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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Human Drift, by Jack London
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Human Drift
+
+
+Author: Jack London
+
+Release Date: April 27, 2005  [eBook #1669]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HUMAN DRIFT***
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcribed 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 southeaster.
+
+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 rip-snorting 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 mainsail 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, a
+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 bricklayer 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
+heartless we were to him.  He was without sin.  He could not, by the very
+nature of things, have been anything else than he was.  He had not made
+himself, and for his making he was not responsible.  Yet we treated him
+as a free agent and held him personally responsible for all that he was
+and that he should not have been.  As a result, our treatment of him was
+as terrible as he was himself terrible.  Finally we gave him the silent
+treatment, and for weeks before he died we neither spoke to him nor did
+he speak to us.  And for weeks he moved among us, or lay in his bunk in
+our crowded house, grinning at us his hatred and malignancy.  He was a
+dying man, and he knew it, and we knew it.  And furthermore, he knew that
+we wanted him to die.  He cumbered our life with his presence, and ours
+was a rough life that made rough men of us.  And so he died, in a small
+space crowded by twelve men and as much alone as if he had died on some
+desolate mountain peak.  No kindly word, no last word, was passed
+between.  He died as he had lived, a beast, and he died hating us and
+hated by us.
+
+And now I come to the most startling moment of my life.  No sooner was he
+dead than he was flung overboard.  He died in a night of wind, drawing
+his last breath as the men tumbled into their oilskins to the cry of "All
+hands!"  And he was flung overboard, several hours later, on a day of
+wind.  Not even a canvas wrapping graced his mortal remains; nor was he
+deemed worthy of bars of iron at his feet.  We sewed him up in the
+blankets in which he died and laid him on a hatch-cover for'ard of the
+main-hatch on the port side.  A gunnysack, half full of galley coal, was
+fastened to his feet.
+
+It was bitter cold.  The weather-side of every rope, spar, and stay was
+coated with ice, while all the rigging was a harp, singing and shouting
+under the fierce hand of the wind.  The schooner, hove to, lurched and
+floundered through the sea, rolling her scuppers under and perpetually
+flooding the deck with icy salt water.  We of the forecastle stood in sea-
+boots and oilskins.  Our hands were mittened, but our heads were bared in
+the presence of the death we did not respect.  Our ears stung and numbed
+and whitened, and we yearned for the body to be gone.  But the
+interminable reading of the burial service went on.  The captain had
+mistaken his place, and while he read on without purpose we froze our
+ears and resented this final hardship thrust upon us by the helpless
+cadaver.  As from the beginning, so to the end, everything had gone wrong
+with the Bricklayer.  Finally, the captain's son, irritated beyond
+measure, jerked the book from the palsied fingers of the old man and
+found the place.  Again the quavering voice of the captain arose.  Then
+came the cue: "And the body shall be cast into the sea."  We elevated one
+end of the hatch-cover, and the Bricklayer plunged outboard and was gone.
+
+Back into the forecastle we cleaned house, washing out the dead man's
+bunk and removing every vestige of him.  By sea law and sea custom, we
+should have gathered his effects together and turned them over to the
+captain, who, later, would have held an auction in which we should have
+bid for the various articles.  But no man wanted them, so we tossed them
+up on deck and overboard in the wake of the departed body--the last ill-
+treatment we could devise to wreak upon the one we had hated so.  Oh, it
+was raw, believe me; but the life we lived was raw, and we were as raw as
+the life.
+
+The Bricklayer's bunk was better than mine.  Less sea water leaked down
+through the deck into it, and the light was better for lying in bed and
+reading.  Partly for this reason I proceeded to move into his bunk.  My
+other reason was pride.  I saw the sailors were superstitious, and by
+this act I determined to show that I was braver than they.  I would cap
+my proved equality by a deed that would compel their recognition of my
+superiority.  Oh, the arrogance of youth!  But let that pass.  The
+sailors were appalled by my intention.  One and all, they warned me that
+in the history of the sea no man had taken a dead man's bunk and lived to
+the end of the voyage.  They instanced case after case in their personal
+experience.  I was obdurate.  Then they begged and pleaded with me, and
+my pride was tickled in that they showed they really liked me and were
+concerned about me.  This but served to confirm me in my madness.  I
+moved in, and, lying in the dead man's bunk, all afternoon and evening
+listened to dire prophecies of my future.  Also were told stories of
+awful deaths and gruesome ghosts that secretly shivered the hearts of all
+of us.  Saturated with this, yet scoffing at it, I rolled over at the end
+of the second dog-watch and went to sleep.
+
+At ten minutes to twelve I was called, and at twelve I was dressed and on
+deck, relieving the man who had called me.  On the sealing grounds, when
+hove to, a watch of only a single man is kept through the night, each man
+holding the deck for an hour.  It was a dark night, though not a black
+one.  The gale was breaking up, and the clouds were thinning.  There
+should have been a moon, and, though invisible, in some way a dim,
+suffused radiance came from it.  I paced back and forth across the deck
+amidships.  My mind was filled with the event of the day and with the
+horrible tales my shipmates had told, and yet I dare to say, here and
+now, that I was not afraid.  I was a healthy animal, and furthermore,
+intellectually, I agreed with Swinburne that dead men rise up never.  The
+Bricklayer was dead, and that was the end of it.  He would rise up
+never--at least, never on the deck of the _Sophie Sutherland_.  Even then
+he was in the ocean depths miles to windward of our leeward drift, and
+the likelihood was that he was already portioned out in the maws of many
+sharks.  Still, my mind pondered on the tales of the ghosts of dead men I
+had heard, and I speculated on the spirit world.  My conclusion was that
+if the spirits of the dead still roamed the world they carried the
+goodness or the malignancy of the earth-life with them.  Therefore,
+granting the hypothesis (which I didn't grant at all), the ghost of the
+Bricklayer was bound to be as hateful and malignant as he in life had
+been.  But there wasn't any Bricklayer's ghost--that I insisted upon.
+
+A few minutes, thinking thus, I paced up and down.  Then, glancing
+casually for'ard, along the port side, I leaped like a startled deer and
+in a blind madness of terror rushed aft along the poop, heading for the
+cabin.  Gone was all my arrogance of youth and my intellectual calm.  I
+had seen a ghost.  There, in the dim light, where we had flung the dead
+man overboard, I had seen a faint and wavering form.  Six-feet in length
+it was, slender, and of substance so attenuated that I had distinctly
+seen through it the tracery of the fore-rigging.
+
+As for me, I was as panic-stricken as a frightened horse.  I, as I, had
+ceased to exist.  Through me were vibrating the fibre-instincts of ten
+thousand generations of superstitious forebears who had been afraid of
+the dark and the things of the dark.  I was not I.  I was, in truth,
+those ten thousand forebears.  I was the race, the whole human race, in
+its superstitious infancy.  Not until part way down the
+cabin-companionway did my identity return to me.  I checked my flight and
+clung to the steep ladder, suffocating, trembling, and dizzy.  Never,
+before nor since, have I had such a shock.  I clung to the ladder and
+considered.  I could not doubt my senses.  That I had seen something
+there was no discussion.  But what was it?  Either a ghost or a joke.
+There could be nothing else.  If a ghost, the question was: would it
+appear again?  If it did not, and I aroused the ship's officers, I would
+make myself the laughing stock of all on board.  And by the same token,
+if it were a joke, my position would be still more ridiculous.  If I were
+to retain my hard-won place of equality, it would never do to arouse any
+one until I ascertained the nature of the thing.
+
+I am a brave man.  I dare to say so; for in fear and trembling I crept up
+the companion-way and went back to the spot from which I had first seen
+the thing.  It had vanished.  My bravery was qualified, however.  Though
+I could see nothing, I was afraid to go for'ard to the spot where I had
+seen the thing.  I resumed my pacing up and down, and though I cast many
+an anxious glance toward the dread spot, nothing manifested itself.  As
+my equanimity returned to me, I concluded that the whole affair had been
+a trick of the imagination and that I had got what I deserved for
+allowing my mind to dwell on such matters.
+
+Once more my glances for'ard were casual, and not anxious; and then,
+suddenly, I was a madman, rushing wildly aft.  I had seen the thing
+again, the long, wavering attenuated substance through which could be
+seen the fore-rigging.  This time I had reached only the break of the
+poop when I checked myself.  Again I reasoned over the situation, and it
+was pride that counselled strongest.  I could not afford to make myself a
+laughing-stock.  This thing, whatever it was, I must face alone.  I must
+work it out myself.  I looked back to the spot where we had tilted the
+Bricklayer.  It was vacant.  Nothing moved.  And for a third time I
+resumed my amidships pacing.
+
+In the absence of the thing my fear died away and my intellectual poise
+returned.  Of course it was not a ghost.  Dead men did not rise up.  It
+was a joke, a cruel joke.  My mates of the forecastle, by some unknown
+means, were frightening me.  Twice already must they have seen me run
+aft.  My cheeks burned with shame.  In fancy I could hear the smothered
+chuckling and laughter even then going on in the forecastle.  I began to
+grow angry.  Jokes were all very well, but this was carrying the thing
+too far.  I was the youngest on board, only a youth, and they had no
+right to play tricks on me of the order that I well knew in the past had
+made raving maniacs of men and women.  I grew angrier and angrier, and
+resolved to show them that I was made of sterner stuff and at the same
+time to wreak my resentment upon them.  If the thing appeared again, I
+made my mind up that I would go up to it--furthermore, that I would go up
+to it knife in hand.  When within striking distance, I would strike.  If
+a man, he would get the knife-thrust he deserved.  If a ghost, well, it
+wouldn't hurt the ghost any, while I would have learned that dead men did
+rise up.
