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The Human Drift

by Jack London

March, 1999 [Etext #1669]

*The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Human Drift, by Jack London*

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This etext was prepared from the 1919 Mills and Boon edition

by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk

THE HUMAN DRIFT

by Jack London

Contents:

The Human Drift

Small-Boat Sailing

Four Horses and a Sailor

Nothing that Ever Came to Anything

That Dead Men Rise up Never

A Classic of the Sea

A Wicked Woman (Curtain Raiser)

The Birth Mark (Sketch)

THE HUMAN DRIFT

"The Revelations of Devout and Learn'd

Who rose before us, and as Prophets Burn'd,

Are all but stories, which, awoke from Sleep,

They told their comrades, and to Sleep return'd."

The history of civilisation is a history of wandering, sword in

hand, in search of food. In the misty younger world we catch

glimpses of phantom races, rising, slaying, finding food, building

rude civilisations, decaying, falling under the swords of stronger

hands, and passing utterly away. Man, like any other animal, has

roved over the earth seeking what he might devour; and not romance

and adventure, but the hunger-need, has urged him on his vast

adventures. Whether a bankrupt gentleman sailing to colonise

Virginia or a lean Cantonese contracting to labour on the sugar

plantations of Hawaii, in each case, gentleman and coolie, it is a

desperate attempt to get something to eat, to get more to eat than

he can get at home.

It has always been so, from the time of the first pre-human

anthropoid crossing a mountain-divide in quest of better berry-

bushes beyond, down to the latest Slovak, arriving on our shores

to-day, to go to work in the coal-mines of Pennsylvania. These

migratory movements of peoples have been called drifts, and the

word is apposite. Unplanned, blind, automatic, spurred on by the

pain of hunger, man has literally drifted his way around the

planet. There have been drifts in the past, innumerable and

forgotten, and so remote that no records have been left, or

composed of such low-typed humans or pre-humans that they made no

scratchings on stone or bone and left no monuments to show that

they had been.

These early drifts we conjecture and know must have occurred, just

as we know that the first upright-walking brutes were descended

from some kin of the quadrumana through having developed "a pair

of great toes out of two opposable thumbs." Dominated by fear,

and by their very fear accelerating their development, these early

ancestors of ours, suffering hunger-pangs very like the ones we

experience to-day, drifted on, hunting and being hunted, eating

and being eaten, wandering through thousand-year-long odysseys of

screaming primordial savagery, until they left their skeletons in

glacial gravels, some of them, and their bone-scratchings in cave-

men's lairs.

There have been drifts from east to west and west to east, from

north to south and back again, drifts that have criss-crossed one

another, and drifts colliding and recoiling and caroming off in

new directions. From Central Europe the Aryans have drifted into

Asia, and from Central Asia the Turanians have drifted across

Europe. Asia has thrown forth great waves of hungry humans from

the prehistoric "round-barrow" "broad-heads" who overran Europe

and penetrated to Scandinavia and England, down through the hordes

of Attila and Tamerlane, to the present immigration of Chinese and

Japanese that threatens America. The Phoenicians and the Greeks,

with unremembered drifts behind them, colonised the Mediterranean.

Rome was engulfed in the torrent of Germanic tribes drifting down

from the north before a flood of drifting Asiatics. The Angles,

Saxons, and Jutes, after having drifted whence no man knows,

poured into Britain, and the English have carried this drift on

around the world. Retreating before stronger breeds, hungry and

voracious, the Eskimo has drifted to the inhospitable polar

regions, the Pigmy to the fever-rotten jungles of Africa. And in

this day the drift of the races continues, whether it be of

Chinese into the Philippines and the Malay Peninsula, of Europeans

to the United States or of Americans to the wheat-lands of

Manitoba and the Northwest.

Perhaps most amazing has been the South Sea Drift. Blind,

fortuitous, precarious as no other drift has been, nevertheless

the islands in that waste of ocean have received drift after drift

of the races. Down from the mainland of Asia poured an Aryan

drift that built civilisations in Ceylon, Java, and Sumatra. Only

the monuments of these Aryans remain. They themselves have

perished utterly, though not until after leaving evidences of

their drift clear across the great South Pacific to far Easter

Island. And on that drift they encountered races who had

accomplished the drift before them, and they, the Aryans, passed,

in turn, before the drift of other and subsequent races whom we

to-day call the Polynesian and the Melanesian.

Man early discovered death. As soon as his evolution permitted,

he made himself better devices for killing than the old natural

ones of fang and claw. He devoted himself to the invention of

killing devices before he discovered fire or manufactured for

himself religion. And to this day, his finest creative energy and

technical skill are devoted to the same old task of making better

and ever better killing weapons. All his days, down all the past,

have been spent in killing. And from the fear-stricken, jungle-

lurking, cave-haunting creature of long ago, he won to empery over

the whole animal world because he developed into the most terrible

and awful killer of all the animals. He found himself crowded.

He killed to make room, and as he made room ever he increased and

found himself crowded, and ever he went on killing to make more

room. Like a settler clearing land of its weeds and forest bushes

in order to plant corn, so man was compelled to clear all manner

of life away in order to plant himself. And, sword in hand, he

has literally hewn his way through the vast masses of life that

occupied the earth space he coveted for himself. And ever he has

carried the battle wider and wider, until to-day not only is he a

far more capable killer of men and animals than ever before, but

he has pressed the battle home to the infinite and invisible hosts

of menacing lives in the world of micro-organisms.

It is true, that they that rose by the sword perished by the

sword. And yet, not only did they not all perish, but more rose

by the sword than perished by it, else man would not to-day be

over-running the world in such huge swarms. Also, it must not be

forgotten that they who did not rise by the sword did not rise at

all. They were not. In view of this, there is something wrong

with Doctor Jordan's war-theory, which is to the effect that the

best being sent out to war, only the second best, the men who are

left, remain to breed a second-best race, and that, therefore, the

human race deteriorates under war. If this be so, if we have sent

forth the best we bred and gone on breeding from the men who were

left, and since we have done this for ten thousand millenniums and

are what we splendidly are to-day, then what unthinkably splendid

and god-like beings must have been our forebears those ten

thousand millenniums ago! Unfortunately for Doctor Jordan's

theory, those ancient forebears cannot live up to this fine

reputation. We know them for what they were, and before the

monkey cage of any menagerie we catch truer glimpses and hints and

resemblances of what our ancestors really were long and long ago.

And by killing, incessant killing, by making a shambles of the

planet, those ape-like creatures have developed even into you and

me. As Henley has said in "The Song of the Sword":

"The Sword Singing -

Driving the darkness,

Even as the banners

And spear of the Morning;

Sifting the nations,

The Slag from the metal,

The waste and the weak

From the fit and the strong;

Fighting the brute,

The abysmal Fecundity;

Checking the gross

Multitudinous blunders,

The groping, the purblind

Excesses in service

Of the Womb universal,

The absolute drudge."

As time passed and man increased, he drifted ever farther afield

in search of room. He encountered other drifts of men, and the

killing of men became prodigious. The weak and the decadent fell

under the sword. Nations that faltered, that waxed prosperous in

fat valleys and rich river deltas, were swept away by the drifts

of stronger men who were nourished on the hardships of deserts and

mountains and who were more capable with the sword. Unknown and

unnumbered billions of men have been so destroyed in prehistoric

times. Draper says that in the twenty years of the Gothic war,

Italy lost 15,000,000 of her population; "and that the wars,

famines, and pestilences of the reign of Justinian diminished the

human species by the almost incredible number of 100,000,000."

Germany, in the Thirty Years' War, lost 6,000,000 inhabitants.

The record of our own American Civil War need scarcely be

recalled.

And man has been destroyed in other ways than by the sword.

Flood, famine, pestilence and murder are potent factors in

reducing population--in making room. As Mr. Charles Woodruff, in

his "Expansion of Races," has instanced: In 1886, when the dikes

of the Yellow River burst, 7,000,000 people were drowned. The

failure of crops in Ireland, in 1848, caused 1,000,000 deaths.

The famines in India of 1896-7 and 1899-1900 lessened the

population by 21,000,000. The T'ai'ping rebellion and the

Mohammedan rebellion, combined with the famine of 1877-78,

destroyed scores of millions of Chinese. Europe has been swept

repeatedly by great plagues. In India, for the period of 1903 to

1907, the plague deaths averaged between one and two millions a

year. Mr. Woodruff is responsible for the assertion that

10,000,000 persons now living in the United States are doomed to

die of tuberculosis. And in this same country ten thousand

persons a year are directly murdered. In China, between three and

six millions of infants are annually destroyed, while the total

infanticide record of the whole world is appalling. In Africa,

now, human beings are dying by millions of the sleeping sickness.

More destructive of life than war, is industry. In all civilised

countries great masses of people are crowded into slums and

labour-ghettos, where disease festers, vice corrodes, and famine

is chronic, and where they die more swiftly and in greater numbers

than do the soldiers in our modern wars. The very infant

mortality of a slum parish in the East End of London is three

times that of a middle-class parish in the West End. In the

United States, in the last fourteen years, a total of coal-miners,

greater than our entire standing army, has been killed and

injured. The United States Bureau of Labour states that during

the year 1908, there were between 30,000 and 35,000 deaths of

workers by accidents, while 200,000 more were injured. In fact,

the safest place for a working-man is in the army. And even if

that army be at the front, fighting in Cuba or South Africa, the

soldier in the ranks has a better chance for life than the

working-man at home.

And yet, despite this terrible roll of death, despite the enormous

killing of the past and the enormous killing of the present, there

are to-day alive on the planet a billion and three quarters of

human beings. Our immediate conclusion is that man is exceedingly

fecund and very tough. Never before have there been so many

people in the world. In the past centuries the world's population

has been smaller; in the future centuries it is destined to be

larger. And this brings us to that old bugbear that has been so

frequently laughed away and that still persists in raising its

grisly head--namely, the doctrine of Malthus. While man's

increasing efficiency of food-production, combined with

colonisation of whole virgin continents, has for generations given

the apparent lie to Malthus' mathematical statement of the Law of

Population, nevertheless the essential significance of his

doctrine remains and cannot be challenged. Population DOES press

against subsistence. And no matter how rapidly subsistence

increases, population is certain to catch up with it.

When man was in the hunting stage of development, wide areas were

necessary for the maintenance of scant populations. With the

shepherd stages, the means of subsistence being increased, a

larger population was supported on the same territory. The

agricultural stage gave support to a still larger population; and,

to-day, with the increased food-getting efficiency of a machine

civilisation, an even larger population is made possible. Nor is

this theoretical. The population is here, a billion and three

quarters of men, women, and children, and this vast population is

increasing on itself by leaps and bounds.

A heavy European drift to the New World has gone on and is going

on; yet Europe, whose population a century ago was 170,000,000,

has to-day 500,000,000. At this rate of increase, provided that

subsistence is not overtaken, a century from now the population of

Europe will be 1,500,000,000. And be it noted of the present rate

of increase in the United States that only one-third is due to

immigration, while two-thirds is due to excess of births over

deaths. And at this present rate of increase, the population of

the United States will be 500,000,000 in less than a century from

now.

