The Sea Wolves Read Online Free PDF

turned back toward Finn.
    â€œMy orders were clear, Finn. He was not to be touched. Worse yet, you hoped to rob him and keep the dust for yourself—”
    â€œNo, sir,” Finn began. “It weren’t my intention at all. I only—”
    Ghost’s cruel smile alone was enough to silence the man.
    â€œAnd now you’ve interrupted me,” the captain said.
    The ship creaked, lines swaying, pulley blocks jangling, but the crew was utterly silent. Jack had seen this before in the packs of sled dogs in the frozen north. He had watched as a member of the pack challenged the leader, as a bloody, snapping, snarling fight ensued, and as the rest of the pack loomed with dark purpose, waiting to savage the loser. These were men, not dogs, but their ominous silence bespoke the same malign intent.
    â€œDo I not give my men a fair share of the spoils, Finn?”
    â€œYou do, sir,” Finn said, his voice faltering. “My word, you do.”
    â€œAnd yet,” Ghost said, almost idly. “And yet.”
    He turned and paced a bit, tapping his temple as if he were a stage actor performing the part of one deep in thought. Then he glanced at Jack and tipped him a wink, an amused twinkle in his eye.
    â€œMr. Johansen,” Ghost said.
    Jack turned to see a sailor step forward, a lanky man with tiny beads for eyes and long, spidery fingers. This, he knew, must be the first mate, for the captain had called him Mister, and to him would be delivered the orders.
    â€œSir?”
    No trace of a smile remained on the captain’s face.
    â€œKeelhaul him.”
    Finn screamed, lunged from his place at the railing, and drew out a wicked-looking knife as he hurled himself at the captain. Ghost slapped the blade from his hand and it stuck in the deck, quivering in the moonlight. So fierce and strong was the captain that he had the man on his back in the space between heartbeats. He raked a single fingernail along Finn’s jaw, drawing blood and causing the sailor to cry out in surrender.
    â€œIt’s the keel or your throat,” Ghost growled, his face bent so low that the two men were nose to nose. He almost whispered, but in the loaded silence the whole crew heard. “Pain or death. Those are your only choices.”
    Finn went slack beneath him, and Ghost stood, turning his back on the defeated sailor. The captain paused and looked at Jack.
    â€œThey are forever our only choices, young Jack. As you will most assuredly learn.”
    As a boy, Jack London had been something of a pirate himself. Desperate to escape the hellish drudgery of his work at Hickmott’s Cannery, he’d borrowed enough money from his foster mother to buy the sloop Razzle Dazzle . All his young life, he had been in the company of rough men, and he had been along with some of them as they raided the oyster beds in the mudflats off San Francisco Bay, stealing what they could by night and selling it off in Oakland the next morning. Oyster pirates, they called themselves, and with his new boat, he’d become a pirate captain. At the age of fourteen, it had seemed a glorious adventure.
    Now he stood on the deck of the Larsen , the sails full of a gentle Pacific breeze as the ship kept a steady course westward, away from the California coast—away from home and safety, and the family who had already waited too long for his return, and the financial salvation they would be praying he had found in the Yukon. In a single night he had seen blood dripping from multiple blades, heard the dying sighs of innocents, witnessed the brutal abduction of fellow passengers, and been savagely assaulted by someone who seemed more beast than man. And he had the feeling that far worse horrors yet awaited him.
    Oyster pirate? He had been a laughing boy, an imp, attempting to thwart the Fish Patrol and escape arrest. Here, now … these were pirates. They lived by the law of blade and club. Bloodletting seemed ordinary and