Through the South Seas with Jack London
by Martin Johnson · English · Gutenberg #43812 · 557,243 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Through the South Seas with Jack London
Author: Martin Johnson
Commentator: Ralph D. Harrison
Release date: September 25, 2013 [eBook #43812]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THROUGH THE SOUTH SEAS WITH JACK LONDON ***
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:
Original spelling and grammar has been retained, with a few
exceptions, which are detailed in the Transcriber's Endnote.
* * * * *
THROUGH THE SOUTH SEAS WITH JACK LONDON
* * * * *
[Illustration: MARTIN JOHNSON AND A PATHE MOTION-PICTURE OPERATOR ON
A HUNT IN THE SOLOMONS]
Through the South Seas
With Jack London
BY
MARTIN JOHNSON
With an Introduction and a Postscript
BY
RALPH D. HARRISON
_Numerous Illustrations_
[Illustration]
LONDON
T. WERNER LAURIE, LTD.
CLIFFORD'S INN.
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION ix
CHAPTER
I ON THE TRAIL OF ADVENTURE 1
II THE BUILDING OF THE "SNARK" 13
III ON THE HIGH SEAS 49
IV A PACIFIC PARADISE 84
V MOLOKAI, THE LEPER ISLAND 117
VI THE LONG TRAVERSE 137
VII IN THE MARQUESAS 158
VIII THE SOCIETY ISLANDS 180
IX SOME SOUTH SEA ROYALTY 200
X THE SAMOAN GROUP 242
XI LOST IN THE FIJI ISLANDS 260
XII SOUTH SEA CANNIBALS 268
XIII OCEANIC CRUISING 309
XIV THE END OF THE VOYAGE 334
POSTSCRIPT 368
ILLUSTRATIONS
Martin Johnson and a Pathe
motion-picture operator on a hunt in
the Solomons _Frontispiece_
FACING
PAGE
_Snark_ at Honolulu 8
Complement of the _Snark_ in Solomon Islands 8
A Solomon Island Army 20
On the Ballassona River, Solomon Group 32
A Te Motu Round House, Santa Cruz Group 44
"War and Peace"--Foate Cannibals in Mission Boat.
Artificial Islands off Malaita, Solomon Group 56
War Canoes in Their Shelter 68
Manufactured Islet, with Shrine of a Native
Chief--Solomon Group 80
A Man of Roas. Solomon Group, Island of Malaita 92
Chief of Florida Island, Solomon Group 92
Group of Roas Women, Solomon Islands 100
A Mission School, teacher and members of class 112
Molokai, the Leper Settlement, Hawaiian Islands 122
Leper band at Molokai, the leper island of the
Hawaiian Group 132
Santa Cruz natives in catamaran canoes 146
Canoe House in Solomon Islands 154
Marquesas Islanders 166
The Old Home of Robert Louis Stevenson, Marquesas
Islands 176
The Price of a Wife--feather money 184
A Study in Ornaments 196
Mission Schooner trading among the Islands 210
The Haunt of the Crocodile, Solomon Islands 224
Houses on Outrigger Canoes, Solomon Islands 238
Types of Solomon Islanders 246
At Otivi Village, Santa Cruz Group 256
The Landing Place at Namu, Santa Cruz Group 264
Mrs. Godden and her School people, New Hebrides
Islands 278
Cannibal Village, Foate, Solomon Group 292
Artificial Island, off Malaita, Solomon Group 312
"Penduffryn," the largest cocoanut plantation in
the world. Island of Guadalcanar, Solomon Islands 322
Making copra at "Penduffryn," Solomon Islands 330
A Florida canoe--Solomons 342
Trading station, Langakauld-Ugi--Solomons 354
INTRODUCTION
Accounts of dare-devil exploits have always been read with deep
interest. One of the salient features of human nature is curiosity,
a desire to know what is being said and done outside the narrow
limits of one's individual experience, or, in other words, to learn
the modes of life of persons whose environment and problems are
different from one's own environment and problems. To this natural
curiosity, the book of travel is particularly gratifying.
But when we add to the fact that such a narrative treats of races
and conditions almost unknown to the inhabitants of civilised
countries the consideration that those voyageurs to whom the
adventures fell are men and women already prominently before the
public, and so deserving of that public's special confidence, the
interest and value of such a work will be seen to be extraordinarily
enhanced.
The cruise of Jack London's forty-five-foot ketch _Snark_ was
followed eagerly by the press of several continents. The _Snark_
alone was enough to compel attention, but the _Snark_ sailed by Jack
London, a writer of world-wide celebrity, was irresistible. The
venture caught the world's fancy. Periodicals devoted columns to a
discussion of the _Snark_ and her builder, and to the daring crew
who sailed the tiny craft for two years through the South Seas.
When it became known that such a voyage was in contemplation,
hundreds of persons wrote to Mr. London, begging that he allow them
to accompany him. On the other extreme, they were legion who threw
up their hands in horror at the mere suggestion. The belief was
widespread, and was, indeed, almost universally expressed, that the
famous writer and his fellows were setting out on a cruise from
which there would be no return. As an instance of the capriciousness
of things maritime and the fallibility of human judgment, it is
interesting to reflect that the _Snark_, a ten-ton yacht, the
stanchness of which was greatly doubted, travelled her watery miles
without mishap, and is still afloat, while the _Titanic_, the most
wonderful craft that ever put out to sea, the last word in
shipbuilding, declared unsinkable, bore over a thousand of her
passengers to death, and lies to-day, a twisted mass of wreckage,
irrecoverably lost in the depths of the Atlantic.
Hardships there were a-plenty for the little yacht's crew, of which
seasickness was not the least. The _Snark_ was not a "painted ship
upon a painted ocean." Even a seasoned sailor would find it
difficult to accustom himself to the pitch and toss of so small a
boat. The effect upon the _Snark's_ complement, composed mainly of
"landlubbers," may easily be imagined.
Mr. Martin Johnson, who started in as cook, soon became the close
friend and chief companion of Mr. London. He was thus enabled to
make studies of the South Sea natives, many of whom are
unquestionably the strangest creatures in existence. His
photographic records--over seven thousand different negatives--are
the finest in the world: they are absolutely unique. We have read of
some few of the little-known places visited by the voyageurs, in Mr.
London's "Cruise of the _Snark_"; but the present work, being much
more detailed and complete, gives the first real insight into life
aboard the yacht and among the myriad islands of the South Pacific.
The illustrations are from photographs made by Mr. Johnson, with a
few from prints by Mr. J. W. Beattie, of Tasmania.
After reading such a narrative, we seem to lose our wonder at the
voyages of vessels like the _Half Moon_, the _Pinta_, and the _Santa
Maria_. Surely the playing of sea-pranks can go no further. The
conclusion seems justifiable that if men are to outdo the exploits
of the past, they will only succeed by forsaking the water and
mastering the air.
RALPH D. HARRISON.
Indianapolis, U. S. A., April 5, 1913.
THROUGH THE SOUTH SEAS WITH JACK LONDON
CHAPTER I
ON THE TRAIL OF ADVENTURE
Through all my twenty years of life I had been in pursuit of
Adventure. But Adventure eluded me. Many and many a time, when I
thought that at last the prize was mine, she turned, and by some
trickery slipped from my grasp. The twenty years were passed, and
still there she was--Adventure!--in the road ahead of me, and I,
unwearied by our many skirmishes, still following. The lure was
always golden. I could not give it up. Somewhere, sometime, I knew
that the advantage would incline my way, and that I should close
down my two hands firmly upon her, and hold her fast. Adventure
would be mine!
I thought, when I made it across the Atlantic on a cattle-boat, and
trod the soil of several alien countries of the Old World, that I
had won. But it was not so. It was but the golden reflection of
Adventure that I had caught up with, and not the glorious thing
itself. She was still there, ahead of me, and I still must needs
pursue.
In my native Independence, Kansas, I sat long hours in my father's
jewellry store, and dreamed as I worked. I ranged in vision over all
the broad spaces of a world-chart. In this dream-realm, there were
no impediments to my journeying. Through long ice-reaches, across
frozen rivers, over snow-piled mountains, I forced my way to the
Poles. I skimmed over boundless tracts of ocean. Giant continents
beckoned me from coast to coast. Here was an island, rearing its
grassy back out of the great Pacific. My fancy invaded it. Or here
was a lofty mountain-chain, over whose snow-capped summits I roamed
at pleasure, communing with the sky. Then there were the
valley-deeps; dropping down the steep descents on my mount, I
explored their sheltered wonders with unceasing delight. Nothing was
inaccessible. I walked in lands where queer people, in costumes
unfamiliar, lived out their lives in ways which puzzled me, yet
fascinated; my way led often amid strange trees and grasses and
shrubs--their names unguessable. To the farthest limits of East and
West I sallied, and North and South, knew no barriers but the Poles.
I breathed strange airs; I engaged in remarkable pursuits; by night,
unfamiliar stars and constellations glittered in the sky. It is so
easy, travelling--on the map. There are no rigid limitations.
Probabilities do not bother. Latitude and longitude are things
unnoticed.
But all these dreams were presaging a reality. How it came about I
hardly know. I must have tired out that glorious thing, Adventure,
with my long pursuit; or else she grew kind to me, and fluttered
into my clasp. One evening, during the fall of 1906, while passing
away an hour with my favourite magazine, my attention was attracted
to an article describing a proposed trip round the world on a
little forty-five-foot boat, by Jack London and a party of five.
Instantly, I was all aglow with enthusiasm, and before I had
finished the article I had mapped out a plan of action. If that boat
made a trip such as described, I was going to be on the boat. It is
needless to say that the letter I immediately wrote to Mr. Jack
London was as strong as I could make it.
I did my best to convince Mr. London that I was the man he needed. I
told him all I could do, and some things I couldn't do, laying
special stress on the fact that I had at one time made a trip from
Chicago to Liverpool, London, and Brussels, returning by way of New
York with twenty-five cents of the original five dollars and a half
with which I had started. There were other things in that letter,
though just what they were I cannot now remember, nor does it
matter. My impatience was great as I awaited Mr. London's reply. Yet
I dared not believe anything would come of it. That would be
impossible. Why, I knew that my letter was one of a host of letters;
I knew that among those who had applied must be many who could push
far stronger claims than mine; and so, hoping against odds, I looked
to the outcome with no particular optimism.
Then, four days later, when hope had about dwindled away, the
impossible happened. I was standing in my father's jewellry store
after supper on the evening of Monday, November 12, 1906, when a
messenger boy came in and handed me a telegram. The instant I saw
the little yellow envelope, something told me that this was the
turning-point in my life. With trembling hands I tore it open, my
heart beating wildly with excitement. It was Jack London's reply,
the fateful slip of paper that was to dictate my acts for several
years to come.
The telegram was dated from Oakland, California, a few hours earlier
in the day. "Can you cook?" it asked. And I had no sooner read it
than I had framed the reply. A little later it was burning over the
wires in the direction of California. Could I cook? "Sure. Try me,"
I replied, with the bold audacity of youth--and then settled myself
down to another wait.
The interval was brief. I spent it in learning how to cook. One of
my local friends gave me temporary employment in his restaurant; and
when, on Friday, the 23rd, the first letter came from Jack London, I
had already been through the cook-book from cover to cover, learning
the secrets of the cuisine: bread-baking and cake-making, the
preparing of sauces and puddings and omelets, fruit, game, and
fowl--in short, the "chemistry of the kitchen"; and what of my
practical experience in the restaurant, I had even served up two or
three experimental messes that seemed to me fairly creditable for a
beginner.
The letter was long and detailed. It spoke of the ship, of the
crew, of the plans--to use Mr. London's own words, it let me know
just what I was in for.
There were to be six aboard, all-told. There were Jack and Mrs.
London; Captain Roscoe Eames, who is Mrs. London's uncle; Paul H.
Tochigi, a Jap cabin-boy; Herbert Stolz, an all-around athlete,
fresh from Stanford University; and lastly, there was to be myself,
the cook. We were to sail southern seas and northern seas, bays and
inland rivers, lakes and creeks--anything navigable. And we were not
to stop until we had circled the planet. We were to visit the
principal countries of the world, spending from three to six months
in every port. It was planned that we should not be home for at
least seven years.
"It is the strongest boat ever built in San Francisco," ran the
letter. "We could go through a typhoon that would wreck a 15,000-ton
steamer. . . . Practically, for every week that we are on the ocean, we
will be a month in port. For instance, we expect that it will take
us three weeks to sail from here to Hawaii, where we expect to
remain three months--of course, in various portions of the Islands.
"Now as to the crew: All of us will be the crew. There is my wife,
and myself. We will stand our watches and do our trick at the
wheel. . . . When it comes to doing the trick at the wheel, I want to
explain that this will not be arduous as it may appear at first. It
is our intention, by sail-trimming, to make the boat largely sail
herself, without steering. Next, in bad weather, there will be no
steering, for then we will be hove-to. But watches, or rather
lookouts, must be kept at night, when we are sailing. Suppose we
divide day and night into twelve hours each. There are six of us
all-told on the boat. Each will take a two-hour turn on deck.
"Of course, when it comes to moments of danger, or to doing
something ticklish, or to making port, etc., the whole six of us
will then become the crew. I will not be a writer, but a sailor. The
same with my wife. The cabin-boy will be a sailor, and so also, the
cook. In fact, when it's a case for all hands, all hands it will be.
"From the present outlook, we shall sail out of San Francisco Bay on
December 15. So you see, if you accompany us, you will miss your
Christmas at home. . . . Incidentally, if you like boxing, I may tell
you that all of us box, and we'll have the gloves along. You'll have
the advantage of us on reach. Also, I may say that we should all of
us have lots of good times together, swimming, fishing, adventuring,
doing a thousand-and-one things.
"Now, about clothes. Remember that the boat is small, also that we
are going into hot weather and shall be in hot weather all the time.
So bring a small outfit, and one for use in warm weather."
Thereafter, my days and nights were more golden than ever with
dreams. The days flew by swiftly, but their heels seemed heavy to
the anxious wight who spent his hours grubbing in a restaurant. It
appeared to me that the time for my departure would never come. I
shudder as I think of what weird messes I may have served up to my
friend's customers in the moments of my abstraction. Meanwhile, a
letter from Mrs. London dropped in, telling me how to get my
passport. At last the day came for my going. A letter was pressed
into my hands by one of my local friends, who was an Elk, even as I.
When I opened it, I found it to be an introduction for me wherever I
might find myself. Surely here was good-will and loyalty of which to
be proud; and doubly proud was I when I found that the letter was
endorsed by the Grand Exalted Ruler of the Elks. As I was later to
find, this little slip of paper would open many a door which
otherwise had remained shut to me.
With only a small satchel of clothing and a camera, I boarded a
Santa Fé train, said the last good-byes, and sped westward toward
California. The dreams did not cease as I passed through the several
states that intervened. Whether by day or by night, they persisted.
That glorious will-o'-the-wisp, Adventure, was still before me,
though now much nearer and more tantalising. But the advantage was
mine. Mounted on that monster of steam and iron, the modern train, I
felt that Adventure would be hard put for speed in a race with me.
And yet, that train seemed to me the slowest thing that ever ran on
two rails.
My thoughts kept constantly turning upon the man whom I was
journeying to meet. What sort of being was he, that had compelled
the attention of the world by the magic of his pen, and by the
daring of his exploits? One thing I knew. The places I had roamed in
fancy, his foot had trod in reality. And he had sailed over the
seas. In '97, he was a gold-seeker in the far North. He had been a
sailor and a tramp, an oyster-pirate, a Socialist agitator, and a
member of the San Francisco Bay fish-patrol. His voyages up to this
time had carried him far over the earth, and his experiences would
overlap the experiences of an ordinary man a score of times and
more. Above all, he was a student, and a writer of world-wide
celebrity. Wherever civilised men congregated, wherever books were
read, the name of Jack London was familiar.
Why he was making this trip in so tiny a craft? That question he
answered shortly afterward, when he wrote: "Life that lives is life
successful, and success is the breath of its nostrils. The
achievement of a difficult feat is successful adjustment to a
sternly exacting environment. The more difficult the feat, the
greater the satisfaction at its accomplishment. That is why I am
building the _Snark_. I am so made. The trip around the world means
big moments of living. Bear with me a moment and look at it. Here am
I, a little animal called a man--a bit of vitalised matter, one
hundred and sixty-five pounds of meat and blood, nerve, sinew,
bones and brain--all of it soft and tender, susceptible to hurt,
fallible and frail. I strike a light back-handed blow on the nose of
an obstreperous horse, and a bone in my hand is broken. I put my
head under the water for five minutes, and I am drowned. I fall
twenty feet through the air, and I am smashed. I am a creature of
temperature. A few degrees one way, and my fingers and ears and toes
blacken and drop off. A few degrees the other way, and my skin
blisters and shrivels away from the raw, quivering flesh. A few
additional degrees either way, and the light and life in me go out.
A drop of poison injected into my body from a snake, and I cease to
move--forever I cease to move. A splinter of lead from a rifle
enters my head, and I am wrapped around in the eternal blackness.
[Illustration: SNARK AT HONOLULU] [Illustration: COMPLEMENT OF THE
SNARK IN SOLOMON ISLANDS: MRS. JACK LONDON, MR. JACK LONDON AND
MARTIN JOHNSON IN THE CENTRE]
"Fallible and frail, a bit of pulsating, jelly-like life--it is all
I am. About me are the great natural forces--colossal menaces,
Titans of destruction, unsentimental monsters that have less concern
for me than I have for the grain of sand I crush under my foot. They
have no concern for me at all. They do not know me. They are
unconscious, unmerciful, and unmoral. They are the cyclones and
tornadoes, lightning flashes and cloudbursts, tide-rips and tidal
waves, undertows and waterspouts, great whirls and sucks and eddies,
earthquakes and volcanoes, surfs that thunder on rock-ribbed coasts,
and seas that leap aboard the largest crafts that float, crushing
humans to pulp or licking them off into the sea and to death--and
these insensate monsters do not know that tiny sensitive creature,
all nerves and weaknesses, whom men call Jack London, and who
himself thinks he is all right and quite a superior being.
"In the maze and chaos of the conflict of these vast and draughty
Titans, it is for me to thread my precarious way. The bit of life
that is I will exult over them."
And again:
"Being alive, I want to see, and all the world is a bigger thing to
see than one small town or valley. We have done little outlining of
the voyage. Only one thing is definite, and that is that our first
port of call will be Honolulu. Beyond a few general ideas, we have
no thought of our next port after Hawaii. We shall make up our minds
as we get nearer. In a general way, we know that we shall wander
through the South Seas, take in Samoa, New Zealand, Tasmania,
Australia, New Guinea, Borneo, and Sumatra, and go on up through the
Philippines to Japan. Then will come Korea, China, India, the Red
Sea, and the Mediterranean. After that the voyage becomes too vague
to describe, though we know a number of things we shall surely do,
and we expect to spend from one to several months in every country
in Europe."
The article in the magazine, which had first drawn my attention to
the proposed trip, had given me little knowledge of the man with
whom in all probability I was to spend the next seven years of my
life. The nearer I came to Oakland, the California city in which the
Londons were then living, the more intense grew my curiosity. Worst
of all, I was haunted by a fear that if I didn't hustle and get
there, Jack London would have changed his mind, and I should be
obliged to come back in humiliation to Independence.
It was about nine o'clock in the evening when I arrived in Oakland.
As soon as I was off the train, I hunted a telephone and called up
Jack London. It was London himself who came to the 'phone. When I
told him who I was, I heard a pleasant voice say: "Hello, boy; come
right along up," and then followed instructions as to how to find
the house.
They lived in a splendid section of the town. I had no difficulty in
finding them. When I rapped at the door, a neat little woman opened
it, and grabbing my hand, almost wrung it off.
"Come right in," cried Mrs. London. "Jack's waiting for you."
At that moment a striking young man of thirty, with very broad
shoulders, a mass of wavy auburn hair, and a general atmosphere of
boyishness, appeared at the doorway, and shot a quick, inquisitive
look at me from his wide grey eyes. Inside, I could see all manner
of oars, odd assortments of clothing, books, papers, charts, guns,
cameras, and folding canoes, piled in great stacks upon the floor.
"Hello, Martin," he said, stretching out his hand.
"Hello, Jack," I answered. We gripped.
And that is how I met Jack London, traveller, novelist, and social
reformer; and that is how, for the first time, I really ran shoulder
to shoulder with Adventure, which I had been pursuing all my days.
CHAPTER II
THE BUILDING OF THE "SNARK"
The morning after my arrival in Oakland, I met the other members of
the _Snark_ crew--the _Snarkites_, as Mrs. London called them. Stolz
certainly lived up to his description. He was then about twenty-one
years of age, and a stronger fellow for his years I have never seen
anywhere, nor one so possessed of energy. Paul H. Tochigi, the
Japanese cabin-boy, was a manly little fellow of twenty, who had
only been in America one year. Captain Eames was a fine, kindly old
man, the architect and superintendent of construction of the
_Snark_, and was booked to be her navigator.