Man, the hungry one, the killer, has always suffered for lack of

room. The world has been chronically overcrowded. Belgium with

her 572 persons to the square mile is no more crowded than was

Denmark when it supported only 500 palaeolithic people. According

to Mr. Woodruff, cultivated land will produce 1600 times as much

food as hunting land. From the time of the Norman Conquest, for

centuries Europe could support no more than 25 to the square mile.

To-day Europe supports 81 to the square mile. The explanation of

this is that for the several centuries after the Norman Conquest

her population was saturated. Then, with the development of

trading and capitalism, of exploration and exploitation of new

lands, and with the invention of labour-saving machinery and the

discovery and application of scientific principles, was brought

about a tremendous increase in Europe's food-getting efficiency.

And immediately her population sprang up.

According to the census of Ireland, of 1659, that country had a

population of 500,000. One hundred and fifty years later, her

population was 8,000,000. For many centuries the population of

Japan was stationary. There seemed no way of increasing her food-

getting efficiency. Then, sixty years ago, came Commodore Perry,

knocking down her doors and letting in the knowledge and machinery

of the superior food-getting efficiency of the Western world.

Immediately upon this rise in subsistence began the rise of

population; and it is only the other day that Japan, finding her

population once again pressing against subsistence, embarked,

sword in hand, on a westward drift in search of more room. And,

sword in hand, killing and being killed, she has carved out for

herself Formosa and Korea, and driven the vanguard of her drift

far into the rich interior of Manchuria.

For an immense period of time China's population has remained at

400,000,000--the saturation point. The only reason that the

Yellow River periodically drowns millions of Chinese is that there

is no other land for those millions to farm. And after every such

catastrophe the wave of human life rolls up and now millions flood

out upon that precarious territory. They are driven to it,

because they are pressed remorselessly against subsistence. It is

inevitable that China, sooner or later, like Japan, will learn and

put into application our own superior food-getting efficiency.

And when that time comes, it is likewise inevitable that her

population will increase by unguessed millions until it again

reaches the saturation point. And then, inoculated with Western

ideas, may she not, like Japan, take sword in hand and start forth

colossally on a drift of her own for more room? This is another

reputed bogie--the Yellow Peril; yet the men of China are only

men, like any other race of men, and all men, down all history,

have drifted hungrily, here, there and everywhere over the planet,

seeking for something to eat. What other men do, may not the

Chinese do?

But a change has long been coming in the affairs of man. The more

recent drifts of the stronger races, carving their way through the

lesser breeds to more earth-space, has led to peace, ever to wider

and more lasting peace. The lesser breeds, under penalty of being

killed, have been compelled to lay down their weapons and cease

killing among themselves. The scalp-talking Indian and the head-

hunting Melanesian have been either destroyed or converted to a

belief in the superior efficacy of civil suits and criminal

prosecutions. The planet is being subdued. The wild and the

hurtful are either tamed or eliminated. From the beasts of prey

and the cannibal humans down to the death-dealing microbes, no

quarter is given; and daily, wider and wider areas of hostile

territory, whether of a warring desert-tribe in Africa or a

pestilential fever-hole like Panama, are made peaceable and

habitable for mankind. As for the great mass of stay-at-home

folk, what percentage of the present generation in the United

States, England, or Germany, has seen war or knows anything of war

at first hand? There was never so much peace in the world as

there is to-day.

War itself, the old red anarch, is passing. It is safer to be a

soldier than a working-man. The chance for life is greater in an

active campaign than in a factory or a coal-mine. In the matter

of killing, war is growing impotent, and this in face of the fact

that the machinery of war was never so expensive in the past nor

so dreadful. War-equipment to-day, in time of peace, is more

expensive than of old in time of war. A standing army costs more

to maintain than it used to cost to conquer an empire. It is more

expensive to be ready to kill, than it used to be to do the

killing. The price of a Dreadnought would furnish the whole army

of Xerxes with killing weapons. And, in spite of its magnificent

equipment, war no longer kills as it used to when its methods were

simpler. A bombardment by a modern fleet has been known to result

in the killing of one mule. The casualties of a twentieth century

war between two world-powers are such as to make a worker in an

iron-foundry turn green with envy. War has become a joke. Men

have made for themselves monsters of battle which they cannot face

in battle. Subsistence is generous these days, life is not cheap,

and it is not in the nature of flesh and blood to indulge in the

carnage made possible by present-day machinery. This is not

theoretical, as will be shown by a comparison of deaths in battle

and men involved, in the South African War and the Spanish-

American War on the one hand, and the Civil War or the Napoleonic

Wars on the other.

Not only has war, by its own evolution, rendered itself futile,

but man himself, with greater wisdom and higher ethics, is opposed

to war. He has learned too much. War is repugnant to his common

sense. He conceives it to be wrong, to be absurd, and to be very

expensive. For the damage wrought and the results accomplished,

it is not worth the price. Just as in the disputes of individuals

the arbitration of a civil court instead of a blood feud is more

practical, so, man decides, is arbitration more practical in the

disputes of nations.

War is passing, disease is being conquered, and man's food-getting

efficiency is increasing. It is because of these factors that

there are a billion and three quarters of people alive to-day

instead of a billion, or three-quarters of a billion. And it is

because of these factors that the world's population will very

soon be two billions and climbing rapidly toward three billions.

The lifetime of the generation is increasing steadily. Men live

longer these days. Life is not so precarious. The newborn infant

has a greater chance for survival than at any time in the past.

Surgery and sanitation reduce the fatalities that accompany the

mischances of life and the ravages of disease. Men and women,

with deficiencies and weaknesses that in the past would have

effected their rapid extinction, live to-day and father and mother

a numerous progeny. And high as the food-getting efficiency may

soar, population is bound to soar after it. "The abysmal

fecundity" of life has not altered. Given the food, and life will

increase. A small percentage of the billion and three-quarters

that live to-day may hush the clamour of life to be born, but it

is only a small percentage. In this particular, the life in the

man-animal is very like the life in the other animals.

And still another change is coming in human affairs. Though

politicians gnash their teeth and cry anathema, and man, whose

superficial book-learning is vitiated by crystallised prejudice,

assures us that civilisation will go to smash, the trend of

society, to-day, the world over, is toward socialism. The old

individualism is passing. The state interferes more and more in

affairs that hitherto have been considered sacredly private. And

socialism, when the last word is said, is merely a new economic

and political system whereby more men can get food to eat. In

short, socialism is an improved food-getting efficiency.

Furthermore, not only will socialism get food more easily and in

greater quantity, but it will achieve a more equitable

distribution of that food. Socialism promises, for a time, to

give all men, women, and children all they want to eat, and to

enable them to eat all they want as often as they want.

Subsistence will be pushed back, temporarily, an exceedingly long

way. In consequence, the flood of life will rise like a tidal

wave. There will be more marriages and more children born. The

enforced sterility that obtains to-day for many millions, will no

longer obtain. Nor will the fecund millions in the slums and

labour-ghettos, who to-day die of all the ills due to chronic

underfeeding and overcrowding, and who die with their fecundity

largely unrealised, die in that future day when the increased

food-getting efficiency of socialism will give them all they want

to eat.

It is undeniable that population will increase prodigiously-just

as it has increased prodigiously during the last few centuries,

following upon the increase in food-getting efficiency. The

magnitude of population in that future day is well nigh

unthinkable. But there is only so much land and water on the

surface of the earth. Man, despite his marvellous

accomplishments, will never be able to increase the diameter of

the planet. The old days of virgin continents will be gone. The

habitable planet, from ice-cap to ice-cap, will be inhabited. And

in the matter of food-getting, as in everything else, man is only

finite. Undreamed-of efficiencies in food-getting may be

achieved, but, soon or late, man will find himself face to face

with Malthus' grim law. Not only will population catch up with

subsistence, but it will press against subsistence, and the

pressure will be pitiless and savage. Somewhere in the future is

a date when man will face, consciously, the bitter fact that there

is not food enough for all of him to eat.

When this day comes, what then? Will there be a recrudescence of

old obsolete war? In a saturated population life is always cheap,

as it is cheap in China, in India, to-day. Will new human drifts

take place, questing for room, carving earth-space out of crowded

life. Will the Sword again sing:

"Follow, O follow, then,

Heroes, my harvesters!

Where the tall grain is ripe

Thrust in your sickles!

Stripped and adust

In a stubble of empire

Scything and binding

The full sheaves of sovereignty."

Even if, as of old, man should wander hungrily, sword in hand,

slaying and being slain, the relief would be only temporary. Even

if one race alone should hew down the last survivor of all the

other races, that one race, drifting the world around, would

saturate the planet with its own life and again press against

subsistence. And in that day, the death rate and the birth rate

will have to balance. Men will have to die, or be prevented from

being born. Undoubtedly a higher quality of life will obtain, and

also a slowly decreasing fecundity. But this decrease will be so

slow that the pressure against subsistence will remain. The

control of progeny will be one of the most important problems of

man and one of the most important functions of the state. Men

will simply be not permitted to be born.

Disease, from time to time, will ease the pressure. Diseases are

parasites, and it must not be forgotten that just as there are

drifts in the world of man, so are there drifts in the world of

micro-organisms--hunger-quests for food. Little is known of the

micro-organic world, but that little is appalling; and no census

of it will ever be taken, for there is the true, literal "abysmal

fecundity." Multitudinous as man is, all his totality of

individuals is as nothing in comparison with the inconceivable

vastness of numbers of the micro-organisms. In your body, or in

mine, right now, are swarming more individual entities than there

are human beings in the world to-day. It is to us an invisible

world. We only guess its nearest confines. With our powerful

microscopes and ultramicroscopes, enlarging diameters twenty

thousand times, we catch but the slightest glimpses of that

profundity of infinitesimal life.

Little is known of that world, save in a general way. We know

that out of it arise diseases, new to us, that afflict and destroy

man. We do not know whether these diseases are merely the drifts,

in a fresh direction, of already-existing breeds of micro-

organisms, or whether they are new, absolutely new, breeds

themselves just spontaneously generated. The latter hypothesis is

tenable, for we theorise that if spontaneous generation still

occurs on the earth, it is far more likely to occur in the form of

simple organisms than of complicated organisms.

Another thing we know, and that is that it is in crowded

populations that new diseases arise. They have done so in the

past. They do so to-day. And no matter how wise are our

physicians and bacteriologists, no matter how successfully they

cope with these invaders, new invaders continue to arise--new

drifts of hungry life seeking to devour us. And so we are

justified in believing that in the saturated populations of the

future, when life is suffocating in the pressure against

subsistence, that new, and ever new, hosts of destroying micro-

organisms will continue to arise and fling themselves upon earth-

crowded man to give him room. There may even be plagues of

unprecedented ferocity that will depopulate great areas before the

wit of man can overcome them. And this we know: that no matter

how often these invisible hosts may be overcome by man's becoming

immune to them through a cruel and terrible selection, new hosts

will ever arise of these micro-organisms that were in the world

before he came and that will be here after he is gone.