+
+Now I was very angry, and I was quite sure the thing was a trick; but
+when the thing appeared a third time, in the same spot, long, attenuated,
+and wavering, fear surged up in me and drove most of my anger away.  But
+I did not run.  Nor did I take my eyes from the thing.  Both times
+before, it had vanished while I was running away, so I had not seen the
+manner of its going.  I drew my sheath-knife from my belt and began my
+advance.  Step by step, nearer and nearer, the effort to control myself
+grew more severe.  The struggle was between my will, my identity, my very
+self, on the one hand, and on the other, the ten thousand ancestors who
+were twisted into the fibres of me and whose ghostly voices were
+whispering of the dark and the fear of the dark that had been theirs in
+the time when the world was dark and full of terror.
+
+I advanced more slowly, and still the thing wavered and flitted with
+strange eerie lurches.  And then, right before my eyes, it vanished.  I
+saw it vanish.  Neither to the right nor left did it go, nor backward.
+Right there, while I gazed upon it, it faded away, ceased to be.  I
+didn't die, but I swear, from what I experienced in those few succeeding
+moments, that I know full well that men can die of fright.  I stood
+there, knife in hand, swaying automatically to the roll of the ship,
+paralysed with fear.  Had the Bricklayer suddenly seized my throat with
+corporeal fingers and proceeded to throttle me, it would have been no
+more than I expected.  Dead men did rise up, and that would be the most
+likely thing the malignant Bricklayer would do.
+
+But he didn't seize my throat.  Nothing happened.  And, since nature
+abhors a status, I could not remain there in the one place forever
+paralysed.  I turned and started aft.  I did not run.  What was the use?
+What chance had I against the malevolent world of ghosts?  Flight, with
+me, was the swiftness of my legs.  The pursuit, with a ghost, was the
+swiftness of thought.  And there were ghosts.  I had seen one.
+
+And so, stumbling slowly aft, I discovered the explanation of the
+seeming.  I saw the mizzen topmast lurching across a faint radiance of
+cloud behind which was the moon.  The idea leaped in my brain.  I
+extended the line between the cloudy radiance and the mizzen-topmast and
+found that it must strike somewhere near the fore-rigging on the port
+side.  Even as I did this, the radiance vanished.  The driving clouds of
+the breaking gale were alternately thickening and thinning before the
+face of the moon, but never exposing the face of the moon.  And when the
+clouds were at their thinnest, it was a very dim radiance that the moon
+was able to make.  I watched and waited.  The next time the clouds
+thinned I looked for'ard, and there was the shadow of the topmast, long
+and attenuated, wavering and lurching on the deck and against the
+rigging.
+
+This was my first ghost.  Once again have I seen a ghost.  It proved to
+be a Newfoundland dog, and I don't know which of us was the more
+frightened, for I hit that Newfoundland a full right-arm swing to the
+jaw.  Regarding the Bricklayer's ghost, I will say that I never mentioned
+it to a soul on board.  Also, I will say that in all my life I never went
+through more torment and mental suffering than on that lonely night-watch
+on the _Sophie Sutherland_.
+
+(TO THE EDITOR.--This is not a fiction.  It is a true page out of my
+life.)
+
+
+
+
+A CLASSIC OF THE SEA
+
+
+   Introduction to "_Two Years before the Mast_."
+
+Once in a hundred years is a book written that lives not alone for its
+own century but which becomes a document for the future centuries.  Such
+a book is Dana's.  When Marryat's and Cooper's sea novels are gone to
+dust, stimulating and joyful as they have been to generations of men,
+still will remain "Two Years Before the Mast."
+
+Paradoxical as it may seem, Dana's book is the classic of the sea, not
+because there was anything extraordinary about Dana, but for the precise
+contrary reason that he was just an ordinary, normal man, clear-seeing,
+hard-headed, controlled, fitted with adequate education to go about the
+work.  He brought a trained mind to put down with untroubled vision what
+he saw of a certain phase of work-a-day life.  There was nothing
+brilliant nor fly-away about him.  He was not a genius.  His heart never
+rode his head.  He was neither overlorded by sentiment nor hag-ridden by
+imagination.  Otherwise he might have been guilty of the beautiful
+exaggerations in Melville's "Typee" or the imaginative orgies in the
+latter's "Moby Dick."  It was Dana's cool poise that saved him from being
+spread-eagled and flogged when two of his mates were so treated; it was
+his lack of abandon that prevented him from taking up permanently with
+the sea, that prevented him from seeing more than one poetical spot, and
+more than one romantic spot on all the coast of Old California.  Yet
+these apparent defects were his strength.  They enabled him magnificently
+to write, and for all time, the picture of the sea-life of his time.
+
+Written close to the middle of the last century, such has been the
+revolution worked in man's method of trafficking with the sea, that the
+life and conditions described in Dana's book have passed utterly away.
+Gone are the crack clippers, the driving captains, the hard-bitten but
+efficient foremast hands.  Remain only crawling cargo tanks, dirty
+tramps, greyhound liners, and a sombre, sordid type of sailing ship.  The
+only records broken to-day by sailing vessels are those for slowness.
+They are no longer built for speed, nor are they manned before the mast
+by as sturdy a sailor stock, nor aft the mast are they officered by sail-
+carrying captains and driving mates.
+
+Speed is left to the liners, who run the silk, and tea, and spices.
+Admiralty courts, boards of trade, and underwriters frown upon driving
+and sail-carrying.  No more are the free-and-easy, dare-devil days, when
+fortunes were made in fast runs and lucky ventures, not alone for owners,
+but for captains as well.  Nothing is ventured now.  The risks of swift
+passages cannot be abided.  Freights are calculated to the last least
+fraction of per cent.  The captains do no speculating, no bargain-making
+for the owners.  The latter attend to all this, and by wire and cable
+rake the ports of the seven seas in quest of cargoes, and through their
+agents make all business arrangements.
+
+It has been learned that small crews only, and large carriers only, can
+return a decent interest on the investment.  The inevitable corollary is
+that speed and spirit are at a discount.  There is no discussion of the
+fact that in the sailing merchant marine the seamen, as a class, have
+sadly deteriorated.  Men no longer sell farms to go to sea.  But the time
+of which Dana writes was the heyday of fortune-making and adventure on
+the sea--with the full connotation of hardship and peril always
+attendant.
+
+It was Dana's fortune, for the sake of the picture, that the _Pilgrim_
+was an average ship, with an average crew and officers, and managed with
+average discipline.  Even the _hazing_ that took place after the
+California coast was reached, was of the average sort.  The _Pilgrim_
+savoured not in any way of a hell-ship.  The captain, while not the
+sweetest-natured man in the world, was only an average down-east driver,
+neither brilliant nor slovenly in his seamanship, neither cruel nor
+sentimental in the treatment of his men.  While, on the one hand, there
+were no extra liberty days, no delicacies added to the meagre forecastle
+fare, nor grog or hot coffee on double watches, on the other hand the
+crew were not chronically crippled by the continual play of
+knuckle-dusters and belaying pins.  Once, and once only, were men flogged
+or ironed--a very fair average for the year 1834, for at that time
+flogging on board merchant vessels was already well on the decline.
+
+The difference between the sea-life then and now can be no better
+epitomised than in Dana's description of the dress of the sailor of his
+day:
+
+"The trousers tight around the hips, and thence hanging long and loose
+around the feet, a superabundance of checked shirt, a low-crowned, well-
+varnished black hat, worn on the back of the head, with half a fathom of
+black ribbon hanging over the left eye, and a peculiar tie to the black
+silk neckerchief."
+
+Though Dana sailed from Boston only three-quarters of a century ago, much
+that is at present obsolete was then in full sway.  For instance, the old
+word _larboard_ was still in use.  He was a member of the _larboard_
+watch.  The vessel was on the _larboard_ tack.  It was only the other
+day, because of its similarity in sound to starboard, that _larboard_ was
+changed to _port_.  Try to imagine "All larboard bowlines on deck!" being
+shouted down into the forecastle of a present day ship.  Yet that was the
+call used on the _Pilgrim_ to fetch Dana and the rest of his watch on
+deck.
+
+The chronometer, which is merely the least imperfect time-piece man has
+devised, makes possible the surest and easiest method by far of
+ascertaining longitude.  Yet the _Pilgrim_ sailed in a day when the
+chronometer was just coming into general use.  So little was it depended
+upon that the _Pilgrim_ carried only one, and that one, going wrong at
+the outset, was never used again.  A navigator of the present would be
+aghast if asked to voyage for two years, from Boston, around the Horn to
+California, and back again, without a chronometer.  In those days such a
+proceeding was a matter of course, for those were the days when dead
+reckoning was indeed something to reckon on, when running down the
+latitude was a common way of finding a place, and when lunar observations
+were direly necessary.  It may be fairly asserted that very few merchant
+officers of to-day ever make a lunar observation, and that a large
+percentage are unable to do it.
+
+"Sept. 22nd., upon coming on deck at seven bells in the morning we found
+the other watch aloft throwing water upon the sails, and looking astern
+we saw a small, clipper-built brig with a black hull heading directly
+after us.  We went to work immediately, and put all the canvas upon the
+brig which we could get upon her, rigging out oars for studding-sail
+yards; and contined wetting down the sails by buckets of water whipped up
+to the mast-head . . . She was armed, and full of men, and showed no
+colours."
+
+The foregoing sounds like a paragraph from "Midshipman Easy" or the
+"Water Witch," rather than a paragraph from the soberest, faithfullest,
+and most literal chronicle of the sea ever written.  And yet the chase by
+a pirate occurred, on board the brig _Pilgrim_, on September 22nd,
+1834--something like only two generations ago.
+
+Dana was the thorough-going type of man, not overbalanced and erratic,
+without quirk or quibble of temperament.  He was efficient, but not
+brilliant.  His was a general all-round efficiency.  He was efficient at
+the law; he was efficient at college; he was efficient as a sailor; he
+was efficient in the matter of pride, when that pride was no more than
+the pride of a forecastle hand, at twelve dollars a month, in his
+seaman's task well done, in the smart sailing of his captain, in the
+clearness and trimness of his ship.
