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THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 I 
 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW VORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
 ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 
 
 LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 
 
 TORONTO 
 
THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 BY 
 
 JACK LONDON 
 
 /I 
 
 Author of "The Call of the Wild," etc. 
 
 ^m lark 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 1917 
 
3 
 
 15 3^^. g 
 
 Copyright, 1906 
 
 By Ess Ess Publishing Company 
 
 Copyright, 1909 
 
 By The Butterick Publishing Company 
 
 Copyright, 1911 
 
 By Mitchell Kenneely and by The Independent 
 
 Copyright, 1912 
 
 By DOITBLEDAY, PAGE AND COMPANY 
 
 Copyright, 1917 
 By the MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published, February, 1917. 
 
 FEB 23 1917 
 
 ©CI.A455639 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ONE. The Human Drift 1 
 
 TWO. Nothing that Ever Came to Anything . 27 
 
 THREE. That Dead Men Rise Up Never ... 35 
 
 FOUR. Small-boat Sailing 52 
 
 FIVE. Four Horses and a Sailor 74 
 
 SIX. A Classic of the Sea 101 ' 
 
 A Wicked Woman (Curtain Raiser) , . Ill 
 
 The Birth Mark (SketeH) 155 
 
THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 ONE 
 
 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 " The Revelations of Devout and Learn'd 
 Who rose before us, and as Prophets Burn'd, 
 
 Are all but stories, which, awoke from Sleep, 
 They told their comrades, and to Sleep retum'd." 
 
 THE history of civilisation is a history of 
 , wandering, sword in hand, in search of 
 
 food. In the misty younger world we catch 
 glimpses of phantom races, rising, slaying, find- 
 i ing food, building rude civilisations, decaying, 
 j falling under the swords of stronger hands, 
 • and passing utterly away. Man, like any other 
 animal, has roved over the earth seeking what 
 I he might devour; and not romance and adven- 
 1 ture, but the hunger-need, has urged him on his 
 : vast adventures. Whether a bankrupt gentleman 
 sailing to colonise Virginia or a lean Cantonese 
 contracting to labour on the sugar plantations of 
 Hawaii, in each case, gentleman and coolie, it is 
 
 1 
 
2 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 a desperate attempt to get something to eat, to 
 get more to eat than he can get at home. 
 
 It has always been so, from the time of the first 
 pre-human anthropoid crossing a mountain-divide 
 in quest of better berry-bushes beyond, down to 
 the latest Slovak, arriving on our shores to-day, 
 to go to work in the coal-mines of Pennsylvania. 
 These migratory movements of peoples have been 
 /called drifts, and the word is apposite. Un- 
 planned, blind, automatic, spurred on by the pain 
 of hunger, man has literally drifted his way 
 around the planet. There have been drifts in the 
 past, innumerable and forgotten, and so remote 
 that no records have been left, or composed of 
 such low-typed humans or pre-humans that they 
 made no scratchings on stone or bone and left no 
 monuments to show that they had been. These 
 early drifts we conjecture and know must have 
 occurred, just as we know that the first upright- 
 walking brutes were descended from some kin of 
 the quadrumana through having developed " a 
 pair of great toes out of two opposable thumbs." 
 Dominated by fear, and by their very fear ac- 
 celerating their development, these early ances- 
 tors of ours, suffering hunger-pangs very like, the 
 ones we experience to-day, drifted on, hunting 
 and being hunted, eating and being eaten, wan- 
 
THE HUMAN DRIFT 3 
 
 dering through thousand-year-long odysseys of 
 screaming primordial savagery, until they left 
 their skeletons in glacial gravels, some of them, 
 and their bone-scratchings in cavemen's lairs. 
 
 There have been drifts from east to west and 
 west to east, from north to south and back again, 
 drifts that have criss-crossed one another, and 
 drifts colliding and recoiling and caroming off in 
 new directions. From Central Europe the Aryans 
 have drifted into Asia, and from Central Asia 
 the Turanians have drifted across Europe. Asia 
 has thrown forth great waves of hungry humans 
 from the prehistoric " round-barrow " " broad- 
 heads '' who overran Europe and penetrated to 
 Scandinavia and England, down through the 
 hordes of Attila and Tamerlane, to the present 
 immigration of Chinese and Japanese that threat- 
 ens America. The Phoenicians and the Greeks, 
 with unremembered drifts behind them, colonised 
 the Mediterranean. Eome was engulfed in the 
 torrent of Germanic tribes drifting down from 
 the north before a flood of drifting Asiatics. 
 The Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, after having 
 drifted whence no man knows, poured into Brit- 
 ain, and the English have carried this drift on 
 around the world. Retreating before stronger 
 breeds, hungry and voracious, the Eskimo has 
 
4 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 drifted to the inhospitable polar regions, the 
 Pigmy to the fever-rotten jungles of Africa. 
 And in this day the drift of the races continues, 
 whether it be of Chinese into the Philippines and 
 the Malay Peninsula, of Europeans to the United 
 States or of Americans to the wheat-lands of 
 Manitoba and the Northwest. 
 
 Perhaps most amazing has been the South Sea 
 Drift. Blind, fortuitous, precarious as no other 
 drift has been, nevertheless the islands in that 
 waste of ocean have received drift after drift of 
 y the races. Down from the mainland of Asia 
 poured an Aryan drift that built civilisations in 
 Ceylon, Java, and Sumatra. Only the monu- 
 ments of these Aryans remain. They them- 
 selves have perished utterly, though not until 
 after leaving evidences of their drift clear across 
 the great South Pacific to far Easter Island. 
 And on that drift they encountered races who 
 had accomplished the drift before them, and 
 they, the Aryans, passed, in turn, before the drift 
 of other and subsequent races whom we to-day 
 call the Polynesian and the Melanesian. 
 
 Man early discovered death. As soon as his 
 evolution permitted, he made himself better de- 
 vices for killing than the old natural ones of fang 
 and claw. He devoted himself to the invention 
 
THE HUMAN DRIFT 5 
 
 of killing devices before he discovered fire or 
 manufactured for himself religion. And to this 
 day, his finest creative energy and technical skill 
 are devoted to the same old task of making better 
 and ever better killing weapons. All his days, 
 down all the past, have been spent in killing. 
 And from the fear-stricken, jungle-lurking, cave- 
 haunting creature of long ago, he won to empery 
 over the whole animal world because he devel- 
 oped into the most terrible and awful killer of 
 all the animals. He found himself crowded. He 
 killed to make room, and as he made room ever 
 he increased and found himself crowded, and 
 ever he went on killing to make more room. 
 Like a settler clearing land of its weeds and for- 
 est bushes in order to plant corn, so man was 
 compelled to clear all manner of life away in 
 order to plant himself. And, sword in hand, he 
 has literally hewn his way through the vast 
 masses of life that occupied the earth space he 
 coveted for himself. And ever he has carried 
 the battle wider and wider, until to-day not only 
 is he a far more capable killer of men and ani- 
 mals than ever before, but he has pressed the 
 battle home to the infinite and invisible hosts of 
 menacing lives in the world of micro-organ- 
 isms. 
 
6 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 It is true, that they that rose by the sword per- 
 ished by the sword. And yet, not only did they 
 not all perish, but more rose by the sword than 
 perished by it, else man would not to-day be over- 
 running the w^orld in such huge swarms. Also, 
 it must not be forgotten that they who did not 
 rise by the sword did not rise at all. They were 
 not. In view of this, there is something wrong 
 with Doctor Jordan's war-theory, which is to 
 the effect that the best being sent out to war, 
 only the second best, the men who are left, re- 
 main to breed a second best race, and that, there- 
 fore, the human race deteriorates under war. 
 If this be so, if we have sent forth the best we 
 bred and gone on breeding from the men who 
 were left, and since we have done this for ten 
 thousand millenniums and are what we splen- 
 didly are to-day, then what unthinkably splendid 
 and god-like beings must have been our forebears 
 those ten thousand millenniums ago. Unfortu- 
 nately for Doctor Jordan's theory, those ancient 
 forebears cannot live up to this fine reputation. 
 We know them for what they w^ere, and before 
 the monkey cage of any menagerie we catch truer 
 glimpses and hints and resemblances of what 
 our ancestors really w^ere long and long ago. 
 And by killing, incessant killing, by making a 
 
THE HUMAN DRIFT 7 
 
 shambles of the planet, those ape-like creatures 
 have developed even into you and me. As Henley 
 has said in " The Song of the Sword '^ : 
 
 "T/ie Sword Singing — > 
 
 Driving the darkness, 
 
 Even as the banners 
 
 And spears of the Morning; 
 
 Sifting the nations, 
 
 The Slag from the metal. 
 
 The vraste and the weak 
 
 From the fit and the strong ; 
 
 Fighting the brute, 
 
 The abysmal Fecundity ; 
 
 Checking the gross 
 
 Multitudinous blunders, 
 
 The groping, the purblind 
 
 Excesses in service 
 
 Of the Womb universal. 
 
 The absolute drudge." 
 
 As time passed and man increased, he drifted 
 over farther afield in search of room. He en- 
 countered other drifts of men, and the killing 
 of men became prodigious. The weak and the 
 decadent fell under the sword. Nations that fal- 
 tered, that waxed prosperous in fat valleys and 
 rich river deltas, were swept away by the drifts 
 of stronger men who were nourished on the hard- 
 ships of deserts and mountains and who were 
 more capable with the sword. Unknown and un- 
 numbered billions of men have been so destroyed 
 
8 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 in prehistoric times. Draper says that in the 
 twenty years of the Gothic war, Italy lost 15,- 
 000,000 of her population ; " and that the wars, 
 famines, and pestilences of the reign of Jus- 
 tinian diminished the human species by the al- 
 most incredible number of 100,000,000." Ger- 
 many, in the Thirty Years' War, lost 6,000,000 
 inhabitants. The record of our own American 
 Civil War need scarcely be recalled. 
 
 And man has been destroyed in other ways 
 than by the sword. Flood, famine, pestilence 
 and murder are potent factors in reducing popu- 
 lation — in making room. As Mr. Charles 
 Woodruff, in his " Expansion of Eaces," has in- 
 stanced : In 188G, when the dikes of the Yellow 
 River burst, 7,000,000 people were drowned. 
 The failure of crops in Ireland, in 1848, caused 
 1,000,000 deaths. The famines in India of 
 1896-7 and 1899-1900 lessened the population by 
 21,000,000. The T'afping rebellion and the Mo- 
 hammedan rebellion, combined with the famine 
 of 1877-78, destroyed scores of millions of Chi- 
 nese. Europe has been swept repeatedly by great 
 plagues. In India, for the period of 1903 to 
 1907, the plague deaths averaged between one 
 and two millions a year. Mr. Woodruff is re- 
 sponsible for the assertion that 10,000,000 per- 
 
THE HUMAN DRIFT 9 
 
 sons now living in the United States are doomed 
 to die of tuberculosis. And in this same country 
 ten thousand persons a year are directly mur- 
 dered. In China, between three and six millions 
 of infants are annually destroyed, while the total 
 infanticide record of the whole world is appal- 
 ling. In Africa, now, human beings are dying by 
 millions of the sleeping sickness. 
 
 More destructive of life than war, is industry 
 In all civilised countries great masses of people 
 are crowded into slums and labour-ghettos, where 
 disease festers, vice corrodes, and famine is 
 chronic, and where they die more swiftly and in 
 greater numbers than do the soldiers in our mod- 
 ern wars. The very infant mortality of a slum 
 parish in the East End of London is three times 
 that of a middle class parish in the West End. 
 In the United States, in the last fourteen years, 
 a total of coal-miners, greater than our entire 
 standing army, has been killed and injured. 
 The United States Bureau of Labour states that 
 during the year 1908, there were between 30,000 
 and 35,000 deaths of workers by accidents, while 
 200,000 more were injured. In fact, the safest 
 place for a workingman is in the army. And 
 even if that army be at the front, fighting in 
 Cuba or South Africa, the soldier in the ranks 
 
iO THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 has a better chance for life than the workingman 
 at home. 
 
 And yet, despite this terrible roll of death, de- 
 spite the enormous killing of the past and the 
 enormous killing of the present, there are to-day 
 alive on the planet a billion and three-quarters 
 of human beings. Our immediate conclusion is 
 that man is exceedingly fecund and very tough. 
 Never before have there been so many people in 
 the world. In the past centuries the world's 
 population has been smaller; in the future cen- 
 turies it is destined to be larger. And this brings 
 us to that old bugbear that has been so frequently 
 laughed away and that still persists in raising 
 its grisly head — namely, the doctrine of Mal- 
 thus. While man's increasing efficiency of food- 
 production, combined with colonisation of whole 
 virgin continents, has for generations given the 
 apparent lie to Malthus' mathematical statement 
 of the Law of Population, nevertheless the essen- 
 tial significance of his doctrine remains and 
 cannot be challenged. Population does press 
 against subsistence. And no matter how rapidly 
 subsistence increases, population is certain to 
 catch up with it. 
 
 When man was in the hunting stage of de- 
 velopment, wide areas were necessary for the 
 
THE HUMAN DRIFT 11 
 
 maintenance of scant populations. With the 
 shepherd stages, the means of subsistence being 
 increased, a larger population was supported on 
 the same territory. The agricultural stage gave 
 support to a still larger population ; and, to-day, 
 with the increased food-getting efficiency of a 
 machine civilisation, an even larger population 
 is made possible. Nor is this theoretical. The 
 population is here, a billion and three quarters 
 of men, women, and children, and this vast pop- 
 ulation is increasing on itself by leaps and 
 bounds. 
 
 A heavy European drift to the New World has 
 gone on and is going on ; yet Europe, whose pop- 
 ulation a century ago was 170,000,000, has to-day 
 500,000,000. At this rate of increase, provided 
 that subsistence is not overtaken, a century from 
 now the population of Europe will be 1,500,000,- 
 000. And be it noted of the present rate of in- 
 crease in the United States that only one-third is 
 due to immigration, while two-thirds is due to 
 excess of births over deaths. And at this pres- 
 ent rate of increase, the population of the United 
 States will be 500,000,000 in less than a century 
 from now. 
 
 Man, the hungry one, the killer, has always 
 suffered for lack of room. The world has been 
 
12 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 chronically overcrowded. Belgium with her 572 
 persons to the square mile is no more crowded 
 than was Denmark when it supported only 500 
 paleolithic people. According to Mr. Woodruff, 
 cultivated land will produce 1600 times as much 
 food as hunting land. From the time of the Nor- 
 man Conquest, for centuries Europe could sup- 
 port no more than 25 to the square mile. To-day 
 Europe supports 81 to the square mile. The ex- 
 planation for this is that for the several centuries 
 after the Norman Conquest her population was 
 saturated. Then, with the development of trad- 
 ing and capitalism, of exploration and exploita- 
 tion of new lands, and with the invention of la- 
 bour-saving machinery and the discovery and 
 application of scientific principles, was brought 
 about a tremendous increase in Europe's food- 
 getting efficiency. And immediately her popula- 
 tion sprang up. 
 
 According to the census of Ireland, of 1659, 
 that country had a population of 500,000. One 
 hundred and fifty years later, her population was 
 8,000,000. For many centuries the population of 
 Japan was stationary. There seemed no way of 
 increasing her food-getting efficiency. Then, 
 sixty years ago, came Commodore Perry, knock- 
 ing down her doors and letting in the knowledge 
 
THE HUMAN DRIFT 13 
 
 and machinery of the superior food-getting effici- 
 ency of the Western world. Immediately upon 
 this rise in subsistence began the rise of popula- 
 tion; and it is only the other day that Japan, 
 finding her population once again pressing 
 against subsistence, embarked, sword in hand, on 
 a westward drift in search of more room. And, 
 sword in hand, killing and being killed, she has 
 carved out for herself Formosa and Korea, and 
 driven the vanguard of her drift far into the rich 
 interior of Manchuria. 
 
 For an immense period of time China's popu- 
 lation has remained at 400,000,000 — the satura- 
 tion point. The only reason that the Yellow 
 River periodically drowns millions of Chinese is 
 that there is no other land for those millions to 
 farm. And after every such catastrophe the 
 wave of human life rolls up and now millions 
 flood out upon that precarious territory. They 
 are driven to it, because they are pressed re- 
 morselessly against subsistence. It is inevit- 
 able that China, sooner or later, like Japan, will 
 learn and put into application our own superior 
 food-getting efficiency. And when that time 
 comes, it is likewise inevitable that her popula- 
 tion will increase by unguessed millions until it 
 again reaches the saturation point. And then, 
 
14 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 inoculated with Western ideas, may she not, like 
 Japan, take sword in hand and start forth colos- 
 sally on a drift of her own for more room. This 
 is another reputed bogie — the Yellow Peri] ; 
 yet the men of China are only men, like any 
 other race of men, and all men, down all his- 
 tory, have drifted hungrily, here, there and every- 
 where over the planet, seeking for something to 
 eat. What other men do, may not the Chinese 
 do? 
 
 But a change has long been coming in the 
 affairs of man. The more recent drifts of the 
 stronger races, carving their way through the les- 
 ser breeds to more earth-space, has led to peace, 
 ever to wider and more lasting peace. The lesser 
 breeds, under penalty of being killed, have been 
 compelled to lay down their weapons and cease 
 killing among themselves. The scalp-taking In- 
 dian and the head-hunting Melanesian have been 
 either destroyed or converted to a belief in the 
 superior efficacy of civil suits and criminal prose- 
 cutions. The planet is being subdued. The 
 wild and the hurtful are either tamed or elim- 
 inated. From the beasts of prey and the canni- 
 bal humans down to the death-dealing microbes, 
 no quarter is given; and daily, wider and wider 
 areas of hostile territory, whether of a warring 
 
THE HUMAN DRIFT 15 
 
 desert-tribe in Africa or a pestilential fever-hole 
 like Panama, are made peaceable and habitable 
 for mankind. As for the great mass of stay-at- 
 home folk, what percentage of the present gener- 
 ation in the United States, England, or Germany, 
 has seen war or knows anything of w^ar at first 
 hand? There was never so much peace in the 
 world as there is to-day. 
 
 War itself, the old red anarch, is passing. It 
 is safer to be a soldier than a workingman. The 
 chance for life is greater in an active campaign 
 than in a factory or a coal-mine. In the matter 
 of killing, war is growing impotent, and this in 
 face of the fact that the machinery of war was 
 never so expensive in the past nor so dreadful. 
 War-equipment to-day, in time of peace, is more 
 expensive than of old in time of war. A standing 
 army costs more to maintain than it used to cost 
 to conquer an empire. It is more expensive to be 
 ready to kill, than it used to be to do the killing. 
 The price of a Dreadnaught would furnish the 
 whole army of Xerxes with killing weapons. 
 And, in spite of its magnificent equipment, war 
 no longer kills as it used to when its methods 
 were simpler. A bombardment by a modern fleet 
 has been known to result in the killing of one 
 mule. The casualties of a twentieth century war 
 
16 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 between two world-powers are such as to make a 
 worker in an iron-foundry turn green with envy. 
 War has become a joke. Men have made for 
 themselves monsters of battle which they cannot 
 face in battle. Subsistence is generous these 
 days, life is not cheap, and it is not in the nature 
 of flesh and blood to indulge in the carnage made 
 possible by present-day machinery. This is not 
 theoretical, as will be shown by a comparison of 
 deaths in battle and men involved, in the South 
 African War and the Spanish-American War on 
 the one hand, and the Civil War or the Napo- 
 leonic Wars on the other. 
 
 Not only has war, by its own evolution, ren- 
 dered itself futile, but man himself, with greater 
 wisdom and higher ethics, is opposed to war. He 
 has learned too much. War is repugnant to his 
 common sense. He conceives it to be wrong, to 
 be absurd, and to be very expensive. For the 
 damage wrought and the results accomplished, 
 it is not worth the price. Just as in the disputes 
 of individuals the arbitration of a civil court in- 
 stead of a blood feud is more practical, so, man 
 decides, is arbitration more practical in the dis- 
 putes of nations. 
 
 War is passing, disease is being conquered, and 
 man's food-getting efficiency is increasing. It 
 
THE HUMAN DRIFT 17 
 
 is because of these factors that there are a bil- 
 lion and three quarters of people alive to-day 
 instead of a billion, or three-quarter of a billion. 
 And it is because of these factors that the world's 
 population will very soon be two billions and 
 climbing rapidly toward three billions. The life- 
 time of the generation is increasing steadily. 
 Men live longer these days. Life is not so pre- 
 carious. The newborn infant has a greater 
 chance for survival than at any time in the past. 
 Surgery and sanitation reduce the fatalities that 
 accompany the mischances of life and the ravages 
 of disease. Men and women, with deficiencies 
 and weaknesses that in the past would have ef- 
 fected their rapid extinction, live to-day and 
 father and mother a numerous progeny. And 
 high as the food-getting efficiency may soar, pop- 
 ulation is bound to soar after it. The " abysmal 
 fecundity " of life has not altered. Given the 
 food, and life will increase. A small percentage 
 of the billion and three-quarters that live to-day 
 may hush the clamour of life to be born, but it 
 is only a small percentage. In this particular, 
 the life in the man-animal is very like the life 
 in the other animals. 
 