After he is gone? Will he then some day be gone, and this planet

know him no more? Is it thither that the human drift in all its

totality is trending? God Himself is silent on this point, though

some of His prophets have given us vivid representations of that

last day when the earth shall pass into nothingness. Nor does

science, despite its radium speculations and its attempted

analyses of the ultimate nature of matter, give us any other word

than that man will pass. So far as man's knowledge goes, law is

universal. Elements react under certain unchangeable conditions.

One of these conditions is temperature. Whether it be in the test

tube of the laboratory or the workshop of nature, all organic

chemical reactions take place only within a restricted range of

heat. Man, the latest of the ephemera, is pitifully a creature of

temperature, strutting his brief day on the thermometer. Behind

him is a past wherein it was too warm for him to exist. Ahead of

him is a future wherein it will be too cold for him to exist. He

cannot adjust himself to that future, because he cannot alter

universal law, because he cannot alter his own construction nor

the molecules that compose him.

It would be well to ponder these lines of Herbert Spencer's which

follow, and which embody, possibly, the wildest vision the

scientific mind has ever achieved:

"Motion as well as Matter being fixed in quantity, it would seem

that the change in the distribution of Matter which Motion

effects, coming to a limit in whichever direction it is carried,

the indestructible Motion thereupon necessitates a reverse

distribution. Apparently, the universally-co-existent forces of

attraction and repulsion, which, as we have seen, necessitate

rhythm in all minor changes throughout the Universe, also

necessitate rhythm in the totality of its changes--produce now an

immeasurable period during which the attractive forces

predominating, cause universal concentration, and then an

immeasurable period during which the repulsive forces

predominating, cause universal diffusion--alternate eras of

Evolution and Dissolution. AND THUS THERE IS SUGGESTED THE

CONCEPTION OF A PAST DURING WHICH THERE HAVE BEEN SUCCESSIVE

EVOLUTIONS ANALOGOUS TO THAT WHICH IS NOW GOING ON; A FUTURE

DURING WHICH SUCCESSIVE OTHER EVOLUTIONS MAY GO ON--EVER THE SAME

IN PRINCIPLE BUT NEVER THE SAME IN CONCRETE RESULT."

That is it--the most we know--alternate eras of evolution and

dissolution. In the past there have been other evolutions similar

to that one in which we live, and in the future there may be other

similar evolutions--that is all. The principle of all these

evolutions remains, but the concrete results are never twice

alike. Man was not; he was; and again he will not be. In

eternity which is beyond our comprehension, the particular

evolution of that solar satellite we call the "Earth" occupied but

a slight fraction of time. And of that fraction of time man

occupies but a small portion. All the whole human drift, from the

first ape-man to the last savant, is but a phantom, a flash of

light and a flutter of movement across the infinite face of the

starry night.

When the thermometer drops, man ceases--with all his lusts and

wrestlings and achievements; with all his race-adventures and

race-tragedies; and with all his red killings, billions upon

billions of human lives multiplied by as many billions more. This

is the last word of Science, unless there be some further,

unguessed word which Science will some day find and utter. In the

meantime it sees no farther than the starry void, where the

"fleeting systems lapse like foam." Of what ledger-account is the

tiny life of man in a vastness where stars snuff out like candles

and great suns blaze for a time-tick of eternity and are gone?

And for us who live, no worse can happen than has happened to the

earliest drifts of man, marked to-day by ruined cities of

forgotten civilisation--ruined cities, which, on excavation, are

found to rest on ruins of earlier cities, city upon city, and

fourteen cities, down to a stratum where, still earlier, wandering

herdsmen drove their flocks, and where, even preceding them, wild

hunters chased their prey long after the cave-man and the man of

the squatting-place cracked the knuckle-bones of wild animals and

vanished from the earth. There is nothing terrible about it.

With Richard Hovey, when he faced his death, we can say: "Behold!

I have lived!" And with another and greater one, we can lay

ourselves down with a will. The one drop of living, the one taste

of being, has been good; and perhaps our greatest achievement will

be that we dreamed immortality, even though we failed to realise

it.

SMALL-BOAT SAILING

A sailor is born, not made. And by "sailor" is meant, not the

average efficient and hopeless creature who is found to-day in the

forecastle of deepwater ships, but the man who will take a fabric

compounded of wood and iron and rope and canvas and compel it to

obey his will on the surface of the sea. Barring captains and

mates of big ships, the small-boat sailor is the real sailor. He

knows--he must know--how to make the wind carry his craft from one

given point to another given point. He must know about tides and

rips and eddies, bar and channel markings, and day and night

signals; he must be wise in weather-lore; and he must be

sympathetically familiar with the peculiar qualities of his boat

which differentiate it from every other boat that was ever built

and rigged. He must know how to gentle her about, as one instance

of a myriad, and to fill her on the other tack without deadening

her way or allowing her to fall off too far.

The deepwater sailor of to-day needs know none of these things.

And he doesn't. He pulls and hauls as he is ordered, swabs decks,

washes paint, and chips iron-rust. He knows nothing, and cares

less. Put him in a small boat and he is helpless. He will cut an

even better figure on the hurricane deck of a horse.

I shall never forget my child-astonishment when I first

encountered one of these strange beings. He was a runaway English

sailor. I was a lad of twelve, with a decked-over, fourteen-foot,

centre-board skiff which I had taught myself to sail. I sat at

his feet as at the feet of a god, while he discoursed of strange

lands and peoples, deeds of violence, and hair-raising gales at

sea. Then, one day, I took him for a sail. With all the

trepidation of the veriest little amateur, I hoisted sail and got

under way. Here was a man, looking on critically, I was sure, who

knew more in one second about boats and the water than I could

ever know. After an interval, in which I exceeded myself, he took

the tiller and the sheet. I sat on the little thwart amidships,

open-mouthed, prepared to learn what real sailing was. My mouth

remained open, for I learned what a real sailor was in a small

boat. He couldn't trim the sheet to save himself, he nearly

capsized several times in squalls, and, once again, by

blunderingly jibing over; he didn't know what a centre-board was

for, nor did he know that in running a boat before the wind one

must sit in the middle instead of on the side; and finally, when

we came back to the wharf, he ran the skiff in full tilt,

shattering her nose and carrying away the mast-step. And yet he

was a really truly sailor fresh from the vasty deep.

Which points my moral. A man can sail in the forecastles of big

ships all his life and never know what real sailing is. From the

time I was twelve, I listened to the lure of the sea. When I was

fifteen I was captain and owner of an oyster-pirate sloop. By the

time I was sixteen I was sailing in scow-schooners, fishing salmon

with the Greeks up the Sacramento River, and serving as sailor on

the Fish Patrol. And I was a good sailor, too, though all my

cruising had been on San Francisco Bay and the rivers tributary to

it. I had never been on the ocean in my life.

Then, the month I was seventeen, I signed before the mast as an

able seaman on a three-top-mast schooner bound on a seven-months'

cruise across the Pacific and back again. As my shipmates

promptly informed me, I had had my nerve with me to sign on as

able seaman. Yet behold, I WAS an able seaman. I had graduated

from the right school. It took no more than minutes to learn the

names and uses of the few new ropes. It was simple. I did not do

things blindly. As a small-boat sailor I had learned to reason

out and know the WHY of everything. It is true, I had to learn

how to steer by compass, which took maybe half a minute; but when

it came to steering "full-and-by" and "close-and-by," I could beat

the average of my shipmates, because that was the very way I had

always sailed. Inside fifteen minutes I could box the compass

around and back again. And there was little else to learn during

that seven-months' cruise, except fancy rope-sailorising, such as

the more complicated lanyard knots and the making of various kinds

of sennit and rope-mats. The point of all of which is that it is

by means of small-boat sailing that the real sailor is best

schooled.

And if a man is a born sailor, and has gone to the school of the

sea, never in all his life can he get away from the sea again.

The salt of it is in his bones as well as his nostrils, and the

sea will call to him until he dies. Of late years, I have found

easier ways of earning a living. I have quit the forecastle for

keeps, but always I come back to the sea. In my case it is

usually San Francisco Bay, than which no lustier, tougher, sheet

of water can be found for small-boat sailing.

It really blows on San Francisco Bay. During the winter, which is

the best cruising season, we have southeasters, southwesters, and

occasional howling northers. Throughout the summer we have what

we call the "sea-breeze," an unfailing wind off the Pacific that

on most afternoons in the week blows what the Atlantic Coast

yachtsmen would name a gale. They are always surprised by the

small spread of canvas our yachts carry. Some of them, with

schooners they have sailed around the Horn, have looked proudly at

their own lofty sticks and huge spreads, then patronisingly and

even pityingly at ours. Then, perchance, they have joined in a

club cruise from San Francisco to Mare Island. They found the

morning run up the Bay delightful. In the afternoon, when the

brave west wind ramped across San Pablo Bay and they faced it on

the long beat home, things were somewhat different. One by one,

like a flight of swallows, our more meagrely sparred and canvassed

yachts went by, leaving them wallowing and dead and shortening

down in what they called a gale but which we called a dandy

sailing breeze. The next time they came out, we would notice

their sticks cut down, their booms shortened, and their after-

leeches nearer the luffs by whole cloths.

As for excitement, there is all the difference in the world

between a ship in trouble at sea, and a small boat in trouble on

land-locked water. Yet for genuine excitement and thrill, give me

the small boat. Things happen so quickly, and there are always so

few to do the work--and hard work, too, as the small-boat sailor

knows. I have toiled all night, both watches on deck, in a

typhoon off the coast of Japan, and been less exhausted than by

two hours' work at reefing down a thirty-foot sloop and heaving up

two anchors on a lee shore in a screaming south-easter.

Hard work and excitement? Let the wind baffle and drop in a heavy

tide-way just as you are sailing your little sloop through a

narrow draw-bridge. Behold your sails, upon which you are

depending, flap with sudden emptiness, and then see the impish

wind, with a haul of eight points, fill your jib aback with a

gusty puff. Around she goes, and sweeps, not through the open

draw, but broadside on against the solid piles. Hear the roar of

the tide, sucking through the trestle. And hear and see your

pretty, fresh-painted boat crash against the piles. Feel her

stout little hull give to the impact. See the rail actually pinch

in. Hear your canvas tearing, and see the black, square-ended

timbers thrusting holes through it. Smash! There goes your

topmast stay, and the topmast reels over drunkenly above you.

There is a ripping and crunching. If it continues, your starboard

shrouds will be torn out. Grab a rope--any rope--and take a turn

around a pile. But the free end of the rope is too short. You

can't make it fast, and you hold on and wildly yell for your one

companion to get a turn with another and longer rope. Hold on!

You hold on till you are purple in the face, till it seems your

arms are dragging out of their sockets, till the blood bursts from

the ends of your fingers. But you hold, and your partner gets the

longer rope and makes it fast. You straighten up and look at your

hands. They are ruined. You can scarcely relax the crooks of the

fingers. The pain is sickening. But there is no time. The

skiff, which is always perverse, is pounding against the barnacles

on the piles which threaten to scrape its gunwale off. It's drop

the peak! Down jib! Then you run lines, and pull and haul and

heave, and exchange unpleasant remarks with the bridge-tender who

is always willing to meet you more than half way in such repartee.

