Free The Log from the Sea of Cortez by John Steinbeck, Richard Astro

bell with a quick tempo. We stood on top of the deckhouse and watched the town of Pacific Grove slip by and dark pine-covered hills roll back on themselves as though they moved, not we.

    We sat on a crate of oranges and thought what good men most biologists are, the tenors of the scientific world—temperamental, moody, lecherous, loud-laughing, and healthy. Once in a while one comes on the other kind—what used in the university to be called a “dry-ball”—but such men are not really biologists. They are the embalmers of the field, the picklers who see only the preserved form of life without any of its principle. Out of their own crusted minds they create a world wrinkled with formaldehyde. The true biologist deals with life, with teeming boisterous life, and learns something from it, learns that the first rule of life is living. The dryballs cannot possibly learn a thing every starfish knows in the core of his soul and in the vesicles between his rays. He must, so know the starfish and the student biologist who sits at the feet of living things, proliferate in all directions. Having certain tendencies, he must move along their lines to the limit of their potentialities. And we have known biologists who did proliferate in all directions: one or two have had a little trouble about it. Your true biologist will sing you a song as loud and off-key as will a blacksmith, for he knows that morals are too often diagnostic of prostatitis and stomach ulcers. Sometimes he may proliferate a little too much in all directions, but he is as easy to kill as any other organism, and meanwhile he is very good company, and at least he does not confuse a low hormone productivity with moral ethics.

    The Western Flyer pushed through the swells toward Point Joe, which is the southern tip of the Bay of Monterey. There was a line of white which marked the open sea, for a strong north wind was blowing, and on that reef the whistling buoy rode, roaring like a perplexed and mournful bull. On the shore road we could see the cars of our recent friends driving along keeping pace with us while they waved handkerchiefs sentimentally. We were all a little sentimental that day. We turned the buoy and cleared the reef, and as we did the boat rolled heavily and then straightened. The north wind drove down on our tail, and we headed south with the big swells growing under us and passing, so that we seemed to be standing still. A squadron of pelicans crossed our bow, flying low to the waves and acting like a train of pelicans tied together, activated by one nervous system. For they flapped their powerful wings in unison, coasted in unison. It seemed that they tipped a wavetop with their wings now and then, and certainly they flew in the troughs of the waves to save themselves from the wind. They did not look around or change direction. Pelicans seem always to know exactly where they are going. A curious sea-lion came out to look us over, a tawny, crusty old fellow with rakish mustaches and the scars of battle on his shoulders. He crossed our bow too and turned and paralleled our course, trod water, and looked at us. Then, satisfied, he snorted and cut for shore and some sea-lion appointment. They always have them, it’s just a matter of getting around to keeping them.

    And now the wind grew stronger and the windows of houses along the shore flashed in the declining sun. The forward guy-wire of our mast began to sing under the wind, a deep and yet penetrating tone like the lowest string of an incredible bull-fiddle. We rose on each swell and skidded on it until it passed and dropped us in the trough. And from the galley ventilator came the odor of boiling coffee, a smell that never left the boat again while we were on it.

    In the evening we came back restlessly to the top of the deckhouse, and we discussed the Old Man of the Sea, who might well be a myth, except that too many people have seen him. There is some quality in man which makes him people the