 And still another change is coming in human 
 affairs. Though politicians gnash their teeth 
 
18 THE HUMAN DEIFT 
 
 and cry anathema, and man, whose superficial 
 book-learning is vitiated by crystallised prejudice, 
 assure us that civilisation will go to smash, the 
 trend of society, to-day, the world over, is toward 
 socialism. The old individualism is passing. 
 The state interferes more and more in affairs 
 that hitherto have been considered sacredly pri- 
 vate. And socialism, when the last word is said, 
 is merely a new economic and political system 
 whereby more men can get food to eat. In short, 
 socialism is an improved food-getting efficiency. 
 Furthermore, not only will socialism get food 
 more easily and in greater quantity, but it will 
 achieve a more equitable distribution of that 
 food. Socialism promises, for a time, to give all 
 men, women, and children all they want to eat, 
 and to enable them to eat all they want as often 
 as they want. Subsistence will be pushed back, 
 temporarily, an exceedingly long way. In con- 
 sequence, the flood of life will rise like a tidal 
 wave. There will be more marriages and more 
 children born. The enforced sterility that ob- 
 tains to-day for many millions, will no longer 
 obtain. Nor will the fecund millions in the 
 slums and labour-ghettos, who to-day die of all 
 the ills due to chronic underfeeding and over- 
 crowding, and who die with their fecundity 
 
THE HUMAN DRIFT 19 
 
 largely unrealised, die in that future day when 
 the increased food-getting efficiency of socialism 
 will give them all they want to eat. 
 
 It is undeniable that population will increase 
 prodigiously — just as it has increased prodigi- 
 ously during the last few centuries, following 
 upon the increase in food-getting efficiency. The 
 magnitude of population in that future day is 
 well nigh unthinkable. But there is only so 
 much land and water on the surface of the earth. 
 Man, despite his marvellous accomplishments, 
 will never be able to increase the diameter of the 
 planet. The old days of virgin continents will 
 be gone. The habitable planet, from ice-cap to 
 ice-cap, will be inhabited. And in the matter 
 of food-getting, as in everything else, man is only 
 finite. Undreamed efficiencies in food-getting 
 may be achieved, but, soon or late, man will find 
 himself face to face with Malthus' grim law. 
 Not only will population catch up with subsist- 
 ence, but it will press against subsistence, and 
 the pressure will be pitiless and savage. Some- 
 where in the future is a date when man will 
 face, consciously, the bitter fact that there is not 
 food enough for all of him to eat. 
 
 When this day comes, what then? Will there 
 be a recrudescence of old obsolete war? In a 
 
20 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 saturated population life is always cheap, as it 
 is cheap in China, in India, to-day. Will new 
 human drifts take place, questing for room, carv- 
 ing earth-space out of crowded life? Will the 
 Sword again sing: 
 
 "Follow, O follow, then. 
 Heroes, my harvesters! 
 Where the tall grain is ripe 
 Thrust in your sickles ! 
 Stripped and adust 
 In a stubble of empire 
 Scything and binding 
 The full sheaves of sovranty." 
 
 Even if, as of old, man should wander hungrily, 
 sword in hand, slaying and being slain, the relief 
 would be only temporary. Even if one race 
 alone should hew down the last survivor of all 
 the other races, that one race, drifting the world 
 around, would saturate the planet with its own 
 life and again press against subsistence. And 
 in that day, the death rate and the birth rate 
 will have to balance. Men will have to die, or 
 be prevented from being born. Undoubtedly a 
 higher quality of life will obtain, and also a 
 slowly decreasing fecundity. But this decrease 
 will be so slow that the pressure against subsis- 
 tence will remain. The control of progeny will 
 be one of the most important problems of man 
 
THE HUMAN DRIFT 21 
 
 and one of the most important functions of the 
 state. Men will simply be not permitted to be 
 born. 
 
 Disease, from time to time, will ease the pres- 
 sure. Diseases are parasites, and it must not 
 be forgotten that just as there are drifts in the 
 world of man, so are there drifts in the w^orld 
 of micro-organisms — hunger-quests for food. 
 Little is known of the micro-organic w^orld, but 
 that little is appalling; and no census of it will 
 ever be taken, for there is the true, literal " abys- 
 mal fecundity.'' Multitudinous as man is, all 
 his totality of individuals is as nothing in com- 
 parison with the inconceivable vastness of num- 
 bers of the micro-organisms. In your body, or 
 in mine, right now, are swarming more individ- 
 ual entities than there are human beings in the 
 w^orld to-day. It is to us an invisible world. 
 We only guess its nearest confines. With our 
 pow^erful microscopes and ultramicroscopes, en- 
 larging diameters twenty thousand times, we 
 catch but the slightest glimpses of that profun- 
 dity of infinitesimal life. 
 
 Little is known of that world, save in a gen- 
 eral way. We know that out of it arise diseases, 
 new to us, that afflict and destroy man. We do 
 not know whether these diseases are merely the 
 
22 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 drifts, in a fresh direction, of already-existing 
 breeds of micro-organisms, or whether they are 
 new, absolutely new, breeds themselves just spon- 
 taneously generated. The latter hypothesis is 
 tenable, for we theorise that if spontaneous gen- 
 eration still occurs on the earth, it is far more 
 likely to occur in the form of simple organisms 
 than of complicated organisms. 
 
 Another thing we know, and that is that it 
 is in crowded populations that new diseases 
 arise. They have done so in the past. They do 
 so to-day. And no matter how wise are our 
 physicians and bacteriologists, no matter how 
 successfully they cope with these invaders, new 
 invaders continue to arise — new drifts of hun- 
 gry life seeking to devour us. And so we are 
 justified in believing that in the saturated popu- 
 lations of the future, when life is suffocating in 
 the pressure against subsistence, that new, and 
 ever new, hosts of destroying micro-organisms 
 will continue to arise and fling themselves upon 
 earth-crowded man to give him room. There 
 may even be plagues of unprecedented ferocity 
 that will depopulate great areas before the wit 
 of man can overcome them. And this we know : 
 that no matter how often these invisible hosts 
 may be overcome by man's becoming immune 
 
THE HUMAN DRIFT 23 
 
 to them through a cruel and terrible selection, 
 new hosts will ever arise of these micro-organ- 
 isms that were in the world before he came and 
 that will be here after he is gone. 
 
 After he is gone? Will he then some day be 
 gone, and this planet know him no more? Is it 
 thence that the human drift in all its totality 
 is trending? God Himself is silent on this point, 
 though some of his prophets have given us vivid 
 representations of that last day when the earth 
 shall pass into nothingness. Nor does science, 
 despite its radium speculations and its attempted 
 analyses of the ultimate nature of matter, give us 
 any other word than that man will pass. So far 
 as man's knowledge goes, law is universal. 
 Elements react under certain unchangeable con- 
 ditions. One of these conditions is temperature. 
 Whether it be in the test tube of the laboratory 
 or the workshop of nature, all organic chemical 
 reactions take place only within a restricted 
 range of heat. Man, the latest of the ephemera, 
 is pitifully a creature of temperature, strutting 
 his brief day on the thermometer. Behind him 
 is a past wherein it was too warm for him to 
 exist. Ahead of him is a future wherein it will 
 be too cold for him to exist. He cannot adjust 
 himself to that future, because he cannot alter 
 
24 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 universal law, because he cannot alter his own 
 construction nor the molecules that compose him. 
 It would be well to ponder these lines of Her- 
 bert Spencer's which follow, and which embody, 
 possibly, the wildest vision the scientific mind 
 has ever achieved: 
 
 " Motion as well as Matter being fixed in quan- 
 tity, it would seem that the change in the distri- 
 bution of Matter which Motion effects, coming 
 to a limit in whichever direction it is carried, 
 the indestructible Motion thereupon necessitates 
 a reverse distribution. Apparently, the univer- 
 sally-co-existent forces of attraction and repul- 
 sion, which, as we have seen, necessitates rhythm 
 in all minor changes throughout the Universe, 
 also necessitates rhythm in the totality of its 
 changes — produce now an immeasurable period 
 during which the attractive forces predominat- 
 ing, cause universal concentration, and then an 
 immeasurable period during which the repulsive 
 forces predominating, cause universal diffusion 
 — alternate eras of Evolution and Dissolution. 
 And thus there is suggested the conception of a 
 past during ivhich there have been successive 
 Evolutions analogous to that which is now going 
 on; a future during which successive other EvO' 
 
THE HUMAN DRIFT 25 
 
 lutions may go on — ever the same in principle 
 but never the same in concrete result/^ 
 
 That is it — the most we know — alternate 
 eras of evolution and dissolution. In the past 
 there have been other evolutions similar to that 
 one in which we live, and in the future there may 
 be other similar evolutions — that is all. The 
 principle of all these evolutions remains, but 
 the concrete results are never twice alike. Man 
 was not; he was; and again he will not be. In 
 eternity which is beyond our comprehension, the 
 particular evolution of that solar satellite we call 
 the " Earth " occupied but a slight fraction of 
 time. And of that fraction of time man occupies 
 but a small portion. All the whole human drift 
 from the first ape-man to the last savant, is but 
 a phantom, a flash of light and a flutter of move 
 ment across the infinite face of the starry night 
 
 When the thermometer drops, man ceases — 
 with all his lusts and wrestlings and achieve 
 ments; with all his race-adventures and race 
 tragedies; and with all his red killings, billions 
 upon billions of human lives multiplied by as 
 many billions more. This is the last word of 
 Science, unless there be some further, unguessed 
 word which Science will some day find and utter. 
 In the meantime it sees no farther than the 
 
26 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 starry void, where the "' fleeting systems lapse 
 like foam." Of what ledger-account is the tiny 
 life of man in a vastness where stars snuff out 
 like candles and great suns blaze for a time-tick 
 of eternity and are gone? 
 
 And for us who live, no worse can happen than 
 has happened to the earliest drifts of man, 
 marked to-day by ruined cities of forgotten civ- 
 ilisation — ruined, cities, which, on excavation, 
 are found to rest on ruins of earlier cities, city 
 upon city, and fourteen cities, down to a stratum 
 where, still earlier, wandering herdsmen drove 
 their flocks, and w^here, even preceding them, wild 
 hunters chased their prey long after the cave- 
 man and the man of the squatting-place cracked 
 the knuckle-bones of w^ild animals and vanished 
 from the earth. There is nothing terrible about 
 it. With Eichard Hovey, when he faced his 
 death, we can say : " Behold ! I have lived ! " 
 And with another and greater one, we can lay 
 ourselves down with a will. The one drop of 
 living, the one taste of being, has been good ; and 
 perhaps our greatest achievement will be that 
 we dreamed immortality, even though we failed 
 to realise it. 
 
TWO 
 
 NOTHING THAT EVER CAME TO ANYTHING 
 
 IT was at Quito, the mountain capital of Ecua- 
 dor, that the following passage at correspond- 
 ence took place. Having occasion to buy a pair 
 of shoes in a shop six feet by eight in size and with 
 walls three feet thick, I noticed a mangy leopard 
 skin on the floor. I had no Spanish. The shop- 
 keeper had no English. But I was an adept at 
 sign language. I wanted to know where I should 
 go to buy leopard skins. On my scribble-pad 
 I drew the interesting streets of a city. Then 
 I drew a small shop, which, after much effort, I 
 persuaded the proprietor into recognising as his 
 shop. Next, I indicated in my drawing that on 
 the many streets there were many shops. And, 
 finally, I made myself into a living interrogation 
 mark, pointing all the while from the mangy 
 leopard skin to the many shops I had sketched. 
 But the proprietor failed to follow me. So 
 did his assistant. The street came in to help — 
 that is, as many as could crowd into the six -by- 
 eight shop ; while those that could not force their 
 
 27 
 
28 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 way in held an overflow meeting on the sidewalk. 
 The proprietor and the rest took turns at talking 
 to me in rapid-fire Spanish, and, from the ex- 
 pressions on their faces, all concluded that I 
 was remarkably stupid. Again I went through 
 my programme, pointing on the sketch from the 
 one shop to the many shops, pointing out that in 
 this particular shop was one leopard skin, and 
 then questing interrogatively with my pencil 
 among all the shops. All regarded me in blank 
 silence, until I saw comprehension suddenly 
 dawn on the face of a small boy. 
 
 a Tigres montanya I " he cried. 
 
 This appealed to me as mountain tigers, 
 namely, leopards; and in token that he under- 
 stood, the boy made signs for me to follow him, 
 which I obeyed. He led me for a quarter of a 
 mile, and paused before the doorway of a large 
 building where soldiers slouched on sentry duty 
 and in and out of which went other soldiers. 
 Motioning for me to remain, he ran inside. 
 
 Fifteen minutes later he was out again, with- 
 out leopard skins, but full of information. By 
 means of my card, of my hotel card, of my watch, 
 and of the boy's fingers, I learned the following : 
 that at six o'clock that evening he would arrive 
 
NOTHING CAME TO ANYTHING 29 
 
 at my hotel with ten leopard skins for my 
 inspection. Further, I learned that the skins 
 were the property of one Captain Ernesto 
 Beeucei. Also, I learned that the boy's name 
 was Eliceo. 
 
 The boy was prompt. At six o'clock he was 
 at my room. In his hand was a small roll ad- 
 dressed to me. On opening it I found it to be 
 manuscript piano music, the Eora Tranquila 
 ValsCy or " Tranquil Hour Waltz," by Ernesto 
 Becucci. I came for leopard skins thought I, 
 and the owner sends me sheet music instead. 
 But the boy assured me that he would have the 
 skins at the hotel at nine next morning, and I 
 entrusted to him the following letter of acknowl- 
 edgment : 
 
 Dear Captain Becucci : 
 
 A thousand thanks for your kind presentation of Eora 
 Tranquila Valse. Mrs. London will play it for me this even- 
 ing. 
 
 Sincerely yours, 
 
 Jack London. 
 
 Next morning Eliceo was back, but without 
 the skins. Instead, he gave me a letter, written 
 in Spanish, of which the following is a free trans- 
 lation : 
 
30 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 To my dearest and always appreciated friend, I submit my- 
 self— 
 Dear sir : 
 
 I sent you last night an offering by the bearer of this note, 
 and you returned me a letter which I translated. 
 
 Be it known to you, sir, that I am giving this waltz away 
 in the best society, and therefore to your honoured self. 
 Therefore it is beholden to you to recognise the attention, 
 I mean by a tangible return, as this composition was made 
 by myself. You will therefore send by your humble servant, 
 the bearer, any offering, however minute, that you may be 
 prompted to make. Send it under cover of an envelope. 
 The bearer may be trusted. 
 
 I did not indulge in the pleasure of visiting your honour- 
 able self this morning, as I find my body not to be enjoying 
 the normal exercise of its functions. 
 
 As regards the skins from the mountain, you shall be 
 waited on by a small boy at seven o'clock at night with ten 
 skins from which you may select those which most satisfy 
 your aspirations. 
 
 In the hope that you will look upon this in the same light 
 as myself, I beg to be allowed to remain. 
 Your most faithful servant, 
 
 Capitan Ebnesto Becucci. 
 
 Well, thought I, this Captain Ernesto Becucci 
 has shown himself to be such an undependable 
 person, that, while I don't mind rewarding him 
 for his composition, I fear me if I do I never 
 shall lay eyes on those leopard skins. So to 
 Eliceo I gave this letter for the Captain : 
 
NOTHING CAME TO ANYTHING 31 
 
 My dear Captain Becucci : 
 
 Have the boy bring the skins at seven o'clock this evening, 
 when I shall be glad to look at them. This evening when the 
 boy brings the skins, I shall be pleased to give him, in an en- 
 velope, for you, a tangible return for your musical compo- 
 sition. 
 
 Please put the price on each skin, and also let me know 
 for what sum all the skins will sell together. 
 
 Sincerely yours, 
 
 Jack London. 
 
 Now, thought I, I have him. No skins, no 
 tangible return; and evidently he is set on re- 
 ceiving that tangible return. 
 
 At seven o'clock Eliceo was back, but without 
 leopard skins. He handed me this letter : 
 
 Senor London : 
 
 I wish to instil in you the belief that I lost to-day, at 
 half past three in the afternoon, the key to my cubicle. 
 While distributing rations to the soldiers I dropped it. I 
 see in this loss the act of God. 
 
 I received a letter from your honourable self, delivered 
 by the one who bears you this poor response of mine. To- 
 morrow I will burst open the door to permit me to keep my 
 word with you. I feel myself eternally shamed not to be 
 able to dominate the evils that aflBlct colonial mankind. 
 Please send me the trifle that you offered me. Send me 
 this proof of your appreciation by the bearer, who is to 
 be trusted. Also give to him a small sum of money for 
 himself, and earn the undying gratitude of 
 
 Your most faithful servant, 
 
 Capitan Ebnesto Becuoci. 
 
32 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 Also, inclosed in the foregoing letter was the 
 following original poem, apropos neither of 
 leopard skins nor tangible returns, so far as I 
 can make out: 
 
 EFFUSION 
 
 Thou canst not weep; 
 Nor ask I for a year 
 To rid me of my woes 
 Or make my life more dear. 
 
 The mystic chains that bound 
 Thy all-fond heart to mine, 
 Alas! asundered are 
 For now and for all time. 
 
 In vain you strove to hide, 
 From vulgar gaze of man, 
 The burning glance of love 
 That none but Love can scan. 
 
 Go on thy starlit way 
 And leave me to my fate ; 
 Our souls must needs unite — 
 But, God! 'twill be too late. 
 
 To all and sundry of which I replied : 
 
 My dear Captain Becucci: 
 
 I regret exceedingly to hear that by act of God, at half 
 past three this afternoon, you lost the key to your cubicle. 
 Please have the boy bring the skins at seven o'clock to- 
 morrow morning, at which time, when he brings the skins. 
 
NOTHING CAME TO ANYTHING 33 
 
 I shall be glad to make you that tangible return for your 
 " Tranquil Hour Waltz." 
 
 Sincerely yours, 
 
 Jack London. 
 
 At seven o'clock came no skins, but the fol- 
 lowing : 
 
 Sir: , 
 
 After offering you my most sincere respects, I beg to con- 
 tinue by telling you that no one, up to the time of writing, 
 has treated me with such lack of attention. It was a pres- 
 ent to gentlemen who were to retain the piece of music, 
 and who have all, without exception, made me a present of 
 five dollars. It is beyond my humble capacity to believe 
 that you, after having offered to send me money in an 
 envelope, should fail to do so. 
 
 Send me, I pray of you, the money to remunerate the 
 small boy for his repeated visits to you. Please be discreet 
 and send it in an envelope by the bearer. 
 
 Last night I came to the hotel with the boy. You were 
 dining. I waited more than an hour for you and then went 
 to the theatre. Give the boy some small amount, and send 
 me a like offering of larger proportions. 
 
 Awaiting incessantly a slight attention on your part. 
 
 Capita N Ernesto Becucci. 
 
 And here, like one of George Moore's realistic 
 studies, ends this intercourse with Captain 
 Ernesto Becucci. Nothing happened. Nothing 
 ever came to anything. He got no tangible re- 
 turn, and I got no leopard skins. The tangible 
 
34 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 return he might have got, I presented to Eliceo, 
 who promptly invested it in a pair of trousers 
 and a ticket to the bull-fight. 
 
 (Note to Editor. — This is a faithful narration of what 
 actually happened in Quito, Ecuador.) 
 
THEEE 
 
 THAT DEAD MEN RISE UP NEVER 
 
 THE month in which my seventeenth birth- 
 day arrived I signed on before the mast 
 on the Sophie Sutherland^ a three-topmast 
 schooner bound on a seven-months' seal-hunting 
 cruise to the coast of Japan. We sailed from 
 San Francisco, and immediately I found con- 
 fronting me a problem of no inconsiderable pro- 
 portions. There were twelve men of us in the 
 forecastle, ten of whom were hardened, tarry- 
 thumbed sailors. Not alone was I a youth and 
 on my first voyage, but I had for shipmates men 
 who had come through the hard school of the 
 merchant service of Europe. As boys, they had 
 had to perform their ship's duty, and, in addi- 
 tion, by immemorial sea custom, they had had to 
 be the slaves of the ordinary and able-bodied 
 seamen. When they became ordinary seamen 
 they were still the slaves of the able-bodied. 
 Thus, in the forecastle, with the watch below, an 
 able seaman, lying in his bunk, will order an 
 
 35 
 
36 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 ordinary seaman to fetch him his shoes or bring 
 him a drink of water. Now the ordinary sea- 
 man may be lying in his bunk. He is just as 
 tired as the able seaman. Yet he must get out 
 of his bunk and fetch and carry. If he refuses, 
 he will be beaten. If, perchance, he is so strong 
 that he can whip the able seaman, then all the 
 able seamen, or as many as may be necessary, 
 pitch upon the luckless devil and administer the 
 beating. 
 
 My problem now becomes apparent. These 
 hard-bit Scandinavian sailors had come through 
 a hard school. As boys they had served their 
 mates, and as able seamen they looked to be 
 served by other boys. I was a boy — withal with 
 a man's body. I had never been to sea before — 
 withal I was a good sailor and knew my business. 
 It was either a case of holding my own with them 
 or of going under. I had signed on as an equal, 
 and an equal I must maintain myself, or else 
 endure seven months of hell at their hands. And 
 it was this very equality they resented. By what 
 right was I an equal? I had not earned that 
 high privilege. I had not endured the miseries 
 they had endured as maltreated boys or bullied 
 ordinaries. Worse than that, I was a land-lub- 
 ber making his first voyage. And yet, by the in- 
 
THAT DEAD MEN RISE UP NEVER 37 
 
 justice of fate, on the ship's articles I was their 
 equal. 
 
