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Edward Everett Hale - "The Brick Moon, et. al."

Henry Lawson - "Over the Sliprails"

Mr. And Mrs. Haldeman Julius - "Dust"

Jessie B. Rittenhouse - "The Second Book of Modern Verse"

South Sea Tales

J >> Jack London >> South Sea Tales




"Just so," said Roberts. "And somehow it doesn't seem necessary, after all, to
understand the niggers. In direct proportion to the white man's stupidity is
his success in farming the world--"

"And putting the fear of God into the nigger's heart," Captain Woodward
blurted out. "Perhaps you're right, Roberts. Perhaps it's his stupidity that
makes him succeed, and surely one phase of his stupidity is his inability to
understand the niggers. But there's one thing sure, the white has to run the
niggers whether he understands them or not. It's inevitable. It's fate."

"And of course the white man is inevitable--it's the niggers' fate," Roberts
broke in. "Tell the white man there's pearl shell in some lagoon infested by
ten-thousand howling cannibals, and he'll head there all by his lonely, with
half a dozen kanaka divers and a tin alarm clock for chronometer, all packed
like sardines on a commodious, five-ton ketch. Whisper that there's a gold
strike at the North Pole, and that same inevitable white-skinned creature will
set out at once, armed with pick and shovel, a side of bacon, and the latest
patent rocker--and what's more, he'll get there. Tip it off to him that
there's diamonds on the red-hot ramparts of hell, and Mr. White Man will storm
the ramparts and set old Satan himself to pick-and-shovel work. That's what
comes of being stupid and inevitable."

"But I wonder what the black man must think of the--the inevitableness," I
said.

Captain Woodward broke into quiet laughter. His eyes had a reminiscent gleam.

"I'm just wondering what the niggers of Malu thought and still must be
thinking of the one inevitable white man we had on board when we visited them
in the DUCHESS," he explained.

Roberts mixed three more Abu Hameds.

"That was twenty years ago. Saxtorph was his name. He was certainly the most
stupid man I ever saw, but he was as inevitable as death. There was only one
thing that chap could do, and that was shoot. I remember the first time I ran
into him--right here in Apia, twenty years ago. That was before your time,
Roberts. I was sleeping at Dutch Henry's hotel, down where the market is now.
Ever heard of him? He made a tidy stake smuggling arms in to the rebels, sold
out his hotel, and was killed in Sydney just six weeks afterward in a saloon
row.

"But Saxtorph. One night I'd just got to sleep, when a couple of cats began to
sing in the courtyard. It was out of bed and up window, water jug in hand. But
just then I heard the window of the next room go up. Two shots were fired, and
the window was closed. I fail to impress you with the celerity of the
transaction. Ten seconds at the outside. Up went the window, bang bang went
the revolver, and down went the window. Whoever it was, he had never stopped
to see the effect of his shots. He knew. Do you follow me?--he KNEW. There was
no more cat concert, and in the morning there lay the two offenders, stone
dead. It was marvelous to me. It still is marvelous. First, it was starlight,
and Saxtorph shot without drawing a bead; next, he shot so rapidly that the
two reports were like a double report; and finally, he knew he had hit his
marks without looking to see.


"Two days afterward he came on board to see me. I was mate, then, on the
Duchess, a whacking big one-hundred-and fifty-ton schooner, a blackbirder. And
let me tell you that blackbirders were blackbirders in those days. There
weren't any government protection for US, either. It was rough work, give and
take, if we were finished, and nothing said, and we ran niggers from every
south sea island they didn't kick us off from. Well, Saxtorph came on board,
John Saxtorph was the name he gave. He was a sandy little man, hair sandy,
complexion sandy, and eyes sandy, too. Nothing striking about him. His soul
was as neutral as his color scheme. He said he was strapped and wanted to ship
on board. Would go cabin boy, cook, supercargo, or common sailor. Didn't know
anything about any of the billets, but said that he was willing to learn. I
didn't want him, but his shooting had so impressed me that I took him as
common sailor, wages three pounds per month.

"He was willing to learn all right, I'll say that much. But he was
constitutionally unable to learn anything. He could no more box the compass
than I could mix drinks like Roberts here. And as for steering, he gave me my
first gray hairs. I never dared risk him at the wheel when we were running in
a big sea, while full-and-by and close-and-by were insoluble mysteries.
Couldn't ever tell the difference between a sheet and a tackle, simply
couldn't. The fore-throat-jig and the jib-jig were all one to him. Tell him to
slack off the mainsheet, and before you know it, he'd drop the peak. He fell
overboard three times, and he couldn't swim. But he was always cheerful, never
seasick, and he was the most willing man I ever knew. He was an
uncommunicative soul. Never talked about himself. His history, so far as we
were concerned, began the day he signed on the DUCHESS. Where he learned to
shoot, the stars alone can tell. He was a Yankee--that much we knew from the
twang in his speech. And that was all we ever did know.