And finally, at the end of an hour, with aching back, sweat-soaked

shirt, and slaughtered hands, you are through and swinging along

on the placid, beneficent tide between narrow banks where the

cattle stand knee-deep and gaze wonderingly at you. Excitement!

Work! Can you beat it in a calm day on the deep sea?

I've tried it both ways. I remember labouring in a fourteen days'

gale off the coast of New Zealand. We were a tramp collier, rusty

and battered, with six thousand tons of coal in our hold. Life

lines were stretched fore and aft; and on our weather side,

attached to smokestack guys and rigging, were huge rope-nettings,

hung there for the purpose of breaking the force of the seas and

so saving our mess-room doors. But the doors were smashed and the

mess-rooms washed out just the same. And yet, out of it all,

arose but the one feeling, namely, of monotony.

In contrast with the foregoing, about the liveliest eight days of

my life were spent in a small boat on the west coast of Korea.

Never mind why I was thus voyaging up the Yellow Sea during the

month of February in below-zero weather. The point is that I was

in an open boat, a sampan, on a rocky coast where there were no

light-houses and where the tides ran from thirty to sixty feet.

My crew were Japanese fishermen. We did not speak each other's

language. Yet there was nothing monotonous about that trip.

Never shall I forget one particular cold bitter dawn, when, in the

thick of driving snow, we took in sail and dropped our small

anchor. The wind was howling out of the northwest, and we were on

a lee shore. Ahead and astern, all escape was cut off by rocky

headlands, against whose bases burst the unbroken seas. To

windward a short distance, seen only between the snow-squalls, was

a low rocky reef. It was this that inadequately protected us from

the whole Yellow Sea that thundered in upon us.

The Japanese crawled under a communal rice mat and went to sleep.

I joined them, and for several hours we dozed fitfully. Then a

sea deluged us out with icy water, and we found several inches of

snow on top the mat. The reef to windward was disappearing under

the rising tide, and moment by moment the seas broke more strongly

over the rocks. The fishermen studied the shore anxiously. So

did I, and with a sailor's eye, though I could see little chance

for a swimmer to gain that surf-hammered line of rocks. I made

signs toward the headlands on either flank. The Japanese shook

their heads. I indicated that dreadful lee shore. Still they

shook their heads and did nothing. My conclusion was that they

were paralysed by the hopelessness of the situation. Yet our

extremity increased with every minute, for the rising tide was

robbing us of the reef that served as buffer. It soon became a

case of swamping at our anchor. Seas were splashing on board in

growing volume, and we baled constantly. And still my fishermen

crew eyed the surf-battered shore and did nothing.

At last, after many narrow escapes from complete swamping, the

fishermen got into action. All hands tailed on to the anchor and

hove it up. For'ard, as the boat's head paid off, we set a patch

of sail about the size of a flour-sack. And we headed straight

for shore. I unlaced my shoes, unbottoned my great-coat and coat,

and was ready to make a quick partial strip a minute or so before

we struck. But we didn't strike, and, as we rushed in, I saw the

beauty of the situation. Before us opened a narrow channel,

frilled at its mouth with breaking seas. Yet, long before, when I

had scanned the shore closely, there had been no such channel. I

HAD FORGOTTEN THE THIRTY-FOOT TIDE. And it was for this tide that

the Japanese had so precariously waited. We ran the frill of

breakers, curved into a tiny sheltered bay where the water was

scarcely flawed by the gale, and landed on a beach where the salt

sea of the last tide lay frozen in long curving lines. And this

was one gale of three in the course of those eight days in the

sampan. Would it have been beaten on a ship? I fear me the ship

would have gone aground on the outlying reef and that its people

would have been incontinently and monotonously drowned.

There are enough surprises and mishaps in a three-days' cruise in

a small boat to supply a great ship on the ocean for a full year.

I remember, once, taking out on her trial trip a little thirty-

footer I had just bought. In six days we had two stiff blows,

and, in addition, one proper southwester and one ripsnorting

southeaster. The slight intervals between these blows were dead

calms. Also, in the six days, we were aground three times. Then,

too, we tied up to the bank in the Sacramento River, and,

grounding by an accident on the steep slope on a falling tide,

nearly turned a side somersault down the bank. In a stark calm

and heavy tide in the Carquinez Straits, where anchors skate on

the channel-scoured bottom, we were sucked against a big dock and

smashed and bumped down a quarter of a mile of its length before

we could get clear. Two hours afterward, on San Pablo Bay, the

wind was piping up and we were reefing down. It is no fun to pick

up a skiff adrift in a heavy sea and gale. That was our next

task, for our skiff, swamping, parted both towing painters we had

bent on. Before we recovered it we had nearly killed ourselves

with exhaustion, and we certainly had strained the sloop in every

part from keelson to truck. And to cap it all, coming into our

home port, beating up the narrowest part of the San Antonio

Estuary, we had a shave of inches from collision with a big ship

in tow of a tug. I have sailed the ocean in far larger craft a

year at a time, in which period occurred no such chapter of moving

incident.

After all, the mishaps are almost the best part of small-boat

sailing. Looking back, they prove to be punctuations of joy. At

the time they try your mettle and your vocabulary, and may make

you so pessimistic as to believe that God has a grudge against

you--but afterward, ah, afterward, with what pleasure you remember

them and with what gusto do you relate them to your brother

skippers in the fellowhood of small-boat sailing!

A narrow, winding slough; a half tide, exposing mud surfaced with

gangrenous slime; the water itself filthy and discoloured by the

waste from the vats of a near-by tannery; the marsh grass on

either side mottled with all the shades of a decaying orchid; a

crazy, ramshackled, ancient wharf; and at the end of the wharf a

small, white-painted sloop. Nothing romantic about it. No hint

of adventure. A splendid pictorial argument against the alleged

joys of small-boat sailing. Possibly that is what Cloudesley and

I thought, that sombre, leaden morning as we turned out to cook

breakfast and wash decks. The latter was my stunt, but one look

at the dirty water overside and another at my fresh-painted deck,

deterred me. After breakfast, we started a game of chess. The

tide continued to fall, and we felt the sloop begin to list. We

played on until the chess men began to fall over. The list

increased, and we went on deck. Bow-line and stern-line were

drawn taut. As we looked the boat listed still farther with an

abrupt jerk. The lines were now very taut.

"As soon as her belly touches the bottom she will stop," I said.

Cloudesley sounded with a boat-hook along the outside.

"Seven feet of water," he announced. "The bank is almost up and

down. The first thing that touches will be her mast when she

turns bottom up."

An ominous, minute snapping noise came from the stern-line. Even

as we looked, we saw a strand fray and part. Then we jumped.

Scarcely had we bent another line between the stern and the wharf,

when the original line parted. As we bent another line for'ard,

the original one there crackled and parted. After that, it was an

inferno of work and excitement.

We ran more and more lines, and more and more lines continued to

part, and more and more the pretty boat went over on her side. We

bent all our spare lines; we unrove sheets and halyards; we used

our two-inch hawser; we fastened lines part way up the mast, half

way up, and everywhere else. We toiled and sweated and enounced

our mutual and sincere conviction that God's grudge still held

against us. Country yokels came down on the wharf and sniggered

at us. When Cloudesley let a coil of rope slip down the inclined

deck into the vile slime and fished it out with seasick

countenance, the yokels sniggered louder and it was all I could do

to prevent him from climbing up on the wharf and committing

murder.

By the time the sloop's deck was perpendicular, we had unbent the

boom-lift from below, made it fast to the wharf, and, with the

other end fast nearly to the mast-head, heaved it taut with block

and tackle. The lift was of steel wire. We were confident that

it could stand the strain, but we doubted the holding-power of the

stays that held the mast.

The tide had two more hours to ebb (and it was the big run-out),

which meant that five hours must elapse ere the returning tide

would give us a chance to learn whether or not the sloop would

rise to it and right herself.

The bank was almost up and down, and at the bottom, directly

beneath us, the fast-ebbing tide left a pit of the vilest, illest-

smelling, illest-appearing muck to be seen in many a day's ride.

Said Cloudesley to me gazing down into it:

"I love you as a brother. I'd fight for you. I'd face roaring

lions, and sudden death by field and flood. But just the same,

don't you fall into that." He shuddered nauseously. "For if you

do, I haven't the grit to pull you out. I simply couldn't. You'd

be awful. The best I could do would be to take a boat-hook and

shove you down out of sight."

We sat on the upper side-wall of the cabin, dangled our legs down

the top of the cabin, leaned our backs against the deck, and

played chess until the rising tide and the block and tackle on the

boom-lift enabled us to get her on a respectable keel again.

Years afterward, down in the South Seas, on the island of Ysabel,

I was caught in a similar predicament. In order to clean her

copper, I had careened the Snark broadside on to the beach and

outward. When the tide rose, she refused to rise. The water

crept in through the scuppers, mounted over the rail, and the

level of the ocean slowly crawled up the slant of the deck. We

battened down the engine-room hatch, and the sea rose to it and

over it and climbed perilously near to the cabin companion-way and

skylight. We were all sick with fever, but we turned out in the

blazing tropic sun and toiled madly for several hours. We carried

our heaviest lines ashore from our mast-heads and heaved with our

heaviest purchase until everything crackled including ourselves.

We would spell off and lie down like dead men, then get up and

heave and crackle again. And in the end, our lower rail five feet

under water and the wavelets lapping the companion-way combing,

the sturdy little craft shivered and shook herself and pointed her

masts once more to the zenith.

There is never lack of exercise in small-boat sailing, and the

hard work is not only part of the fun of it, but it beats the

doctors. San Francisco Bay is no mill pond. It is a large and

draughty and variegated piece of water. I remember, one winter

evening, trying to enter the mouth of the Sacramento. There was a

freshet on the river, the flood tide from the bay had been beaten

back into a strong ebb, and the lusty west wind died down with the

sun. It was just sunset, and with a fair to middling breeze, dead

aft, we stood still in the rapid current. We were squarely in the

mouth of the river; but there was no anchorage and we drifted

backward, faster and faster, and dropped anchor outside as the

last breath of wind left us. The night came on, beautiful and

warm and starry. My one companion cooked supper, while on deck I

put everything in shape Bristol fashion. When we turned in at

nine o'clock the weather-promise was excellent. (If I had carried

a barometer I'd have known better.) By two in the morning our

shrouds were thrumming in a piping breeze, and I got up and gave

her more scope on her hawser. Inside another hour there was no

doubt that we were in for a southeaster.

It is not nice to leave a warm bed and get out of a bad anchorage

in a black blowy night, but we arose to the occasion, put in two

reefs, and started to heave up. The winch was old, and the strain

of the jumping head sea was too much for it. With the winch out

of commission, it was impossible to heave up by hand. We knew,

because we tried it and slaughtered our hands. Now a sailor hates

to lose an anchor. It is a matter of pride. Of course, we could

have buoyed ours and slipped it. Instead, however, I gave her

still more hawser, veered her, and dropped the second anchor.