+
+There is no sailor whose cockles of the heart will not warm to Dana's
+description of the first time he sent down a royal yard.  Once or twice
+he had seen it done.  He got an old hand in the crew to coach him.  And
+then, the first anchorage at Monterey, being pretty _thick_ with the
+second mate, he got him to ask the mate to be sent up the first time the
+royal yards were struck.  "Fortunately," as Dana describes it, "I got
+through without any word from the officer; and heard the 'well done' of
+the mate, when the yard reached the deck, with as much satisfaction as I
+ever felt at Cambridge on seeing a 'bene' at the foot of a Latin
+exercise."
+
+"This was the first time I had taken a weather ear-ring, and I felt not a
+little proud to sit astride of the weather yard-arm, past the ear-ring,
+and sing out 'Haul out to leeward!'"  He had been over a year at sea
+before he essayed this able seaman's task, but he did it, and he did it
+with pride.  And with pride, he went down a four-hundred foot cliff, on a
+pair of top-gallant studding-sail halyards bent together, to dislodge
+several dollars worth of stranded bullock hides, though all the acclaim
+he got from his mates was: "What a d-d fool you were to risk your life
+for half a dozen hides!"
+
+In brief, it was just this efficiency in pride, as well as work, that
+enabled Dana to set down, not merely the photograph detail of life before
+the mast and hide-droghing on the coast of California, but of the
+untarnished simple psychology and ethics of the forecastle hands who
+droghed the hides, stood at the wheel, made and took in sail, tarred down
+the rigging, holystoned the decks, turned in all-standing, grumbled as
+they cut about the kid, criticised the seamanship of their officers, and
+estimated the duration of their exile from the cubic space of the hide-
+house.
+
+JACK LONDON
+Glen Ellen, California,
+August 13, 1911.
+
+
+
+A WICKED WOMAN
+(Curtain Raiser)
+BY JACK LONDON
+
+
+Scene--California.
+
+Time--Afternoon of a summer day.
+
+CHARACTERS
+
+LORETTA, A sweet, young thing.  Frightfully innocent.  About nineteen
+years old.  Slender, delicate, a fragile flower.  Ingenuous.
+
+NED BASHFORD, A jaded young man of the world, who has philosophised his
+experiences and who is without faith in the veracity or purity of women.
+
+BILLY MARSH, A boy from a country town who is just about as innocent as
+Loretta.  Awkward.  Positive.  Raw and callow youth.
+
+ALICE HEMINGWAY, A society woman, good-hearted, and a match-maker.
+
+JACK HEMINGWAY, Her husband.
+
+MAID.
+
+
+A WICKED WOMAN
+
+
+[Curtain rises on a conventional living room of a country house in
+California.  It is the Hemingway house at Santa Clara.  The room is
+remarkable for magnificent stone fireplace at rear centre.  On either
+side of fireplace are generous, diamond-paned windows.  Wide, curtained
+doorways to right and left.  To left, front, table, with vase of flowers
+and chairs.  To right, front, grand piano.]
+
+[Curtain discovers LORETTA seated at piano, not playing, her back to it,
+facing NED BASHFORD, who is standing.]
+
+LORETTA.  [Petulantly, fanning herself with sheet of music.]  No, I won't
+go fishing.  It's too warm.  Besides, the fish won't bite so early in the
+afternoon.
+
+NED.  Oh, come on.  It's not warm at all.  And anyway, we won't really
+fish.  I want to tell you something.
+
+LORETTA.  [Still petulantly.]  You are always wanting to tell me
+something.
+
+NED.  Yes, but only in fun.  This is different.  This is serious.  Our
+. . . my happiness depends upon it.
+
+LORETTA.  [Speaking eagerly, no longer petulant, looking, serious and
+delighted, divining a proposal.]  Then don't wait.  Tell me right here.
+
+NED.  [Almost threateningly.]  Shall I?
+
+LORETTA.  [Challenging.]  Yes.
+
+[He looks around apprehensively as though fearing interruption, clears
+his throat, takes resolution, also takes LORETTA's hand.]
+
+[LORETTA is startled, timid, yet willing to hear, naively unable to
+conceal her love for him.]
+
+NED.  [Speaking softly.]  Loretta  . . . I, . . . ever since I met you I
+have--
+
+[JACK HEMINGWAY appears in the doorway to the left, just entering.]
+
+[NED suddenly drops LORETTA's hand.  He shows exasperation.]
+
+[LORETTA shows disappointment at interruption.]
+
+NED.  Confound it
+
+LORETTA.  [Shocked.]  Ned!  Why will you swear so?
+
+NED.  [Testily.]  That isn't swearing.
+
+LORETTA.  What is it, pray?
+
+NED.  Displeasuring.
+
+JACK HEMINGWAY.  [Who is crossing over to right.]  Squabbling again?
+
+LORETTA.  [Indignantly and with dignity.]  No, we're not.
+
+NED.  [Gruffly.]  What do you want now?
+
+JACK HEMINGWAY.  [Enthusiastically.]  Come on fishing.
+
+NED.  [Snappily.]  No.  It's too warm.
+
+JACK HEMINGWAY.  [Resignedly, going out right.]  You needn't take a
+fellow's head off.
+
+LORETTA.  I thought you wanted to go fishing.
+
+NED.  Not with Jack.
+
+LORETTA.  [Accusingly, fanning herself vigorously.]  And you told me it
+wasn't warm at all.
+
+NED.  [Speaking softly.]  That isn't what I wanted to tell you, Loretta.
+[He takes her hand.]  Dear Loretta--
+
+[Enter abruptly ALICE HEMINGWAY from right.]
+
+[LORETTA sharply jerks her hand away, and looks put out.]
+
+[NED tries not to look awkward.]
+
+ALICE HEMINGWAY.  Goodness!  I thought you'd both gone fishing!
+
+LORETTA.  [Sweetly.]  Is there anything you want, Alice?
+
+NED.  [Trying to be courteous.]  Anything I can do?
+
+ALICE HEMINGWAY.  [Speaking quickly, and trying to withdraw.]  No, no.  I
+only came to see if the mail had arrived.
+
+LORETTA AND NED
+
+[Speaking together.]  No, it hasn't arrived.
+
+LORETTA.  [Suddenly moving toward door to right.]  I am going to see.
+
+[NED looks at her reproachfully.]
+
+[LORETTA looks back tantalisingly from doorway and disappears.]
+
+[NED flings himself disgustedly into Morris chair.]
+
+ALICE HEMINGWAY.  [Moving over and standing in front of him.  Speaks
+accusingly.]  What have you been saying to her?
+
+NED.  [Disgruntled.]  Nothing.
+
+ALICE HEMINGWAY.  [Threateningly.]  Now listen to me, Ned.
+
+NED.  [Earnestly.]  On my word, Alice, I've been saying nothing to her.
+
+ALICE HEMINGWAY.  [With sudden change of front.]  Then you ought to have
+been saying something to her.
+
+NED.  [Irritably.  Getting chair for her, seating her, and seating
+himself again.]  Look here, Alice, I know your game.  You invited me down
+here to make a fool of me.
+
+ALICE HEMINGWAY.  Nothing of the sort, sir.  I asked you down to meet a
+sweet and unsullied girl--the sweetest, most innocent and ingenuous girl
+in the world.
+
+NED.  [Dryly.]  That's what you said in your letter.
+
+ALICE HEMINGWAY.  And that's why you came.  Jack had been trying for a
+year to get you to come.  He did not know what kind of a letter to write.
+
+NED.  If you think I came because of a line in a letter about a girl I'd
+never seen--
+
+ALICE HEMINGWAY.  [Mockingly.]  The poor, jaded, world-worn man, who is
+no longer interested in women . . . and girls!  The poor, tired pessimist
+who has lost all faith in the goodness of women--
+
+NED.  For which you are responsible.
+
+ALICE HEMINGWAY.  [Incredulously.]  I?
+
+NED.  You are responsible.  Why did you throw me over and marry Jack?
+
+ALICE HEMINGWAY.  Do you want to know?
+
+NED.  Yes.
+
+ALICE HEMINGWAY.  [Judiciously.]  First, because I did not love you.
+Second, because you did not love me.  [She smiles at his protesting hand
+and at the protesting expression on his face.]  And third, because there
+were just about twenty-seven other women at that time that you loved, or
+thought you loved.  That is why I married Jack.  And that is why you lost
+faith in the goodness of women.  You have only yourself to blame.
+
+NED.  [Admiringly.]  You talk so convincingly.  I almost believe you as I
+listen to you.  And yet I know all the time that you are like all the
+rest of your sex--faithless, unveracious, and . . .
+
+[He glares at her, but does not proceed.]
+
+ALICE HEMINGWAY.  Go on.  I'm not afraid.
+
+NED.  [With finality.]  And immoral.
+
+ALICE HEMINGWAY.  Oh!  You wretch!
+
+NED.  [Gloatingly.]  That's right.  Get angry.  You may break the
+furniture if you wish.  I don't mind.
+
+ALICE HEMINGWAY.  [With sudden change of front, softly.]  And how about
+Loretta?
+
+[NED gasps and remains silent.]
+
+ALICE HEMINGWAY.  The depths of duplicity that must lurk under that sweet
+and innocent exterior . . . according to your philosophy!
+
+NED.  [Earnestly.]  Loretta is an exception, I confess.  She is all that
+you said in your letter.  She is a little fairy, an angel.  I never
+dreamed of anything like her.  It is remarkable to find such a woman in
+this age.
+
+ALICE HEMINGWAY.  [Encouragingly.]  She is so naive.
+
+NED.  [Taking the bait.]  Yes, isn't she?  Her face and her tongue betray
+all her secrets.