At the time of my coming to California, the _Snark_ had already been
several months in the building. And her growth promised to be a slow
one. Everything went wrong. More than once, Jack shook his head and
sighed: "She was born unfortunately."
Planned to cost seven thousand dollars, by the time she was finished
she cost thirty thousand. To a ship-wise man, this will seem an
impossible amount to spend on so small a craft. But everything was
of the highest quality on the _Snark_; labour and materials the very
best that money could buy. I really believe she was the strongest
boat ever built.
The idea of the trip had first come to Jack and Captain Eames up at
Jack's ranch near Glen Ellen. While in the swimming pool one day,
their conversation turned to boats. Jack cited the case of Captain
Joshua Slocum, who left Boston one fair day in a little thirty-foot
boat, _Spray_, went round the world, by himself, and came back on
another fair day, three years later, and made fast to the identical
post from which he had cast loose on the day of his start. This led
to some speculation; and out of it all, the idea of a forty-foot
yacht emerged. Later, of course, the idea took on tangible
dimensions, and a few more feet, evolving at last into the _Snark_.
At one time, Jack had thought of calling the yacht the _Wolf_--a
nickname applied to him by his friends--but afterward found the name
_Snark_ in one of Lewis Carroll's nonsense books, and forthwith
adopted it.
The start had originally been planned for October 1, 1906. But she
did not sail on October 1, because she was not yet finished. She was
promised on November 1; again she was delayed--because not finished.
It was then deemed advisable to postpone sailing until November 15;
but when that date rolled around and the _Snark_ was still in the
process of construction, December 1 was decided on as the auspicious
time for a start. And still the _Snark_ grew and grew, and was never
ready. In his letter to me, Jack had set December 15 as the
sailing-date; but on December 15 we did not sail.
During the next three months, I lived at the London home, and my
principal occupation was watching the building of the _Snark_ at
Anderson's Ways, in San Francisco, right across the bay from
Oakland. Anderson's Ways was about one mile from the Union Iron
Works, where the big battleships for the American navy are built.
There were several reasons for the trouble experienced in getting
the _Snark_ ready for her long sea-bath. To begin with, San
Francisco was just beginning to rise anew from wreck and ashes, and
the demand for workmen was urgent. Wages soared skyward; it was
almost impossible to hire carpenters, or workmen of any sort. And
things that Jack ordinarily could have bought in San Francisco, he
was obliged to order from New York. Then, too, so many freight-cars
were heading for the ruined city that a terrible tangle resulted,
and it was difficult to find the consignments of goods needed for
the _Snark_. One freight-car, containing oak ribs for the boat, had
arrived the day after the earthquake, but it had taken a full month
to find it. Nothing went right. To cap matters, the big strike
closed down the shipbuilding plants that furnished us with supplies.
The _Snark_ seemed indeed born into trouble!
All this time, Jack was toiling continually at his desk, earning
money; and all this time Roscoe Eames was spending money freely to
make the _Snark_ come up to their idea of what a boat should be.
Jack was obliged to borrow in the neighbourhood of ten thousand
dollars, for the _Snark's_ bills came pouring in faster than he
could earn money to pay them. He was determined to make of the
_Snark_ a thing of beauty and strength--something unique in the
history of ocean-going vessels.
Some hundreds of persons wrote to Jack, begging him to let them go
with him on the cruise. Every mail contained such letters. They
continued to pour in almost up to the day we sailed out of the
Golden Gate. Most of these letters Jack showed to me. Here was a
chef in a big hotel in Philadelphia, a man getting over two hundred
dollars a month, who offered his services free. A college professor
volunteered to do any kind of work, and give one thousand dollars
for the privilege. Another man, the son of a millionaire, offered
five hundred dollars to go along. Still another declared that he
would put up any amount of money if Jack would allow his son to be
one of the crew. And there were offers and solicitations from
schoolteachers, draftsmen, authors, photographers, secretaries,
stenographers, physicians, surgeons, civil engineers, cooks,
typists, dentists, compositors, reporters, adventurers, sailors,
valets, "lady companions" for Mrs. London, stewards, machinists,
engineers, high-school and university students, electricians--men
and women of every imaginable trade, profession or inclination. I
began to have misgivings when I thought of the fine chefs who had
applied. I contrasted their skilled ability with the little that I
had learned from the cook-book! It was just such things as these
that made me feel how lucky I was to be a member of the crew of the
_Snark_.
There was much protest from the Londons' friends. Many freely
expressed the sentiment that they could not see how sensible people
would even think of such a trip. And they all knew, with profound
certitude, that we were to be drowned. But we paid very little
attention to their ominous head-shakings and pessimistic
predictions. We who were setting out in search of Adventure were not
to be balked by mere words. Also, a number of Jack's Socialist
friends wrote letters, urging him to abandon what they evidently
considered folly. On every side of us, the conviction was openly
aired that we were on our way to the bottom of the sea.
Jack was still spending long hours at his desk. Just then, he was
writing his story, "Goliah." One day he read me the first part of
it, in which he destroyed the Japanese navy.
"And to-day I destroy the American navy," he told me, gleefully.
"Oh, I haven't a bit of conscience when my imagination gets to
working."
"Well, I guess you are rather destructive," I ventured, laughing.
"Now I may write a story with you and Bert for heroes," he went on,
whimsically; and when I assured him that would be fine--
"But of course I'd have to kill you off at the end; and how would
you like that?"
January 12 was Jack's thirty-first birthday. It was also one of our
numerous sailing dates, but despite the best of intentions, we were
obliged to celebrate it on land. During my long stay in Oakland, I
had ample opportunity to get intimately acquainted with both Jack
and Mrs. London; indeed, we were all like one big happy family. Fame
and popularity have not spoiled them. Jack is just like a big
schoolboy, good-natured, frank, generous, and Mrs. London is just a
grown-up schoolgirl. They are good comrades, always helping each
other in their work. Mrs. London I found to be as full of grit as
any of us--as we were later to discover, there was hardly a thing on
board that any of the men could do that she couldn't do; and she was
a practised swimmer, and could ride on horseback with grace--a gift
not vouchsafed all women. And they were both amiable Bohemians.
Often, when Jack was not busy, he and I compared notes on England.
We found that we had snooped around much the same places in the East
End of London. Immediately, I took up his "People of the Abyss,"
which read almost like a passage out of my own life. For seven days,
I had been one of those wretched people who are forever on the move
in the slums of this great city, eternally searching for a scrap of
food and for sufficient ground-space on which to lay down their
weary frames in sleep. All was vividly described in the book. But
while the men and women of the abyss spend their whole lives in this
torment, I was there only until I could get to Liverpool and take a
cattle-boat back to the States.
Once, after reading "The Sea Wolf," I told Jack that I had always
been under the impression that the Scandinavians were of a peaceable
disposition. But he assured me that most of the events of "The Sea
Wolf" were from his own experiences--Wolf Larsen drawn largely from
life. He told me that while up North, he had run across some of the
most bloodthirsty people he had ever seen, and they were
Scandinavians.
Also, I got better acquainted with Tochigi and Bert and Captain
Eames. The captain was a stately old man, grey of hair and grey of
beard; and what he didn't know about yachts was really hardly worth
knowing. In fact, the _Snark_ was built according to his plans.
Captain Eames' room was next to the galley, a place that would be
almost unbearably hot in the tropics; but of course, we planned to
sleep on deck, once we got into the real South Seas.
Tochigi taught me a smattering of Japanese during the wait. True, I
never mastered the language, but I did become proficient enough to
distinguish some of the words he used when in conversation with his
Jap friends. Tochigi was a fine fellow, his manners were the most
perfect I have ever seen, and he was clever and quick to learn. His
English was limited, but every word he did use was the right one.
And he always talked in such a low, well-modulated voice that it
was a pleasure to listen to him. We took a great liking to each
other.
Stolz was away quite a bit. Jack explained to me that he was working
his way through Stanford University. If sheer strength counts for
anything, Stolz is a fellow who will never want for much. He was
always the best swimmer at the swimming pools we went to; he could
always dive from higher and turn more somersaults in the air than
anyone; and Jack found, by experience, that Bert knew every trick in
boxing. He was really more than I expected by Jack's description of
him--an "all-around athlete."
Hardly a day went by without someone's rapping at the door and
asking if the _Snark's_ complement was secured, and if there was not
room for just one more. Over at the boat, I was constantly beset by
cranks, with all sorts of schemes and ideas and inventions; and
there were other people who came simply out of curiosity, wanting to
be shown over the boat. Some of their contrivances were very
ingenious. There were "old schoolmates of Mr. London," and "girlhood
chums of Mrs. London," and there were "distant relatives of the
Londons"; some even claimed to be special correspondents of
magazines or newspapers. But no one got aboard the _Snark_ unless he
had written permission from Jack. Interest was widespread; and
shortly after, Jack increased it by delivering a lecture on
Socialism to over fifteen thousand people in Berkeley.
[Illustration: A SOLOMON ISLAND ARMY]
Since the destruction of San Francisco, Chinatown had moved to
Oakland. On several occasions we went to its theatres, and to the
Chinese social gatherings. Early in January the Chinese celebrate
their New Year. It was my good luck to see such a celebration. On
every side of me, Chinks of every age, men, women and children, shot
off fire-crackers, and flung up packs of multi-coloured papers,
perforated quite thickly with various-shaped holes. It is their
belief that the devil has to come through all these holes before he
can get to sinners; and to stave off the enemy and render his
progress tortuous, they make the holes small and numerous. Again, I
visited secret opium dens, and saw pasty-coloured Chinks lie for
hours under the influence of the drug. Much of the deviltry of
Chinatown, however, had come to an end with the destruction of San
Francisco, as many of the yellow rascals saw in that wholesale
catastrophe the workings of an outraged deity.
As for Frisco itself, it looked hopeless. Hundreds of tons of the
wreckage had been cleared away, but hundreds of tons still remained.
Some few buildings had already been erected. Most of them were
stores, little wooden affairs, knocked together until better could
be built. The fire and quake had ruined the pavements, and the
streets were nothing but great pools of water and mud. A man was
actually drowned in one of these pools while walking down Market
street. There were constant deaths by accidents; walls, frail and
fissured, had a trick of collapsing and letting down their bushels
of brick and stone on the heads of such as were in the streets; the
street-car service was badly muddled, and several persons were
killed while riding the precarious conveyances. As I have said,
wages were sky-high; yet workmen still complained and struck for
more. At the time I was there, the bricklayers, who were getting ten
dollars a day, struck for twelve dollars and a half. Each of the ten
men working on the _Snark_ received five dollars a day, and only
worked until half-past four in the afternoon.
Having been practically raised in a jewellry store, I was pretty
efficient at engraving, and I employed my talent in adding to the
decorations of the _Snark_. Just over the companionway was a big
piece of finest brass. On it I drew the word "SNARK" in Old English
charactery, and the carpenters filled it in with brass-headed nails.
Mrs. London was so pleased that she later had me engrave the
capstan-head. After that, Captain Eames and I oversaw the painters
while they spread a preliminary coat of white paint over the
_Snark's_ hull and picked out the name "SNARK" in gold.
On rainy days, I stayed at the London home, reading books and
magazines. The manuscript of "The Iron Heel," Jack's Socialistic
novel, had not yet been sent to the publishers, and I spent some
exciting hours poring over it. Jack had evidently let his
imagination have full rein in this story, for he had gone far
beyond the destruction of a mere navy, as in "Goliah," and had put
an end to the entire city of Chicago, and allotted to her
inhabitants the most gory deaths imaginable. But the story was one
of the most impressive I have ever read; and like Jack's Socialistic
speech before the students of a great Eastern university, it later
created a sensation.
And still we planned to go, and yet did not go. We set sailing-dates
and cancelled them. The time was not yet. Puzzled by the delay,
editors and publishers with whom Jack had contracts began to write
him for explanations, but Jack could only shake his head and wonder
how he was to explain to them when he couldn't even explain to
himself. When questioned, Captain Eames would do his best to cheer
Jack up by solemnly engaging to have the _Snark_ ready for sailing
within two weeks from the date of promising, but always the time had
to be extended.
The _Snark_ was a trim little yacht, forty-five feet on the
water-line, fifty-five over all, with a width of fourteen feet eight
inches. Her draft was seven feet eight inches. She was of ketch-rig,
which means that she was a two-master, with the largest sail on the
forward mast--just the reverse of a schooner-rig. Jack had seen
boats of a similar design extensively used in the Northern Seas and
also on the Dogger Bank in England; as he explained, the ketch-rig
was a compromise between the yawl and the schooner, which, while
retaining the cruising virtues of the one, embraced some of the
sailing virtues of the other.
Never was there another such boat! Despite the delays and the other
troubles, not one of the _Snarkites_ had lost his enthusiasm. Even
with all their vexations and the ruinous expense, Mrs. London and
Jack were always smiling and happy. Often the crew would go over the
Bay and gather on the _Snark's_ deck to discuss possible
improvements and to anticipate some of the delights of the voyage
that lay ahead of us.
And still the _Snark_ was in the building. Her lines were marvels of
strength and beauty. As an indication of the way she was built, I
need only enumerate a few particulars as to specifications of
material. Her iron keel weighed five tons. Her greatest beam was
fifteen feet, with tumble-home sides. Her planking was specially
ordered Oregon Pine, without butts; men were actually sent to search
the Oregon pines to select natural elbows--in other words, timbers
grown by nature in the exact form required to fit the angles of the
boat, and thus give the maximum strength of each fibre of the wood.
The planking was two and one-half inches thick under the water-line,
two inches thick above the water-line. The ribs were of specially
ordered Indiana Oak, and were set ten inches apart. Angle irons, the
full length of the boat, connected the ribs with the keel; these
were of the best galvanised iron, each made according to pattern.
The _Snark's_ copper was the finest man-o'-war copper; its cost was
over five hundred dollars, to say nothing of the cost of having it
put on. For that matter, the boat was copper-fastened throughout;
not a nail or screw that was not copper. The only iron used in the
_Snark_ was the best galvanised iron; all other metal was brass and
bronze. She was crown-decked and flush-decked, and had six feet of
head-room below. Three water-tight bulkheads divided her length into
four water-tight compartments.
"If we stove in one compartment," Jack explained to me, "we can
still bear up with the other three compartments. I just think we'll
fool some of the birds of ill omen, after all. The _Snark_ is
dependable. She's built to sail all seas, face all storms, and to go
around the world."
The _Snark_ was intended from the first to be a sailing vessel. But
because it was felt that cases of sudden emergency might arise,
where speed was an absolute necessity, a gasolene engine,
seventy-horse-power, was installed. Had Jack adhered to his original
idea of a forty-foot boat, there would have been no room for such an
appurtenance; but forty-five feet gave plenty of space for both it
and a small bath-room. This latter was carefully fitted up with
levers and pumps and sea-valves, some of them of Jack's own
invention. After the engine, a dynamo was put in; and then Jack
decided to light the boat with electricity, and to have a
searchlight which would give sharp detail at a half-mile distance.
But we did not trust entirely to electrical apparatus for
illumination, for if it should break down, it might cost us our
lives. For the binnacle light, the anchor light, and the sidelights,
which were indispensable, we supplied kerosene lamps. Nor was the
use of the engine yet exhausted. We finally planned a giant windlass
to be placed on deck, by means of which the anchor could be hoisted
without trouble.
The _Snark_ had neither house nor hold. The deck was unbroken except
for the hatchway forward, and two companionways. The cockpit, large
and high-railed, so built as to be self-bailing, made a comfortable
place in which to sit, whether in fair weather or foul. The rail,
companionways, hatches, skylights, and other finishings were of
finest teak; the deck-knees, deck-timbers, etc., of the best oak.
There were two bronze propellers; a patent steering-gear; one
hundred and five fathoms of extra heavy best galvanised chain; two
patent galvanised anchors, and one galvanised kedge-anchor. The
_Snark_ carried flying-jib, jib, fore-staysail, mainsail, mizzen and
spinnaker, also extra storm-jibs, and gaff-headed trysails. Her
garboard strake was three inches thick. In the last compartment, in
the stern of the boat, were tanks for over a thousand gallons of
gasolene. Because of the tightness of the bulkhead which marked off
this compartment, we felt reasonably certain that none of this very
dangerous fluid could escape; and to reassure us doubly, we were
informed that the tanks themselves were non-leakable.
After a time, we added more accessories to the _Snark_. Jack ordered
a five-horse-power engine, for running pumps and dynamo;
accumulators, electric light globes, and electric fans. Then came
the consideration of navigation instruments. These consisted of a
Steering Compass, a best Standard Compass, a best Sextant, a best
Octant, a best Pelorus, a best Barometer, a best ship's clock; and
their cost was five hundred dollars. At the last, Jack added to our
equipment what no prudent man would go to sea without--life-boats.
These were a fourteen-foot very seaworthy launch, with gasolene
engine, and an eighteen-foot life-boat, with air-tanks and other
appliances.
During all my stay in Oakland, I enjoyed myself immensely. Jack was
continually inviting me out to theatres, prize-fights, and social
gatherings. One of the most amusing fights I ever saw took place in
Oakland, when a Chinaman and a negro entered the ropes and began to
bang and biff each other. The difference in make-up between the two
types was considerable, and their methods of fighting were entirely
dissimilar. All rules of the game seemed suspended. It was give and
take, give and take; but the Chink was getting the worst of it. Both
the combatants indulged in lip-fighting, the Chinaman execrating his
dusky opponent in strange pigeon-English, and the negro responding
with deep, throaty epithets well calculated to stir the ire of even
an equable celestial. The fight went some rounds, with the Chink
getting the worst of it all the time. But in the end he amazed us.
Venting a perfect torrent of abuse upon the negro, he managed to
deliver almost simultaneously a blow that must have echoed inside
the coon's thick head, and a sweeping punch in the abdomen. Both
these little reminders did the work. The negro doubled up and fell
senseless to the floor, and when the referee called ten he was still
lying there; and the Chinaman, with chest thrown out and head erect,
was strutting about the ropes exulting over the conquest. I never
could understand it--it was such a big negro, and he went down like
a stick of wood!
Often, on bright days, I would take one of my cameras--I now had
four--and go over to San Francisco to photograph streets where new
buildings were going up. Then there was the Bay--it furnished
endless material for good photographic studies, as all manner of
queer crafts were forever coming and going. And then, the
_Snarkites_ would take pictures of one another, and of the boat.
Jack used to have fun telling me that when we got to the cannibal
islands, I could take my camera and go ashore to get pictures, and
that would be Exhibit A; then, if some of the omnivorous natives
came and made a meal of me, he would take pictures of the feast--and
that would be Exhibit B.
But not all my time was devoted to recreation. That cooking
proposition was lying heavy on my mind. I couldn't forget all those
fine chefs who had applied. Going over to Frisco on the ferry, I
buried my nose assiduously in the cook-book again, searching for
details which might have escaped my previous study, and doing my
best to memorise every recipe in the book. It was now the rainy
season, and of evenings Jack and Mrs. London and I would play cards.
Sometimes George Sterling, the poet, who lived at Carmel-by-the-Sea,
and who was a frequent caller at the London home, would join us.
Oftentimes, Jack and I would wrangle and argue as to which of us was
the better player at hearts; but the truth of the matter was that he
and I always won and lost about the same number of games. But though
Jack and I had these disputes, there was never any doubt as to where
poor Mrs. London stood. When it came to playing hearts, she had
undisputed title to being the most unfortunate. A good deal of her
time, however, was spent at the typewriter; she has typed all of
Jack's manuscripts since their marriage; and just now, both were
toiling double tides, that they might have a little work on hand.
They knew that once on the ocean, they would have a spell of
seasickness during which they could not even think of writing or
typing.
The Oakland Elks also helped to make my stay in their city pleasant.
Before I left, they gave me a letter to put with the one the
Independence Elks had given me, so that now I felt doubly armed with
credentials. Old Mammy Jenny, Jack's negro nurse, gave me much
valuable instruction in cooking, telling me things that no cook-book
in the world could have told me. Jack had predicted a diet largely
of fish, when once we should be on the ocean. Mammy Jenny told me
all she knew about fish. I was considerably relieved, too, when I
discovered that most of our provisions would be tinned, and would
need little more than warming up to make them suitable for the
table. I found great consolation in this thought. It thinned the
clouds for me. I took new lease on life.
The weeks were passing, and still the _Snark_ was in the building!
Jack began to grow impatient. Roscoe Eames made promises. The old
captain meant well, but alas! his good intentions were just like all
the other good intentions. He tried his best to hurry things along,
but nothing could be induced to turn out right. Besides, even good
intentions won't build a boat. There were times when Jack vowed he'd
sail the shell of her to Honolulu, and finish building her there.