"And now we begin to get to the point. We had bad luck in the New Hebrides,
only fourteen boys for five weeks, and we ran up before the southeast for the
Solomons. 'malaita, then as now, was good recruiting ground, and we ran into
Malu, on the northwestern corner. There's a shore reef and an outer reef, and
a mighty nervous anchorage; but we made it all right and fired off our
dynamite as a signal to the niggers to come down and be recruited. In three
days we got not a boy. The niggers came off to us in their canoes by hundreds,
but they only laughed when we showed them beads and calico and hatchets and
talked of the delights of plantation work in Samoa.

"On the fourth day there came a change. Fifty-odd boys signed on and were
billeted in the main-hold, with the freedom of the deck, of course. And of
course, looking back, this wholesale signing on was suspicious, but at the
time we thought some powerful chief had removed the ban against recruiting.
The morning of the fifth day our two boats went ashore as usual--one to cover
the other, you know, in case of trouble. And, as usual, the fifty niggers on
board were on deck, loafing, talking, smoking, and sleeping. Saxtorph and
myself, along with four other sailors, were all that were left on board. The
two boats were manned with Gilbert Islanders. In the one were the captain, the
supercargo, and the recruiter. In the other, which was the covering boat and
which lay off shore a hundred yards, was the second mate. Both boats were
well-armed, though trouble was little expected.

"Four of the sailors, including Saxtorph, were scraping the poop rail. The
fifth sailor, rifle in hand, was standing guard by the water-tank just for'ard
of the mainmast. I was for'ard, putting in the finishing licks on a new jaw
for the fore-gaff. I was just reaching for my pipe where I had laid it down,
when I heard a shot from shore. I straightened up to look. Something struck me
on the back of the head, partially stunning me and knocking me to the deck.
'my first thought was that something had carried away aloft; but even as I
went down, and before I struck the deck, I heard the devil's own tattoo of
rifles from the boats, and twisting sidewise, I caught a glimpse of the sailor
who was standing guard. Two big niggers were holding his arms, and a third
nigger from behind was braining him with a tomahawk.

"I can see it now, the water-tank, the mainmast, the gang hanging on to him,
the hatchet descending on the back of his head, and all under the blazing
sunlight. I was fascinated by that growing vision of death. The tomahawk
seemed to take a horribly long time to come down. I saw it land, and the man's
legs give under him as he crumpled. The niggers held him up by sheer strength
while he was hacked a couple of times more. Then I got two more hacks on the
head and decided that I was dead. So did the brute that was hacking me. I was
too helpless to move, and I lay there and watched them removing the sentry's
head. I must say they did it slick enough. They were old hands at the
business.

"The rifle firing from the boats had ceased, and I made no doubt that they
were finished off and that the end had come to everything. It was only a
matter of moments when they would return for my head. They were evidently
taking the heads from the sailors aft. Heads are valuable on Malaita,
especially white heads. They have the place of honor in the canoe houses of
the salt-water natives. What particular decorative effect the bushmen get out
of them I didn't know, but they prize them just as much as the salt-water
crowd.

"I had a dim notion of escaping, and I crawled on hands and knees to the
winch, where I managed to drag myself to my feet. From there I could look aft
and see three heads on top the cabin--the heads of three sailors I had given
orders to for months. The niggers saw me standing, and started for me. I
reached for my revolver, and found they had taken it. I can't say that I was
scared. I've been near to death several times, but it never seemed easier than
right then. I was half-stunned, and nothing seemed to matter.

"The leading nigger had armed himself with a cleaver from the galley, and he
grimaced like an ape as he prepared to slice me down. But the slice was never
made. He went down on the deck all of a heap, and I saw the blood gush from
his mouth. In a dim way I heard a rifle go off and continue to go off. Nigger
after nigger went down. 'my senses began to clear, and I noted that there was
never a miss. Every time that the rifle went off a nigger dropped. I sat down
on deck beside the winch and looked up. Perched in the crosstrees was
Saxtorph. How he had managed it I can't imagine, for he had carried up with
him two Winchesters and I don't know how many bandoliers of ammunition; and he
was now doing the one only thing in this world that he was fitted to do.