+
+ALICE HEMINGWAY.  [Nodding her head.]  Yes, I have noticed it.
+
+NED.  [Delightedly.]  Have you?
+
+ALICE HEMINGWAY.  She cannot conceal anything.  Do you know that she
+loves you?
+
+NED.  [Falling into the trap, eagerly.]  Do you think so?
+
+ALICE HEMINGWAY.  [Laughing and rising.]  And to think I once permitted
+you to make love to me for three weeks!
+
+[NED rises.]
+
+[MAID enters from left with letters, which she brings to ALICE
+HEMINGWAY.]
+
+ALICE HEMINGWAY.  [Running over letters.]  None for you, Ned.  [Selecting
+two letters for herself.]  Tradesmen.  [Handing remainder of letters to
+MAID.]  And three for Loretta.  [Speaking to MAID.]  Put them on the
+table, Josie.
+
+[MAID puts letters on table to left front, and makes exit to left.]
+
+NED.  [With shade of jealousy.]  Loretta seems to have quite a
+correspondence.
+
+ALICE HEMINGWAY.  [With a sigh.]  Yes, as I used to when I was a girl.
+
+NED.  But hers are family letters.
+
+ALICE HEMINGWAY.  Yes, I did not notice any from Billy.
+
+NED.  [Faintly.]  Billy?
+
+ALICE HEMINGWAY.  [Nodding.]  Of course she has told you about him?
+
+NED.  [Gasping.]  She has had lovers . . . already?
+
+ALICE HEMINGWAY.  And why not?  She is nineteen.
+
+NED.  [Haltingly.]  This . . . er . . . this Billy . . . ?
+
+ALICE HEMINGWAY.  [Laughing and putting her hand reassuringly on his
+arm.]  Now don't be alarmed, poor, tired philosopher.  She doesn't love
+Billy at all.
+
+[LORETTA enters from right.]
+
+ALICE HEMINGWAY.  [To LORETTA, nodding toward table.]  Three letters for
+you.
+
+LORETTA.  [Delightedly.]  Oh!  Thank you.
+
+[LORETTA trips swiftly across to table, looks at letters, sits down,
+opens letters, and begins to read.]
+
+NED.  [Suspiciously.]  But Billy?
+
+ALICE HEMINGWAY.  I am afraid he loves her very hard.  That is why she is
+here.  They had to send her away.  Billy was making life miserable for
+her.  They were little children together--playmates.  And Billy has been,
+well, importunate.  And Loretta, poor child, does not know anything about
+marriage.  That is all.
+
+NED.  [Reassured.]  Oh, I see.
+
+[ALICE HEMINGWAY starts slowly toward right exit, continuing conversation
+and accompanied by NED.]
+
+ALICE HEMINGWAY.  [Calling to LORETTA.]  Are you going fishing, Loretta?
+
+[LORETTA looks up from letter and shakes head.]
+
+ALICE HEMINGWAY.  [To NED.]  Then you're not, I suppose?
+
+NED.  No, it's too warm.
+
+ALICE HEMINGWAY.  Then I know the place for you.
+
+NED.  Where?
+
+ALICE HEMINGWAY.  Right here.  [Looks significantly in direction of
+LORETTA.]  Now is your opportunity to say what you ought to say.
+
+[ALICE HEMINGWAY laughs teasingly and goes out to right.]
+
+[NED hesitates, starts to follow her, looks at LORETTA, and stops.  He
+twists his moustache and continues to look at her meditatively.]
+
+[LORETTA is unaware of his presence and goes on reading.  Finishes
+letter, folds it, replaces in envelope, looks up, and discovers NED.]
+
+LORETTA.  [Startled.]  Oh!  I thought you were gone.
+
+NED.  [Walking across to her.]  I thought I'd stay and finish our
+conversation.
+
+LORETTA.  [Willingly, settling herself to listen.]  Yes, you were going
+to . . . [Drops eyes and ceases talking.]
+
+NED.  [Taking her hand, tenderly.]  I little dreamed when I came down
+here visiting that I was to meet my destiny in--[Abruptly releases
+LORETTA's hand.]
+
+[MAID enters from left with tray.]
+
+[LORETTA glances into tray and discovers that it is empty.  She looks
+inquiringly at MAID.]
+
+MAID.  A gentleman to see you.  He hasn't any card.  He said for me to
+tell you that it was Billy.
+
+LORETTA.  [Starting, looking with dismay and appeal to NED.]  Oh! . . .
+Ned!
+
+NED  [Gracefully and courteously, rising to his feet and preparing to
+go.]  If you'll excuse me now, I'll wait till afterward to tell you what
+I wanted.
+
+LORETTA.  [In dismay.]  What shall I do?
+
+NED.  [Pausing.]  Don't you want to see him?  [LORETTA shakes her head.]
+Then don't.
+
+LORETTA.  [Slowly.]  I can't do that.  We are old friends.  We . . . were
+children together.  [To the MAID.]  Send him in.  [To NED, who has
+started to go out toward right.]  Don't go, Ned.
+
+[MAID makes exit to left.]
+
+NED.  [Hesitating a moment.]  I'll come back.
+
+[NED makes exit to right.]
+
+[LORETTA, left alone on stage, shows perturbation and dismay.]
+
+[BILLY enters from left.  Stands in doorway a moment.  His shoes are
+dusty.  He looks overheated.  His eyes and face brighten at sight of
+LORETTA.]
+
+BILLY.  [Stepping forward, ardently.]  Loretta!
+
+LORETTA.  [Not exactly enthusiastic in her reception, going slowly to
+meet him.]  You never said you were coming.
+
+[BILLY shows that he expects to kiss her, but she merely shakes his
+hand.]
+
+BILLY.  [Looking down at his very dusty shoes.]  I walked from the
+station.
+
+LORETTA.  If you had let me know, the carriage would have been sent for
+you.
+
+BILLY.  [With expression of shrewdness.]  If I had let you know, you
+wouldn't have let me come.
+
+[BILLY looks around stage cautiously, then tries to kiss her.]
+
+LORETTA.  [Refusing to be kissed. ]  Won't you sit down?
+
+BILLY.  [Coaxingly.]  Go on, just one.  [LORETTA shakes head and holds
+him off.]  Why not?  We're engaged.
+
+LORETTA.  [With decision. ]  We're not.  You know we're not.  You know I
+broke it off the day before I came away.  And . . . and . . . you'd
+better sit down.
+
+[BILLY sits down on edge of chair.  LORETTA seats herself by table.
+Billy, without rising, jerks his chair forward till they are facing each
+other, his knees touching hers.  He yearns toward her.  She moves back
+her chair slightly.]
+
+BILLY.  [With supreme confidence.]  That's what I came to see you for--to
+get engaged over again.
+
+[BILLY hudges chair forward and tries to take her hand.]
+
+[LORETTA hudges her chair back.]
+
+BILLY.  [Drawing out large silver watch and looking at it.]  Now look
+here, Loretta, I haven't any time to lose.  I've got to leave for that
+train in ten minutes.  And I want you to set the day.
+
+LORETTA.  But we're not engaged, Billy.  So there can't be any setting of
+the day.
+
+BILLY.  [With confidence.]  But we're going to be.  [Suddenly breaking
+out.]  Oh, Loretta, if you only knew how I've suffered.  That first night
+I didn't sleep a wink.  I haven't slept much ever since.  [Hudges chair
+forward.]  I walk the floor all night.  [Solemnly.]  Loretta, I don't eat
+enough to keep a canary bird alive.  Loretta . . . [Hudges chair
+forward.]
+
+LORETTA.  [Hudging her chair back maternally.]  Billy, what you need is a
+tonic.  Have you seen Doctor Haskins?
+
+BILLY.  [Looking at watch and evincing signs of haste.]  Loretta, when a
+girl kisses a man, it means she is going to marry him.
+
+LORETTA.  I know it, Billy.  But . . . [She glances toward letters on
+table.]  Captain Kitt doesn't want me to marry you.  He says . . . [She
+takes letter and begins to open it.]
+
+BILLY.  Never mind what Captain Kitt says.  He wants you to stay and be
+company for your sister.  He doesn't want you to marry me because he
+knows she wants to keep you.
+
+LORETTA.  Daisy doesn't want to keep me.  She wants nothing but my own
+happiness.  She says--[She takes second letter from table and begins to
+open it.]
+
+BILLY.  Never mind what Daisy says--
+
+LORETTA.  [Taking third letter from table and beginning to open it.]  And
+Martha says--
+
+BILLY.  [Angrily.]  Darn Martha and the whole boiling of them!
+
+LORETTA.  [Reprovingly.]  Oh, Billy!
+
+BILLY.  [Defensively.]  Darn isn't swearing, and you know it isn't.
+
+[There is an awkward pause.  Billy has lost the thread of the
+conversation and has vacant expression.]
+
+BILLY.  [Suddenly recollecting.]  Never mind Captain Kitt, and Daisy, and
+Martha, and what they want.  The question is, what do you want?
+
+LORETTA.  [Appealingly.]  Oh, Billy, I'm so unhappy.
+
+BILLY.  [Ignoring the appeal and pressing home the point.]  The thing is,
+do you want to marry me?  [He looks at his watch.]  Just answer that.
+
+LORETTA.  Aren't you afraid you'll miss that train?
+
+BILLY.  Darn the train!
+
+LORETTA.  [Reprovingly.]  Oh, Billy!
+
+BILLY.  [Most irascibly.]  Darn isn't swearing.  [Plaintively.]  That's
+the way you always put me off.  I didn't come all the way here for a
+train.  I came for you.  Now just answer me one thing.  Do you want to
+marry me?
+
+LORETTA.  [Firmly.]  No, I don't want to marry you.
+
+BILLY.  [With assurance.]  But you've got to, just the same.
+
+LORETTA.  [With defiance.]  Got to?