Soon Jack's friends began to make bets, some even wagering that the
_Snark_ would never sail at all. Every time he set a sailing-date,
they would bet against it. Everybody was betting. And everybody had
quit the head-shaking and the making of evil predictions. We were
not going to the bottom of the sea now, because we would never be on
the sea. Even the newspapers began a gentle ridicule, giving wide
publicity to a poem written by Kelly, the Sailor-Poet, in which the
_Snark_ was described as setting out on her long voyage--not yet,
but soon--and meeting with all sorts of strange adventures on the
deep--not yet, but soon; and it recounted somewhat of the things
that befell the voyageurs in the various countries they landed
at--not yet, but soon. And more letters came from editors and
publishers, demanding explanations. A big New York magazine, for
which Jack had contracted to write thirty-five thousand words
descriptive of the trip, flamboyantly announced that it was sending
Jack London, the well-known writer, round the world, especially for
itself. This article was so worded that a reader would suppose the
magazine was paying for everything, even for the building of the
_Snark_. Immediately, everyone who had dealings with Jack began to
charge him outrageously, explaining that the magazine had plenty of
money and that it might as well pay for its fun. Naturally, after
putting a small fortune into the boat, and being at almost
incredible trouble to plan and outfit her, Jack was incensed. Such
an article gave to the whole thing the colour of being a cheap
advertising scheme. Even now, most people believe that the magazine
paid for everything, and that Jack received liberal prices for the
things he wrote. But such was not the case. Jack built the boat and
paid for her; the plan was all his own, and the magazine mentioned
had nothing to do with it. For that matter, Jack saw to it that
they got no more articles from him descriptive of the cruise of the
_Snark_. He played the free-lance, sending his "copy" wherever he
chose.
At the beginning of March, 1907, things looked more desperate than
ever. Jack declared it was plain the boat could never be completed
in San Francisco. "She's breaking down faster than she can be
repaired," he said one day. "That's what comes of taking a year for
building. I'll sail her as she is, and finish her up in Honolulu. If
we don't go now, we'll never go."
But immediately the _Snark_ sprang a leak, and had to be repaired
before she could be moved from Anderson's Ways. This was finally
accomplished, and Jack ordered the boat brought across the Bay to
Oakland. On a bright Saturday morning in the middle of March,
Captain Eames and Bert and I went over to Anderson's Ways, and got
aboard. At nine o'clock Captain Eames yelled, "Let her go!" and the
_Snark_ slid off her ways as easily as could be desired, and took to
the Bay with the grace of a wild water-fowl. There was not so much
as a tremble. We created a great excitement as we were towing across
the Bay to what is known as the Oakland estuary. All the larger
vessels dipped their flags, and the smaller ones saluted by giving
three toots of the whistle. We lay anchored in the estuary three
weeks, while electricians did the wiring and a crew of riggers and a
crew of ship's carpenters worked on the deck and the rigging.
During this time, Bert and I took turns living on board, he
sleeping aboard one night and I the next. Meanwhile, Tochigi made
himself useful at the London home, and Mr. and Mrs. London continued
to turn out reading matter. Jack was writing his famous
tramp-stories, the ones now republished in the volume called "The
Road." Often, I sat on one side of the table at his house, writing a
letter, and he sat on the other side, writing his stories. And as he
finished them, he read them to us; and one and all voted him thanks
for the entertainment.
[Illustration: ON THE BALLASSONA RIVER, SOLOMON GROUP. NO WHITE MAN
HAS EVER BEEN TO THE HEAD WATERS OF THIS RIVER]
I shall never forget the day when the sails were unfurled for the
first time. For remember, up to this time I had never seen a real,
sea-going ship under sail, and the whole thing was mysterious to me.
I did not even know one sail from another, but I was so proud of the
little _Snark_ that I got in the dingy and made photographs of her
from every conceivable position, not caring if the canvas did hang
loose and wrinkled enough to make a sailor's heart sore. A few days
before the decks were finished, we drew up alongside the wharf, and
filled the gasolene tanks. Next day, all hands were down early for
the first trial trip. The _Snark's_ crew was aboard, and also little
Johnny London, Jack's nephew. On the trial trip we went twelve miles
out, and met as heavy a sea as will be encountered on an ocean
voyage, owing to a heavy ground-swell coming into the Golden Gate.
And we were seasick--oh! we were seasick! Everyone aboard was
seasick except little Johnny London, and he was not supposed to be a
sailor at all.
But Mr. and Mrs. London declared they were not seasick, not the
least bit sick. They were just rolled up on the deck enjoying
themselves! And poor little Tochigi said nothing, because he had
nothing to say. He did his best to smile, but force as he would, the
smile wouldn't come. I asked Jack for the honour of bringing the
_Snark_ into the Golden Gate, and he granted the request, but I
noticed that he sat close by and kept watch on me to see that I
didn't run into the Cliff House. As we came back to the
starting-point, we saw, in the mouth of the Oakland River, a mass of
freakish yellow, green and other coloured lights, something on the
order of Japanese lanterns hung out on the lawn during a summer
church-festival. We made port that night, satisfied that we had seen
something, we knew not what. Next day, we found that the Chinese
battleship, the _Whang-Ho_, had anchored in the harbour, and I went
with Jack and Mrs. London on board this most interesting craft. The
_Whang-Ho_ was over two hundred years old, and carried wooden
cannons and torture implements of various kinds, that had been used
on captives of war in the centuries gone by--such as a bird-cage and
a back tickler.
During the short time that elapsed between the trial trip and the
real voyage, many interesting things occurred. When it was my turn
to sleep aboard, I would sit for hours on the _Snark's_ deck,
looking out over the Bay; when tired of that, I would go below, and
lying in my bunk, with a good-sized light over my head, would write
letters home, or read and smoke. It seemed strange to feel the
_Snark_ tumbling and rolling with the wash of the sea. Sometimes it
seemed as if she were tugging at her moorings, longing to be off on
the long, long cruise. Because of her smallness, she responded to
the heave and lunge of the ocean much more freely than would the
ordinary ship. Even a tug-boat, passing many feet away, would jostle
the _Snark_ with its wash. Lying in my bunk, I could look up through
a skylight and see the masts, and, higher yet, the scintillating
stars. At last, after all my hopes and fears, after all the
vexatious troubles and delays, the dream was coming true! The time
was near at hand, when we should really shake the dust of California
from our feet, and ride the little _Snark_ round and about the
earth!
And then, crash! bump! bump! the dream was rudely shattered. The
noise was on every side of me. Two large lumber-scows had dragged
their anchors and laid up against the sides of the _Snark_, nearly
making a sandwich of our little boat. Nothing could be done. They
bumped away at the _Snark_ all night long, and when morning came the
rail was flattened two inches on one side and bulged out rather more
than two inches on the other side; and wherever she is, the _Snark_
is lop-sided to this day.
On another night, when I was alone on board, I went to my bunk
early and fell asleep. About three in the morning I was awakened by
the sound of the anchor-chain paying out of the hawsepipes, and I
rushed up on deck to see what was happening. A terrible storm was
raging, and the boat was just like a cork, bobbing and rolling on
the waves. I made fast the chains and went back to bed. At
four-thirty I again started up from my bunk. Something told me that
all was not well with the _Snark_. When I went on deck, I found the
boat was within a hundred yards of a pile wharf, heading straight
for it, and travelling fast. I knew the anchor had slipped, and if
the boat got on the piles it would be good-bye to our cruise. It was
blowing a gale, and the rain was coming down in sheets. I lowered
the kedge-anchor and stopped the boat for the time being, but knew
she would not hold long. I ran below to start the engine, but could
not do so because one of the machinists had taken it apart in one
place to clean it, and so put it out of commission. I worked for
half an hour, with desperate haste, to put the engine into running
order; then started her, and went on deck. The kedge-anchor was now
slipping, and again we started for the piles. Running to the
cockpit, I turned on the propeller, and away went the boat out into
the Bay, with the anchors dragging. When I stopped her, she started
drifting back; and so I had it, back and forth, toward the piles and
then out into the Bay, all the rest of the night, until eight
o'clock brought the workmen in a rowboat. The fight for life had
continued nearly four terrible hours, but it had been worth it.
About twenty-five vessels, many of them larger than the _Snark_, had
been wrecked in that storm. Mr. London's remarks to me that morning
were quite gratifying, and I felt I had made up for my mistake in
letting the lumber-scows bump the _Snark_ lop-sided.
There were always so many water-thieves around the Bay that it was
necessary to keep a sharp lookout. One night when I was in my bunk I
heard a noise, and crept up in my stocking feet to the deck, armed
with a big 38-calibre revolver. But I could find no cause for alarm.
The night was dark. Far over the Bay was San Francisco, from which
the busy ferry-boats were plying, back and forth; and every few
minutes, a revolving light from a lighthouse stationed on a nearby
rock flooded the deck, making everything bright as day. As a rule,
there were a number of large vessels, from various ports, within a
short distance of the _Snark_, and I could see their lights, and
hear their sailors singing as they worked. During the day, I would
go aboard these ships and engage the sailors in conversation, as I
was always desirous of hearing something about the places which
later I would see.
The galley was now very nearly finished, and many hours I spent in
it practising cooking. I made bread and cakes and pies, and fed them
to the workmen. These products were of varying degrees of
excellence, but the workmen seemed to be able to get away with
them, and so I baked all they could eat. I don't believe the men's
digestions were very seriously deranged, either. Jack bought a
bread-mixing machine a few days later, and then I was able to do in
about thirty minutes what before I could only do in several hours.
Before the buying was finished, there were few luxuries or
facilities we did not have aboard the _Snark_.
Once when I was in the galley, the boat was invaded by the Famous
Fraternity. The Famous Fraternity was a group of celebrated authors
and artists, all hailing from California and most of them resident
there. Among those who came were George Sterling, the man whom the
Londons had pronounced one of the greatest of living poets,
Martinez, the artist, Dick Partington, another artist, Johannes
Reimers, writer, and Jimmie Hopper, famous first as a football hero
and then as a writer of short stories, and others, whose names I
have now forgotten. I did my very best to prepare them a good
dinner; and if their expressions of satisfaction were any
indication, I succeeded. I served up a whole gunny-sack full of
steamed mussels, and some of my bread, which one and all declared
the finest they had ever tasted. They almost beat the workmen
eating. I began to think more than ever of my prowess as a cook. In
such a glow of pride as possessed me, my misgivings disappeared
utterly.
Now let me skim lightly over the troubles that followed up to the
very day of our sailing. I don't want this narrative to shape itself
as a mere record of mishaps and vexations, for such a record would
not reflect things truly. Taken all in all, our troubles were as
nothing at all to our delights. But truth compels me to say that in
the month preceding our departure, things that before had gone
casually and desultorily wrong seemed to take on fresh energy in
ill-doing, and to go systematically and diabolically wrong. Had a
malevolent intelligence been directing events, they could not have
been more discomfiting to the impatient crew of the _Snark_. When
the boat was nearly ready for our sailing, she was placed upon the
ways for a final overhauling. The ways spread, and the _Snark_ fell
stern-first into the mud. In the crash, the bedplate of the big
engine splintered, and the engine, in falling, smashed some of its
connections. When the windlass was tried out, its gears ground each
other flat, and the castings which connected it with the engine
broke into fragments. It took two steam-tugs a week, pulling on the
_Snark_ every high tide night and day, to get her out of the mud and
into the water alongside the Oakland City Wharf. We gave up all hope
of both engine and windlass until we should have reached Honolulu;
and we packed away the broken parts as best we could, and lashed the
engine tight to its foundations.
April 18 was now set for the sailing. We began provisioning and
buying all kinds of photographic supplies, done up in tropical
form--that is, with the film wrapped in tin-foil and sealed in tins,
and the paper triple-wrapped and protected with foil. There were a
thousand and one things bought toward the last, which it is needless
to enumerate here. We bought clothing, and we bought fishing tackle,
and harpoons, and guns, and pistols, and we bought paper, paper for
Jack's writing, and paper for the typewriter, hundreds of reams of
it. I spent a whole day packing this paper behind sliding panels in
the two staterooms forward, which were set aside for Jack and Mrs.
London. We spent money like water; it took dray after dray to bring
down to the wharf the things we purchased. Then there were
dray-loads of the things brought from the London home, wood and
coal, provisions, vegetables, blankets, other things, and still
other things, and above all, books--five hundred of them, on every
conceivable topic, selected from Jack's library of ten thousand
volumes. The _Snark_ was fairly ballasted with books. Mrs. London
busied herself in directing the work, and showed a knowledge of
stevedoring that astonished us. At last, after hours of toil and
sweat, everything was safely aboard. But so much still had to be
done that we decided to put off leaving until Sunday, April 21.
And then came one of the worst blows of all. It was Saturday
afternoon, and Jack and Bert and I were on the _Snark_, packing
things away. All about us, on the wharf, were reporters and
photographers and sightseers. Jack had brought his checque-book and
several thousand dollars in paper money and gold, and was wishing
Roscoe would hurry and come with the accounts of the various firms
to which he was indebted, that he might make payment. Without any
warning whatever, a United States marshal stepped aboard and pasted
a little five-by-seven slip of paper to one of the masts. It was an
attachment, issued from the office of the Marshal of the United
States, of the Northern District of California, and stated that any
person who removed or attempted to move the schooner-yacht, _Snark_,
without the written permission of the marshal, would be prosecuted
to the full extent of the law.
We were all astounded. What could it mean? Jack hastened over to San
Francisco to investigate. We had planned to sail at eleven o'clock
on the morrow, so haste was imperative. After several hours Jack
came back, accompanied by Mrs. London, and told us what had
happened.
It seemed that a man named L. H. Sellers, of San Francisco, who was
a ship-chandler, had placed the attachment on the _Snark_. Jack owed
him something like two hundred and fifty dollars, and Sellers'
account was one of those Jack had intended to close that very day.
"It is just a petty trick of a tradesman in a panic," Jack declared,
as he gazed at the writ of attachment pasted on the mast of the
_Snark_. "But it will not delay me one minute in getting away on
the trip I have planned. If the bill were one thousand dollars, I
would pay it and feel the same way about it. I have done several
thousands of dollars' worth of business with this L. H. Sellers, and
with other firms, and this is the first time I have ever been
attached. I do not dispute the bill of Sellers. I owe the claim, and
intended to pay it. I never received a bill for the amount of the
attachment, and suppose that when L. H. Sellers learned that I was
about to sail, he became panic-stricken at the thought of not
receiving what was due him. I have been endeavouring to communicate
with some officer of the United States district court and settle the
matter as soon as possible."
But the matter was not so easily to be settled. Someone had spread
the word around that Jack London and his crew were preparing to
sneak out of the Bay that night, leaving the statute of limitations
to cancel all debts. Representatives of three other big firms, with
claims aggregating nearly three thousand dollars, descended upon the
_Snark_, and Jack promptly paid them. After that came a drove of
smaller tradesmen--"All in a panic," Jack said--and each and every
one received his money without delay.
Jack sent agents and lawyers all over San Francisco and Oakland, but
the United States marshal could not be found. Then a search was made
for the United States judge, but he, too, had disappeared; and after
all hope was given up of discovering them, Jack set out to find Mr.
L. H. Sellers, but Mr. L. H. Sellers was nowhere to be found, nor
Mr. Sellers' attorney. It was plain that the embargo could not be
lifted that night.
A little old man, a deputy United States marshal, had been left in
charge; and never did miser guard his treasure as that little old
man guarded the _Snark_. He stayed on her constantly, to see that
Jack London did not whisk her out of the Bay and start on the trip.
Of course, we did not sail Sunday, April 21, as planned. The little
old man would not allow it. The funny part of it was that Jack was
obliged to pay this deputy marshal three dollars a day for his
zealous custodianship of the _Snark_. But the old man earned it. He
stuck to the boat like glue, even going without meals that the vigil
might not be interrupted.
Saturday night all the _Snarkites_ walked out on an opposite pier to
take a look at the _Snark_ and to make plans. Jack and Mrs. London
were still smiling. It seemed impossible to dash their spirits.
From where we stood, the _Snark_ showed up bravely. She was a little
floating palace. Jack could not refrain from bragging to Mrs. London
about her bow.
"Isn't it a beauty?" he asked again and again. "That bow was made to
punch storms with! It laughs at the sea! Not a drop can come over
her! We'll be as dry and comfortable as any craft afloat, with such
a bow as that!" And Mrs. London would laugh her assent, and find
new virtues in the boat and in that bow.
"Well," I said at last. "We'll get away Tuesday, anyway."
"Yes, we'll get away Tuesday. Think of that!" Mrs. London cried in
response. "It will be worth all the trouble, and all the expense.
Once we're out on the ocean, we'll forget all our little worries,
the accidents, and the Sellerses, and all the rest. Glorious?
Glorious doesn't express it."
"And think of what we can do when we get the engine to running
again," Jack went on. "Think of the inland work. With such an
engine, there isn't a river in the world with current stiff enough
to baffle us. We can see so much more by inland voyaging than we
could by merely hanging around ports. Think of the people, and the
natural scenery! The things we won't know about the various
countries through which we pass won't be worth knowing."
"That reminds me," I broke in. "What do you think you'll write
about?"
He smiled.
"Well, if we're boarded by pirates and fight it out until our deck
becomes a shambles, I don't think I'll write about it. And if we're
wrecked at sea, and are driven by starvation into eating one another
I'll keep it quiet for the sake of our relatives. And if we're
killed and eaten by cannibals, of course I shan't let the American
public get an inkling of it."
[Illustration: A TE MOTU ROUND HOUSE. SANTA CRUZ GROUP]
"You won't starve," I assured him. "Think of all the food we have
aboard--over three months' supply. And think of your cook! No, you
will never starve aboard the _Snark_."
"The thing that's worrying me," Bert here broke in, "is how we're
going to find room to get around on the boat. Since that windlass
was set up, and the launch and life-boat lashed on deck, there is
hardly room to turn around in." And Tochigi, who was always very
quiet, said nothing at all.
For days, Jack and Captain Eames had been engaged in one of the most
laughable arguments I have ever heard. Roscoe Eames stoutly
maintained that the earth is concave of surface, and that we would
all sail round on the inside of a hollow sphere; while Jack, who was
willing to stick to orthodox cosmology, just as stoutly maintained
that Roscoe was mistaken, and that we would sail round on the
outside. Each had a number of proofs, which he adduced in the
argument; and neither was to be shaken in his confidence. To this
day, I think they hold divergent opinions on the subject. Captain
Eames was also a vegetarian; and it was this fact that made me
wonder how he was to get along satisfactorily on the _Snark_.
Though Jack had answered my question jestingly, I knew that he
contemplated writing an extended series of articles on the home-life
of the various peoples among whom we were to sojourn. He would treat
of their domestic problems; social structures; problems of living;
cost of living as compared with the cost in the United States;
education; opportunities for advancement; general tone of peoples;
culture; morals; religion; how they amuse themselves; marriage and
divorce problems; housekeeping, and a hundred other topics.
When we left the wharf that night, we felt more cheerful than ever.
Mrs. London was right. That boat was well worth all the trouble and
expense. "Barring wreck and worms," said Jack, "she'll be sailing
the seas a hundred years from now."
All day Monday we worked on the _Snark_, besieged constantly by
reporters and photographers. Jack paid Mr. L. H. Sellers his two
hundred and fifty dollars, and lifted the embargo. In the afternoon
we were towed out in the Bay, and an expert adjusted our compasses
and other instruments for us. It was essential that these be in
proper trim, the more so as not one of us knew anything about
navigation except Captain Eames, and even his knowledge was of the
experimental sort. Jack declared that the rest of us could learn
after we were afloat. Thousands of people visited the wharf that day
to take a look at us; and the photographers were busy taking
snap-shots of the boat. Out in the Bay, we had with us a reporter
for the Hearst papers. When he left, he took with him my last
message ashore, a telegram to be sent to Independence announcing the
imminence of our departure. We worked all that night, stowing and
packing, and getting things shipshape for our cruise to Hawaii. At
high tide the next morning we were to up-anchor and away.
Daylight broke at last. That 23rd of April, 1907, I shall never
forget. Thousands came down to the wharf to bid us good-bye and to
wish us a pleasant and successful voyage. Photographers from a
popular western magazine took what they announced would be the last
views of the _Snark_ and her crew. Among the dozens of telegrams I
received was one from an Independence friend, which read: "Good-bye.
Hope I may see you again." Surrounded by hundreds of people who were
prophesying that we would never reach Honolulu, this telegram had a
rather gruesome sound to me. Strangely enough, I never did see this
friend again. I did not meet my death in the water, but he did. He
drowned in one of the rivers near Independence.
Among those who came down to say the farewells were many members of
the Bohemian Club of San Francisco, to which Jack belonged. There
were writers and artists and newspaper men. George Sterling and
James Hopper were on hand, as was also Martinez, the artist. Mrs.