 My method was deliberate, and simple, and 
 drastic. In the first place, I resolved to do mj 
 work, no matter how hard or dangerous it might 
 be, so well that no man would be called upon to 
 do it for me. Further, I put ginger in my 
 muscles. I never malingered when pulling on a 
 rope, for I knew the eagle eyes of my forecastle 
 mates were squinting for just such evidences of 
 my inferiority. I made it a point to be among 
 the first of the watch going on deck, among the 
 last going below, never leaving a sheet or tackle 
 for some one else to coil over a pin. I was al- 
 ways eager for the run aloft for the shifting of 
 topsail sheets and tacks, or for the setting or tak- 
 ing in of topsails ; and in these matters I did more 
 than my share. 
 
 Furthermore, I was on a hair-trigger of re- 
 sentment myself. I knew better than to accept 
 any abuse or the slightest patronizing. At the 
 first hint of such, I went off — I exploded. I 
 might be beaten in the subsequent fight, but I left 
 the impression that I was a wild-cat and that I 
 would just as willingly fight again. My inten- 
 tion was to demonstrate that I would tolerate no 
 imposition. I proved that the man who im- 
 
38 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 posed on me must have a figlit on his hands. 
 And, doing my work well, the innate justice of 
 the men, assisted by their wholesome dislike for 
 a clawing and rending wild-cat ruction, soon led 
 them to give over their hectoring. After a bit of 
 strife, my attitude was accepted, and it was my 
 pride that I was taken in as an equal in spirit as 
 well as in fact. From then on, everything was 
 beautiful, and the voyage promised to be a happy 
 one. 
 
 But there was one other man in the forecastle. 
 Counting the Scandinavians as ten, and myself 
 as the eleventh, this man was the twelfth and 
 last. We never knew his name, contenting our- 
 selves with calling him the " Bricklayer.'' He 
 was from Missouri — at least he so informed us 
 in the one meagre confidence he was guilty of in 
 the early days of the voyage. Also, at that time, 
 we learned several other things. He was a brick- 
 layer by trade. He had never even seen salt 
 water until the week before he joined us, at which 
 time he had arrived in San Francisco and looked 
 upon San Francisco Bay. Why he, of all men, 
 at forty years of age, should have felt the prod 
 to go to sea, was beyond all of us ; for it was our 
 unanimous conviction that no man less fitted 
 for the sea had ever embarked on it. But to sea 
 
THAT DEAD MEN RISE UP NEVER 39 
 
 he had come. After a week's stay in a sailors' 
 boarding-house, he had been shoved aboard of 
 us as an able seaman. 
 
 All hands had to do his work for him. Not 
 only did he know nothing, but he proved himself 
 unable to learn anything. Try as they would, 
 they could never teach him to steer. To him the 
 compass must have been a profound and awful 
 whirligig. He never mastered its cardinal 
 points, much less the checking and steadying of 
 the ship on her course. He never did come to 
 know whether ropes should be coiled from left to 
 right or from right to left. It was mentally im- 
 possible for him to learn the easy muscular trick 
 of throwing his weight on a rope in pulling and 
 hauling. The simplest knots and turns were be- 
 yond his comprehension, while he was mortally 
 afraid of going aloft. Bullied by captain and 
 mate, he was one day forced aloft. He managed 
 to get underneath the crosstrees, and there he 
 froze to the ratlines. Two sailors had to go after 
 him to help him down. 
 
 All of which was bad enough had there been 
 no worse. But he was vicious, malignant, dirty, 
 and without common decency. He was a tall, 
 powerful man, and he fought with everybody. 
 And there was no fairness in his fighting. His 
 
40 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 first fight on board, the first day out, was with 
 me, when he, desiring to cut a plug of chewing 
 tobacco, took my personal table-knife for the 
 purpose, and whereupon, I, on a hair-trigger, 
 promptly exploded. After that he fought with 
 nearly every member of the crew. When his 
 clothing became too filthy to be bearable by the 
 rest of us, we put it to soak and stood over him 
 while he washed it. In short, the Bricklayer was 
 one of those horrible and monstrous things that 
 one must see in order to be convinced that they 
 exist. 
 
 I will only say that he was a beast, and that 
 we treated him like a beast. It is only by look- 
 ing back through the years that I realise how 
 heartless we were to him. He was without sin. 
 He could not, by the very nature of things, have 
 been anything else than he was. He had not 
 made himself, and for his making he w^as not 
 responsible. Yet we treated him as a free agent 
 and held him personally responsible for all that 
 he was and that he should not have been. As a 
 result, our treatment of him was as terrible as 
 he was himself terrible. Finally we gave him 
 the silent treatment, and for weeks before he 
 died w^e neither spoke to him nor did he speak 
 to us. And for weeks he moved among us, or 
 
THAT DEAD MEN RISE UP NEVER 41 
 
 lay in his bunk in our crowded house, grinning 
 at us his hatred and malignancy. He was a dy- 
 ing man, and he knew it, and we knew it. And 
 furthermore, he knew that we wanted him to die. 
 He cumbered our life with his presence, and ours 
 was a rough life that made rough men of us. 
 And so he died, in a small space crowded by 
 twelve men and as much alone as if he had died 
 on some desolate mountain peak. No kindly 
 word, no last w^ord, was passed between. He 
 died as he had lived, a beast, and he died hating 
 us and hated by us. 
 
 And now I come to the most startling moment 
 of my life. No sooner was he dead than he was 
 flung overboard. He died in a night of wind, 
 drawing his last breath as the men tumbled into 
 their oilskins to the cry of " All hands ! '' And 
 he was flung overboard, several hours later, on a 
 day of wind. Not even a canvas wrapping 
 graced his mortal remains; nor was he deemed 
 worthy of bars of iron at his feet. We sewed 
 him up in the blankets in which he died and laid 
 him on a hatch-cover for'ard of the main-hatch 
 on the port side. A gunnysack, half -full of gal- 
 ley coal, was fastened to his feet. 
 
 It w^as bitter cold. The weather-side of every 
 rope, spar, and stay was coated with ice, while 
 
42 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 all the rigging was a harp, singing and shouting 
 under the fierce hand of the wind. The schooner, 
 hove to, lurched and floundered through the sea, 
 rolling her scuppers under and perpetually flood- 
 ing the deck with icy salt water. We of the 
 forecastle stood in sea-boots and oilskins. Our 
 hands were mittened, but our heads were bared 
 in the presence of the death we did not respect. 
 Our ears stung and numbed and whitened, and 
 we yearned for the body to be gone. But the 
 interminable reading of the burial service went 
 on. The captain had mistaken his place, and 
 while he read on without purpose we froze our 
 ears and resented this final hardship thrust upon 
 us by the helpless cadaver. As from the begin- 
 ning, so to the end, everything had gone wrong 
 with the Bricklayer. Finally, the captain's son, 
 irritated beyond measure, jerked the book from 
 the palsied fingers of the old man and found the 
 place. Again the quavering voice of the captain 
 arose. Then came the cue : " And the body 
 shall be cast into the sea.'' We elevated one 
 end of the hatch-cover, and the Bricklayer 
 plunged outboard and was gone. 
 
 Back into the forecastle we cleaned house, 
 washing out the dead man's bunk and remov- 
 ing every vestige of him. By sea law and sea 
 
THAT DEAD MEN RISE UP NEVER 43 
 
 custom, we should have gathered his effects to- 
 gether and turned them over to the captain, who, 
 later, would have held an auction in which we 
 should have bid for the various articles. But no 
 man wanted them, so we tossed them up on deck 
 and overboard in the wake of the departed body 
 — the last ill-treatment we could devise to wreak 
 upon the one we had hated so. Oh, it was raw," 
 believe me; but the life we lived was raw, and 
 we were as raw as the life. 
 
 The Bricklayer's bunk was better than mine. 
 Less sea water leaked down through the deck 
 into it, and the light was better for lying in bed 
 and reading. Partly for this reason I proceeded 
 to move into his bunk. My other reason was 
 pride. I saw the sailors were superstitious, and 
 by this act I determined to show that I was 
 braver than they. I would cap my proved equal- 
 ity by a deed that would compel their recogni- 
 tion of my superiority. Oh, the arrogance of 
 youth! But let that pass. The sailors were 
 appalled by my intention. One and all, they 
 warned me that in the history of the sea no man 
 had taken a dead man's bunk and lived to the end 
 of the voyage. They instanced case after case 
 in their personal experience. I was obdurate. 
 Then they begged and pleaded with me, and my 
 
44 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 pride was tickled in that they showed they really 
 liked me and were concerned about me. This 
 but served to confirm me in my madness. I 
 moved in, and, lying in the dead man's bunk, all 
 afternoon and evening listened to dire prophe- 
 cies of my future. Also were told stories of aw- 
 ful deaths and grewsome ghosts that secretly 
 shivered the hearts of all of us. Saturated with 
 this, yet scoffing at it, I rolled over at the end of 
 the second dog-watch and went to sleep. 
 
 At ten minutes to twelve I was called, and at 
 twelve I was dressed and on deck, relieving the 
 man who had called me. On the sealing grounds, 
 when hove to, a w^atch of only a single man is 
 kept through the night, each man holding the 
 deck for an hour. It was a dark night, though 
 not a black one. The gale was breaking up, and 
 the clouds were thinning. There should have 
 been a moon, and, though invisible, in some way a 
 dim, suffused radiance came from it. I paced 
 back and forth across the deck amidships. My 
 mind was filled with the event of the day and 
 with the horrible tales my shipmates had told, 
 and yet I dare to say, here and now, that I was 
 not afraid. I was a healthy animal, and further- 
 more, intellectually, I agreed with Swinburne 
 that dead men rise up never. The Bricklayer 
 
THAT DEAD MEN RISE UP NEVER 45 
 
 was dead, and that was the end of it. He would 
 rise up never — at least, never on the deck of the 
 Sophie Sutherland. Even then he w^as in the 
 ocean depths miles to windward of our leeward 
 drift, and the likelihood was that he was already 
 portioned out in the maws of many sharks. Still, 
 my mind pondered on the tales of the ghosts 
 of dead men I had heard, and I speculated on 
 the spirit world. My conclusion was that if the 
 spirits of the dead still roamed the world they 
 carried the goodness or the malignancy of the 
 earth-life with them. Therefore, granting the 
 hypothesis (which I didn't grant at all) , the ghost 
 of the Bricklayer was bound to be as hateful and 
 malignant as he in life had been. But there 
 wasn't any Bricklayer's ghost — that I insisted 
 upon. 
 
 A few minutes, thinking thus, I paced up and 
 down. Then, glancing casually for'ard, along the 
 port side, I leaped like a startled deer and in a 
 blind madness of terror rushed aft along the 
 poop, heading for the cabin. Gone was all my 
 arrogance of youth and my intellectual calm. I 
 had seen a ghost. There, in the dim light, where 
 we had flung the dead man overboard, I had 
 seen a faint and wavering form. Six feet in 
 length it was, slender, and of substance so at- 
 
46 THE HUMAN DKIFT 
 
 tenuated that I had distinctly seen through it the 
 tracery of the fore-rigging. 
 
 As for me, I was as panic-stricken as a fright- 
 ened horse. I, as I, had ceased to exist. 
 Through me were vibrating the fibre-instincts of 
 ten thousand generations of superstitious fore- 
 bears who had been afraid of the dark and the 
 things of the dark. I was not I. I was, in truth, 
 those ten thousand forebears. I was the race, 
 the whole human race, in its superstitious in- 
 fancy. Not until part way down the cabin-com- 
 panionway did my identity return to me. I 
 checked my flight and clung to the steep ladder, 
 suffocating, trembling, and dizzy. Never, before 
 nor since, have I had such a shock. I clung to 
 the ladder and considered. I could not doubt my 
 senses. That I had seen something there was 
 no discussion. But what was it? Either a ghost 
 or a joke. There could be nothing else. If a 
 ghost, the question was: would it appear again? 
 If it did not, and I aroused the ship's officers, I 
 would make myself the laughing stock of all on 
 board. And by the same token, if it were a joke, 
 my position would be still more ridiculous. If 
 I were to retain my hard-won place of equality, it 
 would never do to arouse any one until I ascer- 
 tained the nature of the thing. 
 
THAT DEAD MEN RISE UP NEVER 47 
 
 I am a brave man. I dare to say so ; for in fear 
 and trembling I crept up the companionway and 
 went back to the spot from which I had first seen 
 the thing. It had vanished. My bravery was 
 qualified, however. Though I could see nothing, 
 I w^as afraid to go forard to the spot where I 
 had seen the thing. I resumed my pacing up and 
 down, and though I cast many an anxious glance 
 toward the dread spot, nothing manifested itself. 
 As my equanimity returned to me, I concluded 
 that the whole affair had been a trick of the 
 imagination and that I had got what I deserved 
 for allowing my mind to dwell on such mat- 
 ters. 
 
 Once more my glances for'ard were casual, and 
 not anxious; and then, suddenly, I was a mad- 
 man, rushing wildly aft. I had seen the thing 
 again, the long, wavering attenuated substance 
 through which could be seen the fore-rigging. 
 This time I had reached only the break of the 
 poop when I checked myself. Again I reasoned 
 over the situation, and it was pride that 
 counselled strongest. I could not afford to make 
 myself a laughing stock. This thing, whatever 
 it was, I must face alone. I must work it out 
 myself. I looked back to the spot where we had 
 tilted the Bricklayer. It was vacant. Nothing 
 
48 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 moved. And for a third time I resumed my amid- 
 ships pacing. 
 
 In the absence of the thing my fear died away 
 and my intellectual poise returned. Of course 
 it was not a ghost. Dead men did not rise up. 
 It was a joke, a cruel joke. My mates of the 
 forecastle, by some unknown means, were fright- 
 ening me. Twice already must they have seen me 
 run aft. My cheeks burned wdth shame. In 
 fancy I could hear the smothered chuckling and 
 laughter even then going on in the forecastle. 
 I began to grow angry. Jokes were all very well, 
 but this was carrying the thing too far. I was 
 the youngest on board, only a youth, and they 
 had no right to play tricks on me of the order that 
 I well knew in the past had made raving maniacs 
 of men and women. I grew angrier and angrier, 
 and resolved to show them that I was made of 
 sterner stuff and at the same time to wreak my 
 resentment upon them. If the thing appeared 
 again, I made my mind up that I would go up to 
 it — furthermore, that I would go up to it knife 
 in hand. When within striking distance, I 
 would strike. If a man, he would get the knife- 
 thrust he deserved. If a ghost, well, it wouldn't 
 hurt the ghost any, while I would have learned 
 that dead men did rise up. 
 
THAT DEAD MEN RISE UP NEVER 49 
 
 Now I was very angry, and I was quite sure 
 the thing was a trick; but when the thing ap- 
 peared a third time, in the same spot, long, at- 
 tenuated, and wavering, fear surged up in me 
 and drove most of my anger away. But I did 
 not run. Nor did I take my eyes from the thing. 
 Both times before, it had vanished while I was 
 running away, so I had not seen the manner of 
 its going. I drew my sheath-knife from my belt 
 and began my advance. Step by step, nearer and 
 nearer, the effort to control myself grew more 
 severe. The struggle was between my will, my 
 identity, my very self, on the one hand, and on 
 the other, the ten thousand ancestors who were 
 twisted into the fibres of me and whose ghostly 
 voices were whispering of the dark and the fear 
 of the dark that had been theirs in the time when 
 the world was dark and full of terror. 
 
 I advanced more slowly, and still the thing 
 wavered and flitted with strange eerie lurches. 
 And then, right before my eyes, it vanished. I 
 saw it vanish. Neither to the right nor left did 
 it go, nor backward. Right there, while I gazed 
 upon it, it faded away, ceased to be. I didn't die, 
 but I swear, from what I experienced in those few 
 succeeding moments, that I know full well that 
 men can die of fright. I stood there, knife in 
 
50 THE HUMAN DKIFT 
 
 hand, swaying automatically to the roll of the 
 ship, paralysed with fear. Had the Bricklayer 
 suddenly seized my throat with corporeal fingers 
 and proceeded to throttle me, it would have been 
 no more than I expected. Dead men did rise up, 
 and that would be the most likely thing the 
 malignant Bricklayer would do. 
 
 But he didn't seize my throat. Nothing hap- 
 pened. And, since nature abhors a status, I 
 could not remain there in the one place forever 
 paralysed. I turned and started aft. I did not 
 run. What was the use? What chance had I 
 against the malevolent world of ghosts? Flight, 
 with me, was the swiftness of my legs. But pur- 
 suit, with a ghost, was the swiftness of thought. 
 And there were ghosts. I had seen one. 
 
 And so, stumbling slowly aft, I discovered the 
 explanation of the seeming. I saw the mizzen 
 topmast lurching across a faint radiance of cloud 
 behind which was the moon. The idea leaped in 
 my brain. I extended the line between the 
 cloudy radiance and the mizzen-topmast and 
 found that it must strike somewhere near the 
 fore-rigging on the port side. Even as I did this, 
 the radiance vanished. The driving clouds of the 
 breaking gale were alternately thickening and 
 thinninsr before the face of the moon but never 
 
THAT DEAD MEN RISE UP NEVER 51 
 
 exposing the face of the moon. And when the 
 clouds were at their thinnest, it was a very dim 
 radiance that the moon was able to make. I 
 watched and waited. The next time the clouds 
 thinned I looked for'ard, and there was the 
 shadow of the topmast, long and attenuated, wav- 
 ering and lurching on the deck and against the 
 rigging. 
 
 This was mj first ghost. Once again have I 
 seen a ghost. It proved to be a Newfoundland 
 dog, and I don't know which of us was the more 
 frightened, for I hit that Newfoundland a full 
 right-arm swing to the jaw. Regarding the 
 Bricklayer's ghost, I will say that I never men- 
 tioned it to a soul on board. Also, I will say 
 that in all my life I never went through more 
 torment and mental suffering than on that lonely 
 night-watch on the Sophie Sutherland. 
 
 (To THE Editor. — This is not a fiction. It is a true page 
 out of my life.) 
 
FOUR 
 
 SMALL-BOAT SAILING 
 
 A SAILOR is born, not made. And by 
 '' sailor '' is meant, not the average efficient 
 and hopeless creature who is found to-day in the 
 forecastle of deepwater ships, but the man who 
 will take a fabric compounded of wood and iron 
 and rope and canvas and compel it to obey his 
 will on the surface of the sea. Barring captains 
 and mates of big ships, the small-boat sailor is 
 the real sailor. He knows — he must know — 
 how to make the wind carry his craft from one 
 given point to another given point. He must 
 know about tides and rips and eddies, bar and 
 channel markings, and day and night signals ; he 
 must be wise in weather-lore ; and he must be sym- 
 pathetically familiar with the peculiar qualities 
 of his boat which differentiate it from every other 
 boat that was ever built and rigged. He must 
 know how to gentle her about, as one instance 
 of a myriad, and to fill her on the other tack 
 without deadening her way or allowing her to 
 fall off too far. 
 
 52 
 
SMALL-BOAT SAILING 53 
 
 The deepwater sailor of to-day needs know 
 none of these things. And he doesn't. He pulls 
 and hauls as he is ordered, swabs decks, washes 
 paint, and chips iron-rust. He knows nothing, 
 and cares less. Put him in a small boat and he 
 is helpless. He will cut an even better figure on 
 the hurricane deck of a horse. 
 
 I shall never forget my child-astonishment 
 when I first encountered one of these strange be- 
 ings. He was a runaway English sailor. I was 
 a lad of twelve, with a decked-over, fourteen-foot, 
 centre-board skiff which I had taught myself to 
 sail. I sat at his feet as at the feet of a god, 
 while he discoursed of strange lands and peoples, 
 deeds of violence, and hair-raising gales at sea. 
 Then, one day, I took him for a sail. With all 
 the trepidation of the veriest little amateur, I 
 hoisted sail and got under way. Here was a 
 man, looking on critically, I was sure, who knew 
 more in one second about boats and the water 
 than I could ever know. After an interval, in 
 which I exceeded myself, he took the tiller and 
 the sheet. I sat on the little thwart amidships, 
 open-mouthed, prepared to learn what real sail- 
 ing was. My mouth remained open, for I learned 
 what a real sailor was in a small boat. He 
 couldn't trim the sheet to save himself, he nearly 
 
54 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 capsized several times in squalls, and, once again, 
 bj blunderingly jibing over; he didn't know what 
 a centre-board was for, nor did he know that in 
 running a boat before the wind one must sit 
 in the middle instead of on the side ; and finally, 
 when we came back to the wharf, he ran the skiff 
 in full tilt, shattering her nose and carrying away 
 the mast-step. And yet he was a really truly 
 sailor fresh from the vasty deep. 
 
 Which points my moral. A man can sail in the 
 forecastles of big ships all his life and never 
 know what real sailing is. From the time I was 
 twelve, I listened to the lure of the sea. When I 
 was fifteen I w as captain and owner of an oyster- 
 pirate sloop. By the time I was sixteen I was 
 sailing in scow^-schooners, fishing salmon with 
 the Greeks up the Sacramento River, and serving 
 as sailor on the Fish Patrol. And I was a good 
 sailor, too, though all my cruising had been on 
 San Francisco Bay and the rivers tributary to 
 it. I had never been on the ocean in my life. 
 