+
+BILLY.  [With unshaken assurance.]  That's what I said--got to.  And I'll
+see that you do.
+
+LORETTA.  [Blazing with anger.]  I am no longer a child.  You can't bully
+me, Billy Marsh!
+
+BILLY.  [Coolly.]  I'm not trying to bully you.  I'm trying to save your
+reputation.
+
+LORETTA.  [Faintly.]  Reputation?
+
+BILLY.  [Nodding.]  Yes, reputation.  [He pauses for a moment, then
+speaks very solemnly.]  Loretta, when a woman kisses a man, she's got to
+marry him.
+
+LORETTA.  [Appalled, faintly.]  Got to?
+
+BILLY.  [Dogmatically.]  It is the custom.
+
+LORETTA.  [Brokenly.]  And when . . . a . . . a woman kisses a man and
+doesn't . . . marry him . . . ?
+
+BILLY.  Then there is a scandal.  That's where all the scandals you see
+in the papers come from.
+
+[BILLY looks at watch.]
+
+[LORETTA in silent despair.]
+
+LORETTA.  [In abasement.]  You are a good man, Billy.  [Billy shows that
+he believes it.]  And I am a very wicked woman.
+
+BILLY.  No, you're not, Loretta.  You just didn't know.
+
+LORETTA.  [With a gleam of hope.]  But you kissed me first.
+
+BILLY.  It doesn't matter.  You let me kiss you.
+
+LORETTA.  [Hope dying down.]  But not at first.
+
+BILLY.  But you did afterward and that's what counts.  You let me you in
+the grape-arbour.  You let me--
+
+LORETTA.  [With anguish]  Don't!  Don't!
+
+BILLY.  [Relentlessly.]--kiss you when you were playing the piano.  You
+let me kiss you that day of the picnic.  And I can't remember all the
+times you let me kiss you good night.
+
+LORETTA.  [Beginning to weep.]  Not more than five.
+
+BILLY.  [With conviction.]  Eight at least.
+
+LORETTA.  [Reproachfully, still weeping.]  You told me it was all right.
+
+BILLY.  [Emphatically.]  So it was all right--until you said you wouldn't
+marry me after all.  Then it was a scandal--only no one knows it yet.  If
+you marry me no one ever will know it.  [Looks at watch.]  I've got to
+go.  [Stands up.]  Where's my hat?
+
+LORETTA.  [Sobbing.]  This is awful.
+
+BILLY.  [Approvingly.]  You bet it's awful.  And there's only one way
+out.  [Looks anxiously about for hat.]  What do you say?
+
+LORETTA.  [Brokenly.]  I must think.  I'll write to you.  [Faintly.]  The
+train?  Your hat's in the hall.
+
+BILLY.  [Looks at watch, hastily tries to kiss her, succeeds only in
+shaking hand, starts across stage toward left.]  All right.  You write to
+me.  Write to-morrow.  [Stops for a moment in doorway and speaks very
+solemnly.]  Remember, Loretta, there must be no scandal.
+
+[Billy goes out.]
+
+[LORETTA sits in chair quietly weeping.  Slowly dries eyes, rises from
+chair, and stands, undecided as to what she will do next.]
+
+[NED enters from right, peeping.  Discovers that LORETTA is alone, and
+comes quietly across stage to her.  When NED comes up to her she begins
+weeping again and tries to turn her head away.  NED catches both her
+hands in his and compels her to look at him.  She weeps harder.]
+
+NED.  [Putting one arm protectingly around her shoulder and drawing her
+toward him.]  There, there, little one, don't cry.
+
+LORETTA.  [Turning her face to his shoulder like a tired child, sobbing.]
+Oh, Ned, if you only knew how wicked I am.
+
+NED.  [Smiling indulgently.]  What is the matter, little one?  Has your
+dearly beloved sister failed to write to you?  [LORETTA shakes head.]  Has
+Hemingway been bullying you?  [LORETTA shakes head.]  Then it must have
+been that caller of yours?  [Long pause, during which LORETTA's weeping
+grows more violent.]  Tell me what's the matter, and we'll see what I can
+do.  [He lightly kisses her hair--so lightly that she does not know.]
+
+LORETTA.  [Sobbing.]  I can't.  You will despise me.  Oh, Ned, I am so
+ashamed.
+
+NED.  [Laughing incredulously.]  Let us forget all about it.  I want to
+tell you something that may make me very happy.  My fondest hope is that
+it will make you happy, too.  Loretta, I love you--
+
+LORETTA.  [Uttering a sharp cry of delight, then moaning.]  Too late!
+
+NED.  [Surprised.]  Too late?
+
+LORETTA.  [Still moaning.]  Oh, why did I?  [NED somewhat stiffens.]  I
+was so young.  I did not know the world then.
+
+NED.  What is it all about anyway?
+
+LORETTA.  Oh, I . . . he . . . Billy . . . I am a wicked woman, Ned.  I
+know you will never speak to me again.
+
+NED.  This . . . er . . . this Billy--what has he been doing?
+
+LORETTA.  I . . . he . . . I didn't know.  I was so young.  I could not
+help it.  Oh, I shall go mad, I shall go mad!
+
+[NED's encircling arm goes limp.  He gently disengages her and deposits
+her in big chair.]
+
+[LORETTA buries her face and sobs afresh.]
+
+NED.  [Twisting moustache fiercely, regarding her dubiously, hesitating a
+moment, then drawing up chair and sitting down.]  I . . . I do not
+understand.
+
+LORETTA.  [Wailing.]  I am so unhappy!
+
+NED.  [Inquisitorially.]  Why unhappy?
+
+LORETTA.  Because . . . he . . . he wants to marry me.
+
+NED.  [His face brightening instantly, leaning forward and laying a hand
+soothingly on hers.]  That should not make any girl unhappy.  Because you
+don't love him is no reason--[Abruptly breaking off.]  Of course you
+don't love him?  [LORETTA shakes her head and shoulders vigorously.]
+What?
+
+LORETTA.  [Explosively.]  No, I don't love Billy!  I don't want to love
+Billy!
+
+NED.  [With confidence.]  Because you don't love him is no reason that
+you should be unhappy just because he has proposed to you.
+
+LORETTA.  [Sobbing.]  That's the trouble.  I wish I did love him.  Oh, I
+wish I were dead.
+
+NED.  [Growing complacent.]  Now my dear child, you are worrying yourself
+over trifles.  [His second hand joins the first in holding her hands.]
+Women do it every day.  Because you have changed your mind, or did not
+know you mind, because you have--to use an unnecessarily harsh
+word--jilted a man--
+
+LORETTA.  [Interrupting, raising her head and looking at him.]  Jilted?
+Oh Ned, if that were a all!
+
+NED.  [Hollow voice.]  All!
+
+[NED's hands slowly retreat from hers.  He opens his mouth as though to
+speak further, then changes his mind and remains silent.]
+
+LORETTA.  [Protestingly.]  But I don't want to marry him!
+
+NED.  Then I shouldn't.
+
+LORETTA.  But I ought to marry him.
+
+NED.  _Ought_ to marry him?  [LORETTA nods.]  That is a strong word.
+
+LORETTA.  [Nodding.]  I know it is.  [Her lips are trembling, but she
+strives for control and manages to speak more calmly.]  I am a wicked
+woman.  A terrible wicked woman.  No one knows how wicked I am . . .
+except Billy.
+
+NED.  [Starting, looking at her queerly.]  He . . . Billy knows?  [LORETTA
+nods.  He debates with himself a moment.]  Tell me about it.  You must
+tell me all of it.
+
+LORETTA.  [Faintly, as though about to weep again.]  All of it?
+
+NED.  [Firmly.]  Yes, all of it.
+
+LORETTA.  [Haltingly.]  And . . . will . . . you . . . ever . . . forgive
+. . . me?
+
+NED.  [Drawing a long, breath, desperately.]  Yes, I'll forgive you.  Go
+ahead.
+
+LORETTA.  There was no one to tell me.  We were with each other so much.
+I did not know anything of the world . . . then.  [Pauses.]
+
+NED.  [Impatiently.]  Go on.
+
+LORETTA.  If I had only known.  [Pauses.]
+
+NED.  [Biting his lip and clenching his hands.]  Yes, yes.  Go on.
+
+LORETTA.  We were together almost every evening.
+
+NED.  [Savagely.]  Billy?
+
+LORETTA.  Yes, of course, Billy.  We were with each other so much . . .
+If I had only known . . . There was no one to tell me . . . I was so
+young . . . [Breaks down crying.]
+
+NED.  [Leaping to his feet, explosively.]  The scoundrel!
+
+LORETTA.  [Lifting her head.]  Billy is not a scoundrel . . . He . . . he
+. . . is a good man.
+
+NED.  [Sarcastically.]  I suppose you'll be telling me next that it was
+all your fault.  [LORETTA nods.]  What!
+
+LORETTA.  [Steadily.]  It was all my fault.  I should never have let him.
+I was to blame.
+
+NED.  [Paces up and down for a minute, stops in front of her, and speaks
+with resignation.]  All right.  I don't blame you in the least, Loretta.
+And you have been very honest.  It is . . . er . . . commendable.  But
+Billy is right, and you are wrong.  You must get married.
+
+LORETTA.  [In dim, far-away voice.]  To Billy?
+
+NED.  Yes, to Billy.  I'll see to it.  Where does he live?  I'll make
+him.  If he won't I'll . . . I'll shoot him!
+
+LORETTA.  [Crying out with alarm.]  Oh, Ned, you won't do that?
+
+NED.  [Sternly.]  I shall.
+
+LORETTA.  But I don't want to marry Billy.
+
+NED.  [Sternly.]  You must.  And Billy must.  Do you understand?  It is
+the only thing.
+
+LORETTA.  That's what Billy said.
+
+NED.  [Triumphantly.]  You see, I am right.