London's friends came in a body. Then there were Oakland Elks, and
San Francisco Elks, and friends of Tochigi, and Bert's friends, and
all the friends of the Eames', and others who came merely out of
curiosity to see the world-famous author and his crew sail off in
one of the most unique little boats that ever rode the waves.
It was a beautiful, bright, sunshiny day when we passed out of the
Golden Gate, with hundreds of whistles tooting us a farewell salute,
passed the Seal Rocks, and turned her bow to the westward. My duties
on the smallest boat, with only one or two exceptions, that ever
crossed the Pacific Ocean, had begun; but instead of getting busy
cooking meals, I sat in the stern looking gloomily toward the land,
which was the last I would see of good old American soil for nearly
three years. I was thinking of the friends and the home I was
leaving, and wondering if we were really bound for the bottom of the
sea as so many had foretold; and I could not altogether down a
feeling that I would just a little rather be on the full-rigged ship
that passed us on her way into the harbour. But on the _Snark_ I was
and on the _Snark_ I must remain. Gloomy dreams soon ended, and we
settled down to life on the high seas.
So it was that we put forth into the wide Pacific, in a mere cork of
a boat, without a navigator, with no engineer, no sailors, and for
that matter, no cook. This lack of a cook did not bother much just
then, however, for soon we were all too seasick to care to eat.
When night came, land was out of sight, darkness wrapped us about on
every side, and the _Snark_ rose and fell rhythmically, the sport of
every wave.
CHAPTER III
ON THE HIGH SEAS
After we passed out of the Golden Gate and headed seaward on our
voyage, there followed twenty-seven days that are almost beyond
description. One cannot describe them by comparing them with
anything else, for probably since the world began there has never
been anything quite like them. Suffice it to say that these
twenty-seven days were the most wild and chaotic that human beings
ever experienced.
We headed south, hoping to pick up with the northeast trades. The
port for which we were making lay approximately twenty-one hundred
miles away, in a straight line. But while we ignored the straight
line, and were in no particular hurry, we nevertheless fairly raced
over the water. We couldn't help ourselves. The _Snark_ tore along
before the wind despite all handicaps.
"I wish some of the crack sailors of the Bohemian Club could see us
now!" Jack exclaimed, exultantly. "They said the _Snark_ could not
run--that her lines wouldn't permit it. Well, here's something to
make them sit up and revise their criticism--but unfortunately they
can't see!"
The water began to get rough. A queer sensation kept asserting
itself right in the region of my stomach, and I knew only too well
what it portended. As the moments went by, this feeling recurred
more frequently, each attack a little more aggravated than the one
before it. The sea grew boisterous. It began to lash itself into
crested waves.
The galley or kitchen of the _Snark_ was tucked away to one side,
and was not large enough for two small men to enter, close the door,
and then turn around. As a matter of fact, if I was handling a dish
of any size, I had to back out of the door to turn around, myself.
For the first meal, I decided that I would try some fried onions, a
nice roast with dressing, some vegetables, and some pudding; so I
got out about a half-peck of onions, and by the time I had finished
peeling those onions in that little galley, I decided that onions
were all that was needed for that meal. Did you ever peel onions in
a kitchen cupboard? That is practically what I was doing. My eyes
were watering so that I couldn't see, and my nostrils and throat
were burning so that I couldn't talk. The entire crew was kind
enough to say that they liked onions, anyway.
Tochigi served the dinner, and we all ate. Then I made for my bunk,
feeling, as Captain Eames put it, "rather white around the gills."
As soon as Tochigi had served the dinner, he got out his flute,
played the most mournful piece I have ever heard, and as the last
note died away, rushed precipitately up on deck and relieved his
deathly sickness at the rail. Mrs. London speedily joined him. But
Jack and Bert and Captain Eames were as yet unaffected.
The boat was leaking like a sieve. Yes, the _Snark_, the famous
_Snark_, that had cost thirty thousand dollars, that had been built
by expert shipbuilders, and that was declared to be the tightest
craft afloat, leaked! The sides leaked, the bottom leaked; we were
flooded. Even the self-bailing cockpit quickly filled with water
that could find no outlet. Our gasolene, stored in non-leakable
tanks and sealed behind an air-tight bulkhead, began to filter out,
so that we hardly dared to strike a match. The air was full of the
smell of it. I got up from my bunk, staggering sick. Bert started
the five-horse-power engine, which controlled the pumps, and by this
means managed to get some of the sea out of our quarters below.
At intervals, I was obliged to spend some necessary moments at the
rail. The rail was only a foot high; one was obliged to crouch down
on deck, clinging tightly, and lean far out, confronted ever by the
stern face of the waves. The unutterable, blind sickness of such
moments it is beyond the province of words to portray.
Never had I known anything like it! My head ached, my stomach ached,
every muscle in my body ached. There were times when it seemed
impossible that I should live. When the sickness was at its height,
I was blind, deaf, and--need I say it?--dumb. All stabilities were
shattered. The universe itself was rocking and plunging through the
cold depths of space. And then, for a brief instant, the sickness
would subside, and sight and speech and hearing return, and I knew I
was on the _Snark_, the plaything of the waves, and that I, the most
desperate of living creatures, was gurgling and babbling my troubles
to the uncaring sea. Later, it was laughable, but ye gods! at the
time laughter was a stranger to my soul.
It did not ease matters much to discover that the water pouring into
the boat had ruined the tools in the engine room, and spoiled a good
part of our three months' provisions in the galley. Our box of
oranges had been frozen; our box of apples was mostly spoiled; the
carrots tasted of kerosene; the turnips and beets were worthless;
and last, but not least, our crate of cabbages was so far gone in
decay that it had to be thrown overboard. As for our coal, it had
been delivered in rotten potato-sacks, and in the swinging and
thrashing of the ship had escaped, and was washing through the
scuppers into the ocean. We found that the engine in the launch was
out of order, and that our cherished life-boat leaked as badly as
did the _Snark_. In one respect, however, I was especially marked
out for discomfort. I had the misfortune to be somewhat taller than
any of the rest; and so low was the ceiling of the galley and the
staterooms downstairs that I could never stand upright, but was
obliged to stoop. The only place where I could be really comfortable
was on deck, and even here things were so tightly packed that there
never was room for a promenade.
We didn't discover all our handicaps at once. It took about a week
for us to see all there was to see, and to get acquainted with our
little floating home. One of our greatest drawbacks was the fact
that never for a moment could we let go of one hold unless we were
assured of another. To have let go would have meant being jerked off
our feet and thrown sprawling until we fetched up against something
stout enough to check the fall. Circus gymnastics is as nothing
compared with it. I have seen many acrobatic feats, but nothing
resembling in mad abandon the double handspring Mrs. London turned
one day when her hand missed its hold and she landed down the
companionway in the middle of the table, on top of a dinner which I
had just cooked, and which Tochigi was serving.
Toward evening of the first day, we passed a steamer, but could not
make her out. The air grew chilly as night set in, and the flying
spray in the air made it worse. Our dynamo would not work, so we had
nothing but the kerosene lamps to depend on for light. After
considerable difficulty, we got the mizzen mainstay and jibsails
set, and such of us as were not on watch turned in. Mrs. London's
watch was from eight till ten; then I relieved her from ten till
twelve, and was in turn relieved by Tochigi.
Bert and Tochigi and I occupied one cabin. Mine was an upper bunk;
Tochigi's bunk was beneath mine, and Bert slept across the room.
Captain Eames had a room of his own, but just now he was unable to
sleep in it, for the water and gasolene drove him out. (Captain
Eames waxed facetious, and always referred to his room as "the
gasolene chamber.") Each bunk had upholstered springs and mattresses
and was fitted with an electric light globe and a fan. Such of the
crew as were sleeping had to be packed tight in their bunks with
pillows to prevent their being tossed across the room.
On the morning of the second day, Jack awoke me at six-thirty, and I
got breakfast. He was the only one who could eat. Not much wind was
stirring, but a big swell was running. The _Snark_ was still racing.
"I gave no thought to speed in building the _Snark_," Jack said that
morning. "Only safety and comfort were considered. But if the
_Snark_ has fallen below our expectations in some things, she has
certainly exceeded them in that."
I hazarded a guess. "At this rate, we will compress seven years'
travelling into a few months."
"Oh, we'll find a means to stop her," he was confident, and went
upstairs to the wheel.
And now occurred another remarkable thing. Jack started to heave-to,
in other words, to place the _Snark_ bow-on to the wind. The first
gust of a gale had started, and the _Snark_, with flying-jib, jib
and mizzen taken in, and reefs in the big mainsail and the
fore-staysail, was rolling in the trough, the most dangerous
position in which a ship can be placed. As Jack put the wheel down
to heave-to, the flying jib-boom poked its nose into the water, and
broke clean off. Jack put the wheel hard down, and the _Snark_ never
responded, but remained in the trough. The ship alternately buried
her rails in the stiff sea. The mainsail was flattened down, but
without avail. Then Bert tried slacking it off, but that had no
effect whatever. Hoping to bring her bow up to the wind, they took
in all canvas but the storm trysail on the mizzen, but still the
_Snark_ rolled in the trough. Jack declared he had never heard of
such a thing before.
"And we must even lose faith in the _Snark's_ wonderful bow," he
said, regretfully. "It won't heave-to."
Meanwhile, I had gone back to my bunk, sicker than ever. Tochigi lay
prostrate, seeing and hearing nothing. He had not moved since
yesterday. Mrs. London and Bert and Captain Eames were able to stay
on deck, but even they had occasional tremors and sudden rushes of
sickness. Once, in the afternoon, I tried to fool my stomach by
eating a cracker, but it was no go. By this time, the floors of
stateroom and galley were slushy with water, and all the time more
was seeping in. Bert had pumped it out yesterday, but already it was
up to our knees. My sickness increased whenever I heard it swashing
around on the floor.
Night was coming on, a night of storm and wind. The _Snark_ was
creaking and groaning, and still in that most dangerous of all
positions, the trough. Jack got out his patent sea-anchor, warranted
not to dive, and trailed it out a few yards into the sea, then made
fast. Almost the minute the line drew taut, the anchor dived. The
_Snark_ still raced. Then Jack drew the anchor in, and tied a big
timber to it. This time it floated, but it had no deterrent effect
at all. The _Snark_ continued to race. Do what they would, the
little boat went right ahead, and remained in the trough of the sea,
all the while pitching like a cork.
On Thursday, I prepared only two meals. Bert and Captain Eames and
Jack ate. Tochigi lay motionless in his bunk, looking like one dead,
and I made for my bunk at the first opportunity. Mrs. London was
taken desperately sick, and we saw little of her that day. We were
still heading south. Before leaving the Golden Gate, Jack had told
us of the flying fish that we were sure to pick up with as soon as
we got out to sea, and of the dolphin and porpoises and bonita, to
say nothing of sharks. But despite his prediction, we saw nothing at
all. The _Snark_ headed farther and farther south, the days grew
warmer and warmer, but never a shark nor porpoise nor even a flying
fish showed up. On Sunday, April 28, we made one hundred and ten
miles. The galley floor burst from the pressure of water, and we had
a hard time repairing it. For days I wore thigh-boots in cooking,
and we kept the five-horse-power engine busy with the pumps. On
April 30, one week after leaving Frisco, things looked worse than
ever, and we were still sick. There were times when only Jack or
Captain Eames could eat anything.
[Illustration: "WAR AND PEACE"--FOATE CANNIBALS IN MISSION BOAT.
ARTIFICIAL ISLANDS OFF MALAITA, SOLOMON GROUP]
We all tried to keep one another cheered up as much as possible.
Anyone who has been seasick can in some measure appreciate our
predicament. There is something amusing about seasickness--when
somebody else is afflicted. At first, you fear you will die; then,
after it has a good hold on you, you fear you won't die; and you
feel that you are all stomach, and that that stomach is emptying
itself faster than it could possibly be filled. The person who is
not actually in the throes of seasickness can have no sympathy with
the person who is so afflicted. I used to go up to Mrs. London when
she was at the wheel, and ask her if I should not prepare for her
dinner a nice piece of fat pork with a string tied to it. The effect
was magical. Immediately, she would clap her hands over her mouth
and make for the rail. There is something infectious about
seasickness. I would have to go join her myself, and sometimes Jack
would come with us.
On one occasion, I almost gave up, and expressed to Jack the wish
that I could see land. He replied: "Never mind, Martin, we are not
over two miles from land now;" and when I asked him which way, he
said: "Straight down, Martin, straight down."
One whole day I slept, or tried to sleep, in the life-boat. But the
life-boat was a joke. By this time we realised that if a really
severe storm should strike us, the life-boat would be the first
thing to go, and our only resource in case of foundering would be
the launch, which is to say, that had the _Snark_ gone down, we
would have gone down with it. So our only hope was in fair weather
and the pumps.
The bath-room had long since gone out of commission. The first day
out, the big iron levers that controlled the sea-valves and the
bath-pumps broke into splinters. Jack's heart was sore at this, for
he had planned that bath-room carefully, and had been to much
expense in fitting it up. Another thing that would have dashed most
skippers' spirits was the fact that the specially ordered planking
from Puget Sound, warranted to have no butts, was literally crowded
with butts. But Jack did not let any of these things trouble him
much; he merely commented on them, and then set himself to make the
best of the voyage. Luckily, we were not becalmed. Had this
misfortune been added to the rest, it might have taken us sixty days
or more to reach Honolulu.
A little over a week out, a gale struck us, and carried away the jib
and staysail. Everybody worked; the boat was creaking and groaning,
water spouting in everywhere, and the cockpit filled with water. The
engine wouldn't work, and nothing else worked. This gale was a
wonderful experience for me. The little boat would go down in the
trough of the wave, and I would gaze up and see the water coming in
a massive cone, a million tons of water, looking a hundred feet
high. It seemed to overtop our mainmast several times and more. I
felt absolutely certain that when that mass of water hit us, we
would be gone; but each time our stout little craft would climb the
side of the wave until we reached the top, and then would start down
the opposite side so rapidly that it produced that peculiar feeling
one experiences when going down a Shoot-the-Chutes or the steep
incline of a Roller-Coaster. In fact, seasickness is nothing more
than this sensation aggravated to a point where it is painful. We
were pitched around with great violence--sometimes we would be away
over on one side until the water came pouring in the scuppers; and
again, the boat would rush downward at such a rate of speed that I
just knew we were making for that bottom Mr. London had spoken of;
then we would go up again, each time to my surprise, because I was
satisfied that we were as good as dead at least twice to each wave
we rode. During this storm, the thought came to me that just a year
before, on May 1, I was on a big cattle-steamer, going east on the
Atlantic; and here I was, a year later, on a fish-bobber, in the
middle of the Pacific, going--where? But the sea was not in
existence that could swamp us. When the storm broke away the next
day, and the sun arose bright and clear, everyone seemed to feel
better and to take renewed interest in life.
We had not been long out of port before we became convinced that we
had no navigator aboard. Captain Eames was supposed to be the
navigator, but the navigation of a small boat is difficult and Jack
had to assist him in the work. On certain days we made splendid
headway and seemed to have covered considerable distance but our
observations and markings on the chart showed that we had not done
nearly as well as we supposed. On the other hand, there were days
when it had been practically calm, and our records would show that
we had fairly whirled over the water. The principles of navigation
are fairly simple--and misunderstood by most people. Before we had
reached Honolulu, everyone in the boat was navigating, except
Tochigi. Of course, most of our mistakes had their roots in the fact
that the boat's tossing threw our observations out of line, and our
eyes were rather too near to the water. Of course, too, our record
of time on board was sadly perturbed, despite our turning the ship's
clock back about ten minutes each day.
And still we saw no fish of any sort. Jack could not understand it.
He had been in these latitudes before, and always had seen porpoises
and dolphins and flying fish, as well as sharks and bonita. But the
ocean was absolutely bare in every direction. We were in a watery
desert. It was not until we got to latitude 19° that we saw the
first flying fish, and he was all by himself.
On Thursday, May 2, we felt that we were certainly in the trade
winds. We went dead ahead of the breeze, with all the sails set
except the mizzen, and doing what old sailors, men of forty years on
the sea, declare cannot be done--racing along with no one at the
wheel. We simply set the wheel over to suit the wind, without even
lashing it; and then all went below to supper, and to play cribbage.
By this time I had learned a number of new dishes. Tochigi showed me
the Japanese way of preparing rice, and it beat anything I had yet
cooked. All were feeling in high spirits. The sickness had left us,
and the boat looked tidier than at any time since leaving Frisco,
for we had spent the day in scrubbing the floors, and generally
cleaning things up.
When it came to the actual test, we found that the provisions of the
_Snark_ were not exactly adapted to that kind of trip. The duty of
provisioning the boat had been left to Mrs. London and myself, and I
fear that in the buying we lost all sense of proportion. We had
bought an enormous crate of cabbages (which, as I have said,
speedily found its way into the sea), and a whole case of lemons;
and I had made out the list of spices and seasonings, all of which
were purchased, enough to run the Delmonico for a year. The amount
of pepper we had aboard would last a good-sized family through
several lifetimes. When we completed the voyage, we had pepper to
throw overboard, and I'll bet the fish in that vicinity have been
coughing and sneezing ever since.
But the cooking was a reasonably easy proposition, because most of
the time over half the crew didn't care for anything to eat, and the
others were kind enough to say that they particularly liked my
method of preparing only one dish at a meal, and depending on the
can-opener for the rest. And observe the security of my
position--they could not fire me and hire a new cook, so they had to
like it or do without eating.
The galley had a Primus kerosene stove, which burned without odour.
On the galley shelves were all sorts of pots and pans, bottles,
tins, and utensils. For each and every separate thing, a hole had
been made in the shelves, of just the right size and shape, so that
nothing could topple out. On the stove, there were racks to hold the
skillets and pots and pans while I cooked; but the pots and pans had
a trick of jumping out of their racks and banging down into the
bilge-water on the floor. And what didn't leap off the stove slopped
and splashed all over the galley and the cook. As for myself, I was
flung back and forth from one side of the galley to the other, until
my back was a mass of bruises from bumping against the bulkhead.
A few extracts from the diary I kept during this cruise to Hawaii
will throw an interesting light on how we lived aboard the _Snark_.
The entries in this diary reflect my feelings better than I could
recollect them after the lapse of several years.
_May 2, 1907._--I feel much better to-day. Am trying to clean up
galley. It is getting warmer. No wind scarcely--making about two
knots. I've changed watches with Bert, so now I have from four to
six in the morning. Mrs. London is certainly a brick--weighs only
one hundred and ten pounds, but bears up wonderfully, and is
everywhere at once. The last few days I've cooked with my boots on.
Mrs. L. helps. Floor of galley only about two feet above inside
bottom of _Snark_. Down below, water moves freely from one air-tight
compartment to the other. Will we ever reach Honolulu alive?
Evening.--I feel fine. So do all. Even Tochigi is smiling again, and
that's nuff said. It's the prettiest evening I've seen in a long
time. Bert, who is engineer, finds the dynamo won't work, so he is
filling the oil lamps again. Just think of it--we have 19 big
electric lights on the boat, and a searchlight, and not one of them
working! Jack and Mrs. London are playing cribbage in the cockpit.
Tochigi washing clothes over the rail. Ocean calm, except for the
swell that is always felt. We had a fine time at supper, telling
stories, and joking with one another. Well, I'm going to turn in. My
bunk is five feet five inches long, two feet wide, and one foot six
inches from the ceiling, but I feel as good in it as on feathers.
Queer that we have seen no fish. Jack can't account for it. Mr.
Eames has gone back to his room--he was run out a few days ago by
gasolene leaking under his bunk. Water still spouting in. Pumps
needed. Many of Tochigi's books are ruined by being water-soaked.
Mrs. London has bad headache, and so have I, but a little sleep will
cure that. So here's for the bunk.
_Friday, May 3, 1907._--Big sea to-day. Tochigi again seasick. I'm
not feeling so well; neither is Mrs. London. At dinner no one could
stay at the table, the boat rocked so. Jack and Mrs. London were
thrown clear across the cabin. All my dishes swimming around the
floor--nothing will stay on the stove. I just slid across cabin and
ran into Mrs. London coming head-first down companionway. Not badly
hurt. We are averaging 5-1/2 knots.
_Saturday, May 4, 1907._--Last night we had some hard luck; at five
o'clock the gooseneck, the piece of iron that holds the main gaff to
the barrel on the main boom, broke, and let down the gaff. We took
the gooseneck off the gaff of the storm trysail and replaced the one
that had broken; and went below to supper. Just as we sat down the
blamed thing came crashing down again, so we had to lash it with
ropes, and let it go until we reach Honolulu--if we ever get there.
But these goosenecks breaking looks bad. Both were of wrought iron;
on the second one we would have depended in time of storm. Jack says
it is just like macaroni, the way it snapped. Wind pretty stiff, and
a suggestion of rain in the air. Feeling rather sick.