There was little sleep after that, for first one and then the

other of us would be rolled out of our bunks. The increasing size

of the seas told us we were dragging, and when we struck the

scoured channel we could tell by the feel of it that our two

anchors were fairly skating across. It was a deep channel, the

farther edge of it rising steeply like the wall of a canyon, and

when our anchors started up that wall they hit in and held.

Yet, when we fetched up, through the darkness we could hear the

seas breaking on the solid shore astern, and so near was it that

we shortened the skiff's painter.

Daylight showed us that between the stern of the skiff and

destruction was no more than a score of feet. And how it did

blow! There were times, in the gusts, when the wind must have

approached a velocity of seventy or eighty miles an hour. But the

anchors held, and so nobly that our final anxiety was that the

for'ard bitts would be jerked clean out of the boat. All day the

sloop alternately ducked her nose under and sat down on her stern;

and it was not till late afternoon that the storm broke in one

last and worst mad gust. For a full five minutes an absolute dead

calm prevailed, and then, with the suddenness of a thunderclap,

the wind snorted out of the southwest--a shift of eight points and

a boisterous gale. Another night of it was too much for us, and

we hove up by hand in a cross head-sea. It was not stiff work.

It was heart-breaking. And I know we were both near to crying

from the hurt and the exhaustion. And when we did get the first

anchor up-and-down we couldn't break it out. Between seas we

snubbed her nose down to it, took plenty of turns, and stood clear

as she jumped. Almost everything smashed and parted except the

anchor-hold. The chocks were jerked out, the rail torn off, and

the very covering-board splintered, and still the anchor held. At

last, hoisting the reefed main-sail and slacking off a few of the

hard-won feet of the chain, we sailed the anchor out. It was nip

and tuck, though, and there were times when the boat was knocked

down flat. We repeated the manoeuvre with the remaining anchor,

and in the gathering darkness fled into the shelter of the river's

mouth.

I was born so long ago that I grew up before the era of gasolene.

As a result, I am old-fashioned. I prefer a sail-boat to a motor-

boat, and it is my belief that boat-sailing is a finer, more

difficult, and sturdier art than running a motor. Gasolene

engines are becoming fool-proof, and while it is unfair to say

that any fool can run an engine, it is fair to say that almost any

one can. Not so, when it comes to sailing a boat. More skill,

more intelligence, and a vast deal more training are necessary.

It is the finest training in the world for boy and youth and man.

If the boy is very small, equip him with a small, comfortable

skiff. He will do the rest. He won't need to be taught. Shortly

he will be setting a tiny leg-of-mutton and steering with an oar.

Then he will begin to talk keels and centreboards and want to take

his blankets out and stop aboard all night.

But don't be afraid for him. He is bound to run risks and

encounter accidents. Remember, there are accidents in the nursery

as well as out on the water. More boys have died from hot-house

culture than have died on boats large and small; and more boys

have been made into strong and reliant men by boat-sailing than by

lawn-croquet and dancing-school.

And once a sailor, always a sailor. The savour of the salt never

stales. The sailor never grows so old that he does not care to go

back for one more wrestling bout with wind and wave. I know it of

myself. I have turned rancher, and live beyond sight of the sea.

Yet I can stay away from it only so long. After several months

have passed, I begin to grow restless. I find myself day-dreaming

over incidents of the last cruise, or wondering if the striped

bass are running on Wingo Slough, or eagerly reading the

newspapers for reports of the first northern flights of ducks.

And then, suddenly, there is a hurried pack of suit-cases and

overhauling of gear, and we are off for Vallejo where the little

Roamer lies, waiting, always waiting, for the skiff to come

alongside, for the lighting of the fire in the galley-stove, for

the pulling off of gaskets, the swinging up of the mainsail, and

the rat-tat-tat of the reef-points, for the heaving short and the

breaking out, and for the twirling of the wheel as she fills away

and heads up Bay or down.

JACK LONDON

On Board Roamer,

Sonoma Creek,

April 15, 1911

FOUR HORSES AND A SAILOR

"Huh! Drive four horses! I wouldn't sit behind you--not for a

thousand dollars--over them mountain roads."

So said Henry, and he ought to have known, for he drives four

horses himself.

Said another Glen Ellen friend: "What? London? He drive four

horses? Can't drive one!"

And the best of it is that he was right. Even after managing to

get a few hundred miles with my four horses, I don't know how to

drive one. Just the other day, swinging down a steep mountain

road and rounding an abrupt turn, I came full tilt on a horse and

buggy being driven by a woman up the hill. We could not pass on

the narrow road, where was only a foot to spare, and my horses did

not know how to back, especially up-hill. About two hundred yards

down the hill was a spot where we could pass. The driver of the

buggy said she didn't dare back down because she was not sure of

the brake. And as I didn't know how to tackle one horse, I didn't

try it. So we unhitched her horse and backed down by hand. Which

was very well, till it came to hitching the horse to the buggy

again. She didn't know how. I didn't either, and I had depended

on her knowledge. It took us about half an hour, with frequent

debates and consultations, though it is an absolute certainty that

never in its life was that horse hitched in that particular way.

No; I can't harness up one horse. But I can four, which compels

me to back up again to get to my beginning. Having selected

Sonoma Valley for our abiding place, Charmian and I decided it was

about time we knew what we had in our own county and the

neighbouring ones. How to do it, was the first question. Among

our many weaknesses is the one of being old-fashioned. We don't

mix with gasolene very well. And, as true sailors should, we

naturally gravitate toward horses. Being one of those lucky

individuals who carries his office under his hat, I should have to

take a typewriter and a load of books along. This put saddle-

horses out of the running. Charmian suggested driving a span.

She had faith in me; besides, she could drive a span herself. But

when I thought of the many mountains to cross, and of crossing

them for three months with a poor tired span, I vetoed the

proposition and said we'd have to come back to gasolene after all.

This she vetoed just as emphatically, and a deadlock obtained

until I received inspiration.

"Why not drive four horses?" I said.

"But you don't know how to drive four horses," was her objection.

I threw my chest out and my shoulders back. "What man has done, I

can do," I proclaimed grandly. "And please don't forget that when

we sailed on the Snark I knew nothing of navigation, and that I

taught myself as I sailed."

"Very well," she said. (And there's faith for you! ) "They shall

be four saddle horses, and we'll strap our saddles on behind the

rig."

It was my turn to object. "Our saddle horses are not broken to

harness."

"Then break them."

And what I knew about horses, much less about breaking them, was

just about as much as any sailor knows. Having been kicked,

bucked off, fallen over backward upon, and thrown out and run

over, on very numerous occasions, I had a mighty vigorous respect

for horses; but a wife's faith must be lived up to, and I went at

it.

King was a polo pony from St. Louis, and Prince a many-gaited

love-horse from Pasadena. The hardest thing was to get them to

dig in and pull. They rollicked along on the levels and galloped

down the hills, but when they struck an up-grade and felt the

weight of the breaking-cart, they stopped and turned around and

looked at me. But I passed them, and my troubles began. Milda

was fourteen years old, an unadulterated broncho, and in

temperament was a combination of mule and jack-rabbit blended

equally. If you pressed your hand on her flank and told her to

get over, she lay down on you. If you got her by the head and

told her to back, she walked forward over you. And if you got

behind her and shoved and told her to "Giddap!" she sat down on

you. Also, she wouldn't walk. For endless weary miles I strove

with her, but never could I get her to walk a step. Finally, she

was a manger-glutton. No matter how near or far from the stable,

when six o'clock came around she bolted for home and never missed

the directest cross-road. Many times I rejected her.

The fourth and most rejected horse of all was the Outlaw. From

the age of three to seven she had defied all horse-breakers and

broken a number of them. Then a long, lanky cowboy, with a fifty-

pound saddle and a Mexican bit had got her proud goat. I was the

next owner. She was my favourite riding horse. Charmian said I'd

have to put her in as a wheeler where I would have more control

over her. Now Charmian had a favourite riding mare called Maid.

I suggested Maid as a substitute. Charmian pointed out that my

mare was a branded range horse, while hers was a near-

thoroughbred, and that the legs of her mare would be ruined

forever if she were driven for three months. I acknowledged her

mare's thoroughbredness, and at the same time defied her to find

any thoroughbred with as small and delicately-viciously pointed

ears as my Outlaw. She indicated Maid's exquisitely thin

shinbone. I measured the Outlaw's. It was equally thin,

although, I insinuated, possibly more durable. This stabbed

Charmian's pride. Of course her near-thoroughbred Maid, carrying

the blood of "old" Lexington, Morella, and a streak of the super-

enduring Morgan, could run, walk, and work my unregistered Outlaw

into the ground; and that was the very precise reason why such a

paragon of a saddle animal should not be degraded by harness.

So it was that Charmian remained obdurate, until, one day, I got

her behind the Outlaw for a forty-mile drive. For every inch of

those forty miles the Outlaw kicked and jumped, in between the

kicks and jumps finding time and space in which to seize its team-

mate by the back of the neck and attempt to drag it to the ground.

Another trick the Outlaw developed during that drive was suddenly

to turn at right angles in the traces and endeavour to butt its

team-mate over the grade. Reluctantly and nobly did Charmian give

in and consent to the use of Maid. The Outlaw's shoes were pulled

off, and she was turned out on range.

Finally, the four horses were hooked to the rig--a light

Studebaker trap. With two hours and a half of practice, in which

the excitement was not abated by several jack-poles and numerous

kicking matches, I announced myself as ready for the start. Came

the morning, and Prince, who was to have been a wheeler with Maid,

showed up with a badly kicked shoulder. He did not exactly show

up; we had to find him, for he was unable to walk. His leg

swelled and continually swelled during the several days we waited

for him. Remained only the Outlaw. In from pasture she came,

shoes were nailed on, and she was harnessed into the wheel.

Friends and relatives strove to press accident policies on me, but

Charmian climbed up alongside, and Nakata got into the rear seat

with the typewriter--Nakata, who sailed cabin-boy on the Snark for

two years and who had shown himself afraid of nothing, not even of

me and my amateur jamborees in experimenting with new modes of

locomotion. And we did very nicely, thank you, especially after

the first hour or so, during which time the Outlaw had kicked

about fifty various times, chiefly to the damage of her own legs

and the paintwork, and after she had bitten a couple of hundred

times, to the damage of Maid's neck and Charmian's temper. It was

hard enough to have her favourite mare in the harness without also

enduring the spectacle of its being eaten alive.

Our leaders were joys. King being a polo pony and Milda a rabbit,

they rounded curves beautifully and darted ahead like coyotes out

of the way of the wheelers. Milda's besetting weakness was a

frantic desire not to have the lead-bar strike her hocks. When

this happened, one of three things occurred: either she sat down

on the lead-bar, kicked it up in the air until she got her back

under it, or exploded in a straight-ahead, harness-disrupting

jump. Not until she carried the lead-bar clean away and danced a

break-down on it and the traces, did she behave decently. Nakata

and I made the repairs with good old-fashioned bale-rope, which is

stronger than wrought-iron any time, and we went on our way.