+
+LORETTA.  And if . . . if I don't marry him . . . there will be . . .
+scandal?
+
+NED.  [Calmly.]  Yes, there will be scandal.
+
+LORETTA.  That's what Billy said.  Oh, I am so unhappy!
+
+[LORETTA breaks down into violent weeping.]
+
+[NED paces grimly up and down, now and again fiercely twisting his
+moustache.]
+
+LORETTA.  [Face buried, sobbing and crying all the time.]
+
+I don't want to leave Daisy!  I don't want to leave Daisy!  What shall I
+do?  What shall I do?  How was I to know?  He didn't tell me.  Nobody
+else ever kissed me.  [NED stops curiously to listen.  As he listens his
+face brightens.]  I never dreamed a kiss could be so terrible . . . until
+. . . until he told me.  He only told me this morning.
+
+NED.  [Abruptly.]  Is that what you are crying about?
+
+LORETTA.  [Reluctantly.]  N-no.
+
+NED.  [In hopeless voice, the brightness gone out of his face, about to
+begin pacing again.]  Then what are you crying about?
+
+LORETTA.  Because you said I had to marry Billy.  I don't want to marry
+Billy.  I don't want to leave Daisy.  I don't know what I want.  I wish I
+were dead.
+
+NED.  [Nerving himself for another effort.]  Now look here, Loretta, be
+sensible.  What is this about kisses?  You haven't told me everything
+after all.
+
+LORETTA.  I . . . I don't want to tell you everything.
+
+NED.  [Imperatively.]  You must.
+
+LORETTA.  [Surrendering.]  Well, then . . . must I?
+
+NED.  You must.
+
+LORETTA.  [Floundering.]  He . . . I . . . we . . . I let him, and he
+kissed me.
+
+NED.  [Desperately, controlling himself.]  Go on.
+
+LORETTA.  He says eight, but I can't think of more than five times.
+
+NED.  Yes, go on.
+
+LORETTA.  That's all.
+
+NED.  [With vast incredulity.]  All?
+
+LORETTA.  [Puzzled.]  All?
+
+NED.  [Awkwardly.]  I mean . . . er . . . nothing worse?
+
+LORETTA.  [Puzzled.]  Worse?  As though there could be.  Billy said--
+
+NED.  [Interrupting.]  When?
+
+LORETTA.  This afternoon.  Just now.  Billy said that my . . . our . . .
+our . . . our kisses were terrible if we didn't get married.
+
+NED.  What else did he say?
+
+LORETTA.  He said that when a woman permitted a man to kiss her she
+always married him.  That it was awful if she didn't.  It was the custom,
+he said; and I say it is a bad, wicked custom, and it has broken my
+heart.  I shall never be happy again.  I know I am terrible, but I can't
+help it.  I must have been born wicked.
+
+NED.  [Absent-mindedly bringing out a cigarette and striking a match.]  Do
+you mind if I smoke?  [Coming to himself again, and flinging away match
+and cigarette.]  I beg your pardon.  I don't want to smoke.  I didn't
+mean that at all.  What I mean is . . . [He bends over LORETTA, catches
+her hands in his, then sits on arm of chair, softly puts one arm around
+her, and is about to kiss her.]
+
+LORETTA.  [With horror, repulsing him.]  No!  No!
+
+NED.  [Surprised.]  What's the matter?
+
+LORETTA.  [Agitatedly.]  Would you make me a wickeder woman than I am?
+
+NED.  A kiss?
+
+LORETTA.  There will be another scandal.  That would make two scandals.
+
+NED.  To kiss the woman I love . . . a scandal?
+
+LORETTA.  Billy loves me, and he said so.
+
+NED.  Billy is a joker . . . or else he is as innocent as you.
+
+LORETTA.  But you said so yourself.
+
+NED.  [Taken aback.]  I?
+
+LORETTA.  Yes, you said it yourself, with your own lips, not ten minutes
+ago.  I shall never believe you again.
+
+NED.  [Masterfully putting arm around her and drawing her toward him.]
+And I am a joker, too, and a very wicked man.  Nevertheless, you must
+trust me.  There will be nothing wrong.
+
+LORETTA.  [Preparing to yield.]  And no . . . scandal?
+
+NED.  Scandal fiddlesticks.  Loretta, I want you to be my wife.  [He
+waits anxiously.]
+
+[JACK HEMINGWAY, in fishing costume, appears in doorway to right and
+looks on.]
+
+NED.  You might say something.
+
+LORETTA.  I will . . . if . . .
+
+[ALICE HEMINGWAY appears in doorway to left and looks on.]
+
+NED.  [In suspense.]  Yes, go on.
+
+LORETTA.  If I don't have to marry Billy.
+
+NED.  [Almost shouting.]  You can't marry both of us!
+
+LORETTA.  [Sadly, repulsing him with her hands.]  Then, Ned, I cannot
+marry you.
+
+NED.  [Dumbfounded.]  W-what?
+
+LORETTA.  [Sadly.]  Because I can't marry both of you.
+
+NED.  Bosh and nonsense!
+
+LORETTA.  I'd like to marry you, but . . .
+
+NED.  There is nothing to prevent you.
+
+LORETTA.  [With sad conviction.]  Oh, yes, there is.  You said yourself
+that I had to marry Billy.  You said you would s-s-shoot him if he
+didn't.
+
+NED.  [Drawing her toward him.]  Nevertheless . . .
+
+LORETTA.  [Slightly holding him off.]  And it isn't the custom . . . what
+. . . Billy said?
+
+NED.  No, it isn't the custom.  Now, Loretta, will you marry me?
+
+LORETTA.  [Pouting demurely.]  Don't be angry with me, Ned.  [He gathers
+her into his arms and kisses her.  She partially frees herself, gasping.]
+I wish it were the custom, because now I'd have to marry you, Ned,
+wouldn't I?
+
+[NED and LORETTA kiss a second time and profoundly.]
+
+[JACK HEMINGWAY chuckles.]
+
+[NED and LORETTA, startled, but still in each other's arms, look around.
+NED looks sillily at ALICE HEMINGWAY.  LORETTA looks at JACK HEMINGWAY.]
+
+LORETTA.  I don't care.
+
+CURTAIN
+
+
+
+
+THE BIRTH MARK
+SKETCH BY JACK LONDON written for Robert and Julia Fitzsimmons
+
+
+SCENE--One of the club rooms of the West Bay Athletic Club.  Near centre
+front is a large table covered with newspapers and magazines.  At left a
+punching-bag apparatus.  At right, against wall, a desk, on which rests a
+desk-telephone.  Door at rear toward left.  On walls are framed pictures
+of pugilists, conspicuous among which is one of Robert Fitzsimmons.
+Appropriate furnishings, etc., such as foils, clubs, dumb-bells and
+trophies.
+
+[Enter MAUD SYLVESTER.]
+
+[She is dressed as a man, in evening clothes, preferably a Tuxedo.  In
+her hand is a card, and under her arm a paper-wrapped parcel.  She peeps
+about curiously and advances to table.  She is timorous and excited,
+elated and at the same time frightened.  Her eyes are dancing with
+excitement.]
+
+MAUD.  [Pausing by table.]  Not a soul saw me.  I wonder where everybody
+is.  And that big brother of mine said I could not get in.  [She reads
+back of card.]  "Here is my card, Maudie.  If you can use it, go ahead.
+But you will never get inside the door.  I consider my bet as good as
+won."  [Looking up, triumphantly.]  You do, do you?  Oh, if you could see
+your little sister now.  Here she is, inside.  [Pauses, and looks about.]
+So this is the West Bay Athletic Club.  No women allowed.  Well, here I
+am, if I don't look like one.  [Stretches out one leg and then the other,
+and looks at them.  Leaving card and parcel on table, she struts around
+like a man, looks at pictures of pugilists on walls, reading aloud their
+names and making appropriate remarks.  But she stops before the portrait
+of Fitzsimmons and reads aloud.]  "Robert Fitzsimmons, the greatest
+warrior of them all."  [Clasps hands, and looking up at portrait
+murmurs.]  Oh, you dear!
+
+[Continues strutting around, imitating what she considers are a man's
+stride and swagger, returns to table and proceeds to unwrap parcel.]
+Well, I'll go out like a girl, if I did come in like a man.  [Drops
+wrapping paper on table and holds up a woman's long automobile cloak and
+a motor bonnet.  Is suddenly startled by sound of approaching footsteps
+and glances in a frightened way toward door.]  Mercy!  Here comes
+somebody now!  [Glances about her in alarm, drops cloak and bonnet on
+floor close to table, seizes a handful of newspapers, and runs to large
+leather chair to right of table, where she seats herself hurriedly.  One
+paper she holds up before her, hiding her face as she pretends to read.
+Unfortunately the paper is upside down.  The other papers lie on her
+lap.]
+
+[Enter ROBERT FITZSIMMONS.]
+
+[He looks about, advances to table, takes out cigarette case and is about
+to select one, when he notices motor cloak and bonnet on floor.  He lays
+cigarette case on table and picks them up.  They strike him as profoundly
+curious things to be in a club room.  He looks at MAUD, then sees card on
+table.  He picks it up and reach it to himself, then looks at her with
+comprehension.  Hidden by her newspaper, she sees nothing.  He looks at
+card again and reads and speaks in an aside.]
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  "Maudie.  John H. Sylvester."  That must be Jack
+Sylvester's sister Maud.  [FITZSIMMONS shows by his expression that he is
+going to play a joke.  Tossing cloak and bonnet under the table he places
+card in his vest pocket, selects a chair, sits down, and looks at MAUD.
+He notes paper is upside down, is hugely tickled, and laughs silently.]
+Hello!  [Newspaper is agitated by slight tremor.  He speaks more loudly.]
+Hello!  [Newspaper shakes badly.  He speaks very loudly.]  Hello!