"I've seen shooting and slaughter, but I never saw anything like that. I sat
by the winch and watched the show. I was weak and faint, and it seemed to be
all a dream. Bang, bang, bang, bang, went his rifle, and thud, thud, thud,
thud, went the niggers to the deck. It was amazing to see them go down. After
their first rush to get me, when about a dozen had dropped, they seemed
paralyzed; but he never left off pumping his gun. By this time canoes and the
two boats arrived from shore, armed with Sniders, and with Winchesters which
they had captured in the boats. The fusillade they let loose on Saxtorph was
tremendous. Luckily for him the niggers are only good at close range. They are
not used to putting the gun to their shoulders. They wait until they are right
on top of a man, and then they shoot from the hip. When his rifle got too hot,
Saxtorph changed off. That had been his idea when he carried two rifles up
with him.

"The astounding thing was the rapidity of his fire. Also, he never made a
miss. If ever anything was inevitable, that man was. It was the swiftness of
it that made the slaughter so appalling. The niggers did not have time to
think. When they did manage to think, they went over the side in a rush,
capsizing the canoes of course. Saxtorph never let up. The water was covered
with them, and plump, plump, plump, he dropped his bullets into them. Not a
single miss, and I could hear distinctly the thud of every bullet as it buried
in human flesh.

"The niggers spread out and headed for the shore, swimming. The water was
carpeted with bobbing heads, and I stood up, as in a dream, and watched it
all--the bobbing heads and the heads that ceased to bob. Some of the long
shots were magnificent. Only one man reached the beach, but as he stood up to
wade ashore, Saxtorph got him. It was beautiful. And when a couple of niggers
ran down to drag him out of the water, Saxtorph got them, too.

"I thought everything was over then, when I heard the rifle go off again. A
nigger had come out of the cabin companion on the run for the rail and gone
down in the middle of it. The cabin must have been full of them. I counted
twenty. They came up one at a time and jumped for the rail. But they never got
there. It reminded me of trapshooting. A black body would pop out of the
companion, bang would go Saxtorph's rifle, and down would go the black body.
Of course, those below did not know what was happening on deck, so they
continued to pop out until the last one was finished off.

"Saxtorph waited a while to make sure, and then came down on deck. He and I
were all that were left of the DUCHESS'S complement, and I was pretty well to
the bad, while he was helpless now that the shooting was over. Under my
direction he washed out my scalp wounds and sewed them up. A big drink of
whiskey braced me to make an effort to get out. There was nothing else to do.
All the rest were dead. We tried to get up sail, Saxtorph hoisting and I
holding the turn. He was once more the stupid lubber. He couldn't hoist worth
a cent, and when I fell in a faint, it looked all up with us.

"When I came to, Saxtorph was sitting helplessly on the rail, waiting to ask
me what he should do. I told him to overhaul the wounded and see if there were
any able to crawl. He gathered together six. One, I remember, had a broken
leg; but Saxtorph said his arms were all right. I lay in the shade, brushing
the flies off and directing operations, while Saxtorph bossed his hospital
gang. I'll be blessed if he didn't make those poor niggers heave at every rope
on the pin-rails before he found the halyards. One of them let go the rope in
the midst of the hoisting and slipped down to the deck dead; but Saxtorph
hammered the others and made them stick by the job. When the fore and main
were up, I told him to knock the shackle out of the anchor chain and let her
go. I had had myself helped aft to the wheel, where I was going to make a
shift at steering. I can't guess how he did it, but instead of knocking the
shackle out, down went the second anchor, and there we were doubly moored.

"In the end he managed to knock both shackles out and raise the staysail and
jib, and the Duchess filled away for the entrance. Our decks were a
spectacle. Dead and dying niggers were everywhere. They were wedged away some
of them in the most inconceivable places. The cabin was full of them where
they had crawled off the deck and cashed in. I put Saxtorph and his graveyard
gang to work heaving them overside, and over they went, the living and the
dead. The sharks had fat pickings that day. Of course our four murdered
sailors went the same way. Their heads, however, we put in a sack with
weights, so that by no chance should they drift on the beach and fall into the
hands of the niggers.

"Our five prisoners I decided to use as crew, but they decided otherwise. They
watched their opportunity and went over the side. Saxtorph got two in mid-air
with his revolver, and would have shot the other three in the water if I
hadn't stopped him. I was sick of the slaughter, you see, and besides, they'd
helped work the schooner out. But it was mercy thrown away, for the sharks got
the three of them.