In the meantime I was learning--I shall not say to tool a four-in-

hand--but just simply to drive four horses. Now it is all right

enough to begin with four work-horses pulling a load of several

tons. But to begin with four light horses, all running, and a

light rig that seems to outrun them--well, when things happen they

happen quickly. My weakness was total ignorance. In particular,

my fingers lacked training, and I made the mistake of depending on

my eyes to handle the reins. This brought me up against a

disastrous optical illusion. The bight of the off head-line,

being longer and heavier than that of the off wheel-line, hung

lower. In a moment requiring quick action, I invariably mistook

the two lines. Pulling on what I thought was the wheel-line, in

order to straighten the team, I would see the leaders swing

abruptly around into a jack-pole. Now for sensations of sheer

impotence, nothing can compare with a jack-pole, when the

horrified driver beholds his leaders prancing gaily up the road

and his wheelers jogging steadily down the road, all at the same

time and all harnessed together and to the same rig.

I no longer jack-pole, and I don't mind admitting how I got out of

the habit. It was my eyes that enslaved my fingers into ill

practices. So I shut my eyes and let the fingers go it alone.

To-day my fingers are independent of my eyes and work

automatically. I do not see what my fingers do. They just do it.

All I see is the satisfactory result.

Still we managed to get over the ground that first day--down sunny

Sonoma Valley to the old town of Sonoma, founded by General

Vallejo as the remotest outpost on the northern frontier for the

purpose of holding back the Gentiles, as the wild Indians of those

days were called. Here history was made. Here the last Spanish

mission was reared; here the Bear flag was raised; and here Kit

Carson, and Fremont, and all our early adventurers came and rested

in the days before the days of gold.

We swung on over the low, rolling hills, through miles of dairy

farms and chicken ranches where every blessed hen is white, and

down the slopes to Petaluma Valley. Here, in 1776, Captain Quiros

came up Petaluma Creek from San Pablo Bay in quest of an outlet to

Bodega Bay on the coast. And here, later, the Russians, with

Alaskan hunters, carried skin boats across from Fort Ross to poach

for sea-otters on the Spanish preserve of San Francisco Bay.

Here, too, still later, General Vallejo built a fort, which still

stands--one of the finest examples of Spanish adobe that remain to

us. And here, at the old fort, to bring the chronicle up to date,

our horses proceeded to make peculiarly personal history with

astonishing success and dispatch. King, our peerless, polo-pony

leader, went lame. So hopelessly lame did he go that no expert,

then and afterward, could determine whether the lameness was in

his frogs, hoofs, legs, shoulders, or head. Maid picked up a nail

and began to limp. Milda, figuring the day already sufficiently

spent and maniacal with manger-gluttony, began to rabbit-jump.

All that held her was the bale-rope. And the Outlaw, game to the

last, exceeded all previous exhibitions of skin-removing, paint-

marring, and horse-eating.

At Petaluma we rested over while King was returned to the ranch

and Prince sent to us. Now Prince had proved himself an excellent

wheeler, yet he had to go into the lead and let the Outlaw retain

his old place. There is an axiom that a good wheeler is a poor

leader. I object to the last adjective. A good wheeler makes an

infinitely worse kind of a leader than that. I know . . . now. I

ought to know. Since that day I have driven Prince a few hundred

miles in the lead. He is neither any better nor any worse than

the first mile he ran in the lead; and his worst is even extremely

worse than what you are thinking. Not that he is vicious. He is

merely a good-natured rogue who shakes hands for sugar, steps on

your toes out of sheer excessive friendliness, and just goes on

loving you in your harshest moments.

But he won't get out of the way. Also, whenever he is reproved

for being in the wrong, he accuses Milda of it and bites the back

of her neck. So bad has this become that whenever I yell

"Prince!" in a loud voice, Milda immediately rabbit-jumps to the

side, straight ahead, or sits down on the lead-bar. All of which

is quite disconcerting. Picture it yourself. You are swinging

round a sharp, down-grade, mountain curve, at a fast trot. The

rock wall is the outside of the curve. The inside of the curve is

a precipice. The continuance of the curve is a narrow, unrailed

bridge. You hit the curve, throwing the leaders in against the

wall and making the polo-horse do the work. All is lovely. The

leaders are hugging the wall like nestling doves. But the moment

comes in the evolution when the leaders must shoot out ahead.

They really must shoot, or else they'll hit the wall and miss the

bridge. Also, behind them are the wheelers, and the rig, and you

have just eased the brake in order to put sufficient snap into the

manoeuvre. If ever team-work is required, now is the time. Milda

tries to shoot. She does her best, but Prince, bubbling over with

roguishness, lags behind. He knows the trick. Milda is half a

length ahead of him. He times it to the fraction of a second.

Maid, in the wheel, over-running him, naturally bites him. This

disturbs the Outlaw, who has been behaving beautifully, and she

immediately reaches across for Maid. Simultaneously, with a fine

display of firm conviction that it's all Milda's fault, Prince

sinks his teeth into the back of Milda's defenceless neck. The

whole thing has occurred in less than a second. Under the

surprise and pain of the bite, Milda either jumps ahead to the

imminent peril of harness and lead-bar, or smashes into the wall,

stops short with the lead-bar over her back, and emits a couple of

hysterical kicks. The Outlaw invariably selects this moment to

remove paint. And after things are untangled and you have had

time to appreciate the close shave, you go up to Prince and

reprove him with your choicest vocabulary. And Prince, gazelle-

eyed and tender, offers to shake hands with you for sugar. I

leave it to any one: a boat would never act that way.

We have some history north of the Bay. Nearly three centuries and

a half ago, that doughty pirate and explorer, Sir Francis Drake,

combing the Pacific for Spanish galleons, anchored in the bight

formed by Point Reyes, on which to-day is one of the richest dairy

regions in the world. Here, less than two decades after Drake,

Sebastien Carmenon piled up on the rocks with a silk-laden galleon

from the Philippines. And in this same bay of Drake, long

afterward, the Russian fur-poachers rendezvous'd their bidarkas

and stole in through the Golden Gate to the forbidden waters of

San Francisco Bay.

Farther up the coast, in Sonoma County, we pilgrimaged to the

sites of the Russian settlements. At Bodega Bay, south of what

to-day is called Russian River, was their anchorage, while north

of the river they built their fort. And much of Fort Ross still

stands. Log-bastions, church, and stables hold their own, and so

well, with rusty hinges creaking, that we warmed ourselves at the

hundred-years-old double fireplace and slept under the hand-hewn

roof beams still held together by spikes of hand-wrought iron.

We went to see where history had been made, and we saw scenery as

well. One of our stretches in a day's drive was from beautiful

Inverness on Tomales Bay, down the Olema Valley to Bolinas Bay,

along the eastern shore of that body of water to Willow Camp, and

up over the sea-bluffs, around the bastions of Tamalpais, and down

to Sausalito. From the head of Bolinas Bay to Willow Camp the

drive on the edge of the beach, and actually, for half-mile

stretches, in the waters of the bay itself, was a delightful

experience. The wonderful part was to come. Very few San

Franciscans, much less Californians, know of that drive from

Willow Camp, to the south and east, along the poppy-blown cliffs,

with the sea thundering in the sheer depths hundreds of feet below

and the Golden Gate opening up ahead, disclosing smoky San

Francisco on her many hills. Far off, blurred on the breast of

the sea, can be seen the Farallones, which Sir Francis Drake

passed on a S. W. course in the thick of what he describes as a

"stynking fog." Well might he call it that, and a few other

names, for it was the fog that robbed him of the glory of

discovering San Francisco Bay.

It was on this part of the drive that I decided at last I was

learning real mountain-driving. To confess the truth, for

delicious titillation of one's nerve, I have since driven over no

mountain road that was worse, or better, rather, than that piece.

And then the contrast! From Sausalito, over excellent, park-like

boulevards, through the splendid redwoods and homes of Mill

Valley, across the blossomed hills of Marin County, along the

knoll-studded picturesque marshes, past San Rafael resting warmly

among her hills, over the divide and up the Petaluma Valley, and

on to the grassy feet of Sonoma Mountain and home. We covered

fifty-five miles that day. Not so bad, eh, for Prince the Rogue,

the paint-removing Outlaw, the thin-shanked thoroughbred, and the

rabbit-jumper? And they came in cool and dry, ready for their

mangers and the straw.

Oh, we didn't stop. We considered we were just starting, and that

was many weeks ago. We have kept on going over six counties which

are comfortably large, even for California, and we are still

going. We have twisted and tabled, criss-crossed our tracks, made

fascinating and lengthy dives into the interior valleys in the

hearts of Napa and Lake Counties, travelled the coast for hundreds

of miles on end, and are now in Eureka, on Humboldt Bay, which was

discovered by accident by the gold-seekers, who were trying to

find their way to and from the Trinity diggings. Even here, the

white man's history preceded them, for dim tradition says that the

Russians once anchored here and hunted sea-otter before the first

Yankee trader rounded the Horn, or the first Rocky Mountain

trapper thirsted across the "Great American Desert" and trickled

down the snowy Sierras to the sun-kissed land. No; we are not

resting our horses here on Humboldt Bay. We are writing this

article, gorging on abalones and mussels, digging clams, and

catching record-breaking sea-trout and rock-cod in the intervals

in which we are not sailing, motor-boating, and swimming in the

most temperately equable climate we have ever experienced.

These comfortably large counties! They are veritable empires.

Take Humboldt, for instance. It is three times as large as Rhode

Island, one and a half times as large as Delaware, almost as large

as Connecticut, and half as large as Massachusetts. The pioneer

has done his work in this north of the bay region, the foundations

are laid, and all is ready for the inevitable inrush of population

and adequate development of resources which so far have been no

more than skimmed, and casually and carelessly skimmed at that.

This region of the six counties alone will some day support a

population of millions. In the meanwhile, O you home-seekers, you

wealth-seekers, and, above all, you climate-seekers, now is the

time to get in on the ground floor.

Robert Ingersoll once said that the genial climate of California

would in a fairly brief time evolve a race resembling the

Mexicans, and that in two or three generations the Californians

would be seen of a Sunday morning on their way to a cockfight with

a rooster under each arm. Never was made a rasher generalisation,

based on so absolute an ignorance of facts. It is to laugh. Here

is a climate that breeds vigour, with just sufficient geniality to

prevent the expenditure of most of that vigour in fighting the

elements. Here is a climate where a man can work three hundred

and sixty-five days in the year without the slightest hint of

enervation, and where for three hundred and sixty-five nights he

must perforce sleep under blankets. What more can one say? I

consider myself somewhat of climate expert, having adventured

among most of the climates of five out of the six zones. I have

not yet been in the Antarctic, but whatever climate obtains there

will not deter me from drawing the conclusion that nowhere is

there a climate to compare with that of this region. Maybe I am

as wrong as Ingersoll was. Nevertheless I take my medicine by

continuing to live in this climate. Also, it is the only medicine

I ever take.

But to return to the horses. There is some improvement. Milda

has actually learned to walk. Maid has proved her

thoroughbredness by never tiring on the longest days, and, while

being the strongest and highest spirited of all, by never causing

any trouble save for an occasional kick at the Outlaw. And the

Outlaw rarely gallops, no longer butts, only periodically kicks,

comes in to the pole and does her work without attempting to

vivisect Maid's medulla oblongata, and--marvel of marvels--is

really and truly getting lazy. But Prince remains the same

incorrigible, loving and lovable rogue he has always been.

