"
I found Wolf Larsen in the cabin, stripped and bloody, waiting for me. He greeted me with his whimsical smile.
‘Come, get to work, doctor. The signs are favorable for an extensive practice this voyage. I don’t know what the Ghost would have been without you, and if I could cherish such noble sentiments, I’d tell you that her master is deeply grateful.’
I knew the run of the simple medicine-chest the Ghost carried, and while I was heating water on the cabin stove and getting the things ready for dressing his wounds, he moved about, laughing and chatting, and examining his hurts with a calculating eye. I had never before seen him stripped, and the sight of his body quite took my breath away.
I must say that I was fascinated by the perfect lines of Wolf Larsen’s figure, and by what I may term the terrible beauty of it. I had noted the men in the forecastle. Powerfully muscled though some of them were, Oofty-Oofty had been the only one whose lines were at all pleasing, while, in so far as they pleased, had they been what I should call feminine.
But Wolf Larsen was the man type, the masculine, and almost a god in his perfectness. As he moved about or raised his arms, the great muscles leapt and moved under the satiny skin. I have forgotten to say that the bronze ended with his face. His body, thanks to his Scandinavian stock, was fair as the fairest woman’s. I remember his putting his hand up to feel of the wound on his head, and my watching the biceps move like a living thing under its white sheath.
He noticed me, and I became aware that I was staring at him.
‘God made you well,’ I said.
"
—Humphrey van Weyden - The Sea Wolf [Jack London]
msbennets:
do you know when you read a book that’s just so well written that when you finish it you can’t help but just sit there in silence for a few minutes just thinking about it, and then you reread the last couple pages, and just close the book and kind of stroke the cover in a weird sort of way and just keep thinking because it leaves such a strong impression on you that it just kinda haunts you in the back of your mind for the next few days
"My vision is clear and far. I could almost believe in God. But" - and his voice changed and the light went out of his face - “what is this condition in which I find myself? This joy of living? This exultation of life? This inspiration, I may well call it? It comes when there is nothing wrong with one’s digestion, when the stomach is in trim and and his appetite has an edge, and all goes well."
—The Sea Wolf - Jack London
"Do you know the only value life has is what life puts upon itself? And it is of course overestimated, for 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 of 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. The supply is too large."
—Jack London, The Sea Wolf (Book)