 Then, the month I was seventeen, I signed be- 
 fore the mast as an able seaman on a three-top- 
 mast schooner bound on a seven-months' cruise 
 across the Pacific and back again. As my ship- 
 mates promptly informed me, I had had my 
 nerve with me to sign on as able seaman. Yet 
 
SMALL-BOAT SAILING 55 
 
 behold, I was an able seaman. I had graduated 
 from the right school. It took no more than 
 minutes to learn the names and uses of the few 
 new ropes. It was simple. I did not do things 
 blindly. As a small-boat sailor I had learned to 
 reason out and know the why of everything. It 
 is true, I had to learn how to steer by compass, 
 which took maybe half a minute; but when it 
 came to steering " full-and-by " and " close-and- 
 by," I could beat the average of my shipmates^ 
 because that was the very way I had always 
 sailed. Inside fifteen minutes I could box the 
 compass around and back again. And there was 
 little else to learn during that seven-months' 
 cruise, except fancy rope-sailorising, such as the 
 more complicated lanyard knots and the making 
 of various kinds of sennit and rope-mats. The 
 point of all of which is that it is by means of 
 small-boat sailing that the real sailor is best 
 schooled. 
 
 And if a man is a born sailor, and has gone to 
 the school of the sea, never in all his life can he 
 get away from the sea again. The salt of it is in 
 his bones as well as his nostrils, and the sea will 
 call to him until he dies. Of late years, I have 
 found easier wa^^s of earning a living. I have 
 quit the forecastle for keeps, but always I come 
 
56 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 back to the sea. In my case it is usually San 
 Francisco Bay, than which no lustier, tougher, 
 sheet of water can be found for small-boat sail- 
 ing. 
 
 It really blows on San Francisco Bay. Dur- 
 ing the winter, which is the best cruising season, 
 we have southeasters, southwesters, and occa- 
 sional howling northers. Throughout the sum- 
 mer we have what we call the " sea-breeze," an 
 unfailing wind off the Pacific that on most after- 
 noons in the week blows what the Atlantic Coast 
 yachtsmen would name a gale. They are always 
 surprised by the small spread of canvas our 
 yachts carry. Some of them, with schooners 
 they have sailed around the Horn, have looked 
 proudly at their own lofty sticks and huge 
 spreads, then patronisingly and even pityingly 
 at ours. Then, perchance, they have joined in a 
 club cruise from San Francisco to Mare Island. 
 They found the morning run up the Bay delight- 
 ful. In the afternoon, when the brave west wind 
 ramped across San Pablo Bay and they faced it 
 on the long beat home, things were somewhat 
 different. One by one, like a flight of swallows, 
 our more meagrely sparred and canvassed yachts 
 went by, leaving them wallowing and dead and 
 shortening down in what they called a gale but 
 
SMALL-BOAT SAILING 57 
 
 which we called a dandy sailing breeze. The 
 next time they came out, we would notice their 
 sticks cut down, their booms shortened, and their 
 after-leeches nearer the luffs by whole cloths. 
 
 As for excitement, there is all the difference in 
 the world between a ship in trouble at sea, and a 
 small boat in trouble on land-locked water. Yet 
 for genuine excitement and thrill, give me the 
 small boat. Things happen so quickly, and there 
 are always so few to do the work — and hard 
 work, too, as the small-boat sailor knows. I have 
 toiled all night, both watches on deck, in a 
 typhoon off the coast of Japan, and been less 
 exhausted than by two hours' w^ork at reefing 
 down a thirty-foot sloop and heaving up two 
 anchors on a lee shore in a screaming south- 
 easter. 
 
 Hard work and excitement? Let the wind 
 baffle and drop in a heavy tide-way just as you are 
 sailing your little sloop through a narrow draw- 
 bridge. Behold your sails, upon which you are 
 depending, flap with sudden emptiness, and then 
 see the impish wind, with a haul of eight points, 
 fill your jib aback with a gusty puff. Around 
 she goes, and sweeps, not through the open draw, 
 but broadside on against the solid piles. Hear 
 the roar of the tide, sucking through the trestle. 
 
58 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 And hear and see your pretty, fresh-painted boat 
 crash against the piles. Feel her stout little hull 
 give to the impact. See the rail actually pinch 
 in. Hear your canvas tearing, and see the black, 
 square-ended timbers thrusting holes through it. 
 Smash ! There goes your topmast stay, and the 
 topmast reels over drunkenly above you. There 
 is a ripping and crunching. If it continues, your 
 starboard shrouds will be torn out. Grab a rope 
 — any rope — and take a turn around a pile. 
 But the free end of the rope is too short. You 
 can't make it fast, and you hold on and wildly 
 yell for your one companion to get a turn with 
 another and longer rope. Hold on! You hold 
 on till you are purple in the face, till it seems 
 your arms are dragging out of their sockets, till 
 the blood bursts from the ends of your fingers. 
 But you hold, and your partner gets the longer 
 rope and makes it fast. You straighten up and 
 look at your hands. They are ruined. You can 
 scarcely relax the crooks of the fingers. The 
 pain is sickening. But there is no time. The 
 skiff, which is always perverse, is pounding 
 against the barnacles on the piles which threaten 
 to scrape its gunwale off. It's drop the peak! 
 Down jib! Then you run lines, and pull and 
 haul and heave, and exchange unpleasant re- 
 
SMALL-BOAT SAILING 59 
 
 marks with the bridge-tender who is always will- 
 ing to meet you more than half way in such 
 repartee. And finally, at the end of an hour, 
 with aching back, sweat-soaked shirt, and 
 slaughtered hands, you are through and swinging 
 along on the placid, beneficent tide between nar- 
 row banks where the cattle stand knee-deep and 
 gaze wonderingly at you. Excitement! Work! 
 Can you beat it in a calm day on the deep sea? 
 
 I've tried it both w^ays. I remember labouring 
 in a fourteen days' gale off the coast of New 
 Zealand. We were a tramp collier, rusty and 
 battered, with six thousand tons of coal in our 
 hold. Life lines were stretched fore and aft; 
 and on our weather side, attached to smokestack 
 guys and rigging, were huge rope-nettings, hung 
 there for the purpose of breaking the force of 
 the seas and so saving our mess-room doors. 
 But the doors were smashed and the mess-rooms 
 washed out just the same. And yet, out of it all, 
 arose but the one feeling, namely, of monotony. 
 
 In contrast with the foregoing, about the live- 
 liest eight days of my life were spent in a small 
 boat on the west coast of Korea. Never mind 
 why I was thus voyaging up the Yellow Sea dur- 
 ing the month of February in below-zero weather. 
 The point is that I was in an open boat, a sampan^ 
 
60 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 on a rocky coast where there were no light-houses 
 and where the tides ran from thirty to sixty feet. 
 My crew was Japanese fishermen. We did not 
 speak each other's language. Yet there was 
 nothing monotonous about that trip. Never 
 shall I forget one particular cold bitter dawn, 
 when, in the thick of driving snow, we took in 
 sail and dropped our small anchor. The wind 
 was howling out of the northwest, and we were 
 on a lee shore. Ahead and astern, all escape was 
 cut off by rocky headlands, against whose bases 
 burst the unbroken seas. To windward a short 
 distance, seen only between the snow-squalls, was 
 a low rocky reef. It was this that inadequately 
 protected us from the whole Yellow Sea that 
 thundered in upon us. 
 
 The Japanese crawled under a communal rice 
 mat and went to sleep. I joined them, and for 
 several hours we dozed fitfully. Then a sea de- 
 luged us out with icy water, and we found several 
 inches of snow on top the mat. The reef to wind- 
 ward was disappearing under the rising tide, and 
 moment by moment the seas broke more strongly 
 over the rocks. The fishermen studied the shore 
 anxiously. So did I, and with a sailor's eye, 
 though I could see little chance for a swimmer to 
 gain that surf-hammered line of rocks. I made 
 
SMALL-BOAT SAILING 61 
 
 signs toward the headlands on either flank. The 
 Japanese shook their heads. I indicated that 
 dreadful lee shore. Still they shook their heads 
 and did nothing. My conclusion was that they 
 were paralysed by the hopelessness of the situa- 
 tion. Yet our extremity increased with every 
 minute, for the rising tide was robbing us of the 
 reef that served as buffer. It soon became a case 
 of swamping at our anchor. Seas were splash- 
 ing on board in growing volume, and we baled 
 constantly. And still my fishermen crew eyed 
 the surf-battered shore and did nothing. 
 
 At last, after many narrow escapes from com- 
 plete swamping, the fishermen got into action. 
 All hands tailed on to the anchor and hove it 
 up. For'ard, as the boat's head paid off, we set 
 a patch of sail about the size of a flour-sack. 
 And we headed straight for shore. I unlaced 
 my shoes, unbuttoned my great-coat and coat, 
 and was ready to make a quick partial strip a 
 minute or so before w^e struck. But we didn't 
 strike, and, as we rushed in, I saw the beauty of 
 the situation. Before us opened a narrow chan- 
 nel, frilled at its mouth with breaking seas. Yet, 
 long before, w hen I had scanned the shore closely, 
 there had been no such channel. / had forgotten 
 the thirty-foot tide. And it was for this tide 
 
62 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 that the Japanese had so precariously waited. 
 We ran the frill of breakers, curved into a tiny 
 sheltered bay where the water was scarcely flawed 
 by the gale, and landed on a beach where the 
 salt sea of the last tide lay frozen in long curv- 
 ing lines. And this was one gale of three in the 
 course of those eight days in the sampan. Would 
 it have been beaten on a ship? I fear me the 
 ship would have gone aground on the outlying 
 reef and that its people would have been incon- 
 tinently and monotonously drowned. 
 
 There are enough surprises and mishaps in a 
 three-days' cruise in a small boat to supply a 
 great ship on the ocean for a full year. I remem- 
 ber, once, taking out on her trial trip a little 
 thirty-footer I had just bought. In six days we 
 had two stiff blows, and, in addition, one proper 
 southwester and one ripsnorting southeaster. 
 The slight intervals between these blows were 
 dead calms. Also, in the six days, we were 
 aground three times. Then, too, we tied up to 
 the bank in the Sacramento River, and, grounding 
 by an accident on the steep slope on a falling tide, 
 nearly turned a side somersault down the bank. 
 In a stark calm and a heavy tide in the Carquinez 
 Straits, where anchors skate on the channel- 
 
SMALL-BOAT SAILING 63 
 
 scoured bottom, we were sucked against a big 
 dock and smashed and bumped down a quarter 
 of a mile of its length before we could get clear. 
 Two hours afterward, on San Pablo Bay, the 
 wind was piping up and we were reefing down. 
 It is no fun to pick up a skiff adrift in a heavy 
 sea and gale. That was our next task, for our 
 skiff, swamping, parted both towing painters we 
 had bent on. Before we recovered it we had 
 nearly killed ourselves with exhaustion, and we 
 certainly had strained the sloop in every part 
 from keelson to truck. And to cap it all, coming 
 into our home port, beating up the narrowest 
 part of the San Antonio Estuary, we had a shave 
 of inches from collision with a big ship in tow 
 of a tug. I have sailed the ocean in far larger 
 craft a year at a time, in which period occurred 
 no such chapter of moving incident. 
 
 After all, the mishaps are almost the best part 
 of small-boat sailing. Looking back, they prove 
 to be punctuations of joy. At the time they try 
 your mettle and your vocabulary, and may make 
 you so pessimistic as to believe that God has a 
 grudge against you — but afterward, ah, after- 
 ward, with what pleasure you remember them 
 and with what gusto do you relate them to your 
 
64 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 brother skippers in the fellowhood of small-boat 
 sailing. 
 
 A narrow, winding slough ; a half tide, expos- 
 ing mud surfaced with gangrenous slime; the 
 water itself filthy and discoloured by the waste 
 from the vats of a near-by tannery; the marsh 
 grass on either side mottled with all the shades of 
 a decaying orchid ; a crazy, ramshackled, ancient 
 wharf; and at the end of the wharf a small, white- 
 painted sloop. Nothing romantic about it. No 
 hint of adventure. A splendid pictorial argu- 
 ment against the alleged joys of small-boat sail- 
 ing. Possibly that is what Cloudesley and I 
 thought, that sombre, leaden morning as we 
 turned out to cook breakfast and wash decks. 
 The latter was my stunt, but one look at the 
 dirty water overside and another at my fresh- 
 painted deck, deterred me. After breakfast, we 
 started a game of chess. The tide continued to 
 fall, and we felt the sloop begin to list. We 
 played on until the chess men began to fall over. 
 The list increased, and we went on deck. Bow- 
 line and stern-line were drawn taut. As we 
 looked the boat listed still farther with an abrupt 
 jerk. The lines were now very taut. 
 
 " As soon as her belly touches the bottom she 
 will stop," I said. 
 
SMALL-BOAT SAILING 65 
 
 Cloudeslej sounded with a boat hook along the 
 outside. 
 
 " Seven feet of water," he announced. " The 
 bank is almost up and down. The first thing 
 that touches will be her mast when she turns 
 bottom up." 
 
 An ominous, minute snapping noise came from 
 the stern-line. Even as we looked, we saw a 
 strand fray and part. Then we jumped. 
 Scarcely had we bent another line between the 
 stern and the wharf, when the original line 
 parted. As we bent another line forward, the 
 original one there crackled and parted. After 
 that, it was an inferno of work and excitement. 
 We ran more and more lines, and more and more 
 lines continued to part, and more and more the 
 pretty boat went over on her side. We bent all 
 our spare lines ; we unrove sheets and halyards ; 
 we used our two-inch hawser; w^e fastened lines 
 part way up the mast, half way up, and every- 
 where else. We toiled and sweated and enounced 
 our mutual and sincere conviction that God's 
 grudge still held against us. Country yokels 
 came down on the wharf and sniggered at us. 
 When Cloudesley let a coil of rope slip down the 
 inclined deck into the vile slime and fished it out 
 with seasick countenance, the yokels sniggered 
 
66 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 louder and it was all I could do to prevent him 
 from climbing up on the wharf and committing 
 murder. 
 
 By the time the sloop's deck was perpendicular, 
 we had unbent the boom-lift from below, made 
 it fast to the wharf, and, with the other end fast 
 nearly to the mast head, heaved it taut with 
 block and tackle. The lift was of steel wire. 
 We were confident that it could stand the strain, 
 but we doubted the holding-power of the stays 
 that held the mast. 
 
 The tide had two more hours to ebb (and it was 
 the big run-out), which meant that five hours 
 must elapse ere the returning tide would give us 
 a chance to learn whether or not the sloop would 
 rise to it and right herself. The bank was al- 
 most up and down, and at the bottom, directly 
 beneath us, the fast-ebbing tide left a pit of the 
 vilest, illest-smelling, illest-appearing muck to be 
 seen in many a day's ride. Said Cloudesley to 
 me gazing down into it : 
 
 " I love you as a brother. I'd fight for you. 
 I'd face roaring lions, and sudden death by field 
 and flood. But just the same, don't you fall 
 into that." He shuddered nauseously. " For if 
 you do, I haven't the grit to pull you out. I 
 simply couldn't. You'd be awful. The best I 
 
SMALL-BOAT SAILING 67 
 
 could do would be to take a boat-hook and shove 
 you down out of sight.'' 
 
 We sat on the upper side-wall of the cabin, 
 dangled our legs down the top of the cabin, leaned 
 our backs against the deck, and played chess un- 
 til the rising tide and the block and tackle on 
 the boom-lift enabled us to get her on a respect- 
 able keel again. Years afterward, down in the 
 South Seas, on the island of Ysabel, I was caught 
 in a similar predicament. In order to clean her 
 copper, I had careened the Snark broadside on 
 to the beach and outward. When the tide rose, 
 she refused to rise. The water crept in through 
 the scuppers, mounted over the rail, and the level 
 of the ocean slowly crawled up the slant of the 
 deck. We battened down the engine room hatch, 
 and the sea rose to it and over it and climbed 
 perilously near to the cabin companionway and 
 skylight. We were all sick with fever, but we 
 turned out in the blazing tropic sun and toiled 
 madly for several hours. We carried our heavi- 
 est lines ashore from our mast-heads and heaved 
 with our heaviest purchase until everything 
 crackled including ourselves. We would spell 
 off and lie down like dead men, then get up and 
 heave and crackle again. And in the end, our 
 lower rail five feet under water and the wavelets 
 
68 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 lapping the companionwaj combing, the sturdy 
 little craft shivered and shook herself and pointed 
 her masts once more to the zenith. 
 
 There is never lack of exercise in small-boat 
 sailing, and the hard work is not only part of the 
 fun of it, but it beats the doctors. San Francisco 
 Bay is no mill pond. It is a large and draughty 
 and variegated piece of water. I remember, one 
 winter evening, trying to enter the mouth of the 
 Sacramento. There was a freshet on the river, 
 the flood tide from the bay had been beaten back 
 into a strong ebb, and the lusty west wind died 
 down with the sun. It was just sunset, and wdth 
 a fair to middling breeze, dead aft, we stood still 
 in the rapid current. We were squarely in the 
 mouth of the river; but there was no anchorage 
 and we drifted backward, faster and faster, and 
 dropped anchor outside as the last breath of 
 wind left us. The night came on, beautiful and 
 warm and starry. My one companion cooked 
 supper, while on deck I put everything in shape 
 Bristol fashion. When we turned in at nine 
 o'clock the weather-promise was excellent. (If 
 I had carried a barometer I'd have known better. ) 
 By two in the morning our shrouds were thum- 
 ming in a piping breeze, and I got up and gave 
 
SMALL-BOAT SAILING 69 
 
 her more scope on her hawser. Inside another 
 hour there was no doubt that we were in for a 
 southeaster. 
 
 It is not nice to leave a warm bed and get out 
 of a bad anchorage in a black blowy night, but 
 we arose to the occasion, put in two reefs, and 
 started to heave up. The winch was old, and 
 the strain of the jumping head sea was too much 
 for it. With the winch out of commission, it 
 was impossible to heave up by hand. We knew, 
 because we tried it and slaughtered our hands. 
 Now a sailor hates to lose an anchor. It is a 
 matter of pride. Of course, we could have 
 buoyed ours and slipped it. Instead, however, I 
 gave her still more hawser, veered her, and 
 dropped the second anchor. 
 
 There was little sleep after that, for first one 
 and then the other of us would be rolled out of 
 our bunks. The increasing size of the seas told 
 us we were dragging, and when we struck the 
 scoured channel we could tell by the feel of it that 
 our two anchors were fairly skating across. It 
 was a deep channel, the farther edge of it ris- 
 ing steeply like the wall of a canyon, and when 
 our anchors started up that wall they hit in and 
 held. Yet, when we fetched up, through the 
 
70 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 darkness we could hear the seas breaking on 
 the solid shore astern, and so near was it that we 
 shortened the skiff's painter. 
 
 Daylight showed us that between the stern of 
 the skiff and destruction was no more than a 
 score of feet. And how it did blow ! There were 
 times, in the gusts, when the wind must have 
 approached a velocity of seventy or eighty miles 
 an hour. But the anchors held, and so nobly 
 that our final anxiety was that the for'ard bitts 
 would be jerked clean out of the boat. All day 
 the sloop alternately ducked her nose under and 
 sat down on her stern; and it was not till late 
 afternoon that the storm broke in one last and 
 worst mad gust. For a full five minutes an ab- 
 solute dead calm prevailed, and then, with the 
 suddenness of a thunderclap, the wind snorted 
 out of the southwest — a shift of eight points and 
 a boisterous gale. Another night of it was too 
 much for us, and we hove up by hand in a cross 
 head-sea. It was not stiff work. It was heart- 
 breaking. And I know we were both near to 
 crying from the hurt and the exhaustion. And 
 when we did get the first anchor up-and-down 
 we couldn't break it out. Between seas we 
 snubbed her nose down to it, took plenty of turns, 
 and stood clear as she jumped. Almost every- 
 
SMALL-BOAT SAILING 71 
 
 thing smashed and parted except the anchor-hold. 
 The chocks were jerked out, the rail torn off, and 
 the very covering-board splintered, and still the 
 anchor held. At last, hoisting the reefed main- 
 sail and slacking off a few of the hard-won feet 
 of the chain, we sailed the anchor out. It was 
 nip and tuck, though, and there were times when 
 the boat was knocked down flat. We repeated 
 the manoeuvre with the remaining anchor, and in 
 the gathering darkness fled into the shelter of 
 the river's mouth. 
 
 I was born so long ago that I grew up before 
 the era of gasoline. As a result, I am old-fash- 
 ioned. I prefer a sail-boat to a motor-boat, and 
 it is my belief that boat-sailing is a finer, more 
 difficult, and sturdier art than running a motor. 
 Gasoline engines are becoming fool proof, and 
 while it is unfair to say that any fool can run an 
 engine, it is fair to say that almost any one can. 
 Not so, when it comes to sailing a boat. More 
 skill, more intelligence, and a vast deal more 
 training are necessary. It is the finest training 
 in the world for boy and youth and man. If the 
 boy is very small, equip him with a small, com- 
 fortable skiff. He will do the rest. He won't 
 need to be taught. Shortly he will be setting a 
 tiny leg-of-mutton and steering with an oar. 
 