+
+MAUD.  [Peeping at him over top of paper and speaking hesitatingly.]  H-h-
+hello!
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  [Gruffly.]  You are a queer one, reading a paper upside
+down.
+
+MAUD.  [Lowering newspaper and trying to appear at ease.]  It's quite a
+trick, isn't it?  I often practise it.  I'm real clever at it, you know.
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  [Grunts, then adds.]  Seems to me I have seen you before.
+
+MAUD.  [Glancing quickly from his face to portrait and back again.]  Yes,
+and I know you--You are Robert Fitzsimmons.
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  I thought I knew you.
+
+MAUD.  Yes, it was out in San Francisco.  My people still live there.  I'm
+just--ahem--doing New York.
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  But I don't quite remember the name.
+
+MAUD.  Jones--Harry Jones.
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  [Hugely delighted, leaping from chair and striding over to
+her.]  Sure.  [Slaps her resoundingly on shoulder.]
+
+[She is nearly crushed by the weight of the blow, and at the same time
+shocked.  She scrambles to her feet.]
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  Glad to see you, Harry.  [He wrings her hand, so that it
+hurts.]  Glad to see you again, Harry.  [He continues wringing her hand
+and pumping her arm.]
+
+MAUD.  [Struggling to withdraw her hand and finally succeeding.  Her
+voice is rather faint.]  Ye-es, er . . . Bob . . . er . . . glad to see
+you again.  [She looks ruefully at her bruised fingers and sinks into
+chair.  Then, recollecting her part, she crosses her legs in a mannish
+way.]
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  [Crossing to desk at right, against which he leans, facing
+her.]  You were a wild young rascal in those San Francisco days.
+[Chuckling.]  Lord, Lord, how it all comes back to me.
+
+MAUD.  [Boastfully.]  I was wild--some.
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  [Grinning.]  I should say!  Remember that night I put you
+to bed?
+
+MAUD.  [Forgetting herself, indignantly.]  Sir!
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  You were . . . er . . . drunk.
+
+MAUD.  I never was!
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  Surely you haven't forgotten that night!  You began with
+dropping champagne bottles out of the club windows on the heads of the
+people on the sidewalk, and you wound up by assaulting a cabman.  And let
+me tell you I saved you from a good licking right there, and squared it
+with the police.  Don't you remember?
+
+MAUD.  [Nodding hesitatingly.]  Yes, it is beginning to come back to me.
+I was a bit tight that night.
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  [Exultantly.]  A bit tight!  Why, before I could get you to
+bed you insisted on telling me the story of your life.
+
+MAUD.  Did I?  I don't remember that.
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  I should say not.  You were past remembering anything by
+that time.  You had your arms around my neck--
+
+MAUD.  [Interrupting.]  Oh!
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  And you kept repeating over and over, "Bob, dear Bob."
+
+MAUD.  [Springing to her feet.]  Oh!  I never did!  [Recollecting
+herself.]  Perhaps I must have.  I was a trifle wild in those days, I
+admit.  But I'm wise now.  I've sowed my wild oats and steadied down.
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  I'm glad to hear that, Harry.  You were tearing off a
+pretty fast pace in those days.  [Pause, in which MAUD nods.]  Still
+punch the bag?
+
+MAUD.  [In quick alarm, glancing at punching bag.]  No, I've got out of
+the hang of it.
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  [Reproachfully.]  You haven't forgotten that
+right-and-left, arm, elbow and shoulder movement I taught you?
+
+MAUD.  [With hesitation.]  N-o-o.
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  [Moving toward bag to left.]  Then, come on.
+
+MAUD.  [Rising reluctantly and following.]  I'd rather see you punch the
+bag.  I'd just love to.
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  I will, afterward.  You go to it first.
+
+MAUD.  [Eyeing the bag in alarm.]  No; you.  I'm out of practice.
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  [Looking at her sharply.]  How many drinks have you had to-
+night?
+
+MAUD.  Not a one.  I don't drink--that is--er--only occasionally.
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  [Indicating bag.]  Then go to it.
+
+MAUD.  No; I tell you I am out of practice.  I've forgotten it all.  You
+see, I made a discovery.
+
+[Pauses.]
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  Yes?
+
+MAUD.  I--I--you remember what a light voice I always had--almost
+soprano?
+
+[FITZSIMMONS nods.]
+
+MAUD.  Well, I discovered it was a perfect falsetto.
+
+[FITZSIMMONS nods.]
+
+MAUD.  I've been practising it ever since.  Experts, in another room,
+would swear it was a woman's voice.  So would you, if you turned your
+back and I sang.
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  [Who has been laughing incredulously, now becomes
+suspicious.]  Look here, kid, I think you are an impostor.  You are not
+Harry Jones at all.
+
+MAUD.  I am, too.
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  I don't believe it.  He was heavier than you.
+
+MAUD.  I had the fever last summer and lost a lot of weight.
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  You are the Harry Jones that got sousesd and had to be put
+to bed?
+
+MAUD.  Y-e-s.
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  There is one thing I remember very distinctly.  Harry Jones
+had a birth mark on his knee.  [He looks at her legs searchingly.]
+
+MAUD.  [Embarrassed, then resolving to carry it out.]  Yes, right here.
+[She advances right leg and touches it.]
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  [Triumphantly.]  Wrong.  It was the other knee.
+
+MAUD.  I ought to know.
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  You haven't any birth mark at all.
+
+MAUD.  I have, too.
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  [Suddenly springing to her and attempting to seize her
+leg.]  Then we'll prove it.  Let me see.
+
+MAUD.  [In a panic backs away from him and resists his attempts, until
+grinning in an aside to the audience, he gives over.  She, in an aside to
+audience.]  Fancy his wanting to see my birth mark.
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  [Bullying.]  Then take a go at the bag.  [She shakes her
+head.]  You're not Harry Jones.
+
+MAUD.  [Approaching punching bag.]  I am, too.
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  Then hit it.
+
+MAUD.  [Resolving to attempt it, hits bag several nice blows, and then is
+struck on the nose by it.]  Oh!
+
+[Recovering herself and rubbing her nose.]  I told you I was out of
+practice.  You punch the bag, Bob.
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  I will, if you will show me what you can do with that
+wonderful soprano voice of yours.
+
+MAUD.  I don't dare.  Everybody would think there was a woman in the
+club.
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  [Shaking his head.]  No, they won't.  They've all gone to
+the fight.  There's not a soul in the building.
+
+MAUD.  [Alarmed, in a weak voice.]  Not--a--soul--in--the building?
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  Not a soul.  Only you and I.
+
+MAUD.  [Starting hurriedly toward door.]  Then I must go.
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  What's your hurry?  Sing.
+
+MAUD.  [Turning back with new resolve.]  Let me see you punch the
+bag,--er--Bob.
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  You sing first.
+
+MAUD.  No; you punch first.
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  I don't believe you are Harry--
+
+MAUD.  [Hastily.]  All right, I'll sing.  You sit down over there and
+turn your back.
+
+[FITZSIMMONS obeys.]
+
+[MAUD walks over to the table toward right.  She is about to sing, when
+she notices FITZSIMMONS' cigarette case, picks it up, and in an aside
+reads his name on it and speaks.]
+
+MAUD.  "Robert Fitzsimmons."  That will prove to my brother that I have
+been here.
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  Hurry up.
+
+[MAUD hastily puts cigarette case in her pocket and begins to sing.]
+
+SONG
+
+[During the song FITZSIMMONS turns his head slowly and looks at her with
+growing admiration.]
+
+MAUD.  How did you like it?
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  [Gruffly.]  Rotten.  Anybody could tell it was a boy's
+voice--
+
+MAUD.  Oh!
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  It is rough and coarse and it cracked on every high note.
+
+MAUD.  Oh!  Oh!
+
+[Recollecting herself and shrugging her shoulders.]  Oh, very well.  Now
+let's see if you can do any better with the bag.
+
+[FITZSIMMONS takes off coat and gives exhibition.]
+
+[MAUD looks on in an ecstasy of admiration.]
+
+MAUD.  [As he finishes.]  Beautiful!  Beautiful!
+
+[FITZSIMMONS puts on coat and goes over and sits down near table.]
+Nothing like the bag to limber one up.  I feel like a fighting cock.
+Harry, let's go out on a toot, you and I.
+
+MAUD.  Wh-a-a-t?
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  A toot.  You know--one of those rip-snorting nights you
+used to make.
+
+MAUD.  [Emphatically, as she picks up newspapers from leather chair, sits
+down, and places them on her lap.]  I'll do nothing of the sort.
+I've--I've reformed.
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  You used to joy-ride like the very devil.
+
+MAUD.  I know it.
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  And you always had a pretty girl or two along.
+
+MAUD.  [Boastfully, in mannish, fashion.]  Oh, I still have my fling.  Do
+you know any--well,--er,--nice girls?
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  Sure.
+
+MAUD.  Put me wise.
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  Sure.  You know Jack Sylvester?
+
+MAUD.  [Forgetting herself.]  He's my brother--
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  [Exploding.]  What!
+
+MAUD.--In-law's first cousin.
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  Oh!
+
+MAUD.  So you see I don't know him very well.  I only met him once--at
+the club.  We had a drink together.
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  Then you don't know his sister?
+
+MAUD.  [Starting.]  His sister?  I--I didn't know he had a sister.
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  [Enthusiastically.]  She's a peach.  A queen.  A little bit
+of all right.  A--a loo-loo.
+
+MAUD.  [Flattered.]  She is, is she?
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  She's a scream.  You ought to get acquainted with her.
+
+MAUD.  [Slyly.]  You know her, then?
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  You bet.
+
+MAUD.  [Aside.]  Oh, ho!  [To FITZSIMMONS.]  Know her very well?
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  I've taken her out more times than I can remember.  You'll
+like her, I'm sure.
+
+MAUD.  Thanks.  Tell me some more about her.