And the country we've been over! The drives through Napa and Lake

Counties! One, from Sonoma Valley, via Santa Rosa, we could not

refrain from taking several ways, and on all the ways we found the

roads excellent for machines as well as horses. One route, and a

more delightful one for an automobile cannot be found, is out from

Santa Rosa, past old Altruria and Mark West Springs, then to the

right and across to Calistoga in Napa Valley. By keeping to the

left, the drive holds on up the Russian River Valley, through the

miles of the noted Asti Vineyards to Cloverdale, and then by way

of Pieta, Witter, and Highland Springs to Lakeport. Still another

way we took, was down Sonoma Valley, skirting San Pablo Bay, and

up the lovely Napa Valley. From Napa were side excursions through

Pope and Berryessa Valleys, on to AEtna Springs, and still on,

into Lake County, crossing the famous Langtry Ranch.

Continuing up the Napa Valley, walled on either hand by great rock

palisades and redwood forests and carpeted with endless vineyards,

and crossing the many stone bridges for which the County is noted

and which are a joy to the beauty-loving eyes as well as to the

four-horse tyro driver, past Calistoga with its old mud-baths and

chicken-soup springs, with St. Helena and its giant saddle ever

towering before us, we climbed the mountains on a good grade and

dropped down past the quicksilver mines to the canyon of the

Geysers. After a stop over night and an exploration of the

miniature-grand volcanic scene, we pulled on across the canyon and

took the grade where the cicadas simmered audibly in the noon

sunshine among the hillside manzanitas. Then, higher, came the

big cattle-dotted upland pastures, and the rocky summit. And here

on the summit, abruptly, we caught a vision, or what seemed a

mirage. The ocean we had left long days before, yet far down and

away shimmered a blue sea, framed on the farther shore by rugged

mountains, on the near shore by fat and rolling farm lands. Clear

Lake was before us, and like proper sailors we returned to our

sea, going for a sail, a fish, and a swim ere the day was done and

turning into tired Lakeport blankets in the early evening. Well

has Lake County been called the Walled-in County. But the

railroad is coming. They say the approach we made to Clear Lake

is similar to the approach to Lake Lucerne. Be that as it may,

the scenery, with its distant snow-capped peaks, can well be

called Alpine.

And what can be more exquisite than the drive out from Clear Lake

to Ukiah by way of the Blue Lakes chain!--every turn bringing into

view a picture of breathless beauty; every glance backward

revealing some perfect composition in line and colour, the intense

blue of the water margined with splendid oaks, green fields, and

swaths of orange poppies. But those side glances and backward

glances were provocative of trouble. Charmian and I disagreed as

to which way the connecting stream of water ran. We still

disagree, for at the hotel, where we submitted the affair to

arbitration, the hotel manager and the clerk likewise disagreed.

I assume, now, that we never will know which way that stream runs.

Charmian suggests "both ways." I refuse such a compromise. No

stream of water I ever saw could accomplish that feat at one and

the same time. The greatest concession I can make is that

sometimes it may run one way and sometimes the other, and that in

the meantime we should both consult an oculist.

More valley from Ukiah to Willits, and then we turned westward

through the virgin Sherwood Forest of magnificent redwood,

stopping at Alpine for the night and continuing on through

Mendocino County to Fort Bragg and "salt water." We also came to

Fort Bragg up the coast from Fort Ross, keeping our coast journey

intact from the Golden Gate. The coast weather was cool and

delightful, the coast driving superb. Especially in the Fort Ross

section did we find the roads thrilling, while all the way along

we followed the sea. At every stream, the road skirted dizzy

cliff-edges, dived down into lush growths of forest and ferns and

climbed out along the cliff-edges again. The way was lined with

flowers--wild lilac, wild roses, poppies, and lupins. Such

lupins!--giant clumps of them, of every lupin-shade and -colour.

And it was along the Mendocino roads that Charmian caused many

delays by insisting on getting out to pick the wild blackberries,

strawberries, and thimble-berries which grew so profusely. And

ever we caught peeps, far down, of steam schooners loading lumber

in the rocky coves; ever we skirted the cliffs, day after day,

crossing stretches of rolling farm lands and passing through

thriving villages and saw-mill towns. Memorable was our launch-

trip from Mendocino City up Big River, where the steering gears of

the launches work the reverse of anywhere else in the world; where

we saw a stream of logs, of six to twelve and fifteen feet in

diameter, which filled the river bed for miles to the obliteration

of any sign of water; and where we were told of a white or albino

redwood tree. We did not see this last, so cannot vouch for it.

All the streams were filled with trout, and more than once we saw

the side-hill salmon on the slopes. No, side-hill salmon is not a

peripatetic fish; it is a deer out of season. But the trout! At

Gualala Charmian caught her first one. Once before in my life I

had caught two . . . on angleworms. On occasion I had tried fly

and spinner and never got a strike, and I had come to believe that

all this talk of fly-fishing was just so much nature-faking. But

on the Gualala River I caught trout--a lot of them--on fly and

spinners; and I was beginning to feel quite an expert, until

Nakata, fishing on bottom with a pellet of bread for bait, caught

the biggest trout of all. I now affirm there is nothing in

science nor in art. Nevertheless, since that day poles and

baskets have been added to our baggage, we tackle every stream we

come to, and we no longer are able to remember the grand total of

our catch.

At Usal, many hilly and picturesque miles north of Fort Bragg, we

turned again into the interior of Mendocino, crossing the ranges

and coming out in Humboldt County on the south fork of Eel River

at Garberville. Throughout the trip, from Marin County north, we

had been warned of "bad roads ahead." Yet we never found those

bad roads. We seemed always to be just ahead of them or behind

them. The farther we came the better the roads seemed, though

this was probably due to the fact that we were learning more and

more what four horses and a light rig could do on a road. And

thus do I save my face with all the counties. I refuse to make

invidious road comparisons. I can add that while, save in rare

instances on steep pitches, I have trotted my horses down all the

grades, I have never had one horse fall down nor have I had to

send the rig to a blacksmith shop for repairs.

Also, I am learning to throw leather. If any tyro thinks it is

easy to take a short-handled, long-lashed whip, and throw the end

of that lash just where he wants it, let him put on automobile

goggles and try it. On reconsideration, I would suggest the

substitution of a wire fencing-mask for the goggles. For days I

looked at that whip. It fascinated me, and the fascination was

composed mostly of fear. At my first attempt, Charmian and Nakata

became afflicted with the same sort of fascination, and for a long

time afterward, whenever they saw me reach for the whip, they

closed their eyes and shielded their heads with their arms.

Here's the problem. Instead of pulling honestly, Prince is

lagging back and manoeuvring for a bite at Milda's neck. I have

four reins in my hands. I must put these four reins into my left

hand, properly gather the whip handle and the bight of the lash in

my right hand, and throw that lash past Maid without striking her

and into Prince. If the lash strikes Maid, her thoroughbredness

will go up in the air, and I'll have a case of horse hysteria on

my hands for the next half hour. But follow. The whole problem

is not yet stated. Suppose that I miss Maid and reach the

intended target. The instant the lash cracks, the four horses

jump, Prince most of all, and his jump, with spread wicked teeth,

is for the back of Milda's neck. She jumps to escape--which is

her second jump, for the first one came when the lash exploded.

The Outlaw reaches for Maid's neck, and Maid, who has already

jumped and tried to bolt, tries to bolt harder. And all this

infinitesimal fraction of time I am trying to hold the four

animals with my left hand, while my whip-lash, writhing through

the air, is coming back to me. Three simultaneous things I must

do: keep hold of the four reins with my left hand; slam on the

brake with my foot; and on the rebound catch that flying lash in

the hollow of my right arm and get the bight of it safely into my

right hand. Then I must get two of the four lines back into my

right hand and keep the horses from running away or going over the

grade. Try it some time. You will find life anything but

wearisome. Why, the first time I hit the mark and made the lash

go off like a revolver shot, I was so astounded and delighted that

I was paralysed. I forgot to do any of the multitudinous other

things, tangled the whip lash in Maid's harness, and was forced to

call upon Charmian for assistance. And now, confession. I carry

a few pebbles handy. They're great for reaching Prince in a tight

place. But just the same I'm learning that whip every day, and

before I get home I hope to discard the pebbles. And as long as I

rely on pebbles, I cannot truthfully speak of myself as "tooling a

four-in-hand."

From Garberville, where we ate eel to repletion and got acquainted

with the aborigines, we drove down the Eel River Valley for two

days through the most unthinkably glorious body of redwood timber

to be seen anywhere in California. From Dyerville on to Eureka,

we caught glimpses of railroad construction and of great concrete

bridges in the course of building, which advertised that at least

Humboldt County was going to be linked to the rest of the world.

We still consider our trip is just begun. As soon as this is

mailed from Eureka, it's heigh ho! for the horses and pull on. We

shall continue up the coast, turn in for Hoopa Reservation and the

gold mines, and shoot down the Trinity and Klamath rivers in

Indian canoes to Requa. After that, we shall go on through Del

Norte County and into Oregon. The trip so far has justified us in

taking the attitude that we won't go home until the winter rains

drive us in. And, finally, I am going to try the experiment of

putting the Outlaw in the lead and relegating Prince to his old

position in the near wheel. I won't need any pebbles then.

NOTHING THAT EVER CAME TO ANYTHING

It was at Quito, the mountain capital of Ecuador, that the

following passage at correspondence took place. Having occasion

to buy a pair of shoes in a shop six feet by eight in size and

with walls three feet thick, I noticed a mangy leopard skin on the

floor. I had no Spanish. The shop-keeper had no English. But I

was an adept at sign language. I wanted to know where I should go

to buy leopard skins. On my scribble-pad I drew the interesting

streets of a city. Then I drew a small shop, which, after much

effort, I persuaded the proprietor into recognising as his shop.

Next, I indicated in my drawing that on the many streets there

were many shops. And, finally, I made myself into a living

interrogation mark, pointing all the while from the mangy leopard

skin to the many shops I had sketched.

But the proprietor failed to follow me. So did his assistant.

The street came in to help--that is, as many as could crowd into

the six-by-eight shop; while those that could not force their way

in held an overflow meeting on the sidewalk. The proprietor and

the rest took turns at talking to me in rapid-fire Spanish, and,

from the expressions on their faces, all concluded that I was

remarkably stupid. Again I went through my programme, pointing on

the sketch from the one shop to the many shops, pointing out that

in this particular shop was one leopard skin, and then questing

interrogatively with my pencil among all the shops. All regarded

me in blank silence, until I saw comprehension suddenly dawn on

the face of a small boy.

"Tigres montanya!" he cried.

This appealed to me as mountain tigers, namely, leopards; and in

token that he understood, the boy made signs for me to follow him,

which I obeyed. He led me for a quarter of a mile, and paused

before the doorway of a large building where soldiers slouched on

sentry duty and in and out of which went other soldiers.

Motioning for me to remain, he ran inside.