72 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 Then he will begin to talk keels and centreboards 
 and want to take his blankets out and stop 
 aboard all night. 
 
 But don't be afraid for him. He is bound to 
 run risks and encounter accidents. Eemember, 
 there are accidents in the nursery as well as out 
 on the water. More bojs have died from hot- 
 house culture than have died on boats large and 
 small ; and more boys have been made into strong 
 and reliant men by boat-sailing than by lawn- 
 croquet and dancing school. 
 
 And once a sailor, always a sailor. The savour 
 of the salt never stales. The sailor never growls 
 so old that he does not care to go back for one 
 more wrestling bout with wind and wave. I 
 know it of myself. I have turned rancher, and 
 live beyond sight of the sea. Yet I can stay 
 away from it only so long. After several months 
 have passed, I begin to grow restless. I find 
 myself day-dreaming over incidents of the last 
 cruise, or wondering if the striped bass are run- 
 ning on Wingo Slough, or eagerly reading the 
 newspapers for reports of the first northern 
 flights of ducks. And then, suddenly, there is a 
 hurried packing of suit-cases and overhauling of 
 gear, and w^e are off for Vallejo where the little 
 Roamer lies, waiting, always waiting, for the 
 
SMALL-BOAT SAILING 73 
 
 skiff to come alongside, for the lighting of the 
 fire in the gallej-stove, for the pulling off of 
 gaskets, the swinging up of the mainsail, and the 
 rat-tat-tat of the reef -points, for the heaving short 
 and the breaking out, and for the twirling of the 
 wheel as she fills away and heads up Bay or down. 
 
 Jack London. 
 
 On Board RoameVf 
 Sonoma Creek, 
 April 15, 1911. 
 
FIVE 
 
 FOUR HORSES AND A SAILOR 
 
 "TTUH! Drive four horses! I wouldn't sit 
 
 A ^ behind you — not for a thousand dollars 
 — over them mountain roads." 
 
 So said Henry, and he ought to have known, for 
 he drives four horses himself. 
 
 Said another Glen Ellen friend: "What? 
 London? He drive four horses? Can't drive 
 one ! " 
 
 And the best of it is that he was right. Even 
 after managing to get a few hundred miles with 
 my four horses, I don't know how to drive one. 
 Just the other day, swinging down a steep moun- 
 tain road and rounding an abrupt turn, I came 
 full tilt on a horse and buggy being driven by a 
 woman up the hill. We could not pass on the 
 narrow road, where was only a foot to spare, and 
 my horses did not know how to back, especially 
 up hill. About two hundred yards down the 
 hill was a spot where we could pass. The driver 
 of the buggy said she didn't dare back down be- 
 cause she was not sure of the brake. And as I 
 
 74 
 
FOUR HORSES AND A SAILOR 75 
 
 didn't know how to tackle one horse, I didn't 
 try it. So we unhitched her horse and backed 
 down by hand. Which was very well, till it came 
 to hitching the horse to the buggy again. She 
 didn't know how. I didn't either, and I had de- 
 pended on her knowledge. It took us about half 
 an hour, with frequent debates and consultations, 
 though it is an absolute certainty that never in 
 its life was that horse hitched in that particular 
 way. 
 
 No; I can't harness up one horse. But I can 
 four, which compels me to back up again to get 
 to my beginning. Having selected Sonoma 
 Valley for our abiding place, Charmian and I 
 decided it w^as about time we knew what we had 
 in our own county and the neighbouring ones. 
 How to do it, was the first question. Among our 
 many weaknesses is the one of being old-fash- 
 ioned. We don't mix with gasoline very well. 
 And, as true sailors should, we naturally gravi- 
 tate toward horses. Being one of those lucky in- 
 dividuals w^ho carries his office under his hat, I 
 should have to take a typewriter and a load of 
 books along. This put saddle-horses out of the 
 running. Charmian suggested driving a span. 
 She had faith in me; besides, she could drive a 
 span herself. But when I thought of the many 
 
76 THE HUMA^^ DRIFT 
 
 mountains to cross, and of crossing tliem for 
 three months with a poor tired span, I vetoed 
 the proposition and said we'd have to come back 
 to gasoline after all. This she vetoed just as 
 emphatically, and a deadlock obtained until I 
 received inspiration. 
 
 " Why not drive four horses? '' I said. 
 
 " But you don't know how to drive four horses," 
 was her objection. 
 
 I threw my chest out and my shoulders back. 
 "What man has done, I can do,"' I proclaimed 
 grandly. "And please don't forget that when 
 w^e sailed on the Snark I knew nothing of navi- 
 gation, and that I taught myself as I sailed." 
 
 "Very well," she said. (And there's faith 
 for you ! ) " They shall be four saddle horses, 
 and we'll strap our saddles on behind the rig." 
 
 It was my turn to object. " Our saddle horses 
 are not broken to harness." 
 
 " Then break them." 
 
 And what I knew about horses, much less about 
 breaking them, was just about as much as any 
 sailor knows. Having been kicked, bucked off, 
 fallen over backward upon, and thrown out and 
 run over, on very numerous occasions, I had a 
 mighty vigorous respect for horses; but a wife's 
 faith must be lived up to, and I went at it. 
 
FOUR HORSES AND A SAILOR 77 
 
 King was a polo pony from St. Louis, and 
 Prince a many-gaited love-horse from Pasadena. 
 The hardest thing was to get them to dig in and 
 pull. They rollicked along on the levels and 
 galloped down the hills, but when they struck an 
 up-grade and felt the weight of the breaking- 
 cart, they stopped and turned around and looked 
 at me. But I passed them, and my troubles be- 
 gan. Milda was fourteen years old, an unadult- 
 erated broncho, and in temperament was a com- 
 bination of mule and jack -rabbit blended equally. 
 If you pressed your hand on her flank and told 
 her to get over, she lay down on you. If you got 
 her by the head and told her to back, she walked 
 forward over you. And if you got behind her 
 and shoved and told her to '' Giddap ! ^' she sat 
 down on you. Also, she wouldn't walk. For 
 endless weary miles I strove with her, but never 
 could I get her to walk a step. Finally, she was 
 a manger-glutton. No matter how near or far 
 from the stable, when six o'clock came around she 
 bolted for home and never missed the directest 
 cross-road. Many times I rejected her. 
 
 The fourth and most rejected horse of all was 
 the Outlaw. From the age of three to seven 
 she had defied all horse-breakers and broken a 
 number of them. Then a long, lanky cowboy. 
 
78 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 with a fifty -pound saddle and a Mexican bit had 
 got her proud goat. I was the next owner. She 
 was my favourite riding horse. Charmian said 
 Fd have to put her in as a wheeler where I would 
 have more control over her. Now Charmian had 
 a favourite riding mare called Maid. I sug- 
 gested Maid as a substitute. Charmian pointed 
 out that my mare was a branded range horse, 
 while hers was a near-thoroughbred, and that the 
 legs of her mare would be ruined forever if she 
 were driven for three months. I acknowledged 
 her mare's thoroughbredness, and at the same 
 time defied her to find any thoroughbred with as 
 small and delicately -viciously pointed ears as my 
 Outlaw. She indicated Maid's exquisitely thin 
 shinbone. I measured the Outlaw's. It was 
 equally thin, although, I insinuated, possibly 
 more durable. This stabbed Charmian's pride. 
 Of course her near-thoroughbred Maid, carrying 
 the blood of "old'' Lexington, Morella, and a 
 streak of the super-enduring Morgan, could run, 
 walk, and work my unregistered Outlaw into the 
 ground ; and that was the very precise reason why 
 such a paragon of a saddle animal should not be 
 degraded by harness. 
 
 So it was that Charmian remained obdurate, 
 until, one day, I got her behind the Outlaw for 
 
FOUR HORSES AND A SAILOR 79 
 
 a forty-mile drive. For every inch of those forty 
 miles the Outlaw kicked and jumped, in between 
 the kicks and jumps finding time and space in 
 which to seize its team-mate by the back of the 
 neck and attempt to drag it to the ground. An- 
 other trick the Outlaw developed during that 
 drive was suddenly to turn at right angles in the 
 traces and endeavour to butt its team-mate over 
 the grade. Reluctantly and nobly did Charmian 
 give in and consent to the use of Maid. The Out- 
 law's shoes were pulled off, and she was turned 
 out on range. 
 
 Finally, the four horses were hooked to the 
 rig — a light Studebaker trap. With two hours 
 and a half of practice, in which the excitement 
 was not abated by several jackpoles and numer- 
 ous kicking matches, I announced myself as ready 
 for the start. Came the morning, and Prince, 
 who was to have been a wheeler with Maid, 
 showed up with a badly kicked shoulder. He did 
 not exactly show up ; we had to find him, for he 
 was unable to walk. His leg swelled and con- 
 tinually swelled during the several days we 
 waited for him. Remained only the Outlaw. In 
 from pasture she came, shoes were nailed on, and 
 she was harnessed into the wheel. Friends and 
 relatives strove to press accident policies on me. 
 
80 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 but Charmian climbed up alongside, and Nakata 
 got into the rear seat with the typewriter — 
 Nakata, who sailed cabin-boy on the Snark for 
 two years and who has shown himself afraid of 
 nothing, not even of me and my amateur jam- 
 borees in experimenting with new modes of loco- 
 motion. And we did very nicely, thank you, 
 especially after the first hour or so, during which 
 time the Outlaw had kicked about fifty various 
 times, chiefly to the damage of her own legs and 
 the paintwork, and after she had bitten a couple 
 of hundred times, to the damage of Maid's neck 
 and Charmian's temper. It was hard enough to 
 have her favourite mare in the harness without 
 also enduring the spectacle of its being eaten 
 alive. 
 
 Our leaders were joys. King being a pole 
 pony and Milda a rabbit, they rounded curves 
 beautifully and darted ahead like coyotes out 
 of the way of the wheelers. Milda's besetting 
 weakness was a frantic desire not to have the 
 lead-bar strike her hocks. When this happened, 
 one of three things occurred : either she sat down 
 on the lead-bar, kicked it up in the air until she 
 got her back under it, or exploded in a straight- 
 ahead, harness-disrupting jump. Not until she 
 carried the lead-bar clean away and danced a 
 
FOUR HORSES AND A SAILOR 81 
 
 break-down on it and the traces, did she behave 
 decently. Nakata and I made the repairs with 
 good old-fashioned bale-rope, which is stronger 
 than wrought-iron any time, and we went on our 
 way. 
 
 In the meantime I was learning — I shall not 
 say to tool a four-in-hand — but just simply to 
 drive four horses. Now it is all right enough to 
 begin with four work-horses pulling a load of 
 several tons. But to begin with four light 
 horses, all running, and a light rig that seems to 
 outrun them — well, when things happen they 
 happen quickly. My weakness was total igno- 
 rance. In particular, my fingers lacked training, 
 and I made the mistake of depending on my eyes 
 to handle the reins. This brought me up against 
 a disastrous optical illusion. The bight of the 
 off head-line, being longer and heavier than that 
 of the off wheel-line, hung lower. In a moment 
 requiring quick action, I invariably mistook the 
 two lines. Pulling on what I thought was the 
 wheel-line, in order to straighten the team, I 
 would see the leaders swing abruptly around into 
 a jack-pole. Now for sensations of sheer im- 
 potence, nothing can compare with a jack-pole, 
 when the horrified driver beholds his leaders 
 prancing gaily up the road and his wheelers 
 
82 THE HUMAN DKIFT 
 
 jogging steadily down the road, all at the same 
 time and all harnessed together and to the same 
 rig. 
 
 I no longer jack-pole, and I don't mind admit- 
 ting how I got out of the habit. It was my eyes 
 that enslaved my fingers into ill practices. So 
 I shut my eyes and let the fingers go it alone. 
 To-day my fingers are independent of my eyes 
 and work automatically. I do not see what my 
 fingers do. They just do it. All I see is the 
 satisfactory result. 
 
 Still we managed to get over the ground that 
 first day — down sunny Sonoma Valley to the 
 old town of Sonoma, founded by General Vallejo 
 as the remotest outpost on the northern frontier 
 for the purpose of holding back the Gentiles, as 
 the wild Indians of those days were called. Here 
 history was made. Here the last Spanish mis- 
 sion was reared; here the Bear flag was raised; 
 and here Kit Carson, and Fremont, and all our 
 early adventurers came and rested in the days 
 before the days of gold. 
 
 We swung on over the low, rolling hills, 
 through miles of dairy farms and chicken ranches 
 where every blessed hen is white, and down the 
 slopes to Petaluma Valley. Here, in 1776, Cap- 
 tain Quiros came up Petaluma Creek from San 
 
FOUR HORSES AND A SAILOR 83 
 
 Pablo Bay in quest of an outlet to Bodega Bay 
 on the coast. And here, later, the Russians, with 
 Alaskan hunters, carried ski boats across from 
 Fort Ross to poach for sea-otters on the Spanish 
 preserve of San Francisco Bay. Here, too, still 
 later, General Vallejo built a fort, which still 
 stands — one of the finest examples of Spanish 
 adobe that remain to us. And here, at the old 
 fort, to bring the chronicle up to date, our horses 
 proceeded to make peculiarly personal history 
 with astonishing success and dispatch. King, 
 our peerless, polo-pony leader, went lame. So 
 hopelessly lame did he go that no expert, then and 
 afterward, could determine whether the lame- 
 ness was in his frogs, hoofs, legs, shoulders, or 
 head. Maid picked up a nail and began to limp. 
 Milda, figuring the day already sufficiently spent 
 and maniacal with manger gluttony, began to 
 rabbit- jump. All that held her was the bale- 
 rope. And the Outlaw, game to the last, ex- 
 ceeded all previous exhibitions of skin-removing, 
 paint-marring, and horse-eating. 
 
 At Petaluma we rested over while King was 
 returned to the ranch and Prince sent to us. 
 Now Prince had proved himself an excellent 
 wheeler, yet he had to go into the lead and let the 
 Outlaw retain his old place. There is an axiom 
 
84: THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 that a good wheeler is a poor leader. I object 
 to the last adjective. A good wheeler makes an 
 infinitely worse kind of a leader than that. I 
 know . . . now. I ought to know. Since that 
 day I have driven Prince a few hundred miles 
 in the lead. He is neither any better nor any 
 worse than the first mile he ran in the lead ; and 
 his worst is even extremely worse than what you 
 are thinking. Not that he is vicious. He is 
 merely a good-natured rogue who shakes hands 
 for sugar, steps on your toes out of sheer exces- 
 sive friendliness, and just goes on loving you in 
 your harshest moments. 
 
 But he won't get out of the way. Also, when- 
 ever he is reproved for being in the wrong, he 
 accuses Milda of it and bites the back of her neck. 
 So bad has this become that whenever I yell 
 " Prince ! " in a loud voice, Milda immediately 
 rabbit- jumps to the side, straight ahead, or sits 
 down on the lead-bar. All of which is quite dis- 
 concerting. Picture it yourself. You are swing- 
 ing a sharp, down-grade, mountain curve, at a 
 fast trot. The rock wall is the outside of the 
 curve. The inside of the curve is a precipice. 
 The continuance of the curve is a narrow, un- 
 railed bridge. You hit the curve, throwing the 
 leaders in against the wall and making the pole- 
 
FOUR HORSES AND A SAILOR 85 
 
 horse do the work. All is lovely. The leaders 
 are hugging the wall like nestling doves. But 
 the moment comes in the evolution when the 
 leaders must shoot out ahead. They really must 
 shoot, or else they'll hit the wall and miss the 
 bridge. Also, behind them are the wheelers, and 
 the rig, and you have just eased the brake in 
 order to put sufficient snap into the manoeuvre. 
 If ever team-work is required, now is the time. 
 Milda tries to shoot. She does her best, but 
 Prince, bubbling over with roguishness, lags be- 
 hind. He knows the trick. Milda is half a 
 length ahead of him. He times it to the frac- 
 tion of a second. Maid, in the wheel, over-run- 
 ning him, naturally bites him. This disturbs the 
 Outlaw, who has been behaving beautifully, and 
 she immediately reaches across for Maid. Sim- 
 ultaneously, with a fine display of firm convic- 
 tion that it^s all Milda's fault. Prince sinks his 
 teeth into the back of Milda's defenceless neck. 
 The whole thing has occurred in less than a sec- 
 ond. Under the surprise and pain of the bite, 
 Milda either jumps ahead to the imminent peril 
 of harness and lead-bar, or smashes into the 
 wall, stops short with the lead-bar over her back, 
 and emits a couple of hysterical kicks. The 
 Outlaw invariably selects this moment to remove 
 
86 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 paint. And after things are untangled and you 
 have had time to appreciate the close shave, you 
 go up to Prince and reprove him with your choic- 
 est vocabulary. And Prince, gazelle-eyed and 
 tender, offers to shake hands with you for sugar. 
 I leave it to any one : a boat would never act that 
 way. 
 
 We have some history north of the Bay. 
 Nearly three centuries and a half ago, that 
 doughty pirate and explorer, Sir Francis Drake, 
 combing the Pacific for Spanish galloons, 
 anchored in the bight formed by Point Reyes, on 
 which to-day is one of the richest dairy regions 
 in the world. Here, less than two decades after 
 Drake, Sebastien Carmenon piled up on the rocks 
 with a silk-laden galleon from the Philippines. 
 And in this same bay of Drake, long afterward, 
 the Russian fur-poachers rendezvoused their 
 MdarJces and stole in through the Golden Gate 
 to the forbidden waters of San Francisco Bay. 
 
 Farther up the coast, in Sonoma County, we 
 pilgrimaged to the sites of the Russian settle- 
 ments. At Bodega Bay, south of what to-day is 
 called Russian River, was their anchorage, while 
 north of the river they built their fort. And 
 much of Fort Ross still stands. Log-bastions, 
 church, and stables hold their own, and so well. 
 
FOUR HORSES AND A SAILOR 87 
 
 with rusty hinges creaking, that we warmed our- 
 selves at the hundred-years-old double fireplace 
 and slept under the hand-hewn roof beams still 
 held together by spikes of hand-wrought iron. 
 
 We went to see where history had been made, 
 and we saw scenery as well. One of our stretches 
 in a day's drive was from beautiful Inverness on 
 Tomales Bay, down the Olema Valley to Bolinas 
 Bay, along the eastern shore of that body of water 
 to Willow Camp, and up over the sea-bluffs, 
 around the bastions of Tamalpais, and down to 
 Sausalito. From the head of Bolinas Bay to 
 Willow Camp the drive on the edge of the beach, 
 and actually, for half-mile stretches, in the waters 
 of the bay itself, was a delightful experience. 
 The wonderful part was to come. Very few San 
 Franciscans, much less Californians, know of 
 that drive from Willow Camp, to the south and 
 east, along the poppy-blown cliffs, with the sea 
 thundering in the sheer depths hundreds of feet 
 below and the Golden Gate opening up ahead, 
 disclosing smoky San Francisco on her many 
 hills. Far off, blurred on the breast of the sea, 
 can be seen the Farallones, which Sir Francis 
 Drake passed on a S. W. course in the thick of 
 what he describes as a " stynking fog." Well 
 might he call it that, and a few other names, for 
 
88 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 it was the fog that robbed him of the glory of 
 discovering San Francisco Bay. 
 
 It was on this part of the drive that I decided 
 at last I was learning real mountain-driving. 
 To confess the truth, for delicious titillation of 
 one's nerve, I have since driven over no moun- 
 tain road that was worse, or better, rather, than 
 that piece. 
 
 And then the contrast ! From Sausalito, over 
 excellent, park-like boulevards, through the 
 splendid redwoods and homes of Mill Valley, 
 across the blossomed hills of Marin County, along 
 the knoll-studded picturesque marshes, past San 
 Rafael resting warmly among her hills, over the 
 divide and up the Petaluma Valley, and on to 
 the grassy feet of Sonoma Mountain and home. 
 We covered fifty-five miles that day. Not so bad, 
 eh, for Prince the Rogue, the paint-removing 
 Outlaw, the thin-shanked thorough-bred, and the 
 rabbit- jumper? And they came in cool and dry, 
 ready for their mangers and the straw. 
 
 Oh, we didn't stop. We considered we were 
 just starting, and that was many weeks ago. 
 We have kept on going over six counties which 
 are comfortably large, even for California, and 
 we are still going. We have twisted and 
 doubled, criss-crossed our tracks, made fascinat- 
 
FOUR HORSES AND A SAILOR 89 
 
 ing and lengthy dives into the interior valleys in 
 the hearts of Napa and Lake Counties, travelled 
 the coast for hundreds of miles on end, and are 
 now in Eureka, on Humboldt Bay, which was 
 discovered by accident by the gold-seekers, who 
 were trying to find their way to and from the 
 Trinity diggings. Even here, the whiteman's his- 
 tory preceded them, for dim tradition says that 
 the Russians once anchored here and hunted 
 sea-otter before the first Yankee trader rounded 
 the Horn, or the first Rocky Mountain trapper 
 thirsted across the " Great American Desert '^ 
 and trickled down the snowy Sierras to the sun- 
 kissed land. No; we are not resting our horses 
 here on Humboldt Bay. We are writing this 
 article, gorging on abalones and mussels, digging 
 clams, and catching record-breaking sea-trout 
 and rock-cod in the intervals in which we are 
 not sailing, motor-boating, and swimming in the 
 most temperately equable climate we have ever 
 experienced. 
 