_Sunday, May 5, 1907._--Fine day, and everybody feeling well. I've
just now begun to enjoy this trip. Wonder what's going on in the
world, anyway! I've come to the point where I've forgotten what the
world was like. The past is all like some dream. Our world is a big,
blue expanse of water, reaching in an eternal circle to the horizon;
a blue, clear-looking sky overhead, in which journeys the hot,
glowing sun; and a tiny boat, a speck in the immensity of things,
pursuing its solitary way across the deep. Loafed on deck most of
to-day. We are far south of the regular track of steamers. Bert and
Tochigi and I are all writing on our diaries this evening. The
Londons have retired. Captain Eames is at the wheel, singing some
sea-song--seems to be happy. Course south by west.
_Monday, May 6, 1907._--Baked bread and made biscuits to-day; had
fine success. Fourteen days out of Frisco. Bert and Captain Eames
took a bath in the ocean to-day--got clear down on the stays, and
let the motion of the boat do the rest. Bert keeps declaring that he
will let go and have a decent swim, but Jack warns him that if he
does the sharks will get him. But Bert says the sharks are all with
the dolphins and porpoises and bonita--in other words, that there
aren't any. Changed our course to southwest by west. I think we are
a little over half-way. To-night, we are going to start a game of
whist and play it up until the moment we land. Everybody is making
fun of my whiskers. Of course, I haven't shaved since we left, and
I have an awful growth of beard, which I shan't scrape off until we
reach port. Bert is the same way; there are times when he looks like
a pirate. A queer bird hove in sight to-day. It's circling around
us. It's white, with a long tail, sharp as a needle, and a long
bill. Jack says he never heard of any like it before. I have my
washing out. We just tie ropes on our clothes and tow them overboard
all night, and in the morning they are clean; all we have to do is
hang them up to dry. We crossed the line last night and are now in
the tropics, or torrid zone. Have not seen a ship for over a week.
Well, Jack's idea was to get away from the crowd, and certainly he
has nothing to complain of in that respect. No mail, no telephones,
no telegraph messengers, no cranks, nothing at all to bother him. He
writes every day, and then does his trick at the wheel, or helps
with the sailorising. Tochigi is at the wheel, reading a Japanese
novel up-side down and from the back--or so it looks. Last night at
supper he took the wheel, and played some weird music on his bamboo
flute. We all stopped eating to listen. It is hard to realise that
it is over a thousand miles to land in any direction.
_Tuesday, May 7, 1907._--Played whist last night, and had a fine
time. Jack and Mrs. London won both games. Captain Eames looked on
until a lamp fell on his head, and after that he seemed to lose
interest. Tochigi had the wheel. When I am feeling sick, my
early-morning watch seems terribly long; but if I am well, it is
really enjoyable. We are taking a good many pictures now-a-days. I
develop and print my own pictures, and all the others'. Jack
requires a good many as illustrations to his magazine articles.
To-day, Bert and Captain Eames set the spinnaker sail. Bert went out
on the boom and got a good ducking, but the water is fine and warm,
so it wasn't disagreeable. As I write, I have to hold on to the
companionway with one hand. Lat. 22°--44′--24″, Long. 136°--4′. We
figure that another ten days will put us in Honolulu. Captain has
just hung the map with our course, and it's the most zigzagged route
I ever saw. Yesterday we actually went out of our way fourteen
miles. Everyone is feeling good, even if we are rolling some. I
realise now, that, joking aside, this is as perilous a voyage as
ever human beings voluntarily ventured on. We could never weather a
hard storm. For the boat won't heave-to. And no one aboard knows how
to make her heave-to. A fine warm evening, and the most beautiful
sunset. It's queer we see no fish, for by all the books we have on
fish, this is where they should be found. Jack throws out his
trolling line every day, but catches nothing. Our course to-night is
west-southwest.
_Wednesday, May 8, 1907._--My pay-day--but what's the use? I can't
spend any money here. It may be two weeks before we reach Honolulu.
Had fair wind to-day--changed course to south by west. At meals,
Mr. and Mrs. London and Mr. Eames eat, Tochigi waits table, and Bert
takes wheel; then we three eat. We are having lots of Portuguese
men-of-war these days; they are a kind of jelly-fish that move in
schools and have a sail in the middle of their backs. Jack and Mrs.
London are playing pedro, and Bert is putting out the sidelights. It
is getting awfully monotonous, always swaying up and down on these
big waves--now away in the valley formed by two big swells, then on
top of one of them. We are all over our seasickness, and feeling
pretty good. Bert is certainly just right for this trip. He is
robust and strong--a young Hercules. We are all discarding our
shirts and wearing white trousers and canvas shoes. Fortunately, the
breeze keeps the air from getting oppressively warm. Bert takes his
daily bath from the stays.
_Thursday, May 9, 1907._--Jack and Mrs. London swear they saw three
flying fish to-day; we think they are mistaken. Jack has had a
spoon-hook out ever since we left, but has not even had a nibble.
Tochigi washed out some clothing to-day--I made a picture of him at
it. Lat. 21°--42′--14″, Long. 139°--22′--15″. If only I could get
some sleep! But the sea is so rough that I just roll from one side
of the bunk to the other. We have all kinds of music. Jack has a big
talking-machine, with over five hundred records; some of them are of
the finest opera music, vocal and instrumental. How strange it would
be, if one could stand off a hundred yards and watch the little
_Snark_ go by on the crested waves, while the voice of Caruso,
say, sang from our companionway. I think one would rub his eyes, and
think it something visionary, unreal. We have awnings on deck which
help to keep off the heat of the sun. And oh, yes, besides the
talking-machine and the musical records, we have an Edison
language-machine, with Italian, German, Spanish, and French records,
and a text-book for each language.
[Illustration: WAR CANOES IN THEIR SHELTER]
_Friday, May 10, 1907._--Sea rough to-day. Everybody needing sleep.
Saw some flying fish, but couldn't catch any. Been threatening rain;
wind from northeast, course southwest. It's mighty hard to cook, for
nothing will stay on the stove. What does slops out. I am thrown
around all the time. Water still sopping around in galley. It is a
good thing we are prepared for the wet--we have rubber hip-boots,
oilskin coats, rubber sou'-westers. Then, for work, there are blue
flannel shirts, blue calico shirts; and for dress, silk shirts. We
have also brought pajamas, for use in very warm weather. How the
boat rocks and pitches! What wouldn't I give to stand still for only
a minute? Tochigi is relapsing into seasickness again.
* * * * *
The next day found us in a fierce sea. We were all soaked with
water. Indeed, it was impossible to step on deck without getting
wet. Great waves, many times higher than the _Snark_, kept sweeping
down as if to swamp us, but always we slid along the top of them,
seeing for miles around; then would come the dive down into the
slough, where everything was blotted from view but a wild swirl of
waters. It was next to impossible to cook. Dishes defied all laws of
gravitation, and skimmed like birds through the air; and the stove
was a sight, what of the things that slopped over it. We were
covered with bruises from being thrown up against the vessel. Mrs.
London made another aerial descent of the companionway that night,
but was only slightly bruised. Captain Eames scraped the skin off
his head in the course of one tumble. I got my punishment in burns
from the stove. Far above, in the tropic sky, the lightning flashed
and the thunder rolled. Lightning had an awful significance to the
crew of the _Snark_. We were far out at sea; the copper and other
metals would tend to draw the current, and had a spark ever reached
us, and ignited the eleven hundred gallons of gasolene on board,
there wouldn't have been a splinter left to tell the tale.
Like all sailors, we did not love the sea. It was the eternal
menace. Looking upon its placid surface in moments of calm, we could
almost forget that it was forever yawning, and that into its maw had
gone many a brave ship, of greater tonnage than ours. But in raging
storms, with the lightning shooting in fiery lines across the sky,
and the artillery of heaven rumbling and banging overhead and
echoing on the storm-lashed waves, we came to appreciate the true
meaning of things, and to assign to earth and sky and sea the proper
values. At such moments, I repeat, we did not love the sea; but we
did love the _Snark_. Its ten tons of wood and metal stood between
us and destruction. It made life possible to us. It was in such
reflections as these, miles and miles from any land, that the words
of Jack London rang again in my ears: "Life that lives is life
successful. The achievement of a difficult feat is successful
adjustment to a sternly exacting environment." Well, we strove to
accomplish, and our environment was savage. Supreme courage and
unwavering vigilance alone could enable us to adjust ourselves, and
come alive out of the welter of foam and frothing waves that
assailed the little _Snark_ the greater part of her perilous voyage
to Hawaii.
Even out in the ocean, several kinds of birds follow in the wake of
ships to pick up the leavings. With a piece of meat tied on a
string, we succeeded in catching a guny. These gunys are a species
of albatross, and they live, sleep, and find their food entirely on
the face of the great deep. When these birds are swimming on the
surface of the water and wish to rise into the air, they cannot make
the ascent as most birds do, simply by flapping their wings. They
must start swimming rapidly, with wings extended, until their speed
becomes sufficient to enable them gradually to rise into the air.
Before they start to fly, they are literally walking on the water.
The meat of the guny is not palatable, and looks something like the
meat of an ordinary crow.
Every day, Jack wrote two hours. Just two hours, no more, no less.
He would get up in the morning and take his trick at the wheel, have
breakfast, and then shut himself in his stateroom for just two hours
and write. He always laughed at what he called the tomfoolery of
waiting for inspiration to come. He doesn't believe there is any
such thing as inspiration--he himself can write just as well at one
time as at another. It is plain work, he says, and the only way he
can do it is to go ahead and do it. Incidentally, I may mention that
Jack London never rewrites a story. He writes it just once, and
never goes over it to change it. He writes with a fountain pen, and
nobody can read his writing but Mrs. London. He turns his manuscript
over to her, and she types it and gets it ready for the publishers.
In addition to their writing and typing, both the Londons did their
trick at the wheel, and even helped Bert at the sailorising. When
the weather was calm and we had gotten over our sickness, we would
all gather on deck and talk, and tell each other of our experiences
before chance grouped us together on the _Snark_. Of course, Jack
had lived more of life than any of us. He spent hours recounting to
us tales of the Klondike, and other faraway places he had visited.
One of the most interesting things he told us was of how he came to
write. Since his days in the grade schools of Oakland, he had nursed
the secret wish to become a writer. He spent long hours poring over
books of history, travel, and fiction. But everything seemed against
him. His father, a veteran of the Civil War, was slowly dying, and
it became necessary for Jack to turn to and help support the family.
He worked at everything and anything. Now he was a sailor, now a San
Francisco Bay oyster-pirate, now a member of the Bay Fish Patrol. He
mowed lawns and washed windows, and cleaned carpets, and worked in
canneries and other factories. Through all this experience, his
Socialistic tendencies were strengthened, and he ardently espoused
the cause of revolution, and clings to it still. He wrote evenings
after he came home from work, but all his manuscripts were returned
to him. At last, however, came the day. He had been to the Klondike,
and had returned penniless and stricken with scurvy. He could do
little work. Between odd jobs, he wrote. One night, coming home, he
conceived the idea of turning some of his Arctic experiences into
stories. That evening he sat down and produced the great story that
made him famous, and that has been read round the world, "The White
Silence." It was written from things he knew. It was a bit of life,
"cut from the raw, and woven round with words." A big western
magazine promptly published it, paying him the scanty sum of five
dollars. But his next story, published in an eastern short-story
magazine, brought him better monetary return, so that he was enabled
to go ahead and write. And we all know that he succeeded.
Another rather amusing thing Jack told us was of an experience in
Manchuria, during the Russo-Japanese War. He had been sent as war
correspondent by a big American newspaper syndicate, and besides his
scratch-pad, he was provided with a camera. One day he started to
take some pictures, and was promptly arrested and haled before the
military authorities. A fat and rather deaf old Jap officer began to
question him.
"Why do you take pictures?"
"Because I wish to."
"And why do you wish to?"
"Because I desire to."
And so it went for half an hour, question and answer, attack and
rebuff. Other correspondents who had been rounded up with cameras in
their possession followed the same plan. At last, the Jap officer
gave up in disgust, and allowed them all to depart, though warning
them of what might happen to them in time of war.
During this period, there was strict censorship of all letters and
telegrams, both coming and going. The war correspondents were in a
quandary. They desired to keep their papers posted on the latest
developments, but were unable to get a line of information beyond
the frontier. They tried cipher-codes and various freak methods of
writing, but without avail. These messages were destroyed as being
of a suspicious character. At last, however, one of the
enterprising correspondents hit upon a plan. He wrote plain
English to his paper. Just at the time, an important military
manœuvre was in progress. By building a bridge over a certain river,
the Japs would be enabled to transport their supplies, and to gain
control of an important position. So the war correspondent wrote to
his paper a rather rambling personal letter, of no consequence
whatever, but at the end casually mentioned that the Japanese troops
were on the bank of the river, with timber and big wooden beams and
posts. "I'm not allowed to tell you what they're doing, but you can
bet they're not digging a well." Fortunately, the editor was a man
of acumen; out of all the chaff he sifted the grain of wheat, and
his paper had an enviable beat, that great delight of the editorial
heart.
When we all got to navigating in good shape, we found that we were
able to produce a widely different set of figures. Of course, each
could prove the correctness of his points. I well remember the day
that my figures showed we were in the Atlantic Ocean instead of the
Pacific. As I think back, I wonder more and more that we ever got
anywhere, what of our brilliant navigation. But luck was with us. We
did eventually get to port, though not without stress and storm.
_Monday, May 13, 1907._--We have had all kinds of excitement to-day.
This morning, about eleven, I lay asleep in the bow, when Tochigi
awoke me and pointed just ahead on our port side, and there were
thirty or forty whales; not very big, but they certainly looked big.
I guess they would average twenty or twenty-five feet, and had an
enormous fin in the centre of their backs. They were playing, now
darting our way, now the other way. They looked very lazy floating
on the waves. In half an hour they had disappeared. Jack calls them
fin-backs, and says they are very rare. While they were here, the
air and water seemed alive with flying fish. These flying fish are
of the four-winged kind, about a foot long. Bert and I have been
sitting on the deck practising different kinds of knots. It's
getting awfully hot. We are all discarding as much clothing as we
can. Captain Eames says we will sight Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa next
Friday morning, and make Pearl Harbor, on the island of Oahu,
Sunday. I hope so, but I'm sceptical. Don't think anyone knows our
bearings within a hundred miles or so. Bert and I went in bathing
to-day. Got out on the bobstay, under the bowsprit, and every time
the boat would dip we would go under, and the speed of the boat made
it hard for us to hang on. If ever we let go, it would be all up
with us. It's dangerous, anyway, for sharks are supposed to be thick
here. Getting hotter every day. Now registers 90°; we are not making
much speed at present. My bread was a failure to-day, so I've got to
do it again or we'll starve. Great excitement just now: Mrs. London
has discovered the Southern Cross, a cluster of stars that sailors
use for reckoning after they get too far south to use the North
Star. It's directly south, and never changes position. Bert and I
shaved to-day, and put on our lightest clothes.
_Wednesday, May 15, 1907._--We are making fine time. Best yet--and
all sails drawing. Weather perfect. At noon, registered 88°, but
since then about 80°. We have things closely packed aboard the
_Snark_. Not an inch of wall-or ceiling-space but is utilised. Even
the "leaves" of the dining-table close down over a chest-of-drawers
that contains all the table-linen. In the two little staterooms
forward, devoted to Jack and Mrs. London, there are all sorts of
cubbyholes. Closets, large and small, honeycomb the sides and
ceilings. Mrs. London can hang her dresses full length, and she has
even a hat-box. Then, too, Jack has his tobacco-stores--plenty of
tobacco. This evening, the new moon and the stars are brighter than
I ever saw them, and there are many new stars, unfamiliar to me. We
expect to sight Hawaii to-morrow, that is, if, as Bert says, "we are
where we are." Bert has been telling me about his father, who was
shot by a desperate leper in these islands. He was sheriff, and was
trying to take the leper to Molokai, the Leper Island. I made some
good pictures of Mrs. London to-day--she dresses simply these days,
bare-headed, blue sailor waist, plain short skirt. Only a few more
dog-watches, and then I'll get a good long sleep. This getting up at
four in the morning, and steering till six, is no joke. During that
time I have to put out the sidelights and binnacles, and stow the
sidelights in the bos'ns locker, then call Jack. We turn the clock
back about ten minutes each day.
_Thursday, May 16, 1907._--This morning at four it was raining when
I went on watch, so I put on my oilskins. The wind died out in a
little while, and I don't think we have moved over ten knots all
day. The surface of the ocean is as calm as San Francisco Bay. Very
warm. It is fine these nights, to lie in one's bunk without any
bedclothes, and with no flies or mosquitoes to bother. Jack and Bert
and I went in bathing on the bowsprit in the afternoon, and Bert let
go and swam with the ship. If a shark had put in an appearance, or
if a puff of wind had sent the boat ahead, it would have been all up
with him. We dressed, and then took pictures of each other. Captain
Eames and Mrs. London were at the cockpit, and Tochigi was below
making candy. Suddenly Bert yelled, "Look at that fin," and we were
all excitement at once. We ran to the stern, and there was a real,
live shark, about seven feet long. Jack threw over a shark-hook,
attached to a ninethread. The hook was a big thing, weighing over a
pound, and a foot long; and the ninethread is a little thicker than
one's finger. We baited the hook with a piece of fat pork, and the
shark made a dive for it, but did not swallow it. However, we coaxed
him up within a few feet of the boat, where we could get a good look
at him. He was about the shape and colour of an enormous cat-fish,
except that he was of slimmer build and his fin and gills were
larger. The ugliest head, with little, mean-looking eyes! Just ahead
of his fin was the pilot fish, occasionally darting ahead to inspect
the boat, or so it seemed. The pilot was a pretty fish, ten inches
long, and striped like a zebra. They stayed with us all of two
hours. Now and again, the shark would turn over, belly upward, and
make a rush for the hook, but never did he get it. The water was so
clear that we could see him easily. I brought up a cold lunch, and
we never took our eyes off the fish. Tochigi could hardly break away
long enough to take the dishes below. About six o'clock we saw the
pilot fish take its position back of the shark's head. They swam up
close to the side of the boat, then glided off to the north and
disappeared. We are moving scarcely at all now. No motion to the
boat. With about twenty hours of fair wind, we could sight the
islands.
_Friday, May 17, 1907._--Great excitement again. We think we've
sighted land. If our conjectures are correct, the island of Hawaii
is to our port bow, and Maui dead ahead. They were discovered by Mr.
and Mrs. London, while they were playing cribbage in the cockpit and
watching one of these perfect tropical sunsets. Both spots of land
loom up like high mountains, and look about fifty or sixty miles
distant. Jack has given orders that all on watch to-night go forward
every five minutes and take a lookout. It got dark so early, or
rather we sighted the supposed land so late, that we got only about
a half-hour's light to watch them; but on my watch in the morning I
ought to get a good look at them, or at least at Maui, for we have
changed our course to west-northwest, and will draw off from Hawaii
by morning if the wind does not die down. It is now only about two
knots strong. Previous to our discovery, we had been in low spirits,
for Bert discovered that out of three observations, none agreed, and
all varied about sixty miles. We suspected that our chronometer had
gone wrong; and we feared that we might flounder around for weeks
and never find the islands. Jack had given orders to be saving on
food and water, and to wash in salt water, but he has countermanded
that order now. Jack is poring over his maps, on the cabin table.
_Saturday, May 18, 1907._--Marvel of marvels! We have really found
the islands. They are in exactly the place the reckonings put us,
but it seems strange to be coming in from the south. This morning on
my watch the clouds were so dense on the horizon that I could not
make out land. Jack came on deck at five o'clock, and we searched
the horizon for an hour, and finally gave up and decided that it was
clouds we saw last night. But just then Mrs. London came on deck and
cried, "Oh!" and then, "Isn't that lovely!" and sure enough, the
clouds had parted, and disclosed the snow-peaked active volcano of
Mauna Loa on the island of Hawaii, only about twenty miles to port.
It was a fine sight--Mauna Loa, over thirteen thousand feet high,
the largest active volcano in the world! Well, we kept off her until
noon, when we sighted Maui, reaching over ten thousand feet into the
air. This evening Molokai is off our port bow, Molokai, the island
where hundreds of poor wretches afflicted with leprosy are isolated.
We are headed direct for her, and will round her in the morning and
sight Oahu. Expect to be in Pearl Harbor to-morrow night. We have a
fine breeze; making almost six knots. To-night the watches will be
doubled--one person forward and one at the wheel: Mrs. London and
Tochigi from eight till twelve, Mr. Eames and Bert until four, and
Jack and I until eight. To-day, Tochigi found a flying fish on deck,
that had flown aboard and fallen helpless.