Fifteen minutes later he was out again, without leopard skins, but

full of information. By means of my card, of my hotel card, of my

watch, and of the boy's fingers, I learned the following: that at

six o'clock that evening he would arrive at my hotel with ten

leopard skins for my inspection. Further, I learned that the

skins were the property of one Captain Ernesto Becucci. Also, I

learned that the boy's name was Eliceo.

The boy was prompt. At six o'clock he was at my room. In his

hand was a small roll addressed to me. On opening it I found it

to be manuscript piano music, the Hora Tranquila Valse, or

"Tranquil Hour Waltz," by Ernesto Becucci. I came for leopard

skins, thought I, and the owner sends me sheet music instead. But

the boy assured me that he would have the skins at the hotel at

nine next morning, and I entrusted to him the following letter of

acknowledgment:

"DEAR CAPTAIN BECUCCI:

"A thousand thanks for your kind presentation of Hora Tranquila

Valse. Mrs. London will play it for me this evening.

Sincerely yours,

"Jack London."

Next morning Eliceo was back, but without the skins. Instead, he

gave me a letter, written in Spanish, of which the following is a

free translation:

"To my dearest and always appreciated friend, I submit myself -

"DEAR SIR:

" I sent you last night an offering by the bearer of this note,

and you returned me a letter which I translated.

"Be it known to you, sir, that I am giving this waltz away in the

best society, and therefore to your honoured self. Therefore it

is beholden to you to recognise the attention, I mean by a

tangible return, as this composition was made by myself. You will

therefore send by your humble servant, the bearer, any offering,

however minute, that you may be prompted to make. Send it under

cover of an envelope. The bearer may be trusted.

"I did not indulge in the pleasure of visiting your honourable

self this morning, as I find my body not to be enjoying the normal

exercise of its functions.

"As regards the skins from the mountain, you shall be waited on by

a small boy at seven o'clock at night with ten skins from which

you may select those which most satisfy your aspirations.

"In the hope that you will look upon this in the same light as

myself, I beg to be allowed to remain,

"Your most faithful servant,

" CAPTAIN ERNESTO BECUCCI."

Well, thought I, this Captain Ernesto Becucci has shown himself to

be such an undependable person, that, while I don't mind rewarding

him for his composition, I fear me if I do I never shall lay eyes

on those leopard skins. So to Eliceo I gave this letter for the

Captain:

"MY DEAR CAPTAIN BECUCCI:

"Have the boy bring the skins at seven o'clock this evening, when

I shall be glad to look at them. This evening when the boy brings

the skins, I shall be pleased to give him, in an envelope, for

you, a tangible return for your musical composition.

"Please put the price on each skin, and also let me know for what

sum all the skins will sell together.

"Sincerely yours,

"JACK LONDON."

Now, thought I, I have him. No skins, no tangible return; and

evidently he is set on receiving that tangible return.

At seven o'clock Eliceo was back, but without leopard skins. He

handed me this letter:

"SENOR LONDON:

"I wish to instil in you the belief that I lost to-day, at half

past three in the afternoon, the key to my cubicle. While

distributing rations to the soldiers I dropped it. I see in this

loss the act of God.

"I received a letter from your honourable self, delivered by the

one who bears you this poor response of mine. To-morrow I will

burst open the door to permit me to keep my word with you. I feel

myself eternally shamed not to be able to dominate the evils that

afflict colonial mankind. Please send me the trifle that you

offered me. Send me this proof of your appreciation by the

bearer, who is to be trusted. Also give to him a small sum of

money for himself, and earn the undying gratitude of

Your most faithful servant,

"CAPTAIN ERNESTO BECUCCI."

Also, inclosed in the foregoing letter was the following original

poem, e propos neither of leopard skins nor tangible returns, so

far as I can make out:

EFFUSION

Thou canst not weep;

Nor ask I for a year

To rid me of my woes

Or make my life more dear.

The mystic chains that bound

Thy all-fond heart to mine,

Alas! asundered are

For now and for all time.

In vain you strove to hide,

From vulgar gaze of man,

The burning glance of love

That none but Love can scan.

Go on thy starlit way

And leave me to my fate;

Our souls must needs unite -

But, God! 'twill be too late.

To all and sundry of which I replied:

"MY DEAR CAPTAIN BECUCCI:

"I regret exceedingly to hear that by act of God, at half past

three this afternoon, you lost the key to your cubicle. Please

have the boy bring the skins at seven o'clock to-morrow morning,

at which time, when he brings the skins, I shall be glad to make

you that tangible return for your "Tranquil Hour Waltz."

"Sincerely yours,

"JACK LONDON."

At seven o'clock came no skins, but the following:

"SIR:

"After offering you my most sincere respects, I beg to continue by

telling you that no one, up to the time of writing, has treated me

with such lack of attention. It was a present to GENTLEMEN who

were to retain the piece of music, and who have all, without

exception, made me a present of five dollars. It is beyond my

humble capacity to believe that you, after having offered to send

me money in an envelope, should fail to do so.

"Send me, I pray of you, the money to remunerate the small boy for

his repeated visits to you. Please be discreet and send it in an

envelope by the bearer.

"Last night I came to the hotel with the boy. You were dining. I

waited more than an hour for you and then went to the theatre.

Give the boy some small amount, and send me a like offering of

larger proportions.

"Awaiting incessantly a slight attention on your part,

"CAPTAIN ERNESTO BECUCCI."

And here, like one of George Moore's realistic studies, ends this

intercourse with Captain Ernesto Becucci. Nothing happened.

Nothing ever came to anything. He got no tangible return, and I

got no leopard skins. The tangible return he might have got, I

presented to Eliceo, who promptly invested it in a pair of

trousers and a ticket to the bull-fight.

(NOTE TO EDITOR.--This is a faithful narration of what actually

happened in Quito, Ecuador.)

THAT DEAD MEN RISE UP NEVER

The month in which my seventeenth birthday arrived I signed on

before the mast on the Sophie Sutherland, a three-topmast schooner

bound on a seven-months' seal-hunting cruise to the coast of

Japan. We sailed from San Francisco, and immediately I found

confronting me a problem of no inconsiderable proportions. There

were twelve men of us in the forecastle, ten of whom were

hardened, tarry-thumbed sailors. Not alone was I a youth and on

my first voyage, but I had for shipmates men who had come through

the hard school of the merchant service of Europe. As boys, they

had had to perform their ship's duty, and, in addition, by

immemorial sea custom, they had had to be the slaves of the

ordinary and able-bodied seamen. When they became ordinary seamen

they were still the slaves of the able-bodied. Thus, in the

forecastle, with the watch below, an able seaman, lying in his

bunk, will order an ordinary seaman to fetch him his shoes or

bring him a drink of water. Now the ordinary seaman may be lying

in HIS bunk. He is just as tired as the able seaman. Yet he must

get out of his bunk and fetch and carry. If he refuses, he will

be beaten. If, perchance, he is so strong that he can whip the

able seaman, then all the able seamen, or as many as may be

necessary, pitch upon the luckless devil and administer the

beating.

My problem now becomes apparent. These hard-bit Scandinavian

sailors had come through a hard school. As boys they had served

their mates, and as able seamen they looked to be served by other

boys. I was a boy--withal with a man's body. I had never been to

sea before--withal I was a good sailor and knew my business. It

was either a case of holding my own with them or of going under.

I had signed on as an equal, and an equal I must maintain myself,

or else endure seven months of hell at their hands. And it was

this very equality they resented. By what right was I an equal?

I had not earned that high privilege. I had not endured the

miseries they had endured as maltreated boys or bullied

ordinaries. Worse than that, I was a land-lubber making his first

voyage. And yet, by the injustice of fate, on the ship's articles

I was their equal.

My method was deliberate, and simple, and drastic. In the first

place, I resolved to do my work, no matter how hard or dangerous

it might be, so well that no man would be called upon to do it for

me. Further, I put ginger in my muscles. I never malingered when

pulling on a rope, for I knew the eagle eyes of my forecastle

mates were squinting for just such evidences of my inferiority. I

made it a point to be among the first of the watch going on deck,

among the last going below, never leaving a sheet or tackle for

some one else to coil over a pin. I was always eager for the run

aloft for the shifting of topsail sheets and tacks, or for the

setting or taking in of topsails; and in these matters I did more

than my share.

Furthermore, I was on a hair-trigger of resentment myself. I knew

better than to accept any abuse or the slightest patronizing. At

the first hint of such, I went off-- I exploded. I might be

beaten in the subsequent fight, but I left the impression that I

was a wild-cat and that I would just as willingly fight again. My

intention was to demonstrate that I would tolerate no imposition.

I proved that the man who imposed on me must have a fight on his

hands. And doing my work well, the innate justice of the men,

assisted by their wholesome dislike for a clawing and rending

wild-cat ruction, soon led them to give over their hectoring.

After a bit of strife, my attitude was accepted, and it was my

pride that I was taken in as an equal in spirit as well as in

fact. From then on, everything was beautiful, and the voyage

promised to be a happy one.

But there was one other man in the forecastle. Counting the

Scandinavians as ten, and myself as the eleventh, this man was the

twelfth and last. We never knew his name, contenting ourselves

with calling him the "Bricklayer." He was from Missouri--at least

he so informed us in the one meagre confidence he was guilty of in

the early days of the voyage. Also, at that time, we learned

several other things. He was a brick-layer by trade. He had

never even seen salt water until the week before he joined us, at

which time he had arrived in San Francisco and looked upon San

Francisco Bay. Why he, of all men, at forty years of age, should

have felt the prod to go to sea, was beyond all of us; for it was

our unanimous conviction that no man less fitted for the sea had

ever embarked on it. But to sea he had come. After a week's stay

in a sailors' boarding-house, he had been shoved aboard of us as

an able seaman.

All hands had to do his work for him. Not only did he know

nothing, but he proved himself unable to learn anything. Try as

they would, they could never teach him to steer. To him the

compass must have been a profound and awful whirligig. He never

mastered its cardinal points, much less the checking and steadying

of the ship on her course. He never did come to know whether

ropes should be coiled from left to right or from right to left.

It was mentally impossible for him to learn the easy muscular

trick of throwing his weight on a rope in pulling and hauling.

The simplest knots and turns were beyond his comprehension, while

he was mortally afraid of going aloft. Bullied by captain and

mate, he was one day forced aloft. He managed to get underneath

the crosstrees, and there he froze to the ratlines. Two sailors

had to go after him to help him down.

All of which was bad enough had there been no worse. But he was

vicious, malignant, dirty, and without common decency. He was a

tall, powerful man, and he fought with everybody. And there was

no fairness in his fighting. His first fight on board, the first

day out, was with me, when he, desiring to cut a plug of chewing

tobacco, took my personal table-knife for the purpose, and

whereupon, I, on a hair-trigger, promptly exploded. After that he

fought with nearly every member of the crew. When his clothing

became too filthy to be bearable by the rest of us, we put it to

soak and stood over him while he washed it. In short, the

Bricklayer was one of those horrible and monstrous things that one

must see in order to be convinced that they exist.

I will only say that he was a beast, and that we treated him like

a beast. It is only by looking back through the years that I

realise how heart