 These comfortably large counties! They are 
 veritable empires. Take Humboldt, for instance. 
 It is three times as large as Rhode Island, one 
 and a half times as large as Delaware, almost as 
 large as Connecticut, and half as large as 
 Massachusetts. The pioneer has done his work 
 
90 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 in this north of the bay region, the foundations 
 are laid, and all is ready for the inevitable in- 
 rush of population and adequate development of 
 resources which so far have been no more than 
 skimmed, and casually and carelessly skimmed 
 at that. This region of the six counties alone 
 will some day support a population of millions. 
 In the meanwhile, O you home-seekers, you 
 wealth-seekers, and, above all, you climate-seek- 
 ers, now is the time to get in on the ground floor. 
 Robert Ingersoll once said that the genial 
 climate of California would in a fairly brief time 
 evolve a race resembling the Mexicans, and that 
 in two or three generations the Californians 
 would be seen of a Sunday morning on their way 
 to a cockfight with a rooster under each arm. 
 Never was made a rasher generalisation, based 
 on so absolute an ignorance of facts. It is to 
 laugh. Here is a climate that breeds vigour, 
 with just sufficient geniality to prevent the ex- 
 penditure of most of that vigour in fighting the 
 elements. Here is a climate where a man can 
 work three hundred and sixty-five days in the 
 year without the slightest hint of enervation, and 
 where for three hundred and sixty-five nights he 
 must perforce sleep under blankets. What more 
 can one say? I consider myself somewhat of a 
 
FOUR HORSES AND A SAILOR 91 
 
 climate expert, having adventured among most of 
 the climates of five out of the six zones. I have 
 not yet been in the Antarctic, but whatever 
 climate obtains there will not deter me from 
 drawing the conclusion that nowhere is there a 
 climate to compare with that of this region. 
 Maybe I am as wrong as Ingersoll was. Never- 
 theless I take my medicine by continuing to live 
 in this climate. Also, it is the only medicine I 
 ever take. 
 
 But to return to the horses. There is some 
 improvement. Milda has actually learned to 
 walk. Maid has proved her thoroughbredness by 
 never tiring on the longest days, and, while be- 
 ing the strongest and highest spirited of all, by 
 never causing any trouble save for an occasional 
 kick at the Outlaw. And the Outlaw rarely 
 gallops, no longer butts, only periodically kicks, 
 comes in to the pole and does her work without 
 attempting to vivisect Maid's medulla oblongata, 
 and — marvel of marvels — is really and truly 
 getting lazy. But Prince remains the same in- 
 corrigible, loving and lovable rogue he has always 
 been. 
 
 And the country we've been over ! The drives 
 through Napa and Lake Counties! One, from 
 Sonoma Valley, via Santa Rosa, we could not 
 
92 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 refrain from taking several ways, and on all the 
 ways we found the roads excellent for machines 
 as well as horses. One route, and a more de- 
 lightful one for an automobile cannot be found, 
 is out from Santa Rosa, past old Altruria and 
 Mark West Springs, then to the right and across 
 to Calistoga in Napa Valley. By keeping to 
 the left, the drive holds on up the Russian River 
 Valley, through the miles of the noted Asti Vine- 
 yards to Cloverdale, and then by way of Pieta, 
 Witter, and Highland Springs to Lakeport. Still 
 another way we took, was down Sonoma Valley, 
 skirting San Pablo Bay, and up the lovely Napa 
 Valley. From Napa were side excursions 
 through Pope and Berryessa Valleys, on to 
 ^tna Springs, and still on, into Lake County, 
 crossing the famous Langtry Ranch. 
 
 Continuing up the Napa Valley, walled on 
 either hand by great rock palisades and redwood 
 forests and carpeted with endless vineyards, and 
 crossing the many stone bridges for which the 
 County is noted and which are a joy to the beauty- 
 loving eyes as well as to the four-horse tyro 
 driver, past Calistoga with its old mud-baths and 
 chicken-soup springs, with St. Helena and its 
 giant saddle ever towering before us, we climbed 
 the mountains on a good grade and dropped 
 
FOUR HORSES AND A SAILOR 93 
 
 down past the quicksilver mines to the canyon 
 of the Geysers. After a stop over night and 
 an exploration of the miniature-grand volcanic 
 scene, we pulled on across the canyon and took 
 the grade where the cicades simmered audibly in 
 the noon sunshine among the hillside manzanitas. 
 Then, higher, came the big cattle-dotted upland 
 pastures, and the rocky summit. And here on 
 the summit, abruptly, we caught a vision, or what 
 seemed a mirage. The ocean we had left long 
 days before, yet far down and away shimmered 
 a blue sea, framed on the farther shore by rugged 
 mountains, on the near shore by fat and rolling 
 farm lands. Clear Lake w^as before us, and like 
 proper sailors we returned to our sea, going for a 
 sail, a fish, and a swim ere the day was done and 
 turning into tired Lakeport blankets in the early 
 evening. Well has Lake County been called the 
 Walled-in County. But the railroad is coming. 
 They say the approach we made to Clear Lake is 
 similar to the approach to Lake Lucerne. Be 
 that as it may, the scenery, with its distant snow- 
 capped peaks, can well be called Alpine. 
 
 And what can be more exquisite than the drive 
 out from Clear Lake to Ukiah by way of the 
 Blue Lakes chain ! — every turn bringing into 
 view a picture of breathless beauty ; every glance 
 
94 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 backward revealing some perfect composition in 
 line and colour, the intense blue of the water 
 margined with splendid oaks, green fields, and 
 swaths of orange poppies. But those side 
 glances and backw^ard glances were provocative 
 of trouble. Charmian and I disagreed as to 
 which way the connecting stream of water ran. 
 We still disagree, for at the hotel, where we 
 submitted the affair to arbitration, the hotel 
 manager and the clerk likewise disagreed. I 
 assume, now, that we never will know which way 
 that stream runs. Charmian suggests " both 
 ways." I refuse such a compromise. No stream 
 of water I ever saw could accomplish that feat at 
 one and the same time. The greatest concession 
 I can make is that sometimes it may run one way 
 and sometimes the other, and that in the mean- 
 time we should both consult an oculist. 
 
 More valley from Ukiah to Willits, and then 
 we turned westward through the virgin Sher- 
 wood Forest of magnificent redwood, stopping at 
 Alpine for the night and continuing on through 
 Mendocino County to Fort Bragg and " salt 
 water.'' We also came to Fort Bragg up the 
 coast from Fort Ross, keeping our coast journey 
 intact from the Golden Gate. The coast weather 
 was cool and delightful, the coast driving superb. 
 
FOUR HORSES AND A SAILOR 95 
 
 Especially in the Fort Ross section did we find 
 the roads thrilling, while all the way along we 
 followed the sea. At every stream, the road 
 skirted dizzy cliff-edges, dived down into lush 
 growths of forest and ferns and climbed out along 
 the cliff -edges again. The way w^as lined with 
 flowers — wild lilac, wild roses, poppies, and 
 lupins. Such lupins I — giant clumps of them, 
 of every lupin-shade and -colour. And it w^as 
 along the Mendocino roads that Charmian caused 
 many delays by insisting on getting out to pick 
 the wild blackberries, strawberries, and thimble- 
 berries which grew so profusely. And ever we 
 caught peeps, far down, of steam schooners load- 
 ing lumber in the rocky coves; ever we skirted 
 the cliffs, day after day, crossing stretches of 
 rolling farm lands and passing through thriving 
 villages and saw-mill towns. Memorable was 
 our launch-trip from Mendocino City up Big 
 River, where the steering gears of the launches 
 work the reverse of anyw^here else in the world ; 
 where we saw a stream of logs, of six to twelve 
 and fifteen feet in diameter, which filled the river 
 bed for miles to the obliteration of any sign of 
 water; and where we were told of a white or 
 albino redwood tree. We did not see this last, 
 so cannot vouch for it. 
 
96 THE HUMAN DKIFT 
 
 All the streams were filled with trout, and 
 more than once we saw the side-hill salmon on 
 the slopes. No, side-hill salmon is not a peripa- 
 tetic fish; it is a deer out of season. But the 
 trout! At Gualala Charmian caught her first 
 one. Once before in my life I had caught 
 two ... on angleworms. On occasion I had 
 tried fly and spinner and never got a strike, and 
 I had come to believe that all this talk of fly- 
 fishing was just so much nature-faking. But on 
 the Gualala Kiver I caught trout — a lot of them 
 — on fly and spinners; and I was beginning to 
 feel quite an expert, until Nakata, fishing on bot- 
 tom with a pellet of bread for bait, caught the 
 biggest trout of all. I now afifirm there is noth- 
 ing in science nor in art. Nevertheless, since 
 that day poles and baskets have been added to 
 our baggage, we tackle every stream we come to, 
 and we no longer are able to remember the grand 
 total of our catch. 
 
 At Usal, many hilly and picturesque miles 
 north of Fort Bragg, we turned again into the 
 interior of Mendocino, crossing the ranges and 
 coming out in Humboldt County on the south 
 fork of Eel River at Garberville. Throughout 
 the trip, from Marin County north, we had been 
 warned of "bad roads ahead.'' Yet we never 
 
FOUR HORSES AND A SAILOR 97 
 
 found those bad roads. We seemed always to be 
 just ahead of them or behind them. The farther 
 we came the better the roads seemed, though this 
 was probably due to the fact that we were learn- 
 ing more and more w^hat four horses and a light 
 rig could do on a road. And thus do I save my 
 face with all the counties. I refuse to m.ake in- 
 vidious road comparisons. I can add that while, 
 save in rare instances on steep pitches, I have 
 trotted my horses down all the grades, I have 
 never had one horse fall down nor have I had 
 to send the rig to a blacksmith shop for repairs. 
 
 Also, I am learning to throw leather. If any 
 tyro thinks it is easy to take a short-handled, 
 long-lashed whip, and throw the end of that lash 
 just where he wants it, let him put on automobile 
 goggles and try it. On reconsideration, I would 
 suggest the substitution of a wire fencing-mask 
 for the goggles. For days I looked at that whip. 
 It fascinated me, and the fascination was com- 
 posed mostly of fear. At my first attempt, 
 Charmian and Nakata became afflicted with the 
 same sort of fascination, and for a long time 
 afterward, whenever they saw me reach for the 
 whip, they closed their eyes and shielded their 
 heads with their arms. 
 
 Here's the problem. Instead of pulling 
 
98 THE HUMA:^r DRIFT 
 
 honestly, Prince is lagging back and manoeuvre- 
 ing for a bite at Hilda's neck. I have four reins 
 in my hands. I must put these four reins into 
 my left hand, properly gather the whip handle 
 and the bight of the lash in my right hand, and 
 throw that lash past Maid without striking her 
 and into Prince. If the lash strikes Maid, her 
 thoroughbredness will go up in the air and I'll 
 have a case of horse hysteria on my hands for 
 the next half hour. But follow. The whole 
 problem is not yet stated. Suppose that I miss 
 Maid and reach the intended target. The in- 
 stant the lash cracks, the four horses jump. 
 Prince most of all, and his jump, with spread 
 wicked teeth, is for the back of Milda's neck. 
 She jumps to escape — which is her second jump, 
 for the first one came when the lash exploded. 
 The Outlaw reaches for Maid's neck, and Maid, 
 who has already jumped and tried to bolt, tries to 
 bolt harder. And all this infinitesimal fraction 
 of time I am trying to hold the four animals with 
 my left hand, while my whip-lash writhing 
 through the air, is coming back to me. Three 
 simultaneous things I must do: keep hold of 
 the four hands with my left hand; slam on the 
 brake with my foot; and on the rebound catch 
 
FOUR HORSES AND A SAILOR 99 
 
 that flying lash in the hollow of my right arm 
 and get the bight of it safely into my right hand. 
 Then I must get two of the four lines back into 
 my right hand and keep the horses from running 
 away or going over the grade. Try it some time. 
 You will find life anything but wearisome. 
 Why, the first time I hit the mark and made the 
 lash go off like a revolver shot, I was so 
 astounded and delighted that I was paralysed. 
 I forgot to do any of the multitudinous other 
 things, tangled the whip lash in Maid's harness, 
 and was forced to call upon Charmian for assist- 
 ance. And now, confession. I carry a few peb- 
 bles handy. They're great for reaching Prince 
 in a tight place. But just the same I'm learning 
 that whip every day, and before I get home I 
 hope to discard the pebbles. And as long as I 
 rely on pebbles, I cannot truthfully speak of 
 myself as " tooling a four-in-hand." 
 
 From Garberville, where we ate eel to reple- 
 tion and got acquainted with the aborigines, we 
 drove down the Eel River Valley for two days 
 through the most unthinkably glorious body of 
 redwood timber to be seen anywhere in Cali- 
 fornia. From Dyerville on to Eureka, we caught 
 glimpses of railroad construction and of great 
 
100 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 concrete bridges in the course of building, which 
 advertised that at least Humboldt County was 
 going to be linked to the rest of the world. 
 
 We still consider our trip is just begun. As 
 soon as this is mailed from Eureka, it's heigh ho ! 
 for the horses and pull on. We shall continue 
 up the coast, turn in for Hoopa Reservation and 
 the gold mines, and shoot down the Trinity and 
 Klamath rivers in Indian canoes to Requa. 
 After that, we shall go on through Del Norte 
 County and into Oregon. The trip so far has 
 justified us in taking the attitude that we won't 
 go home until the winter rains drive us in. And, 
 finally, I am going to try the experiment of put- 
 ting the Outlaw in the lead and relegating Prince 
 to his old position in the near wheel. I won't 
 need any pebbles then.^ 
 
 1 In the Spring of 1916, Sonoma Maid, mother of two fine 
 colts, died in giving birth to a third. Also, during this year, 
 Prince contracted an incurable rheumatism, and Milda began 
 to show an incurable agedness. Jack had always said that 
 the team should never leave the ranch, and so, following his 
 own death in November, 1916, w^e laid away Prince the 
 Love Horse, and Milda the Rabbit, on our hillside in the 
 Valley of the Moon. Gert the Outlaw still flourishes upon 
 her master's acres, and is the mother of three fine colts. — 
 C. K. L. 
 
SIX 
 
 A CLASSIC OF THE SEA 
 
 Introduction to " Two Years Before the Mast.'^ 
 
 ONCE in a hundred years is a book written 
 that lives not alone for its own century but 
 which becomes a document for the future cen- 
 turies. Such a book is Dana's. When Marry- 
 at's and Cooper's sea novels are gone to dust, 
 stimulating and joyful as they have been to gen- 
 erations of men, still will remain " Two Years 
 Before the Mast.'' 
 
 Paradoxical as it may seem, Dana's book is the 
 classic of the sea, not because there was anything 
 extraordinary about Dana, but for the precise 
 contrary reason that he was just an ordinary, 
 normal man, clear-seeing, hard-headed, con- 
 trolled, fitted with adequate education to go 
 about the work. He brought a trained mind to 
 put down with untroubled vision what he saw of 
 a certain phase of work-a-day life. There was 
 nothing brilliant nor fly-away about him. He 
 
 101 
 
102 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 was not a genius. His heart never rode his 
 head. He was neither overlorded by sentiment 
 nor hag-ridden by imagination. Otherwise he 
 might have been guilty of the beautiful exagger- 
 ations in Melville's " Typee " or the imaginative 
 orgies in the latter's " Moby Dick." It was 
 Dana^s cool poise that saved him from being 
 spread-eagled and flogged when two of his mates 
 were so treated ; it was his lack of abandon that 
 prevented him from taking up permanently with 
 the sea, that prevented him from seeing more 
 than one poetical spot, and more than one ro- 
 mantic spot on all the coast of Old California. 
 Yet these apparent defects were his strength. 
 They enabled him magnificently to write, and 
 for all time, the picture of the sea-life of his time. 
 Written close to the middle of the last century, 
 such has been the revolution worked in man's 
 method of trafficking with the sea, that the life 
 and conditions described in Dana's book have 
 passed utterly away. Gone are the crack clip- 
 pers, the driving captains, the hard-bitten but 
 efficient foremast hands. Remain only crawling 
 cargo tanks, dirty tramps, greyhound liners, and 
 a sombre, sordid type of sailing ship. The only 
 records broken to-day by sailing vessels are those 
 for slowness. They are no longer built for speed. 
 
A CLASSIC OF THE SEA 103 
 
 nor are thej manned before the mast by as sturdy 
 a sailor stock, nor aft the mast are they officered 
 by sail-carrying captains and driving mates. 
 
 Speed is left to the liners, who run the silk, 
 and tea, and spices. Admiralty courts, boards 
 of trade, and underwriters frown upon driving 
 and sail-carrying. No more are the free-and- 
 easy, dare-devil days, when fortunes were made 
 in fast runs and lucky ventures, not alone for 
 owners, but for captains as well. Nothing is 
 ventured now. The risks of swift passages can- 
 not be abided. Freights are calculated to the 
 last least fraction of per cent. The captains do 
 no speculating, no bargain-making for the own- 
 ers. The latter attend to all this, and by wire 
 and cable rake the ports of the seven seas in 
 quest of cargoes, and through their agents make 
 all business arrangements. 
 
 It has been learned that small crews only, and 
 large carriers only, can return a decent interest 
 on the investment. The inevitable corollary is 
 that speed and spirit are at a discount. There 
 is no discussion of the fact that in the sailing 
 merchant marine the seamen, as a class, have 
 sadly deteriorated. Men no longer sell farms to 
 go to sea. But the time of which Dana writes 
 was the heyday of fortune-making and adventure 
 
104 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 on the sea — with the full connotation of hard- 
 ship and peril always attendant. 
 
 It was Dana's fortune, for the sake of the 
 picture that the Pilgrim was an average ship, 
 with an average crew and officers, and managed 
 with average discipline. Even the hazing that 
 took place after the California coast was reached, 
 was of the average sort. The Pilgrim savoured 
 not in any way of a hell-ship. The captain, 
 while not the sweetest-natured man in the world, 
 was only an average down-east driver, neither 
 brilliant nor slovenly in his seamanship, neither 
 cruel nor sentimental in the treatment of his men. 
 While, on the one hand, there were no extra 
 liberty days, no delicacies added to the meagre 
 forecastle fare, nor grog or hot coffee on double 
 watches, on the other hand the crew was not 
 chronically crippled by the continual play of 
 knuckle-dusters and belaying pins. Once, and 
 once only, were men flogged or ironed — a very 
 fair average for the year 1834, for at that time 
 flogging on board merchant vessels was already 
 well on the decline. 
 
 The difference between the sea-life then and 
 now can be no better epitomised than in Dana's 
 description of the dress of the sailor of his day : 
 
 " The trousers tight around the hips, and 
 
A CLASSIC OF THE SEA 105 
 
 thence hanging long and loose around the feet, 
 a superabundance of checked shirt, a low- 
 crowned, well-varnished black hat, worn on the 
 back of the head, with half a fathom of black 
 ribbon hanging over the left eye, and a peculiar 
 tie to the black silk neckerchief." 
 
 Though Dana sailed from Boston only three- 
 quarters of a century ago, much that is at present 
 obsolete was then in full sway. For instance, 
 the old word larboard was still in use. He was 
 a member of the larboard watch. The vessel was 
 on the larboard tack. It was only the other day, 
 because of its similarity in sound to starboard, 
 that larboard was changed to port. Try to 
 imagine " All larboard bowlines on deck ! " being 
 shouted down into the forecastle of a present day 
 ship. Yet that was the call used on the Pilgrim 
 to fetch Dana and the rest of his watch on deck. 
 
 The chronometer, which is merely the least 
 imperfect time-piece man has devised, makes pos- 
 sible the surest and easiest method by far of as- 
 certaining longitude. Yet the Pilgrim sailed in 
 a day when the chronometer was just coming into 
 general use. So little was it depended upon that 
 the Pilgrim carried only one, and that one, going 
 wrong at the outset, was never used again. A 
 navigator of the present would be aghast if asked 
 
106 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 to voyage for two years, from Boston, around the 
 Horn to California, and back again, without a 
 chronometer. In those days such a proceeding 
 was a matter of course, for those were the days 
 when dead reckoning was indeed something to 
 reckon on, when running down the latitude w^as 
 a common way of finding a place, and w^hen lunar 
 observations were direly necessary. It may be 
 fairly asserted that very few merchant officers 
 of to-day ever make a lunar observation, and 
 that a large percentage are unable to do it. 
 
 ^^ Sept. 22nd. y upon coming on deck at seven 
 bells in the morning we found the other watch 
 aloft throwing water upon the sails, and looking 
 astern we saw a small, clipper-built brig with a 
 black hull heading directly after us. We went 
 to work immediately, and put all the canvas upon 
 the brig which we could get upon her, rigging out 
 oars for studding-sail yards ; and continued wet- 
 ting down the sails by buckets of water whipped 
 up to the mast head. . . . She was armed, and 
 full of men, and showed no colors." 
 
 The foregoing sounds like a paragraph from 
 "Midshipman Easy" or the "Water Witch," 
 rather than a paragraph from the soberest, faith- 
 fulest, and most literal chronicle of the sea ever 
 written. And yet the chase by a pirate occurred, 
 
A CLASSIC OF THE SEA 107 
 
 on board the brig Pilgrim, on September 22nd, 
 1834 — something like only two generations ago. 
 