[Illustration: MANUFACTURED ISLET, WITH SHRINE OF A NATIVE
CHIEF--SOLOMON GROUP]
_Sunday, May 19, 1907._--This morning Jack took the lookout, and I
took the wheel. Until daylight we could not make out our position.
Molokai gradually came in view to our port, and as the light grew
stronger we could make out the rocks that the steamer _Manchuria_
ran into on Oahu. About that time, the wind played out, and all day
we have remained in almost the same spot. It's awfully exasperating
to be within sight of Honolulu, or nearly so, and not be able to get
there. It is a fine day. This evening the wind freshened a bit, so
that we got about twenty-five miles closer--that is, within
twenty-five miles of Honolulu--but the wind didn't last long. I can
hear the sails jibbing back and forth, and the booms are cracking
around in a way I don't like. A calm is often far more dangerous to
the rigging of a small vessel than is a storm. Worst of all, the
currents are carrying us toward Molokai; and if we are wrecked on
its rocky coast, we will never be allowed to leave. But we will
surely make Pearl Harbor in the morning. This afternoon we baited a
hook with pork and caught a guny. He was a large one--measured over
six feet from tip of one wing to tip of other wing. They are said to
get seasick when caught, but this one didn't. When we let him
overboard, he gave one disgusted look at us, and swam away. He tried
to fly, but think his wings were too full of water from struggling
to get free. The ocean is now alive with life. Flying fish are
everywhere. There are fish of every sort, and schools of porpoises.
Late this evening, we sighted a steamer, and a couple of sloops are
away off on our port horizon.
* * * * *
The next morning, twenty-seven days out of Frisco, we were near to
Honolulu. We were met by the customs tug, from the deck of which
papers were thrown to us. One of the papers had pictures of the
_Snark_, and a long story, telling that, considering the
twenty-seven days out of San Francisco, all hope had been given up
of the _Snark's_ ever reaching port--that she had evidently gone
down with all hands. When the customs tug volunteered to tow us into
Pearl Harbor, eighteen miles from Honolulu, Jack jumped at the
chance. The _Kamehameha_ and the _Kalaohkun_, of the Hawaiian Yacht
Club, came out to meet us, and escorted us into Pearl Harbor. We
passed several Japanese _sampans_, the first I had ever seen, queer
little flat boats used by the Jap fishermen. Once a monstrous
turtle, said to be the largest ever seen in these parts, swam near
us, and lifted his ungainly head to gaze at us. We took his presence
as an omen of good luck.
Pearl Harbor has a small mouth like a river, which is called Pearl
Locks. Inside, the harbour is deep and large. It was then being
fitted up as a base of supplies and repairs for the American navy,
by Captain Curtis Otwell, who was in charge of the entire
construction work. A little later, we dropped anchor in Pearl
Harbor, and furled the sails. I cannot begin to tell how good it was
to be on solid ground again, after twenty-seven days of pitching and
rolling on the sea. It seemed too good to be true. We called the
harbour "Dream Harbour." It seemed to suit better than any other
name--for was this not all a dream? We were met by a throng of
reporters, camera fiends, Kanakas, and a general mixture of
nationalities, and one and all gave us a hearty welcome to their
island.
CHAPTER IV
A PACIFIC PARADISE
Land at last! It seemed like Paradise. When we saw the rich, soft
grass, we felt like getting down and rolling on it, it looked so
good. Commodore Hoborn, of the Hawaiian Yacht Club, had tendered the
use of his bungalow to Jack and Mrs. London, an offer that was
gratefully accepted. The bungalow was only a few yards from our
anchorage, so that the _Snark_ family remained within easy hailing
distance. We unlashed our boats, covered the sails, and threw out
the spinnaker-boom; and then the Londons went ashore with the
commodore, while we remained for the time on the _Snark_, besieged
by reporters and photographers.
When the customs inspector's tug offered to tow us into Pearl
Harbor, Jack had been quick to accept the kindness; but I had kept
looking toward Honolulu, where I knew there was fresh meat and
fruit, to say nothing of the varied life of the city. But I soon
thought differently. Along the coast for several hundred feet out
the water was white with breakers. After we got nearer to the mouth
of Pearl Harbor, we could see palms along the shore, and other
tropical trees, while in the water plied busy Chinese junk-fishers
and Japanese _sampans_ and native sloops, the occupants in a state
closely approaching nudity. The air was warm and balmy. We all gaped
with wonder--all except Jack, who had been here before.
It was two o'clock that afternoon when we got shoreleave. We could
hardly walk. The land tilted and heaved, even as the _Snark_ had
tilted and heaved. I caught myself spreading my feet apart to
prevent my falling, just as we did on the boat. A train ran every
hour to Pearl City, so we made haste to catch it. It was one of the
queerest trains imaginable, a little yellow car and a miniature
engine, loaded down with Chinamen and Japs dressed in their native
costumes, and the reporters who were returning to Pearl City after
interviewing the crew of the _Snark_. Pearl City, which was only a
mile away, consisted of a depot and a few Japanese and Chinese
stores. We ate our lunch in a roadside hotel, where girls played
guitars and danced and sang all through the meal.
All the next day we packed things back and forth from the boat to
the bungalow, and put up hammocks and mosquito netting. It was a
one-storey building, with low, protruding roof. There were four
rooms, but even this seemed commodious after nearly a month on the
_Snark_, where space in every direction was rigidly economised. One
continuous window let in the sunshine on all four sides of the
bungalow; and the yard was filled with little forests of cocoanut
palms, and a profusion of bananas, figs, papaias, guava palms, and
other tropical trees. The grass was large and blue, and,
fortunately, sheltered no chigoes--or, as they are often called,
chiggers--to drive us mad with their biting. Along the shore was the
sea-wall and a long boat-landing; here the water was so clear that
one could see to the bottom in ten feet of it, to where the coral
lies in wonderful patterns, and shells nestle down almost out of
sight, and fish of every colour swim back and forth.
The weather was perfect. It is always perfect. The temperature never
varies over ten degrees--from about 75° to 85°. There was always
plenty of food, growing right to one's hand; no tropical diseases to
be seen, at least not yet; no dirt, no smoke; everything so pleasing
and satisfying as to be beyond description. The only thing that
really kept us on the jump was the mosquitoes. Sitting in our main
room, in pajamas, reading, talking or writing, we were obliged to
burn mosquito powder all the time, and even that did little to rid
us of the pests. Mark Twain had a bungalow near here a few years
ago, and the story is told that he had netting put all around his
bed, alow and aloft, that he might sleep without losing any of his
blood; but the mosquitoes got in anyway, and nearly tormented the
life out of him. At last, however, he made the discovery that when
the mosquitoes once got inside the netting, they could not find
their way out, so he used to lie there as a bait until all were
safely ensnared, then crawl out and sleep upon the floor.
In the next few days, we were continually finding new things to do
and to see. We swam in the crystal-clear water, despite the natives'
warnings about sharks. For my part I had plenty of leisure. After an
heroic silence of days, the crew finally broke out in protest
against my cooking; they simply could stand no more of it. When on
the sea, it had been eat it or starve; but now that they were
ashore, there was greater latitude of choice. After that, we all
boarded with different white families in the vicinity, and the poor
harassed crew forgot its troubles in the delight of eating once more
the things that humans eat, cooked as humans would cook them.
The people of Oahu were very accommodating, always bringing us fruit
and looking after our wishes with a care unknown in the States. The
conductor on the mile-long railroad-run to Pearl City brought us
various fruits gathered along the way; and when we were riding and
saw anything we wanted, he would stop the train to get it. Coming
from Honolulu one night, the main train switched, and took me direct
to our bungalow, carrying along four other coaches of Japs and
Chinese. The conductor was an American. He said that he didn't care
whether "the cattle"--referring to my fellow-passengers--got
anywhere or not.
Much of our time, however, was spent on the _Snark_, where we were
constantly receiving visitors. I met a great number of American and
English people, and many natives. As for the population of the
islands, the Japanese greatly predominate. I think, in figures, it
runs about as follows: sixty-one thousand Japanese, forty-five
thousand Chinese, twenty-three thousand British, twenty-five
thousand Americans, twelve thousand five hundred natives (Kanakas),
four hundred and fifty South Sea Islanders, and six hundred and
fifty Portuguese; and as nearly all these people dress in their
native costumes, the whole has a decidedly cosmopolitan look. As for
Honolulu, it consists mostly of stores run by Japs and Chinese--many
call it Little Japan. There are many half-castes and quarter-castes
on the islands. I knew one man who could trace through his ancestry
connection with every one of the principal divisions of the human
family.
On June 3 occurred the first split in the _Snark_ crew. Captain
Eames decided that he had had enough yachting, and departed on the
steamship _Sierra_ for California. Shortly after, word came from
Bert's mother, asking him to return and continue his course at
Stanford University. Bert considered a while over this, but in the
end decided to do as she had asked. He formally resigned from the
crew, and went to Honolulu to stay until he could work his way back
to California. It seemed as if the newspapers could never get
through inventing falsehoods about Jack and the rest of us. When
Bert left, they reported that Jack was a big, bullyragging brute,
and had beaten all of us into a pulp. As a matter of fact, there
was never so much as a quarrel among us.
Jack and Mrs. London had gone to Honolulu, and were staying at the
Seaside Hotel. Every day, Jack would send me his exposed films and I
would develop them and send prints by the next train. Never was
there so obliging a person as Tony, conductor of the mile-long
railroad I have mentioned, and which, because of its nature, we
called the Unlimited. Tony was not only conductor, but he was also
engineer, fireman, brakeman and porter. If he could help us at the
house, he would bank the fire in the engine, and leave his train for
half a day. Once, while watching me at my photographing, he found
that he was five minutes late for the run to Pearl City, so he
decided not to make the trip. As he explained, nothing but Japs and
Kanakas (Hawaiians), and Chinamen rode on it, and he didn't care
anything about them. As for us, when we rode he absolutely refused
to collect any fare. When I had made Jack's prints, I would bundle
them up and give them to Tony; then, when he reached Pearl City, he
would give them to the conductor of the train for Honolulu, and
eventually they would find their way to Jack.
About this time, we got our new captain. He was an old fellow who
had been all through the South Seas, and knew them like a book, and
whom we will call Captain X----. He was an ideal sea-captain of the
old school--the kind that is rough and headstrong. He and I had a
little set-to at first, but later ignored each other as much as
possible. About this time, too, Gene Fenelon, a young fellow of
thirty, came from Oakland to take Bert's place as engineer. He and
Jack had known each other for some years, and were good friends. We
took a great liking to Gene, who was really a clever fellow, though,
as will be seen, he did not last long at this particular job. He had
been for eight years assistant manager of an European circus, and
spoke several languages fluently. Bert and Gene and I would go of
nights up to the Hawaiian Yacht Club, and coming back would frighten
the very birds off their perches by our vigorous sea-songs. During
the day we were busy around the boat, scraping the masts and
painting the galley, and developing and printing Jack's negatives.
I myself spent a couple of days in Honolulu at this period, doing
some special camera work, and trying my luck at surf-board riding.
This is said to be one of the greatest sports in the world, but as
it takes several months, at the least, really to learn it, I can
hardly testify as to that. But I do know that I was nearly drowned,
and managed to swallow a few quarts of salt water before the fun
wore off. Jack stayed at it for some time, and got so sunburned that
he was confined to his bed. Let me say here that it is my honest
belief that only the native Hawaiians ever really learn the trick
in all its intricacies, despite the fact that, at several contests
held, white men have come out victorious.
For my part, I found swimming and fishing at Pearl Harbor much
better sport. The fish bit readily. I have caught as many as twenty
in five minutes. In the water, nearby, were turtles as big as a
wash-tub. One day a shark twenty-two feet long was killed, and the
day after one eighteen feet long.
Once, toward evening, Tochigi, Gene, and I were out rowing in a
little canvas boat. It sank about a quarter of a mile from shore.
Not that we cared much, for we had on nothing but swimming trunks,
but we went lively when we discovered that a little hammer-headed
shark was close to us, circling around in the water. He was too
small to do us any harm, but his little protruding eyes looked so
fierce that we all made haste for shore. This place was full of
these little hammer-headed sharks, as well as of turtles and
devil-fish.
It may sound rather strange when I say that we were in the habit of
wearing only swimming suits, but we lessoned from the people we saw
about us, and many of them were more simply garbed even than that.
Mr. and Mrs. London, however, usually wore Japanese kimonos. And our
captain dressed like a tramp.
Captain X---- was a horrible example of what ill temper will do. His
half-breed son declared that he was born angry. At any rate, he
seemed aboard the _Snark_ to have the idea that he was working
Kanaka sailors, and would have sworn at us continually had we
allowed it. It may be that he had cause to be irritable, for he had
once been beaten out of a great fortune. X---- had been plying
around the South Seas for twenty years, and once had discovered a
small island covered with guano--about twenty million dollars' worth
of it. X---- beat back to Honolulu with all haste, that he might
arrange to take the island in the name of the United States. He was
given the proper authority, and with a small crew he hastened back
to his wonderful find. Daylight was breaking dimly as he approached;
there was sufficient light for him to see a small Japanese
man-of-war slipping in the gloom toward the cherished island. When
he and his men landed, they were met by soldiers, who told them that
the island was now formally in the possession of the Japanese
government. I really think that this would be enough to sour any
man's temper. Another time, he drifted around for weeks in a small
ship, nearly dead for water, and with half his crew lying corpses on
the deck. He escaped when wrecked off the coast of the island of
Maui. One of his occupations was "shanghai"-ing South Sea Islanders
for work on the Hawaiian plantations; and a favourite trick was to
cheat the natives when buying copra--he would put his knee under the
sack while weighing it, thus making a two-hundred-pound sack lose
half of its weight. He was a regular old skinflint; but whatever his
merits or demerits, one thing was certain: he had been everywhere
in the South Seas, and had the records to prove it.
[Illustration: A MAN OF ROAS. SOLOMON GROUP, ISLAND OF MALAITA]
[Illustration: CHIEF OF FLORIDA ISLAND, SOLOMON GROUP]
Much work was being done on the _Snark_. Men came from Honolulu and
put everything shipshape. They got the seventy-horse-power engine to
running, also the dynamo of the small engine, painted the _Snark_
again, cleaned the rigging, scraped the masts and spars, and stopped
the leaks. Best of all, they put the engine of the gasolene launch
into condition. We used to make little trips in the launch by night.
All this time, Jack and Mrs. London were making visits to the
neighbouring islands, so that we saw little of them.
Oftentimes, in the evening, I would spend an hour or more watching
the beauties of the Hawaiian scenery when bathed in the soft beams
of the moon. In the harbour lay the _Snark_, looking as if lighted
by electricity where the moonbeams were mirrored on her freshly
painted sides and her polished metal, and further away was the
shadowy shore-line, fringed by groves of cocoanut palms, and still
further back, fading away into the night, were the majestic
mountains.
"The _Snark_ will never be able to heave-to," we were told. "She
catches too much wind aft, no matter how the sails are trimmed." But
with the seventy-horse-power engine in running order, the danger was
vastly minimised, for with its aid we could cut through a storm like
a knife.
The boat was taken to Honolulu for a thorough overhauling. Of
course, the crew went too. My stay in Honolulu was one of the most
enjoyable periods of my life, despite the growing enmity between
Captain X---- and myself. None of us liked him; even Jack was
wishing for an opportunity to let him go. He was an eccentric
person, to say the least, and had all the latest variations in his
vocabulary. Being particularly sore on me, he used to take his spite
out by calling inanimate objects about the vessel the names he
really intended to apply to the erstwhile cook of the _Snark_; and
when our repairs were complete and the _Snark_ was taken out for a
trial trip, all the crew, except Captain X----, knew that Jack was
dissatisfied with Captain X---- and would appoint a new captain at
the first opportunity--presumably Mr. Y----, who was then on the
boat as a common sailor. Hence his control of us was rather broken;
during the trip the entire crew absolutely refused to be ordered
about any; but, carried out the work that was necessary to take the
_Snark_ out in the bay and back again, while Captain X---- remained
at the wheel, seemingly much disgruntled. Entering the harbour, as a
result of this misunderstanding between the captain and crew, the
_Snark_ was so manœuvred that she bumped into a trading-steamer, and
then into a bark, at both of which times the _Snark_ was slightly
injured--several holes were made in the stern. As soon as we touched
the wharf, I telephoned to Jack to come down, as the opportunity was
at hand for him to discharge the profane captain; and this Jack
did, with neatness and despatch, as soon as a cab could bring him
from the hotel.
During President Cleveland's administration, there was considerable
agitation about the annexation of Hawaii to the United States. The
natives had become somewhat dissatisfied with Queen Lilioukalani,
because she refused to allow them to frame a constitution. They felt
that she wished to be the entire government. The natives dethroned
the queen, and elected Mr. Frederick Doyle as their president, and
they framed a constitution as similar to that of the United States
as they could possibly get it. At this time a Mr. Thurston, a
prominent land-owner and one of the most influential men on the
island, took a hand in the administration of public affairs. It was
his advice that led to President Doyle's trip to the United States,
which resulted in the annexation of the islands to our country; and
the Queen's palace became the United States Government building. Mr.
Thurston's plan of annexation was a good one; it prevented the
islands from falling into the hands of the Japanese, who were
rapidly gaining control of them. Hawaii was civilised before the
western line of the United States; the grass huts had disappeared
before California was developed. This progress in the Hawaiian
Islands was due to the conscientious efforts of the early
missionaries; but there is now to be found upon this island a class
of people who are the descendants of a few of the earlier
missionaries (who were of a distinctly mercenary turn of mind and
secured for their private use some of the most valuable lands of the
valley). The descendants, known as the "missionary class" now live
in ease and comfort without putting forth the slightest effort to
help develop the islands or assist in the betterment of anyone but
themselves. Of course, they are not missionaries, nor have they ever
been missionaries in the true sense, as they are not supported by
any church organisation, but live off the natural richness of the
land appropriated by their missionary forefathers.
During the development of the islands, it was necessary, in order to
secure suitable grounds for the rapidly growing and beautiful city
of Honolulu, to fill in and raise above its former marshy level the
entire end of the Nuuanu Valley; and this large drainage canal still
disposes of the water from the upper valley. The city of Honolulu
now boasts of as fine hotels as will be found anywhere in the world
in a town of that size, and the business section of the city is
built upon as solid a basis as any town of possibly twice the size.
In 1778, Captain Cook estimated the native population of Hawaii as
four hundred thousand. The 1900 census showed only about twenty-nine
thousand natives on the island. In their place have sprung up
thousands and thousands of Japs, Chinese, and half-castes.
With all its development and advancement, there are still
interesting spots in the city of Honolulu. One will occasionally see
a Japanese 'rickashaw, or see a Japanese mother carrying her naked
baby in the streets. The Chinese section presents about the same
weird style of Chinese architecture as will be found in many of the
large cities in the States, where the Chinese population still holds
to its original manners and customs. After the annexation of the
Hawaiian Islands to the United States, which took place in 1900, the
business advancement of the islands was very rapid, in spite of
certain peculiar laws enacted by the members of the first
legislative body. This body was composed of natives who had no other
idea in mind than to get their names on a statute-book as the makers
of law. One of them even proposed an act to regulate the rise and
fall of the tides. Of course, he had an idea that this legislative
body, backed by all the authority of the United States government,
could accomplish any act it saw fit to. Another member proposed a
bill creating the office of State Entomologist, as he had read
somewhere that an entomologist was a bug-man; he had himself
appointed to the office, and a few days later came with another bill
asking that the position of State Entomologist be declared vacant,
because there were still bugs in his coffee. But these minor defects
in the first legislative body were rapidly overcome, and now the
people of Hawaii hold dear to their hearts two flags, one the stars
and stripes of the United States, and the other the red, white and
purple of Hawaii. In their decorating, the two flags are always in
evidence, equal prominence given to each.
We paid a visit to the crater of an extinct volcano, called The
Punch Bowl. Out at Waikiki Beach the surf-board riding could always
be undertaken by such as liked it; and there were other amusements.
Once, at Thomas Square, I heard the Royal Hawaiian Band play, while
a Sunday School gathering of Japanese children sang. After they had
finished, a Kanaka class sang. All those three hundred children were
dressed in their native costumes. It was very enjoyable, even if we
couldn't understand a word of the songs.
We were in Honolulu over the Fourth of July, that is, all but Jack
and Mrs. London. Several American transports, with fourteen thousand
troops, lay in the harbour. The celebration of the Fourth of July
was a moral event in Hawaiian history; and the parade was one of the
most splendid I have ever witnessed. As a fitting climax to the
day's festivities, a picked baseball team from among the American
soldiers challenged, and were defeated by, a picked-up aggregation
of Japanese boys.
The development of the city of Honolulu under the American flag is
just as perfect and complete as in any city in America. In fact, the
street-car system of the city of Honolulu is the most perfect in the
world--all fine, big sixty-foot observation cars, especially fitted
for the passengers to enjoy to the utmost the tropical scenery
along the delightful suburban routes. The fire departments are fully
equipped with the most efficient and modern machinery, and their
runs are just as awe-inspiring as those of the city departments of
our land.
