweat out a hot and dusty
existence in the city and to toil incessantly.
Had it not been my custom to run up to see him
every Saturday afternoon and to stop over till
Monday morning, this particular January Monday
morning would not have found me afloat on San
Francisco Bay.
Not but that I was afloat in a safe craft, for
the Martinez was a new ferry-steamer, making her
fourth or fifth trip on the run between
Sausalito and San Francisco. The danger lay in
the heavy fog which blanketed the bay, and of
which, as a landsman, I had little apprehension.
In fact, I remember the placid exaltation with
which I took up my position on the forward upper
deck, directly beneath the pilot-house, and
allowed the mystery of the fog to lay hold of my
imagination. A fresh breeze was blowing, and for
a time I was alone in the moist obscurity—yet
not alone, for I was dimly conscious of the
presence of the pilot, and of what I took to be
the captain, in the glass house above my head...
 Martin
Eden
The one opened the door with a latch-key
and went in, followed by a young fellow who
awkwardly removed his cap. He wore rough clothes
that smacked of the sea, and he was manifestly
out of place in the spacious hall in which he
found himself. He did not know what to do with
his cap, and was stuffing it into his coat
pocket when the other took it from him. The act
was done quietly and naturally, and the awkward
young fellow appreciated it. “He understands,”
was his thought. “He’ll see me through all right.”
He walked at the other’s heels with a swing to
his shoulders, and his legs spread unwittingly,
as if the level floors were tilting up and
sinking down to the heave and lunge of the sea.
The wide rooms seemed too narrow for his rolling
gait, and to himself he was in terror lest his
broad shoulders should collide with the doorways
or sweep the bric-a-brac from the low mantel. He
recoiled from side to side between the various
objects and multiplied the hazards that in
reality lodged only in his mind. Between a grand
piano and a centre-table piled high with books
was space for a half a dozen to walk abreast,
yet he essayed it with trepidation. His heavy
arms hung loosely at his sides. He did not know
what to do with those arms and hands, and when,
to his excited vision, one arm seemed liable to
brush against the books on the table, he lurched
away like a frightened horse, barely missing the
piano stool. He watched the easy walk of the
other in front of him, and for the first time
realized that his walk was different from that
of other men. He experienced a momentary pang of
shame that he should walk so uncouthly. The
sweat burst through the skin of his forehead in
tiny beads, and he paused and mopped his bronzed
face with his handkerchief...

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