"I had brain fever or something after we got clear of the land. Anyway, the
DUCHESS lay hove to for three weeks, when I pulled myself together and we
jogged on with her to Sydney. Anyway those niggers of Malu learned the
everlasting lesson that it is not good to monkey with a white man. In their
case, Saxtorph was certainly inevitable."

Charley Roberts emitted a long whistle and said:

"Well I should say so. But whatever became of Saxtorph?"

"He drifted into seal hunting and became a crackerjack. For six years he was
high line of both the Victoria and San Francisco fleets. The seventh year his
schooner was seized in Bering Sea by a Russian cruiser, and all hands, so the
talk went, were slammed into the Siberian salt mines. At least I've never
heard of him since."

"Farming the world," Roberts muttered. "Farming the world. Well here's to
them. Somebody's got to do it--farm the world, I mean."

Captain Woodward rubbed the criss-crosses on his bald head.

"I've done my share of it," he said. "Forty years now. This will be my last
trip. Then I'm going home to stay."

"I'll wager the wine you don't," Roberts challenged. "You'll die in the
harness, not at home."

Captain Woodward promptly accepted the bet, but personally I think Charley
Roberts has the best of it.



THE SEED OF McCOY

The Pyrenees, her iron sides pressed low in the water by her cargo of wheat,
rolled sluggishly, and made it easy for the man who was climbing aboard from
out a tiny outrigger canoe. As his eyes came level with the rail, so that he
could see inboard, it seemed to him that he saw a dim, almost indiscernible
haze. It was more like an illusion, like a blurring film that had spread
abruptly over his eyes. He felt an inclination to brush it away, and the same
instant he thought that he was growing old and that it was time to send to San
Francisco for a pair of spectacles.

As he came over the rail he cast a glance aloft at the tall masts, and, next,
at the pumps. They were not working. There seemed nothing the matter with the
big ship, and he wondered why she had hoisted the signal of distress. He
thought of his happy islanders, and hoped it was not disease. Perhaps the ship
was short of water or provisions. He shook hands with the captain whose gaunt
face and care-worn eyes made no secret of the trouble, whatever it was. At the
same moment the newcomer was aware of a faint, indefinable smell. It seemed
like that of burnt bread, but different.

He glanced curiously about him. Twenty feet away a weary-faced sailor was
calking the deck. As his eyes lingered on the man, he saw suddenly arise from
under his hands a faint spiral of haze that curled and twisted and was gone.
By now he had reached the deck. His bare feet were pervaded by a dull warmth
that quickly penetrated the thick calluses. He knew now the nature of the
ship's distress. His eyes roved swiftly forward, where the full crew of
weary-faced sailors regarded him eagerly. The glance from his liquid brown
eyes swept over them like a benediction, soothing them, rapping them about as
in the mantle of a great peace. "How long has she been afire, Captain?" he
asked in a voice so gentle and unperturbed that it was as the cooing of a
dove.

At first the captain felt the peace and content of it stealing in upon him;
then the consciousness of all that he had gone through and was going through
smote him, and he was resentful. By what right did this ragged beachcomber, in
dungaree trousers and a cotton shirt, suggest such a thing as peace and
content to him and his overwrought, exhausted soul? The captain did not reason
this; it was the unconscious process of emotion that caused his resentment.

"Fifteen days," he answered shortly. "Who are you?"

"My name is McCoy," came the answer in tones that breathed tenderness and
compassion.

"I mean, are you the pilot?"

McCoy passed the benediction of his gaze over the tall, heavy-shouldered man
with the haggard, unshaven face who had joined the captain.

"I am as much a pilot as anybody," was McCoy's answer. "We are all pilots
here, Captain, and I know every inch of these waters."

But the captain was impatient.

"What I want is some of the authorities. I want to talk with them, and blame
quick."

"Then I'll do just as well."

Again that insidious suggestion of peace, and his ship a raging furnace
beneath his feet! The captain's eyebrows lifted impatiently and nervously, and
his fist clenched as if he were about to strike a blow with it.

"Who in hell are you?" he demanded.

"I am the chief magistrate," was the reply in a voice that was still the
softest and gentlest imaginable.

The tall, heavy-shouldered man broke out in a harsh laugh that was partly
amusement, but mostly hysterical. Both he and the captain regarded McCoy with
incredulity and amazement. That this barefooted beachcomber should possess
such high-sounding dignity was inconceivable. His cotton shirt, unbuttoned,
exposed a grizzled chest and the fact that there was no undershirt beneath.