The equable climate of Honolulu has tempted many of the wealthiest
people of the United States to select it as a spot for permanent
residence. As I think I have mentioned before, the temperature
varies only about ten degrees, so that Hawaii is a veritable
Paradise of the Pacific. Beautiful homes are springing up along the
shady streets, some of the more elegant ones costing many thousands
of dollars. The Japanese seem fully to understand the use of the
picturesque and beautiful trees found on the islands. The parks are
as pretty as any in the world, little pagodas and brilliant-coloured
trees and grasses usually so disposed in landscape gardening as to
carry out quaint Japanese patterns. Some of the mammoth trees burst
into a mass of bright flowers, and they, too, will be found to be
set in varied designs. Here will be found the famous banyan tree.
One peculiarity of this tree is its method of throwing down from the
horizontal branches supports, which take root as soon as they touch
ground and enlarge into trunks and extend branches of their own,
until one tree will cover an acre or more of ground. A single tree
has been known to cover seven acres. The pleasant drives naturally
stimulate the breeding of fine horses. One may see here equipages as
superb as are to be found in Paris or London.
As a natural result of the religious basis upon which the original
civilisation of Hawaii was founded, there are many fine churches,
mostly constructed of lava. Volcanic lava forms a very solid and
permanent building stone, being much heavier even than granite, and
susceptible of a very high polish.
Upon the island are several volcanoes. Scientists have figured out
that one of these is the progenitor of the island of Oahu, and
certainly, whatever the validity of their claims, Oahu is entirely
of volcanic origin. Japanese now farm inside the crater of one
extinct volcano, which is more than a mile across. The volcanic
mountain called Diamond Head, the first point of land observed by
sailors approaching the Hawaiian Islands, is as beautiful a bit of
mountain scenery as will be found on any sea-coast. On the island of
Hawaii are the two largest volcanoes in the world, Mauna Kea,
thirteen thousand eight hundred feet high, and Mauna Loa, thirteen
thousand six hundred feet high.
Thunderstorms are rare and hurricanes are unknown in the Hawaiian
Islands, hence the deep large bays form very favourable shipping
ports. Their position puts them in direct line of vessels trading
between western North America on the one side, and eastern Asia and
Australia on the other. This is responsible to a great extent for
its commercial development. Regular steamers come to Honolulu from
San Francisco, Vancouver, Yokohama, Hong-Kong and Sydney, and the
various ports of minor significance. Honolulu is also a station
of the Pacific Commercial Cable, and has direct communication with
the United States and the Orient. During our stay, the cable ship
_Relief_ came into the harbour. We saw ships of every sort, from the
little fishing craft, Jap _sampans_, up to brigantines. One of the
most interesting of all was the transport, _Thomas_, with several
thousand American soldiers on board. Sailing-dates of one of the
large steamers are always big days; thousands of people flock to the
wharf.
[Illustration: GROUP OF ROAS WOMEN, SOLOMON ISLANDS]
Before leaving Honolulu, Captain X---- did everything in his power
to make me uncomfortable, for he considered it my fault that he had
lost his position. He called me a mutineer and told Jack that I was
not of much account, anyway. As the time drew closer for us to think
of leaving Honolulu, we set several dates for our departure, but
always at the last minute something went wrong with the engines, and
we were compelled to postpone sailing. Tochigi told me several times
that he thought he would quit--he could not help but dread the
seasickness he knew would afflict him--but each time I persuaded him
to remain, reminding him that it would be a sorry trick to leave me
all alone to fight the sickness.
Whenever we set a date there would be a crowd of people at the wharf
to see us off, but each time we were obliged to set out a sign,
_Sailing postponed_, until the people in Honolulu had ceased taking
us seriously; and one man asked Jack why he did not buy him a house
instead of living at a hotel--that it would be cheaper. The Honolulu
press came out with several amusing articles on the _Snark_, and
even reprinted the old refrain of "Not yet, but soon." This, with
other articles, made us dislike to go upon the street, on account of
the comments, as we were pretty well known by them. One day, while
in King Street, one of the principal thoroughfares of the city, I
heard even the newsboys crying: "When will the _Snark_ sail?--Not
yet, but soon."
But after spending several months in Honolulu and the suburb of
Waikiki, we managed to leave the harbour on a day when few people
expected us to be ready. The engines ran splendidly, until we were
out of sight of Honolulu; then the suction pump on the big engine
carried away.
Jack was angry, but said he would not go back to Honolulu if the
boat were sinking, so we set sail and during the next three or four
days sailed down past the islands of Molokai and Maui. At the island
of Maui, the natives were catching mammoth turtles that are sold in
the Honolulu fish-markets; as a matter of fact, these natives are
regular fiends for turtle-flesh. They catch their prey in a peculiar
manner, creeping upon them as they lie on the sandy beach warming
themselves in the sun. Two or three Kanakas will steal down upon a
turtle and flop him over on his back, in which position he is
powerless.
After nearly a week of sailing, we came in sight of one of the
largest active volcanoes in the world, Mauna Loa, or, as the crater
is called, Haleakala. This was Captain Y---- 's first landfall, and
I must say the way he brought the _Snark_ head-up into the wind and
lowered anchor was a marvel to us landlubbers, who up to now had
been sailing the vessel as a boy would float a tub. Captain Y----
sailed and anchored the _Snark_ as a ship should be sailed and
anchored. He gave his orders in a tone that left nothing for us to
do but obey; not that his orders were delivered in the manner of
Captain X----, but instead in the strong, clear tones of a man who
was used to giving orders and having them obeyed.
Kailua is the fifth largest town on the island of Hawaii, and
contains possibly one hundred persons. The main business street of
the town often appears utterly deserted, as the natives say no one
but fools and Americans will venture out in the heat of the day. The
main business house is an American saloon run by a Chinaman; the bar
fixtures consisting of a counter and a large refrigerator, which I
am quite sure never had any ice in it. Gene bought a glass of beer,
but it was so flat and warm that he could not drink it.
The volcano of Kilauea is situated on the leeward side of the island
of Hawaii, which makes it very dangerous for sailing vessels.
Captain Cook, whose monument stands a few miles below this volcano,
discovered the Sandwich Islands, or Hawaii, while searching for the
Northwest Passage. He determined to build here his winter home, and
study conditions among the islands while waiting for the snow and
ice to melt, that he might get through to Bering Strait. As the
natives had never seen the like of the saws and axes and hammers
used by the ship's carpenter in building this house, they stole
them. Not that the innocent people knew what stealing was--they had
merely planted the tools in the ground in the hope that they might
grow and produce more tools. Captain Cook, following his usual
drastic methods, seized the old King, whom he intended to hold as a
hostage for the return of his property. During the fight, several of
the natives were killed, and Captain Cook was himself captured. When
the sailors found that Captain Cook had fallen into the hands of the
natives, they sent word that the King was to be held until Captain
Cook was returned. Captain Cook _was_ returned; at least, as much of
him as could be found after the feast. The body was brought aboard
the ship in pieces, was buried, and a monument erected. Beside the
grave is the grave of a Kanaka who used to boast proudly that he had
eaten the big toe of Captain Cook, for, as the natives afterward
explained, the captain had really been eaten, and the body of a
native substituted.
In the days gone by, the natives used to call the feast of human
flesh the long-pig feast. They still have these feasts, only instead
of human flesh they serve the flesh of the wild boar, which is
plentiful on the island. Instead of roasting the pig from the
outside, as we do, the natives dig a hole in the ground, and, after
making a fire, pile stones on top of the fire until they are red
hot, then put the stones on the inside of the pig and bake him from
the inside out, and serve the meat with _poi_.
Like Oahu, the island of Hawaii is entirely of volcanic origin. The
two large volcanoes on this island, Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa,
formerly had craters at the tops, which have soiled over, and new
craters have opened up far down the mountainsides. In many places
the surface of the ground is nothing more than lava, still in the
exact condition the latest eruption has allowed it to cool in, and
seamed with fissures that opened up as it cooled.
Kailua is one of the most lonesome, desolate spots in the Hawaiian
Islands. I had a great deal of time in which I had nothing to do,
for, as I have said, the crew absolutely refused to eat my cooking
any longer. I used to sit on the lava coast and try to see across
the several thousand miles to America, where there were people to
whom I could speak; I did not understand these people here. As
Tochigi had finally settled that he could not fight down his
seasickness, he had decided to remain in Kailua until the steamer
could take him back to Honolulu. I was very sorry to see Tochigi go,
but I appreciated his reason, and so offered no more resistance.
Gene I did not get very well acquainted with; and Captain Y----
seemed too much like a boss for me to be friendly with him, but
afterward he thawed out and we became the best of friends. During
the week that we lay in Kailua anchorage, Tochigi and I made long
trips into the interior and along the coast, where we saw some of
the large rice and coffee plantations. The Chinese are the only ones
in the islands who have any success with rice; we saw the young
sprouts in the artificial marshes they have made. The natives never
make any attempt at farming, except to farm fish. They have large
artificial fish-ponds that they stock with mullet and crimps, and
there is trouble if any person tries to catch fish out of another
man's pond. Fruit here, as on all the islands, is very plentiful.
There are no seasons for it; it grows the year round.
The famous Kona coffee is raised on this side of the island of
Hawaii--in fact, this is the only place in the islands where coffee
can be raised, as elsewhere the wind would disturb the coffee-tree
and cause the bean to shatter. The coffee is hulled by the old and
primitive method of allowing a large log to beat the coffee until it
is hulled.
A pleasant way of killing time was to do a little amateur sailing
with our life-boat. Gene and I knew practically nothing about
sailing such a small boat, and when we got on the bay all the
natives hunted shelter, terrified by our manœuvres; and when we
clumsily ran on the beach, there was much amusement among the
natives who were loafing on shore. Mr. and Mrs. London decided to go
across the island to Hilo, on the Puna coast, on horseback. So only
Captain Y----, Gene, and myself, and a white man we had picked up in
Honolulu, were left to take the _Snark_ around the island through
the main strait to Hilo.
Little Tochigi, who had been but a bundle of Japanese misery every
minute at sea since leaving San Francisco, now said good-bye to us.
As we heaved anchor and sailed out of the bay, the last thing we saw
of poor Tochigi was his diminishing form sitting alone on the
seashore, watching the _Snark_ disappear from his view.
The day before we left Kailua, a small trading sloop came into the
harbour and was still anchored when we left; in fact, we later found
that we had a whole day's start on this boat; but during the time
that the small crew of the _Snark_ was fighting head-winds and
tide-rips in the main channel, this vessel drew up and passed us and
was in Hilo Bay a day before us. After we got to the Puna coast of
Hawaii, we could see the prettiest shore-line, rich with tropical
fruit trees and luxuriant vegetation. Scores of waterfalls, some of
them hundreds of feet above us, were scattered all along this coast,
clear into Hilo Harbor.
We dropped anchor in Hilo five days from Kailua. The harbour here is
too shallow for the largest steamships to draw up close to the
wharf, but the _Snark_, being so small, was able to anchor just at
the mouth of the Waikaiea River. In the heart of Hilo's little
fishing suburbs, the town of Waikaiea is about one mile along the
seashore from Hilo proper, and is inhabited almost wholly by Japs,
Chinese and Kanakas. Before going further, I had perhaps better
explain this word "Kanaka." In the Hawaiian language, _Kanaka_ means
man, and _Wahine_ means woman, but all Hawaiians, both men and
women, are called Kanakas by the white people, so the word is
generally understood to mean native Hawaiian.
The people of Waikaiea are nearly all fishing people, everyone
taking a hand in the fishing. The men go out in their boats just
before sundown, and fish all night long. At five o'clock in the
morning the womenfolk are waiting along the little river-docks to
unload the fish. The fish are carried into one of the fish-markets,
where the children sort out the different kinds into piles. There
are large tanks for the turtles and octopuses; and big hooks are
suspended from the ceilings by pulleys for the larger fish that are
too heavy for handling. Then the auctioneer sells the fish to the
highest bidder. The big sharks weighing two and three hundred pounds
often bring less than a ten-pound fish, as the fins are all that is
used of certain kinds of sharks. I have seen devil-fish, or
octopuses, that were thirty feet from the end of one tentacle to the
end of the opposite one. The fish are usually bought by Japanese or
Chinese fish-runners. Immediately after they have secured all they
can carry, they start off at a dog-trot, which never ceases until
each has reached his district for selling, sometimes ten or fifteen
miles up the country.
To get to Hilo from the _Snark_, the best way was to walk along the
sandy beach clear into Hilo, for the damp sand was always cool and
refreshing, and the sea breeze blowing made one want to take off his
shoes and roll up his trousers, and splash along in the water, a
thing I did many a time. Truth is, people, after a few weeks in the
Sandwich Islands, start doing things they would never think of doing
in the staid old United States. The climate seems to make one
younger, for it is always spring in Hawaii.
On a quiet morning some strangely wonderful sights may be seen. In
the clear water one can easily make out many-hued fish, and coral,
sponges, coral-crabs; and, under the sponges, small octupuses or
devil-fish from the size of one's hand down to the size of a silver
dollar.
Hilo has about five thousand, mixed population. Here, as among all
the islands of the group, the Japanese predominate, with Chinese a
close second. The white people on this side of the island live
mostly outside of Hilo on plantations; and as the brown population
sleeps through the heat of the day, the business streets are
deserted until late in the afternoon. Then the streets spring
suddenly into life, and for several hours are thronged with people
of all nationalities. The clubs and saloons are crowded, the band
plays nearly every evening, and everyone settles down to enjoy
himself.
Off the business streets, the residence district seems like a park.
The roads are well paved, electric lights are strung at every
crossing, hedges and fences are of trees that usually bear flowers
throughout the year. Homes are mostly of the bungalow style, with
large porches running clear around the house. These porches are used
as dining and sleeping rooms the year round. In fact, the people
often give more thought to the _lanai_, as they call the porch, than
to any other part of the house.
The lawns around the bungalows are studded with fruit trees that are
usually laden with ripe fruit at all times. The small boys never
care to steal fruit here, as there is so much of it that anyone may
help himself to fruit wherever he finds it.
The fine public libraries, churches, and a good opera house at Hilo
are as truly modern buildings as any I have seen in the United
States. A large pineapple factory is located here, and one steamer
makes regular trips from San Francisco to get the bananas that grow
wild along this coast.
Hilo supplies the United States with more cane-sugar than any city
in the world. Large sugar-mills are located along the water-front,
in order that ships may load by gravity right from the mill. The
sugar-cane is raised back of Hilo, and as far back as twenty miles
into the mountains. The sugar-cane is sent to the mill in long
flumes that are filled with water, and the cane laid in the flumes
goes down to the mill at the rate of twenty miles an hour.
The manager of the Waipalia sugar-mill invited Jack, Mrs. London,
Captain Y----, and me to go for a flume-ride one Sunday, when there
was no cane in the flume. Cabs were secured, and we were driven away
back in the mountains to a good place to start from. Before leaving
Hilo we had donned our bathing suits. Making a good seat of cane for
ourselves, to guard against possible nails, we all got in the flume
and started off. There is no more exciting sport in the world than
flume-riding. Often, we could look down inclines, from one hundred
and fifty to two hundred feet below. We rushed so fast that had a
nail ever gotten in the way, it would certainly have ripped off a
lot of skin, but we could not stop, for to have done so would have
thrown us from the flume.
The rice fields looked like ordinary wheat fields. The rice is
threshed by the primitive method of cutting the heads off the stalk,
laying them on a large piece of volcanic rock, and letting in
Chinese with bare feet to stamp upon it until the grain is hulled.
Rice is an important factor in the Hawaiian farming, as the Japs and
Chinese live upon it almost wholly. No rice is exported; the
orientals consume the entire output.
As the rice must be planted in the water, the rice fields tend to
breed mosquitoes, which become so annoying that it is often
necessary to burn a powder called _buhack_ all night long, in
addition to having the regular mosquito netting over the bed.
About a half a mile outside of Waikaiea River is a small island a
mile in circumference, called Cocoanut Island. On this island is a
family of native fishermen who still cling to the old way of fishing
with spears, instead of hook and line, and they never employ the
large nets used by the oriental fishermen. Instead, they use a small
hand net, so that they can catch the particular kind of fish they
want. They will not eat an ordinary fish, but they have their
favourite variety, which are hard to catch.
Fish are so plentiful here that a child can catch as many as it
wants. Even a Kanaka child would eat only certain kinds, but to the
_Snark's_ crew they all tasted alike; and we ate whatever we could
catch--even shark, and the tentacles of the octopus.
On one side of Cocoanut Island is a large sandy beach that is fine
for surf bathing. On the other side, the large lava rocks go almost
straight down, making a fine place for diving. Nearly every
afternoon I would go over to the island for a swim, and usually had
the whole beach to myself, except Sundays, when the island was
crowded with bathers. One day, on going to my favourite lava rocks,
off which the diving was fine, I found the place occupied by a
person whom I had never seen before. I was so surprised that I could
only stand and stare. She was a full-blooded Hawaiian girl, and from
what I could see of her she was good-looking, too. Of course, I
could not let a chance like this go to waste, so I made several
photographs of her, and when I asked her to stand I was more than
sure she was good-looking. She did not like to stand with the sun
shining in her eyes, so we hunted a shady spot, and I used up the
rest of the film in my camera.
[Illustration: A MISSION SCHOOL. BOY IN WHITE SHIRT IS THE TEACHER,
THE REST ARE MEMBERS OF THE CLASS]
But it must not be supposed for a minute that the native girls are
the only good-looking girls in Hilo. Some of the Japanese girls with
whom I had a photographing acquaintance were as _chic_ as are to be
found any place. One in particular, who was head saleslady for the
Hilo Drug Company, was not at all bad-looking. To see these little
Japanese girls gliding through the streets--gliding, for their walk
is such a funny little trot that that is the only word to describe
it--I say, to see them gliding along makes a man ashamed of his own
uncouthness when he chances to meet one of them, and must, for
manners' sake, walk up the street with her. One girl I knew was born
in Hilo, but her parents would not let her wear clothes of American
fashion, so she looked like any native Japanese, but spoke excellent
English. American clothes usually spoil the looks of a Japanese, for
the Jap form will not take to our garb at all.
These Jap girls do not at first sight seem to be extravagantly
dressed, but for Sunday-and evening-wear, a Japanese girl's dress
will oftentimes cost double the sum the clothes of a stylish
American girl cost. At least, this is what the new cabin-boy we got
in Hilo, a Jap named Nakata, told me, and I suppose he ought to
know.
In the mountains are herds of wild cattle; and near Hilo are large
ranches, where the best cattle country in the world is found. Here,
too, will be seen the only genuine American cowboy. The cowboys we
have in the States are for exhibition purposes only. But here the
big open valleys and mountains, where the cattle breed, are so
extensive that when the cattle are rounded up only an expert cowboy
would be able to manage them, for by that time they are nearly as
skittish as the wild cattle. With every round-up, the men say they
catch many wild cattle which have attached themselves to the
ranchman's herd.
Gene and I made long excursions with the launch up the little creeks
and rivers, and always returned with a load of fruit. Mr. and Mrs.
London were staying with friends in Hilo. The sailor had been
discharged, so that Captain Y----, Gene and I were the only ones
aboard the _Snark_. We ate at a Chinese restaurant, and as there was
little work to do, we found ample time for exploring. Gene wore only
sleeveless track-shirts and swimming trunks, and became so sunburned
that wherever exposed, his skin was of almost Ethiopian blackness,
in strange contrast with the protected skin. During this time I
became as black as Gene, but I seemed to tan all over. Jack did not
tan at all; every time he became exposed to the sun he blistered so
badly that often it would lay him up in bed.
Finally, through a mutual agreement between Gene and Jack, Gene
decided that the trip was too much for his delicate constitution,
and Jack decided that he must consent to Gene's going. So Gene got
ready to go back to San Francisco.
One day I got a call from Jack over the telephone, telling me that I
was promoted to the position of engineer, and instructing Captain
Y---- and me to look out for a new cook, a new cabin-boy, and a new
sailor. I don't believe I would have traded positions with the
President, or King Edward, that day. I was in a greater state of
excitement than at the time of securing the position of cook. A
Dutchman named Hermann--which is all the name we ever got out of
him--was secured for the crew of one sailor. Hermann was one of the
real deep-water sailors, of the kind that is rapidly passing away.
He was about the best-natured fellow I ever worked with; in storm or
calm he was always the same, always singing in one or another of the
half-dozen tongues he could speak. We secured the cook and cabin-boy
at the same time. Wada, a Japanese, could speak fluent English, and
was a very good cook. He had been in almost every large port in the
world. Nakata, whom we hired for cabin-boy, was likewise Japanese,
and could not speak a word of English. All we could understand of
his vocabulary was _pau_, which means finished, and _pilikea_,
which means trouble. But when Nakata reached Australia, one year and
a half later, he could speak very passable English, and could write
quite well.