 Dana was the thorough-going type of man, not 
 overbalanced and erratic, without quirk or quib- 
 ble of temperament. He was efficient, but not 
 brilliant. His was a general all-around effi- 
 ciency. He was efficient at the law; he was effi- 
 cient at college; he was efficient as a sailor; he 
 was efficient in the matter of pride, when that 
 pride was no more than the pride of a forecastle 
 hand, at twelve dollars a month, in his seaman's 
 task well done, in the smart sailing of his cap- 
 tain, in the cleanness and trimness of his ship. 
 
 There is no sailor whose cockles of the heart 
 will not warm to Dana's description of the first 
 time he sent down a royal yard. Once or twice 
 he had seen it done. He got an old hand in the 
 crew to coach him. And then, the first anchor- 
 age at Monterey, being pretty thick with the 
 second mate, he got him to ask the mate to be 
 sent up the first time the royal yards were struck. 
 " Fortunately," as Dana describes it, " I got 
 through without any word from the officer; and 
 heard the ' well done ' of the mate, when the yard 
 reached the deck, with as much satisfaction as I 
 ever felt at Cambridge on seeing a ^ bene ' at the 
 foot of a Latin exercise.'' 
 
108 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 " This was the first time I had taken a 
 weather ear-ring, and I felt not a little proud to 
 sit astride of the weather yard-arm, past the 
 ear-ring, and sing out ■' Haul out to leeward! ' '' 
 He had been over a year at sea before he essayed 
 this able seaman's task, but he did it, and he did 
 it with pride. And with pride, he went down a 
 four-hundred foot cliff, on a pair of top-gallant 
 studding-sail halyards bent together, to dislodge 
 several dollars worth of stranded bullock hides, 
 though all the acclaim he got from his mates 
 
 was: "What a d d fool you were to risk 
 
 your life for half a dozen hides ! " 
 
 In brief, it was just this efficiency in pride, as 
 well as work, that enabled Dana to set down, not 
 merely the photograph detail of life before the 
 mast and hide-droghing on the coast of Cali- 
 fornia, but of the unvarnished, simple psychology 
 and ethics of the forecastle hands who droghed 
 the hides, stood at the wheel, made and took in 
 sail, tarred down the rigging, holystoned the 
 decks, turned in all-standing, grumbled as they 
 cut about the kid, criticised the seamanship of 
 their officers, and estimated the duration of their 
 exile from the cubic space of the hide-house. 
 
 Jack London. 
 
 Glen Ellen, California, 
 August 13, 1911. 
 
A WICKED WOMAN 
 
 (Curtain-Raiser) 
 By jack LONDON 
 
 Scene — California. 
 
 Time — Afternoon of a summer day. 
 
CHARACTERS 
 
 LoRETTA, A sweet, young thing. Frightfully in- 
 nocent. About nineteen years old. Slender, 
 delicate, a fragile flower. Ingenuous. 
 
 Ned Bashford, A jaded young man of the world, 
 who has philosophised his experiences and who 
 is without faith in the veracity or purity of 
 women. 
 
 Billy Marsh^ A boy from a country town who is 
 just about as innocent as Loretta. Awkward. 
 Positive. Raw and callow youth. 
 
 Alice Hemingway, A society woman, good- 
 hearted, and a match-maker. 
 
 Jack Hemingway, Her husband. 
 
 Maid. 
 
A WICKED WOMAN 
 
 [Curtain rises on a conventional living room of 
 a country house in California, It is the Hem- 
 ingway house at ^anta Clara. The room is 
 remarkable for magnificent stone fireplace at 
 rear centre. On either side of fireplace are 
 generous^ diamond-paned windows. Wide, 
 curtained doorways to right and left. To left, 
 front, table, with vase of flowers and chairs. 
 To right, front, grand piano.] 
 
 [Curtain discovers Loretta seated at piano, not 
 playing, her hack to it, facing Ned Bashford^, 
 who is standing.] 
 
 Loretta 
 [Petulantly, fanning herself with sheet of 
 music] No, I won't go fishing. It's too warm. 
 Besides, the fish won't bite so early in the after- 
 noon. 
 
 Ned 
 Oh, Come on. It's not warm at all. And 
 anyway, we won't really fish. I want to tell 
 you something. 
 
 Ill 
 
112 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 [Still petulantlif.] You are always wanting 
 to tell me something. 
 
 Ned 
 
 Yes, but only in fun. This is different. This 
 is serious. Our . . . my happiness depends 
 upon it. 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 [Speaking eagerly, no longer petulant, looking 
 serious and delighted, divining a proposal.] 
 Then don't wait. Tell me right here. 
 
 Ned 
 [Almost threateningly.] Shall I? 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 [Challenging.] Yes. 
 
 [He looks arou7id apprehensively as though 
 fearing interruption, clears his throat, 
 takes resolution, also takes Loretta^s 
 hand.] 
 [LoRETTA is startled, timid, yet willing to 
 hear, naively unahle to conceal her love 
 for him.] 
 
 Ned 
 [Speaking softly.] Loretta . . . I . . . ever 
 since I met you I have — 
 
A WICKED WOMAN 113 
 
 [Jack Hemingway appears in the doorway 
 
 to the lefty just entering.] 
 [Ned suddenly drops Loretta^s hand. He 
 
 shows exasperation.] 
 [LoRETTA shows disappointment at inter- 
 ruption.] 
 
 Ned 
 Confound it ! 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 [Shocked.] Ned! Why will you swear so? 
 
 Ned 
 [Testily.] That isn't swearing. 
 
 Loretta 
 What is it, pray? 
 
 Ned 
 Displeasuring. 
 
 Jack Hemingway 
 [Who is crossing over to right.] Squabbling 
 again? 
 
 Loretta 
 [Indignantly and with dignity.] No, we're 
 not. 
 
 Ned 
 [Gruffly.] What do you want now? 
 
114 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 Jack Hemingway 
 [Enthusiasticalli/.] Come on fishing. 
 
 Ned 
 [Snappilp.] No. It's too warm. 
 
 Jack Hemingway 
 
 [Resignedly/ y goiyig out right.'] You needn't 
 take a fellow's head off. 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 I thought you wanted to go fishing. 
 
 Ned 
 Not with Jack. 
 
 Loretta 
 [Accusingly, fanning herself vigorously.'] 
 And you told me it wasn't warm at all. 
 
 Ned 
 [Speaking softly.] That isn't what I wanted 
 to tell you, Loretta. [He takes her hand.] 
 Dear Loretta — 
 
 [Enter abruptly Alice Hemingway from 
 
 right.] 
 [Loretta sharply jerks her hand away, and 
 
 looks put out.] 
 [Ned tries not to look awkward.] 
 
A WICKED WOMAN 115 
 
 Alice Hemingway 
 Goodness ! I thought you'd both gone fishing ! 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 [Sweetly.] Is there anything you want, 
 Alice? 
 
 Ned 
 [Trying to he courteous,] Anything I can 
 do? 
 
 Alice Hemingway 
 [Speaking quickly y and trying to withdraw.] 
 No, no. I only came to see if the mail had ar- 
 rived. 
 
 Loretta and Ned 
 [Speaking together.] No, it hasn't arrived. 
 
 Loretta 
 [Suddenly moving toward door to right.] I 
 am going to see. 
 
 [Ned looks at her reproachfully.] 
 [Loretta looks hack tantalisingly from door- 
 way and disappears.] 
 [Ned flings himself disgustedly into Morris 
 chair.] 
 
 Alice Hemingway 
 [Moving over and standing in front of him. 
 
116 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 Speaks accusingly.] What have you been say- 
 ing to her? 
 
 Ned 
 [Disgruntled.] Nothing. 
 
 Alice Hemingway 
 [Threateningly.] Now listen to me, Ned. 
 
 Ned 
 [Earnestly.] On my word, Alice, I^ve been 
 saying nothing to her. 
 
 Alice Hemingway 
 [With sudden change of front.] Then you 
 ought to have been saying something to her. 
 
 Ned 
 [Irritably. Getting chair for her, seating her, 
 and seating himself again.] Look here, Alice, I 
 know your game. You invited me down here to 
 make a fool of me. 
 
 Alice Hemingway 
 Nothing of the sort, sir. I asked you down to 
 meet a sweet and unsullied girl — the sweetest, 
 most innocent and ingenuous girl in the world. 
 
 Ned 
 [Dryly.] That's what you said in your letter. 
 
A WICKED WOMAN 117 
 
 Alice Hemingway 
 And that's why you came. Jack had been 
 trying for a year to get you to come. He did 
 not know what kind of a letter to write. 
 
 Ned 
 If you think I came because of a line in a letter 
 about a girl I'd never seen — 
 
 Alice Hemingway 
 [Mockingly.'] The poor, jaded, world-worn 
 man, who is no longer interested in women 
 . . . and girls! The poor, tired pessimist who 
 has lost all faith in the goodness of women — 
 
 Ned 
 For which you are responsible. 
 
 Alice Hemingway 
 [Incredulously.'] I? 
 
 Ned 
 You are responsible. Why did you throw me 
 over and marry Jack? 
 
 Alice Hemingway 
 Do you want to know? 
 
 Ned 
 Yes. 
 
118 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 Alice Hemingway 
 [Judiciously.^ First, because I did not love 
 you. Second, because jou did not love me. 
 [Bhe smiles at Ms protesting hand and at the 
 protesting expression on his face.] And third, 
 because there were just about twenty -seven other 
 women at that time that you loved, or thought 
 you loved. That is why I married Jack. And 
 that is why you lost faith in the goodness of 
 women. You have only yourself to blame. 
 
 Ned 
 
 [Admiringly. 1 You talk so convincingly. I 
 almost believe you as I listen to you. And yet I 
 know all the time that you are like all the rest 
 of your sex — faithless, unveracious, and . . . 
 
 [Ee glares at her^ hut does not proceed.] 
 
 Alice Hemingway 
 Go on. I'm not afraid. 
 
 Ned 
 [With finality.] And immoral. 
 
 Alice Hemingway 
 Oh! You wretch! 
 
 Ned 
 [Gloatingly.] That's right. Get angry. 
 
A WICKED WOMAN 119 
 
 You may break the furniture if you wish. I 
 don't mind. 
 
 Alice Hemingway 
 [With sudden change of front, softly. '\ And 
 how about Loretta? 
 
 [Ned gasps and remains silent. 1^ 
 
 Alice Hemingway 
 The depths of duplicity that must lurk under 
 that sweet and innocent exterior . . . according 
 to your philosophy! 
 
 Ned 
 [Earnestly.'] Loretta is an exception, I con- 
 fess. She is all that you said in your letter. 
 She is a little fairy, an angel. I never dreamed 
 of anything like her. It is remarkable to find 
 such a woman in this age. 
 
 Alice Hemingway 
 [Encouragingly.'] She is so naive. 
 
 Ned 
 [Taking the halt.] Yes, isn't she? Her face 
 and her tongue betray all her secrets. 
 
 Alice Hemingway 
 [Nodding her head.] Yes, I have noticed it. 
 
120 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 Ned 
 [Delightedly.] Have you? 
 
 Alice Hemingway 
 She cannot conceal anything. Do you know 
 that she loves you? 
 
 Ned 
 [Falling into the trap, eagerly.] Do you 
 think so? 
 
 Alice Hemingway 
 [Laughing and rising.] And to think I once 
 permitted you to make love to me for three 
 weeks ! 
 
 [Ned rises.] 
 
 [Maid enters from left with letters, which 
 she brings to Alice Hemingway.] 
 
 Alice Hemingway 
 [Running over letters.] None for you, Ned. 
 [Selecting two letters for herself.] Tradesmen. 
 [Handing remainder of letters to Maid.] And 
 three for Loretta. [Speaking to Maid.] Put 
 them on the table, Josie. 
 
 [Maid puts letters on table to left front, and 
 makes exit to left.] 
 
A WICKED WOMAN 121 
 
 Ned 
 [With shade of jealousy.] Loretta seems to 
 have quite a correspondence. 
 
 Alice Hemingway 
 [With a sigh.] Yes, as I used to when I was a 
 girl. 
 
 Ned 
 But hers are family letters. 
 
 Alice Hemingway 
 Yes, I did not notice any from Billy. 
 
 Ned 
 [Faintly.] Billy? 
 
 Alice Hemingway 
 [Nodding.] Of course she has told you about 
 him? 
 
 Ned 
 [Gasping.] She has had lovers . . . already? 
 
 Alice Hemingway 
 And why not? She is nineteen. 
 
 Ned 
 [Haltingly.] This . . . er . . . this Billy . . . ? 
 
122 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 Alice Hemingway 
 [Laughing and putting her hand reassuringly 
 on his arm.] Now don't be alarmed, poor, tired 
 philosopher. She doesn't love Billy at all. 
 [LORETTA enters from right.] 
 
 Alice Hemingway 
 [To LoRETTA, nodding toward table.] Three 
 letters for you. 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 [Delightedly.] Oh! Thank you. 
 
 [LoRETTA trips swiftly across to table y looks 
 at letters^ sits down, opens letters, and 
 begins to read.] 
 
 Ned 
 [Suspiciously.] But Billy? 
 
 Alice Hemingway 
 I am afraid he loves her very hard. That is 
 why she is here. They had to send her away. 
 Billy was* making life miserable for her. They 
 were little children together — playmates. And 
 Billy has been, well, importunate. And Loretta, 
 poor child, does not know anything about mar- 
 riage. That is all. 
 
 Ned 
 [Reassured.] Oh, I see. 
 
A WICKED WOMAN 123 
 
 [Alice Hemingway starts slowly toward 
 right exit, continuing conversation and 
 accompanied hy Ned.] 
 
 Alice Hemingway 
 [Calling to Loretta.] Are you going fish- 
 ing, Loretta? 
 
 (Loretta looks up from letter and shakes 
 head.] 
 
 Alice Hemingway 
 [To Ned.] Then you're not, I suppose. 
 
 Ned 
 No, it's too warm. 
 
 Alice Hemingway 
 Then I know the place for you. 
 
 Ned 
 Where? 
 
 Alice Hemingway 
 Right here. [Looks significantly in direction 
 of Loretta.] Now is your opportunity to say 
 what you ought to say. 
 
 [Alice Hemingway laughs teasingly and 
 
 goes out to right.] 
 [Ned hesitates, starts to follow her, looks at 
 
124 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 LoRETTA, and stops. He twists his 
 moustache and continues to look at her 
 meditatively.] 
 [LoRETTA is unaware of his presence and 
 goes on reading. Finishes letter^ folds it, 
 replaces in envelope^ looks up, and dis- 
 covers Ned.] 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 [Startled.] Oh! I tliought you were gone. 
 
 Ned 
 [Walking across to her.] I thought I'd stay 
 and finish our conversation. 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 [Willingly y settling herself to listen.] Yes, 
 you were going to . . . [Drops eyes and ceases 
 talking.] 
 
 Ned 
 [Taking her hand, tenderly.] I little dreamed 
 when I came down here visiting that I was to 
 meet my destiny in — [Abruptly releases 
 Loretta's hand.] 
 
 [Maid enters from left with tray.] 
 [LoRETTA glances into tray and discovers 
 that it is empty. She looks inquiringly at 
 Maid.] 
 
A WICKED WOMAN 125 
 
 Maid 
 A gentleman to see you. He hasn't any card. 
 He said for me to tell you that it was Billy. 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 [Starting y looking with dismay and appeal to 
 Ned.] Oh! ... Ned! 
 
 Ned 
 [Gracefully and courteously, rising to his feet 
 and preparing to go.] If you'll excuse me now, 
 I'll wait till afterward to tell you what I wanted. 
 
 Loretta 
 [In dismay.] What shall I do? 
 
 Ned 
 [Pausing.] Don't you want to see him? 
 [Loretta shakes her head.] Then don't. 
 
 Loretta 
 
 [Slowly.] I can't do that. We are old 
 
 friends. We . . . were children together. [To 
 
 the Maid.] Send him in. [To Ned, who has 
 
 started to go out toward right.] Don't go, Ned. 
 
 [Maid makes exit to left.] 
 
 Ned 
 [Hesitating a moment.] I'll come back. 
 [Ned makes exit to right] 
 
126 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 [LoRETTA, left alone on stage^ shoivs per- 
 turhation and dismay.] 
 
 [Billy enters from left. Stands in doorway 
 a fnoment. His shoes are dusty. He 
 looks overheated. His eyes and face 
 brighten at sight of Loretta.] 
 
 Billy 
 [Stepping forward^ ardently. ] Loretta ! 
 
 Loretta 
 [Not exactly enthusiastic in her reception, 
 going slowly to meet him.] You never said you 
 were coming. 
 
 [Billy shows that he expects to kiss her, hut 
 she merely shakes his hand.] 
 
 Billy 
 [Looking down at his very dusty shoes.] I 
 walked from the station. 
 
 Loretta 
 If you had let me know, the carriage would 
 have been sent for you. 
 
 Billy 
 [With expression of shrewdness.] If I had let 
 you know, you wouldn't have let me come. 
 
 [Billy looks around stage cautiously, then 
 tries to kiss her.] 
 
A WICKED WOMAN 127 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 [Refusing to he kissed.] Won't you sit down? 
 
 Billy 
 [Coawingly,] Go on, just one. [Loretta 
 shakes head and holds him off.] Why not? 
 We're engaged. 
 
 Loretta 
 [With decision.] We're not. You know we're 
 not. You know I broke it off the day before I 
 came away. And . . . and . . . you'd better sit 
 down. 
 
 [Billy sits down on edge of chair. Loretta 
 seats herself hy table. Billy^, without ris- 
 ing , jerks his chair forward till they are 
 facing each other, his knees touching hers. 
 He yearns toward her. She moves hack 
 her chair slightly.] 
 
 Billy 
 [With supreme confidence.] That's what I 
 came to see you for — to get engaged over again. 
 [Billy hiidges chair forward and tries to 
 
 take her hand.] 
 [Loretta hudges her chair hack.] 
 
 Billy 
 [Drawing out large silver watch and looking at 
 
128 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 it.] Now look here, Loretta, I haven't any time 
 to lose. I've got to leave for that train in ten 
 minutes. And I want you to set the day. 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 But we're not engaged, Billy. So there can't 
 be any setting of the day. 
 
 Billy 
 [With confidence.] But we're going to be. 
 [Suddenly breaking out.] Oh, Loretta, if you 
 only knew how I've suffered. That first night I 
 didn't sleep a wink. I haven't slept much ever 
 since. [Hudges chair forward.] I walk the 
 floor all night. [Solemnly.] Loretta, I don't 
 eat enough to keep a canary bird alive. Lor- 
 etta . . . [Hudges chair forward.] 
 
 Loretta 
 [Budging her chair hack maternally.] Billy, 
 what you need is a tonic. Have you seen Doctor 
 Haskins? 
 
 Billy 
 [Looking at watch and evincing signs of 
 haste.] Loretta, when a girl kisses a man, it 
 means she is going to marry him. 
 
 Loretta 
 I know it, Billy. But . . . [She glances 
 
A WICKED WOMAN 129 
 
 toward letters on table.] Captain Kitt doesn't 
 want me to marry you. He says . . . [She takes 
 letter and begins to open it.] 
 
 Billy 
 Never mind what Captain Kitt says. He 
 wants you to stay and be company for your sister. 
 He doesn't want you to marry me because he 
 knows she wants to keep you. 
 
 LOEETTA 
 
 Daisy doesn't want to keep me. She wants 
 nothing but my own happiness. She says — 
 [She takes second letter from table and begins to 
 open it.] 
 
 Billy 
 Never mind what Daisy says — 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 [Taking third letter from table and beginning 
 to open it.] And Martha says — 
 
 Billy 
 [Angrily.] Darn Martha and the whole boil- 
 ing of them ! 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 [Reprovingly.] Oh, Billy! 
 
130 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 Billy 
 [Defensively.] Darn isn't swearing, and you 
 know it isn't. 
 
 [There is an awkward pause. Billy has lost 
 the thread of the conversation and has 
 vacant expression.] 
 
 Billy 
 [Suddenly recollecting.] Never mind Captain 
 Kitt, and Daisy, and Martha, and what they 
 want. The question is, what do you want? 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 [Appealingly.] Oh, Billy, I'm so unhappy. 
 Billy 
 
 [Ignoring the appeal and pressing home the 
 point.] The thing is, do you want to marry me? 
 [He looks at his watch.] Just answer that. 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 Aren't you afraid you'll miss that train? 
 
 Billy 
 Darn the train ! 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 [Reprovingly.] Oh, Billy! 
 
 Billy 
 [Most irascibly.] Darn isn't swearing. 
 
A WICKED WOMAN 131 
 
 [Plaintively.] That's the way you always put 
 me off. I didn't come all the way here for a 
 train. I came for you. Now just answer me one 
 thing. Do you want to marry me? 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 [Firmly. 1 No, I don't want to marry you. 
 
 Billy 
 [With assurance.] But you've got to, just the 
 same. 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 [With defiance.] Got to? 
 
 Billy 
 [With unshaken assurance.] That's what I 
 said — got to. And I'll see that you do. 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 [Blazing toith anger.] I am no longer a child. 
 You can't bully me, Billy Marsh ! 
 