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  She dresses a bit loud.  But you won't mind that.  And
+whatever you do, don't take her to eat.
+
+MAUD.  [Hiding her chagrin.]  Why not?
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  I never saw such an appetite--
+
+MAUD.  Oh!
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  It's fair sickening.  She must have a tapeworm.  And she
+thinks she can sing.
+
+MAUD.  Yes?
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  Rotten.  You can do better yourself, and that's not saying
+much.  She's a nice girl, really she is, but she is the black sheep of
+the family.  Funny, isn't it?
+
+MAUD.  [Weak voice.]  Yes, funny.
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  Her brother Jack is all right.  But he can't do anything
+with her.  She's a--a--
+
+MAUD.  [Grimly.]  Yes.  Go on.
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  A holy terror.  She ought to be in a reform school.
+
+MAUD.  [Springing to her feet and slamming newspapers in his face.]  Oh!
+Oh!  Oh!  You liar!  She isn't anything of the sort!
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  [Recovering from the onslaught and making believe he is
+angry, advancing threateningly on her.]  Now I'm going to put a head on
+you.  You young hoodlum.
+
+MAUD.  [All alarm and contrition, backing away from him.]  Don't!  Please
+don't!  I'm sorry!  I apologise.  I--I beg your pardon, Bob.  Only I
+don't like to hear girls talked about that way, even--even if it is true.
+And you ought to know.
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  [Subsiding and resuming seat.]  You've changed a lot, I
+must say.
+
+MAUD.  [Sitting down in leather chair.]  I told you I'd reformed.  Let us
+talk about something else.  Why is it girls like prize-fighters?  I
+should think--ahem--I mean it seems to me that girls would think prize-
+fighters horrid.
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  They are men.
+
+MAUD.  But there is so much crookedness in the game.  One hears about it
+all the time.
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  There are crooked men in every business and profession.  The
+best fighters are not crooked.
+
+MAUD.  I--er--I thought they all faked fights when there was enough in
+it.
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  Not the best ones.
+
+MAUD.  Did you--er--ever fake a fight?
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  [Looking at her sharply, then speaking solemnly.]  Yes.
+Once.
+
+MAUD.  [Shocked, speaking sadly.]  And I always heard of you and thought
+of you as the one clean champion who never faked.
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  [Gently and seriously.]  Let me tell you about it.  It was
+down in Australia.  I had just begun to fight my way up.  It was with old
+Bill Hobart out at Rushcutters Bay.  I threw the fight to him.
+
+MAUD.  [Repelled, disgusted.]  Oh!  I could not have believed it of you.
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  Let me tell you about it.  Bill was an old fighter.  Not an
+old man, you know, but he'd been in the fighting game a long time.  He
+was about thirty-eight and a gamer man never entered the ring.  But he
+was in hard luck.  Younger fighters were coming up, and he was being
+crowded out.  At that time it wasn't often he got a fight and the purses
+were small.  Besides it was a drought year in Australia.  You don't know
+what that means.  It means that the rangers are starved.  It means that
+the sheep are starved and die by the millions.  It means that there is no
+money and no work, and that the men and women and kiddies starve.
+
+Bill Hobart had a missus and three kids and at the time of his fight with
+me they were all starving.  They did not have enough to eat.  Do you
+understand?  They did not have enough to eat.  And Bill did not have
+enough to eat.  He trained on an empty stomach, which is no way to train
+you'll admit.  During that drought year there was little enough money in
+the ring, but he had failed to get any fights.  He had worked at long-
+shoring, ditch-digging, coal-shovelling--anything, to keep the life in
+the missus and the kiddies.  The trouble was the jobs didn't hold out.
+And there he was, matched to fight with me, behind in his rent, a tough
+old chopping-block, but weak from lack of food.  If he did not win the
+fight, the landlord was going to put them into the street.
+
+MAUD.  But why would you want to fight with him in such weak condition?
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  I did not know.  I did not learn till at the ringside just
+before the fight.  It was in the dressing rooms, waiting our turn to go
+on.  Bill came out of his room, ready for the ring.  "Bill," I said--in
+fun, you know.  "Bill, I've got to do you to-night."  He said nothing,
+but he looked at me with the saddest and most pitiful face I have ever
+seen.  He went back into his dressing room and sat down.
+
+"Poor Bill!" one of my seconds said.  "He's been fair starving these last
+weeks.  And I've got it straight, the landlord chucks him out if he loses
+to-night."
+
+Then the call came and we went into the ring.  Bill was desperate.  He
+fought like a tiger, a madman.  He was fair crazy.  He was fighting for
+more than I was fighting for.  I was a rising fighter, and I was fighting
+for the money and the recognition.  But Bill was fighting for life--for
+the life of his loved ones.
+
+Well, condition told.  The strength went out of him, and I was fresh as a
+daisy.  "What's the matter, Bill?" I said to him in a clinch.   "You're
+weak."  "I ain't had a bit to eat this day," he answered.  That was all.
+
+By the seventh round he was about all in, hanging on and panting and
+sobbing for breath in the clinches, and I knew I could put him out any
+time.  I drew back my right for the short-arm jab that would do the
+business.  He knew it was coming, and he was powerless to prevent it.
+
+"For the love of God, Bob," he said; and--[Pause.]
+
+MAUD.  Yes?  Yes?
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  I held back the blow.  We were in a clinch.
+
+"For the love of God, Bob," he said again, "the misses and the kiddies!"
+
+And right there I saw and knew it all.  I saw the hungry children asleep,
+and the missus sitting up and waiting for Bill to come home, waiting to
+know whether they were to have food to eat or be thrown out in the
+street.
+
+"Bill," I said, in the next clinch, so low only he could hear.  "Bill,
+remember the La Blanche swing.  Give it to me, hard."
+
+We broke away, and he was tottering and groggy.  He staggered away and
+started to whirl the swing.  I saw it coming.  I made believe I didn't
+and started after him in a rush.  Biff!  It caught me on the jaw, and I
+went down.  I was young and strong.  I could eat punishment.  I could
+have got up the first second.  But I lay there and let them count me out.
+And making believe I was still dazed, I let them carry me to my corner
+and work to bring me to.  [Pause.]
+
+Well, I faked that fight.
+
+MAUD.  [Springing to him and shaking his hand.]  Thank God!  Oh!  You are
+a man!  A--a--a hero!
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  [Dryly, feeling in his pocket.]  Let's have a smoke.  [He
+fails to find cigarette case.]
+
+MAUD.  I can't tell you how glad I am you told me that.
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  [Gruffly.]  Forget it.  [He looks on table, and fails to
+find cigarette case.  Looks at her suspiciously, then crosses to desk at
+right and reaches for telephone.]
+
+MAUD.  [Curiously.]  What are you going to do?
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  Call the police.
+
+MAUD.  What for?
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  For you.
+
+MAUD.  For me?
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  You are not Harry Jones.  And not only are you an impostor,
+but you are a thief.
+
+MAUD.  [Indignantly.]  How dare you?
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  You have stolen my cigarette case.
+
+MAUD.  [Remembering and taken aback, pulls out cigarette case.]  Here it
+is.
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  Too late.  It won't save you.  This club must be kept
+respectable.  Thieves cannot be tolerated.
+
+MAUD.  [Growing alarm.]  But you won't have me arrested?
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  I certainly will.
+
+MAUD.  [Pleadingly.]  Please!  Please!
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  [Obdurately.]  I see no reason why I should not.
+
+MAUD.  [Hurriedly, in a panic.]  I'll give you a reason--a--a good one.
+I--I--am not Harry Jones.
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  [Grimly.]  A good reason in itself to call in the police.
+
+MAUD.  That isn't the reason.  I'm--a--Oh!  I'm so ashamed.
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  [Sternly.]  I should say you ought to be.  [Reaches for
+telephone receiver.]
+
+MAUD.  [In rush of desperation.]  Stop!  I'm a--I'm a--a girl.  There!
+[Sinks down in chair, burying her face in her hands.]
+
+[FITZSIMMONS, hanging up receiver, grunts.]
+
+[MAUD removes hands and looks at him indignantly.  As she speaks her
+indignation grows.]
+
+MAUD.  I only wanted your cigarette case to prove to my brother that I
+had been here.  I--I'm Maud Sylvester, and you never took me out once.
+And I'm not a black sheep.  And I don't dress loudly, and I haven't a--a
+tapeworm.
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  [Grinning and pulling out card from vest pocket.]  I knew
+you were Miss Sylvester all the time.
+
+MAUD.  Oh!  You brute!  I'll never speak to you again.
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  [Gently.]  You'll let me see you safely out of here.
+
+MAUD.  [Relenting.]  Ye-e-s.  [She rises, crosses to table, and is about
+to stoop for motor cloak and bonnet, but he forestall her, holds cloak
+and helps her into it.]  Thank you.  [She takes off wig, fluffs her own
+hair becomingly, and puts on bonnet, looking every inch a pretty young
+girl, ready for an automobile ride.]
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  [Who, all the time, watching her transformation, has been
+growing bashful, now handing her the cigarette case.]  Here's the
+cigarette case.  You may k-k-keep it.
+
+MAUD.  [Looking at him, hesitates, then takes it.]  I thank you--er--Bob.
+I shall treasure it all my life.  [He is very embarrassed.]  Why, I do
+believe you're bashful.  What is the matter?
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  [Stammering.]  Why--I--you--You are a girl--and--a--a--deuced
+pretty one.
+
+MAUD.  [Taking his arm, ready to start for door.]  But you knew it all
+along.
+
+FITZSIMMONS.  But it's somehow different now when you've got your girl's
+clothes on.
+
+MAUD.  But you weren't a bit bashful--or nice, when--you--you--[Blurting
+it out.]  Were so anxious about birth marks.
+
+[They start to make exit.]
+
+CURTAIN
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HUMAN DRIFT***
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