A worn straw hat failed to hide the ragged gray hair. Halfway down his chest
descended an untrimmed patriarchal beard. In any slop shop, two shillings
would have outfitted him complete as he stood before them.

"Any relation to the McCoy of the Bounty?" the captain asked.

"He was my great-grandfather."

"Oh," the captain said, then bethought himself. 'my name is Davenport, and
this is my first mate, Mr. Konig."

They shook hands.

"And now to business." The captain spoke quickly, the urgency of a great haste
pressing his speech. "We've been on fire for over two weeks. She's ready to
break all hell loose any moment. That's why I held for Pitcairn. I want to
beach her, or scuttle her, and save the hull."

"Then you made a mistake, Captain, said McCoy. "You should have slacked away
for Mangareva. There's a beautiful beach there, in a lagoon where the water is
like a mill pond."

"But we're here, ain't we?" the first mate demanded. "That's the point. We're
here, and we've got to do something."

McCoy shook his head kindly.

"You can do nothing here. There is no beach. There isn't even anchorage."

"Gammon!" said the mate. "Gammon!" he repeated loudly, as the captain signaled
him to be more soft spoken. "You can't tell me that sort of stuff. Where d'ye
keep your own boats, hey--your schooner, or cutter, or whatever you have? Hey?
Answer me that."

McCoy smiled as gently as he spoke. His smile was a caress, an embrace that
surrounded the tired mate and sought to draw him into the quietude and rest of
McCoy's tranquil soul.

"We have no schooner or cutter," he replied. "And we carry our canoes to the
top of the cliff."

"You've got to show me," snorted the mate. "How d'ye get around to the other
islands, heh? Tell me that."

"We don't get around. As governor of Pitcairn, I sometimes go. When I was
younger, I was away a great deal--sometimes on the trading schooners, but
mostly on the missionary brig. But she's gone now, and we depend on passing
vessels. Sometimes we have had as high as six calls in one year. At other
times, a year, and even longer, has gone by without one passing ship. Yours is
the first in seven months."

"And you mean to tell me--" the mate began.

But Captain Davenport interfered.

"Enough of this. We're losing time. What is to be done, Mr. McCoy?"

The old man turned his brown eyes, sweet as a woman's, shoreward, and both
captain and mate followed his gaze around from the lonely rock of Pitcairn to
the crew clustering forward and waiting anxiously for the announcement of a
decision. 'mcCoy did not hurry. He thought smoothly and slowly, step by step,
with the certitude of a mind that was never vexed or outraged by life.

"The wind is light now," he said finally. "There is a heavy current setting to
the westward."

"That's what made us fetch to leeward," the captain interrupted, desiring to
vindicate his seamanship.

"Yes, that is what fetched you to leeward," McCoy went on. "Well, you can't
work up against this current today. And if you did, there is no beach. Your
ship will be a total loss."

He paused, and captain and mate looked despair at each other.

"But I will tell you what you can do. The breeze will freshen tonight around
midnight--see those tails of clouds and that thickness to windward, beyond the
point there? That's where she'll come from, out of the southeast, hard. It is
three hundred miles to Mangareva. Square away for it. There is a beautiful bed
for your ship there."

The mate shook his head.

"Come in to the cabin, and we'll look at the chart," said the captain.

McCoy found a stifling, poisonous atmosphere in the pent cabin. Stray
waftures of invisible gases bit his eyes and made them sting. The deck was
hotter, almost unbearably hot to his bare feet. The sweat poured out of his
body. He looked almost with apprehension about him. This malignant, internal
heat was astounding. It was a marvel that the cabin did not burst into flames.
He had a feeling as if of being in a huge bake oven where the heat might at
any moment increase tremendously and shrivel him up like a blade of grass.

As he lifted one foot and rubbed the hot sole against the leg of his trousers,
the mate laughed in a savage, snarling fashion.

"The anteroom of hell," he said. "Hell herself is right down there under your
feet."

"It's hot!" McCoy cried involuntarily, mopping his face with a bandana
handkerchief.

"Here's Mangareva," the captain said, bending over the table and pointing to a
black speck in the midst of the white blankness of the chart. "And here, in
between, is another island. Why not run for that?"

McCoy did not look at the chart.

"That's Crescent Island," he answered. "It is uninhabited, and it is only two
or three feet above water. Lagoon, but no entrance. No, Mangareva is the
nearest place for your purpose."

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