The principal photographer in Hilo was a young Chinese boy, who did
excellent work. He used to make pictures of the _Snark_ to sell; and
wherever Jack went, the Chink would be on hand to photograph him. In
the end, Jack could only get rid of the boy by consenting to pose
for a number of pictures, which were afterward published in a
Chinese magazine, with certain descriptive text beneath each one. I
have no doubt Jack is a very big man in their eyes.
The time was rapidly nearing for us to leave. The engines were in
good repair, we had fuel and provisions aboard, and practically
every one of us was anxious to be off. Our way led now to the
Marquesas Islands; and the trip, sixty-one days across the trackless
Pacific, in which we sailed four thousand miles in order to advance
two thousand miles, was to prove the greatest adventurous event of
my life. And it ended by our landing in the world's Garden of Eden.
But before going further with the voyage, I must devote some
consideration to one island of the Hawaiian group to which as yet no
attention has been directed, Molokai, the Leper Island.
CHAPTER V
MOLOKAI, THE LEPER ISLAND
In telling of Molokai, the Leper Island, I might as well confess at
the outset that I was never on it. But Jack London was, and
everything here set forth was gotten direct from him or from others
who had intimate knowledge whereof they spoke. Not many persons,
outside the officials of the Board of Health, have ever been allowed
to leave the island of Molokai, once they had entered the
Settlement. Dr. Pinkham, president of the Board of Health, who has
the entire managing of the island, was an ardent admirer of the
literary works of Jack London; and he so managed it that both the
Londons were allowed to visit Molokai, in order that Mr. London
might properly describe the life on this island, and thus correct
the Kanaka notion that Molokai is a place of torture. Dr. Pinkham's
decision was a wise one. Much has been written in the past of the
horrors of the Leper Settlement, but almost without exception these
expositions have been wild and lurid--as London put it, the work of
sensationalists, most of whom had never laid eyes on a single one of
the things they described in such exaggerated and undependable
detail. But there are a great many persons among English-speaking
peoples who have learned that Jack London always tells the truth as
he sees it. Dr. Pinkham knew that if London were to go to the
Settlement, his account of it would present conditions as they
actually are, not as they are shown to be in the distorted articles
of the yellow press. And so, permission was granted.
But when I tried to follow, the doctor, though my very good friend,
stopped me. He could not take me to the island of Molokai, because
he had no excuse for doing so. I was not a noted writer--I was
merely a sightseer; and to take a sightseer to Molokai would have
lost him his position. For that matter, the Hawaiian citizens and
the Honolulu press did criticise him severely for taking Mr. and
Mrs. London to the island.
But while I have never seen the lepers in their Settlement, I have
seen hundreds of cases of leprosy all through the South Seas.
Furthermore, I have discussed the disease and the managing of
Molokai with Dr. Pinkham, than whom surely there could be no better
source of information. Leprosy was a constant topic of conversation,
morning, noon, and night, with the little crew of voyageurs on the
_Snark_; we were all deeply interested; and of this, as of every
other island subject, Jack London had almost encyclopædic knowledge.
In fact, leprosy was his hobby; he was an untiring defender of
segregation. What of my own experiences, and the memory of other
men's experiences, and what of all that Jack London told me at this
time, there has been bred in me a profound conviction that my own
knowledge of leprosy is considerable--certainly greater than that of
many who live all their lives within a stone's throw of Molokai. In
the very nature of the thing, I was bound to learn, and learn more
than could any ordinary tourist, even though my actual observation
might not extend quite so far as did the observation of the
specialists, the members of the Board of Health, the executives, and
those visitors, few in number, who have had the privilege of setting
foot within the Leper Settlement.
And so, at the beginning, let me add my testimony to that of Jack
London, in saying that the horrors with which Molokai is associated
in the average mind, _simply do not exist_. The sensationalists have
done their work well. To the four corners of the earth they have
disseminated their ghastly fictions, with a persistency truly
wonderful; and the people of every nation, hungry for things that
are gruesome, have pounced greedily on all that was offered. As a
result, their minds are full-fed with every variety of deceit, from
mere harmless fables to the most inexcusable lies, and to such an
extent that the truth, even when shown to them, may find little room
for lodgment. Nevertheless, I am optimistic enough to hope that a
pinch of real fact may leaven a mountain of misrepresentation, and
that, in time, the people of every civilised country will come to
know just what sort of place Molokai is, and just what things take
place there.
It is strange that the greatest misapprehension exists among the
people of Hawaii. Living next door, as it were, to the segregated
unfortunates, many of whom have been recruited from their own ranks,
it might be supposed that they would be the very first to disburden
their minds of delusion. Not so. In the city of Honolulu, there are
many who still credit the idea that Molokai is the place of
life-long confinement, inhuman torture, and melancholy death. The
word "Molokai" spells for them nothing but the most unmerciful
disaster. The very name is enough to send the hot blood rushing to
the heart, and to strike laughter from the lips. Truly, to their
unhappy conception, Molokai is but the valley of the shadows,
wherein shines never a ray of light to brighten the path of him who
must tread its sombre way.
Much of this sentiment is due to demagogues, who stir the people
constantly with their recital of the lepers' wrongs. Indignation
often runs high when some particularly outrageous abuse is
instanced. The natives are almost inconceivably credulous, and,
unfortunately, they will not take the trouble to test the truth of
demagogic assertion. However, a campaign of education has been
begun; persons long resident in the Leper Settlement have been shown
by the bacteriological test to be free from the imputed disease;
and, returned to friends and families, they shatter by direct
evidence the absurd fancies theretofore current. More and more the
value and necessity of segregation is being impressed upon the
Hawaiian natives' minds.
Jack and Mrs. London were at Molokai a week; they spent the Fourth
of July there. I went with them down to the wharf to catch the
leper-steamer, which makes weekly trips. It is almost always sure of
at least one passenger, from the receiving station at Kalihi, where
suspects are put through the bacteriological examination; and of
course Superintendent McVeigh is usually on board, to take charge of
the lepers and see them safely to the island.
A number of new lepers were to go that day, and the wharf was
crowded with friends and relatives, come down to say the good-byes
and to see the poor patients off. It was not a happy sight. I shall
never forget it. Such stormy scenes of grief are terrible. Men and
women and children were there; and on the faces of those who were to
stay was great sadness, on the faces of those who were to go sadness
and something more: a sick look, a lurking dread in their eyes, a
pallor not natural to human flesh. As the time drew near for
departure, a sudden stir came over the crowd; grief grew more
vociferous. The babel of voices, hitherto somewhat subdued, rose
first to a hum and then into a sharp murmur. Somewhere a rich native
voice, low-pitched and beautiful, began softly singing the song of
farewell. _Aloha oe_--_aloha oe_, was the refrain. Wheresoever the
departing lepers might roam, through all their days of enforced
segregation from those who loved them and whom they loved, affection
and best wishes would be with them.
Then came the bustle of going aboard; last handclasps; tears; voices
that shook with emotion; and though the sad hearts could not be seen
nor heard, their beat somehow found its way into the scene; misery
bound the many hearts into one, and their pulse was united by some
mighty bond of sympathy. A harsh cry from the steamer now stirred
everyone into action; the lepers broke sorrowfully away from their
friends and families, whose grief burst out anew, and hurried
aboard. Such was the parting--not a happy thing to see, not a thing
one can forget.
At this point I was compelled to go back to the _Snark_, leaving Mr.
and Mrs. London to make the trip to Molokai on the leper-boat. Two
hours must elapse ere their arrival. Jack carried with him his
camera, and took a number of unique and interesting pictures of the
island and its inhabitants. Some of these pictures are here
reproduced.
As the leper-boat approached the island, he secured some good views
of its rocky coast. Owing to the fact that there is no anchorage
close up, the leper-steamer must stand on and off a half-mile from
shore, and the landing is made by shooting the surf, through a very
dangerous passage, to a little wharf that extends about two hundred
feet out into the channel. As they came near, a sound of music
floated to them over the water. The return of Superintendent McVeigh
is always considered an occasion for rejoicing, among the lepers. A
number of the leper men and women, gathered on the beach, play
stringed instruments and sing happy songs to make the arrival of the
new lepers as pleasant as possible.
[Illustration: MOLOKAI, THE LEPER SETTLEMENT, HAWAIIAN ISLANDS]
Jack told me afterward that it was much different from what he had
expected. He, too, had fed his mind on the writings of the
sensationalists. Once he had read an account which told of
Superintendent McVeigh (his host on this occasion) crouching in a
grass hut and surrounded by lepers wailing through the night for
food, which the cruel superintendent withheld. The funny part of it,
Jack explained, was that Superintendent McVeigh's house was not of
grass, but of wood, and the lepers, well-fed and comfortable, did no
wailing at all, but were remarkably happy and contented folk,
following their various chosen pursuits by day, or loafing if they
desired, and filling the night with the melodious music of their
_ukeleles_, banjos, guitars, violins, and other stringed
instruments, to say nothing of beautiful songs sung by the singing
societies. And another thing: when we were sailing along the
windward side of Molokai on the _Snark_, Jack had pointed to the
island, and said it was the pit of hell, the most cursed place on
earth. But he never spoke so after his visit. His eyes were opened.
The Leper Settlement is divided into two main villages. These are on
a peninsula extending from the north side of the island. To left,
right, and front is the water. At the back towers the giant wall of
the _pali_, varying from two to four thousand feet in height.
Besides the villages, there are a good many seaside and country
homes. Many of the lepers are well-to-do, owning horses,
fishing-boats, buggies, carts, and other property. One woman is said
to have several good houses, which she rents.
In all, I believe there are over eight hundred souls on the island.
The population is a mixed one. Dr. Pinkham told me that most of the
lepers are Hawaiians, or part-Hawaiians; next in number come the
Japanese; and the Chinese are third. (It is thought that the Chinese
imported the disease into Hawaii.) There were also three negroes, a
few Portuguese, a Norwegian, and about seven Americans. Americans,
however, seldom catch the disease, and then almost always by
inoculation. Jack met several of the American lepers; he afterward
mentioned a Major Lee, once a marine engineer for the Inter Island
Steamship Company, and then working in the new steam laundry of
Molokai; Mr. Bartlett, formerly in business in Honolulu, now keeper
of the Board of Health store; and another, whose name I have
forgotten, but who was a veteran of the Civil War--a crack shot--and
at that time in his sixty-fifth year. Then there are the non-lepers.
Of these are the _kokuas_, or native helpers, and the priests;
Protestant ministers and their wives; the resident physicians, Dr.
Goodhue and Dr. Hollman; the Franciscan Sisters at Bishop House, and
their Jap servants; two principals and four Brothers at Baldwin
House, and several domestics. Superintendent McVeigh's assistant,
Mr. Waiamau, is a pure Hawaiian, himself stricken with leprosy.
In the two villages there are churches and assembly halls. Yellow
writers to the contrary, there is not a grass house in the
Settlement. The buildings are of wood and stone, and are very
comfortable. There are stores for such as care to engage in
business. Some of the lepers fish, others farm; there are splendid
grassy pastures for the horses, which roam by hundreds in the
mountains. The lepers have their fishing-boats and a steam launch.
Again, there are painters and carpenters. Almost every trade is
followed--even stock-raising and dairying are carried on. There are
artisans of every variety. In such a large gathering of men and
women and children, there is of course great diversity of taste and
ability. Usually, those who have been actively engaged before coming
to Molokai prefer to follow the same pursuits after their arrival.
But let it be emphasised that not one of these people needs work
unless he elects to do so. Being wards of the Territory of Hawaii,
all things necessary to life and comfort are supplied to them free.
If, by their own efforts, they are able to make a few dollars, they
are just that much ahead of the game. Lepers who live outside the
two villages draw from the government a fixed amount of money as a
"clothes ration order," in addition to a weekly allowance in
provisions. Of course, many of the lepers have property elsewhere,
from which they derive an income; and some of them are looked after
by friends.
There are over seven hundred buildings in the Settlement. Among them
are the six churches: two Protestant, two Mormon, and two Catholic.
The Young Men's Christian Association building is particularly good.
The lepers even have an electric plant, and a _poi_ factory, to say
nothing of a courthouse and jail.
Social life is brisk on Molokai. An athletic club has been founded;
also glee clubs. Weekly band concerts are given in the pavilion. On
the afternoon of the Fourth of July, Jack and Mrs. London had the
pleasure of seeing a merry parade, and were appointed the judges at
a horse-race. On the morning after their arrival, they attended a
shoot of the Kaluapapa Rifle Club. On the day the Londons climbed
the two-thousand-foot _pali_ and looked their last upon the
Settlement, an exciting baseball game, played by the doctors, the
lepers and the non-lepers, was in progress, on a very good baseball
diamond. There are even visitors' houses, kept clean of disease,
where, at certain intervals, the lepers may meet such of their
friends, relatives, or business agents, as come to see them. And
when one adds to all this the consideration that Molokai enjoys a
better climate than even Honolulu, it will be seen that the Leper
Settlement cannot be such a very terrible place after all.
After the Londons returned to Honolulu, many persons expressed
amazement at their temerity in venturing wilfully among the
afflicted of Molokai. They had not even held aloof from the lepers,
nor worn long gloves; instead they had shaken hands with scores of
them. To such of the staid people of Honolulu as still clung to
their chamber-of-horrors notion, the act was the very height of
foolhardiness. It was inconceivable. But among the more intelligent
Hawaiians, no such horror of leprosy obtains. They realise how
feebly contagious it is. In the Settlement, lepers and non-lepers
mingle freely; at a shoot of the Kalaupapa Rifle Club, the same guns
are used by those afflicted and those free from the disease; in
horse-racing, the same horses are ridden by all; and in baseball
games, bats, gloves, and masks are freely exchanged. Not easily does
the _bacillus leprae_ pass from body to body. Only is there danger
when one has open wounds which might come in contact with leprous
flesh. The usual precaution, after being with lepers, is the washing
with antiseptic soap, and the changing of clothing. And as to the
Londons' trip, two very important things were accomplished by it. In
the first place, Jack's longing to see the much-talked-of leper
retreat was satisfied; and that meant much. And secondly--more
important--probably the first detailed and absolutely truthful
account of the Settlement was given to the world in the article Jack
wrote soon after, entitled "The Lepers of Molokai." That article,
now reprinted in his "Cruise of the _Snark_," covers so thoroughly
this visit to Molokai that it is needless for me to say much more
concerning it. But my own observations as to leprosy in the other
islands of the Territory of Hawaii, and the many things told me by
the better-informed class of natives, may not be without value.
Segregation is imperative. By its means, leprosy is on the wane in
Hawaii. When a person is suspected of the disease, he is summoned to
Kalihi, in the outskirts of Honolulu and put through a thorough
bacteriological test. If the _bacillus leprae_ is found, after a
careful examination by the bacteriologist, the suspect is further
examined by a Board of physicians appointed for the purpose; and if
he is pronounced a leper, preparations are made for taking him to
Molokai. Plenty of time is given him in which to administer his
business affairs. Every courtesy is shown. And after being sent to
Molokai, he has the privilege of being again examined, at any time,
by competent authority, to determine the exact condition of his
disease.
As I have said, leprosy is very feebly contagious. But throughout
the world, there is widespread fear of it. Considering the
horribleness of the disease--for horrible it is, beyond the power of
the most unprincipled inkster to exaggerate--and its absolutely
incurable character, one cannot wonder much at the sentiment
existing among all peoples in countries where any of its forms are
known. To be pronounced a leper seems, to the average person,
virtually to be pronounced dead. But not decently dead! Were it so,
the added horrors would not be there. No, the leper's death seems
many times more dreadful than mere ordinary dissolution, because of
its slowness and the awful form it assumes. The average person
shrinks from death, but absolutely recoils from the same dark thing
when it dons the robe of this, of all diseases the most foul.
Furthermore, some deaths are swift--mercifully swift, and not
unlovely. Leprosy is usually slow, vile, hideous. One dies by
inches. Terrible in contemplation, what must it be when fastened
insidiously upon one's flesh!
But no more of this, lest I, too, be adjudged one of the purveyors
of things needlessly dreadful. But remember this: when Jack London,
or I, or any other man, says that the horrors of the Molokai leper
life have been exaggerated, it is not meant that the disease itself
has been exaggerated. No one denies that leprosy is an awful thing.
But anyone who has ever seen the leper colony of Molokai, or knows
anything about it, will most strenuously deny that the conditions
under which these people live are bad. Jack said, on his return to
the _Snark_, that, given his choice between living out his days in
any one of those "cesspools of human misery and degradation," the
East End of London, the East Side of New York, or the Stockyards of
Chicago, or going to stay in Molokai, he would, without hesitation,
with gratitude even, choose Molokai.
For he knows that the people of Molokai are happy. They live at
ease, _while they live_. But not so the people of the other places.
Theirs is one long, mad struggle for mere existence; life is a
turmoil, a riot, a nightmare. On Molokai, food is plenty. No fight
is there. The days are peaceful and the nights are happy. All is
music and beautiful scenes; fresh breezes are always blowing from
over the sea. The men and women of Molokai do not freeze through a
bitter-cold winter, nor do they swelter in a raging summer's heat.
While they live, they live in Paradise. No wonder Jack London knew,
without debate, which place he would choose.
The lepers themselves are satisfied--and what better testimony could
be asked? Since the bacteriological test was put into effect, a
number of persons once declared lepers and sent to Molokai have been
found to be wholly clean of the disease, and been returned to their
homes. They have never ceased bewailing their expulsion from
Molokai. "Back to Molokai," is the lament of all who have once
tasted of the island's delights and then been shut out from them.
One of the most unfortunate things about leprosy in the Territory of
Hawaii is the fact that the friends and relatives of lepers so often
hide them away when the disease first appears, and keep them hidden
until they are in a terrible condition. One day, when I was walking
along a little-frequented part of the beach, not far from Pearl
City, on the island of Oahu, I saw a small child playing near the
water. As I drew near, its mother came rushing toward it, gathered
it up in her arms, and ran to her hut, about fifty yards away. At
the time I was puzzled, but I was afterward told, in confidence,
that the child was a leper, and that the mother was determined to
keep it from the attention of the Board of Health.
It is best for the lepers themselves that they be taken to the
Settlement, where they can receive proper medical treatment.
Outside, they can do nothing but lie and await inevitable death. But
in the Settlement, the surgeons can make occasional operations, and
hold off the ravages indefinitely. Some lepers, stricken in their
youth, have lived happy lives, and died of old age, when thus
protected. Leprosy is very intermittent in its action; after once
appearing and being treated, it may not show itself again for years.
But if not treated, it gallops.
I well remember the case of a leper in the United States a few years
ago. The newspapers exploited the case sensationally, but I think
there was nevertheless an element of truth in what they printed. The
leper was a tramp. How he had contracted the disease, no one knew.
But it is said that he lived altogether in a box-car. This car he
was never allowed to leave. The railway company was desperate. Time
and again they tried to force him out at different stations, but
each time the men of the town cried a veto to the scheme. Thousands
of miles that leper tramp travelled. In the whole country, there was
no spot of earth big enough for him to set his foot on. In the
box-car he was, and in the box-car he must remain. Not that he
starved. People flung food to him as they fling food to dogs; also,
there were occasional donations of clothing, reached out to him on
long poles At last the railway company, grown doubly desperate, hit
upon an expedient. They unhooked the car one night, and left it
standing on a siding, about a mile from a little mining village. But
the trick failed. The next freight that pulled up that way was met
by several hundred black-looking men, armed with rifles; and when
that train pulled out, it carried with it the leper's box-car and
the leper. I never heard what became of the car, nor of its
occupant. But the story was a gruesome thing, and well illustrates
the difference between a leper's fare outside the Settlement, and
inside the Settlement.
[Illustration: LEPER BAND AT MOLOKAI, THE LEPER ISLAND OF THE
HAWAIIAN GROUP]
Now as to leprosy itself. No one knows what it is. It is classified
according to its manifestations. Delve we never so far into the
remoteness of antiquity, we will find records of leprosy. Fifteen
hundred years before Christ, it was widely known in the delta and
valley of the Nile. It flourished throughout the Middle Ages. To-day
it is common in Asia, Africa, South America, the West Indies, and
certain isolated localities of Europe. Little was known of it in the
ancient days; but little is known of it now. It is parasitic--that
much is certain. Dr. Armauer Hansen discovered the _bacillus leprae_
in 1871, but no one has gotten much further than that. Its only
alleviation is surgery, but this is sometimes without avail. Leprosy
is of three well-defined kinds: There is Running Leprosy, the most
horrible of the three. It shows itself mainly as shiny ulcers, which
throw off a highly offensive perspiration. In this kind, the
fingers, ears, nose
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