 Billy 
 [Coolly.] I'm not trying to bully you. I'm 
 trying to save your reputation. 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 [Faintly.] Reputation? 
 Billy 
 [Nodding.] Yes, reputation. [He pauses for 
 
132 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 a moment, then speaks very solemnly.] Loretta, 
 when a woman kisses a man, she's got to marry 
 him. 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 [Appalled, faintly.] Got to? 
 
 Billy 
 [Dogmatically.] It is the custom. 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 [Brokenly.] And when ... a ... a woman 
 kisses a man and doesn't . . . marry him . . .? 
 
 Billy 
 Then there is a scandal. That's where all the 
 scandals you see in the papers come from. 
 [Billy looks at watch.] 
 [LoRETTA in silent despair.] 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 [In alasement.] You are a good man, Billy. 
 [Billy shoics that he believes it.] And I am a 
 very wicked woman. 
 
 Billy 
 No, you're not, Loretta. You just didn't know. 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 [With a gleam of hope.] But you kissed me 
 first. 
 
A WICKED WOMAN 133 
 
 Billy 
 It doesn't matter. You let me kiss you. 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 [Hope dying down.] But not at first. 
 
 Billy 
 But you did afterward and that's what counts. 
 You let me kiss you in the grape-arbor. You let 
 me — 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 [With anguish.] Don't! Don't! 
 
 Billy 
 [Relentlessly.] — kiss you when you were 
 playing the piano. You let me kiss you that day 
 of the picnic. And I can't remember all the 
 times you let me kiss you good night. 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 [Beginning to weep.] Not more than five. 
 
 Billy 
 [With conviction.] Eight at least. 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 [Reproachfully y still weeping.] You told me 
 it was all right. 
 
134 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 Billy 
 
 [Emphatically.] So it was all right — until 
 you said jou wouldn't marry me after all. Then 
 it was a scandal — only no one knows it yet. If 
 you marry me no one ever will know it. [Looks 
 at watch.] I've got to go. [Stands up.] 
 Where's my hat? 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 [Sobbing.] This is awful. 
 
 Billy 
 [Approvingly.] You bet it's awful. And 
 there's only one way out. [Looks anxiously 
 about for hat.] What do you say? 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 [Brokenly.] I must think. I'll write to you. 
 [Faintly.] The train? You're hat's in the hall. 
 
 Billy 
 [Looks at watch, hastily tries to kiss her, suc- 
 ceeds only in shaking hand, starts across stage 
 toward left.] All right. You write to me. 
 Write to-morrow. [Stops for a moment in door- 
 way and speaks very solemnly.] Eemember, 
 Loretta, there must be no scandal. 
 [Billy goes out.] 
 
A WICKED WOMAN 135 
 
 [LoRETTA sits in chair quietly weeping. 
 Slowly dries eyes, rises from chair, and 
 stands, undecided as to what she will do 
 next. 
 
 [Ned enters from right, peeping. Discovers 
 that LoRETTA is alone, and comes quietly 
 across stage to her. When Ned comes up 
 to her she begins tveeping again and tries 
 to turn her head away. Ned catches both 
 her hands in his and compels her to look 
 at him. She weeps harder.] 
 
 Ned 
 [Putting one arm protectingly around her 
 shoulder and dratving her toward him.] There, 
 there, little one, don't cry. 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 [Turning her face to his shoulder like a tired 
 child, sobbing. 1 Oh, Ned, if you only knew how 
 wicked I am. 
 
 Ned 
 [Smiling indulgently.] What is the matter, 
 little one? Has your dearly beloved sister failed 
 to write to you? [Loretta shakes head.] Has 
 Hemingway been bullying you? [Loretta 
 shakes head.] Then it must have been that caller 
 
136 THE HUMAN DKIFT 
 
 of yours? [Long pause, during which Loretta's 
 weeping grows more violent.] Tell me what's 
 the matter, and we'll see what I can do. [He 
 lightly kisses her hair — so lightly that she does 
 not know. 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 [Sobbing.] I can't. You will despise me. 
 Oh, Ned, I am so ashamed. 
 
 Ned 
 [Laughing incredulously.] Let us forget all 
 about it. I want to tell you something that may 
 make me very happy. My fondest hope is that 
 it will make you happy, too. Loretta, I love 
 you — 
 
 Loretta 
 [Uttering a sharp cry of delight, then moan- 
 ing.] Too late! 
 
 Ned 
 [Surprised.] Too late? 
 
 Loretta 
 [Still moaning.] Oh, why did I? [Ned 
 somewhat stiffens.] I was so young. I did not 
 know the world then. 
 
A WICKED WOMAN 137 
 
 Ned 
 What is it all about anyway? 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 Oh, I . . . he . . . Billy ... I am a wicked 
 woman, Ned. I know you will never speak to me 
 again. 
 
 Ned 
 
 This . . . er . . . this Billy ^ what has he 
 been doing? 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 I ... he ... I didn't know. I was so young. 
 I could not help it. Oh, I shall go mad, I shall 
 go mad ! 
 
 [Ned^s encircling arm goes limp. He gently 
 disengages her and deposits her in hig 
 chair.] 
 [LoRETTA buries her face and sobs afresh.] 
 
 Ned 
 [Twisting moustache fiercely , regarding her 
 dubiously, hesitating a moment, then drawing up 
 chair and sitting down.] I ... I do not under- 
 stand. 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 [W ailing.] I am so unhappy! 
 
138 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 Ned 
 [Inquisitorially.] Why unhappy? 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 Because ... he ... he wants to marry me. 
 
 Ned 
 [His face brightening instantly, leaning for- 
 ward and laying a hand soothingly on hers.] 
 That should not make any girl unhappy. Be- 
 cause you don't love him is no reason — 
 [Abruptly breaking off.] Of course you don't 
 love him? [Loretta shakes her head and shoul- 
 ders vigorously.] What? 
 
 Loretta 
 [Explosively.] No, I don't love Billy! I 
 don't want to love Billy! 
 
 Ned 
 [With confidence.] Because you don't love 
 him is no reason that you should be unhappy just 
 because he has proposed to you. 
 
 Loretta 
 [Sobbing.] That's the trouble: I wish I did 
 love him. Oh, I wish I were dead. 
 
 Ned 
 [Growing complacent.] Now my dear child, 
 
A WICKED WOMAN 139 
 
 you are worrying yourself over trifles. [His sec- 
 ond hand joins the first in holding her hands.] 
 Women do it every day. Because you have 
 changed your mind, or did not know your mind, 
 because you have — to use an unnecessarily harsh 
 word — jilted a man — 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 [Interrupting, raising her head and looking at 
 him.] Jilted? Oh, Ned, if that were all ! 
 
 Ned 
 [Hollow voice.] All ! 
 
 [Ned^s hands slowly retreat from hers. He 
 opens his mouth as though to speak fur- 
 ther, then changes his mind and remains 
 silent. 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 [Protestingly.] But I don't want to marry 
 him! 
 
 Ned 
 Then I shouldn't. 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 But I ought to marry him. 
 
 Ned 
 Ought to marry him? [Loretta nods.] That 
 is a strong word. 
 
140 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 [Nodding.] I know it is. [Her lips are 
 tremhling, hut she strives for control and man- 
 ages to speak more calmly.] I am a wicked 
 woman. A terrible wicked woman. No one 
 knows how wicked I am . . . except Billy. 
 
 Ned 
 [Starting, looking at her queerly.] He . . . 
 Billy knows? [Loretta nods. He debates with 
 himself a moment.] Tell me about it. You 
 must tell me all of it. 
 
 Loretta 
 [Faintly, as though about to weep again.] All 
 
 of it? 
 
 Ned 
 
 [Firmly.] Yes, all of it. 
 
 Loretta 
 [Haltingly.] And . . . will . . . you . . . ever 
 . . . forgive . . . me? 
 
 Ned 
 [Drawing a long breath, desperately.] Yes, 
 I'll forgive you. Go ahead. 
 
 Loretta 
 There was no one to tell me. We were with 
 
A WICKED WOMAN 141 
 
 each other so much. I did not know anything of 
 the world . . . then. [Pauses.] 
 
 Ned 
 [Impatiently.] Go on. 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 If I had only known. [Pauses.] 
 
 Ned 
 [Biting his lip and clenching his hands.] Yes, 
 yes. Go on. 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 We were together almost every evening. 
 
 Ned 
 [Savagely.] Billy? 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 Yes, of course, Billy. We were with each other 
 so much. ... If I had only known. . . . There 
 was no one to tell me ... I was so young . . . 
 [Breaks down crying.] 
 
 Ned 
 [Leaping to his feet, explosively.] The scoun- 
 drel! 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 [Lifting her head.] Billy is not a scoundrel 
 ... He ... he ... is a good man. 
 
142 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 Ned 
 [Sarcastically. ] I suppose you'll be telling me 
 next that it was all your fault. [Loretta nodsJ] 
 What! 
 
 Loretta 
 [Steadily,^ It was all my fault. I should 
 never have let him. I was to blame. 
 
 Ned 
 {Paces up and down for a minute, stops in 
 front of her, and speaks with resignation.] All 
 right. I don't blame you in the least, Loretta. 
 And you have been very honest. It is . . . 
 er . . . commendable. But Billy is right, and 
 you are wrong. You must get married. 
 
 Loretta 
 [In dim, far-away voice.] To Billy? 
 
 Ned 
 Yes, to Billy. I'll see to it. Where does he 
 live? I'll make him. If he won't Til . . . I'll 
 shoot him ! 
 
 Loretta 
 [Crying out with alarm.] Oh, Ned, you won't 
 do that? 
 
A WICKED WOMAN 143 
 
 Ned 
 [Sternly.] I shall. 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 But I don't want to marry Billy. 
 
 Ned 
 [Sternly.] You must. And Billy must. Do 
 you understand? It is the only thing. 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 That^s what Billy said. 
 
 Ned 
 [Triumphantly.] You see, I am right. 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 And if ... if I don't marry him . . . there 
 will be . . . scandal? 
 
 Ned 
 [Calmly.] Yes, there will be scandal. 
 
 Loretta 
 That's what Billy said. Oh, I am so unhappy ! 
 [Loretta breaks down into violent weeping.] 
 [Ned paces grimly up and down, now and 
 again fiercely twisting his moustache.] 
 
 Loretta 
 [Face huried, sobbing and crying all the time.] 
 
144 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 I don't want to leave Daisy! I don't want to 
 leave Daisy! What shall I do? What shall I 
 do? How was I to know? He didn't tell me. 
 Nobody else ever kissed me. [Ned stops curi- 
 ously to listen. As he listens his face brightens,] 
 I never dreamed a kiss could be so terrible . . . 
 until . . . until he told me. He only told me 
 this morning. 
 
 Ned 
 
 [Ahruptli/.] Is that what you are crying 
 about? 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 [Reluctantly.] N-no. 
 
 Ned 
 [In hopeless voice, the brightness gone out of 
 his face, about to begin pacing again.] Then 
 what are you crying about? 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 Because you said I had to marry Billy. I 
 don't want to marry Billy. I don't want to leave 
 Daisy. I don't know what I want. I wish I 
 were dead. 
 
 Ned 
 
 [Nerving himself for another effort.] Now 
 look here, Loretta, be sensible. What is this 
 
A WICKED WOMAN 145 
 
 about kisses? You haven't told me everything 
 after all. 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 I ... I don't want to tell you everything. 
 
 Ned 
 [Imperatively.] You must. 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 [Surrendering.] Well, then . . . must I? 
 
 Ned 
 You must. 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 [Floundering.] He ... I ... we ... I let 
 him, and he kissed me. 
 
 Ned 
 [Desperately y controlling himself.] Go on. 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 He says eight, but I can't think of more than 
 five times. 
 
 Ned 
 Yes, go on. 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 That's all. 
 
146 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 Ned 
 [With vast incredulity.] All? 
 
 LOEETTA 
 
 [Puzzled.] All? 
 
 Ned 
 [Awkwardly.] I mean . . . er . . . nothing 
 worse? 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 [Puzzled.] Worse? As though there could 
 be. Billy said — 
 
 Ned 
 [Interrupting.] When? 
 
 Loretta 
 
 This afternoon. Just now. Billy said that 
 my . . . our . . . our . . . our kisses were ter- 
 rible if we didn't get married. 
 
 Ned 
 What else did he say? 
 
 Loretta 
 
 He said that when a woman permitted a man 
 
 to kiss her she always married him. That it was 
 
 awful if she didn't. It was the custom, he said ; 
 
 and I say it is a bad, wicked custom, and it has 
 
A WICKED WOMAN 147 
 
 broken my heart. I shall never be happy again. 
 I know I am terrible, but I can't help it. I must 
 have been born wicked. 
 
 Ned 
 [Absent-mindedly bringing out a cigarette and 
 striking a match.] Do you mind if I smoke? 
 [Coming to himself again, and flinging away 
 match and cigarette.] I beg your pardon. I 
 don't want to smoke. I didn't mean that at all. 
 What I mean is . . . [He bends over Loretta^ 
 catches her hands in his, then sits on arm of chair, 
 softly puts one arm around her, and is about to 
 kiss her.] 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 [With horror, repulsing him.] No! No! 
 
 Ned 
 [Surprised.] What's the matter? 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 [Agitatedly.] Would you make me a wickeder 
 woman than I am? 
 
 Ned 
 A kiss? 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 There will be another scandal. That would 
 make two scandals. 
 
148 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 Ned 
 To kiss the woman I love ... a scandal? 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 Billj loves me, and he said so. 
 
 Ned 
 Billy is a joker ... or else he is as innocent 
 as you. 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 But you said so yourself. 
 
 Ned 
 [Taken aback.] I? 
 
 Loretta 
 Yes, you said it yourself, with your own 
 lips, not ten minutes ago. I shall never believe 
 you again. 
 
 Ned 
 [Masterfully putting arm around her and 
 drawing her toward him.] And I am a joker, 
 too, and a very wicked man. Nevertheless, you 
 must trust me. There will be nothing wrong. 
 
 Loretta 
 [Preparing to yield.] And no . . . scandal? 
 
A WICKED WOMAN 149 
 
 Ned 
 Scandal fiddlesticks. Loretta, I want you to 
 be my wife. [He waits anxiously.] 
 
 [Jack Hemingway^ in fishing costume^ ap- 
 pears in doorway to right and looks on.] 
 
 Ned 
 You might say something. 
 
 Loretta 
 I will . . . if . . . 
 
 [Alice Hemingway appears in doorway to 
 left and looks on.] 
 
 Ned 
 [In suspense.] Yes, go on. 
 
 Loretta 
 If I don't have to marry Billy. 
 
 Ned 
 [Almost shouting.] You can't marry both 
 of us! 
 
 Loretta 
 [Sadly y repulsing him with her hands.] Then, 
 Ned, I cannot marry you. 
 
 Ned 
 [Dumbfounded.] W-what? 
 
150 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 LOEETTA 
 
 [Sadly.] Because I can't marry both of you. 
 
 Ned 
 Bosh and nonsense ! 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 I'd like to marry you, but . . . 
 
 Ned 
 There is nothing to prevent you. 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 [With sad conviction.] Oh, yes, there is. 
 You said yourself that I had to marry Billy. 
 You said you would s-s-shoot him if he didn't. 
 
 Ned 
 [Drawing her toward him.] Nevertheless . . w 
 
 LORETTA 
 
 [Slightly holding him off.] And it isn't the 
 custom . . . what . . . Billy said. 
 
 Ned 
 No, it isn't the custom. Now, Loretta, will you 
 marry me? 
 
 Loretta 
 [Pouting demurely.] Don't be angry with me, 
 
A WICKED WOMAN 151 
 
 Ned. [He gathers her into his arms and kisses 
 her. She partially frees herself, gasping,] I 
 wish it were the custom, because now I^d have to 
 marry you, Ned, wouldn't I? 
 
 [Ned and Loretta kiss a second time and 
 
 profoundly.] 
 [Jack Hemingway chuckles.] 
 [Ned and Loretta, startled, but still in each 
 other^s arms, look around. Ned looks 
 sillily at Alice Hemingway. Loretta 
 looks at Jack Hemingway.] 
 
 Loretta 
 I don't care. 
 
 curtain 
 
THE BIRTH MARK 
 
 Sketch by Jack London 
 
 written for 
 
 Robert and Julia Fitzsimmons 
 
THE BIRTH MARK 
 
 Scene — One of the club rooms of the West Bay 
 Athletic Club, Near centre front is a large 
 table covered with newspapers and magazines, 
 At left a punching-bag apparatus. At right, 
 against wall, a desk, on which rests a desk- 
 telephone. Door at rear toward left. On 
 walls are framed pictures of pugilists, con- 
 spicuously among which is one of Robert Fitz- 
 simmons. Appropriate furnishings, etc., such 
 as foils, clubs, dumb-bells and trophies. 
 
 [Enter Maud Sylvester.] 
 
 [She is dressed as a man, in evening clothes, pre- 
 ferably a Tuxedo. In her hand is a card, and 
 under her arm a paper-wrapped parcel. She 
 peeps about curiously and advances to table. 
 She is timorous and excited, elated and at the 
 same time frightened. Her eyes are dancing 
 with excitement.] 
 
 Maud 
 [Pausi7ig by table.] Not a soul saw me. I 
 wonder where everybody is. And that big 
 
 155 
 
156 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 brother of mine said I could not get in. [She 
 reads hack of card.] " Here is my card, Maudie. 
 If you can use it, go ahead. But you will never 
 get inside the door. I consider my bet as good 
 as won." [Looking up, triumphantly.'] You do, 
 do you? Oh, if you could see your little sister 
 now. Here she is, inside. [Pauses, and looks 
 about.] So this is the West Bay Athletic Club. 
 No women allowed. Well, here I am, if I don't 
 look like one. [Stretches out one leg and then 
 the other, and looks at them. Leaving card and 
 parcel on table, she struts around like a man, 
 looks at pictures of pugilists on walls, reading 
 aloud their names and making appropriate re- 
 marks. But she stops before the portrait of 
 Fitzsimmons and reads aloud.] "Robert Fitz- 
 simmons, the greatest warrior of them all." 
 [Clasps hands, and looking up at portrait mur- 
 murs.] Oh, you dear! 
 
 [Continues strutting around, imitating what 
 she considers are a man's stride and swagger, re- 
 turns to table and proceeds to unwrap parcel.] 
 Well, I'll go out like a girl, if I did come in like 
 a man. [Drops wrapping paper on table and 
 holds up a woman's long automobile cloak and 
 a motor bonnet. Is suddenly startled by sound 
 of approaching footsteps and glances in a fright- 
 
THE BIRTH MARK 157 
 
 ened way toward door.] Mercy! Here comes 
 somebody now! [Glances about her in alarm, 
 drops cloak and bonnet on floor close to table, 
 seizes a handful of newspapers, and runs to large 
 leather chair to right of table, where she seats 
 herself hurriedly. One paper she holds up before 
 her, hiding her face as she pretends to read. Un- 
 fortunately the paper is upside down. The other 
 papers lie on her lap.] 
 
 [Enter Robert Fitzsimmons.] 
 
 [Ee looks about, advances to table, takes out 
 cigarette case and is about to select one, when 
 he notices motor cloak and bonnet on floor. 
 He lays cigarette case on table and picks them 
 up. They strike him as profoundly curious 
 things to be in a club room. He looks at Maud^ 
 then sees card on table. He picks it up and 
 reads it to himself, then looks at her with com- 
 prehension. Hidden by her newspaper, she 
 sees nothing. He look at card again and reads 
 and speaks in an aside.] 
 
 Fitzsimmons 
 
 " Maudie. John H. Sylvester." That must be 
 
 Jack Sylvester's sister Maud. [Fitzsimmons 
 
 shows by his expression that he is going to play 
 
 a joke. Tossing cloak and bonnet under the 
 
158 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 table he places card in his vest pocket , selects a 
 chair, sits down, and looks at Maud. He notes 
 paper is upside down, is hugely tickled, and 
 laughs siletitly.] Hello! [Newspaper is agi- 
 tated by slight tremor. He speaks more loudly.] 
 Hello! [Newspaper shakes badly. He speaks 
 very loudly.] Hello! 
 
 Maud 
 [Peeping at him over top of paper and speak- 
 ing hesitatingly.] H-h-hello! 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 [Gruffly.] You are a queer one, reading a 
 paper upside down. 
 
 Maud 
 [Lowering newspaper and trying to appear at 
 ease.] It's quite a trick, isn't it? I often prac- 
 tice it. I'm real clever at it, you know. 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 [Grunts, then adds.] Seems to me I have seen 
 you before. 
 
 Maud 
 [Glancing quickly from his face to portrait and 
 back again.] Yes, and I know you — You are 
 Robert Fitzsimmons. 
 
THE BIRTH MARK 159 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 I thought I knew you. 
 
 Maud 
 Yes, it was out in San Francisco. Mj people 
 still live there. I'm just, ahem, doing New York. 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 But I don't quite remember the name. 
 
 Maud 
 Jones — Harry Jones. 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 [Hugely delighted, leaping from chair and 
 striding over to her. Sure. [Slaps her resound- 
 ingly on shoulder.] 
 
 [She is nearly crushed by the weight of the 
 blow, and at the same time shocked. She 
 scrambles to her feet.] 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 Glad to see you, Harry. [He wrings her hand 
 so that it hurts.] Glad to see you again, Harry. 
 [He continues wringing her hand and pumping 
 her arm.] 
 
 Maud 
 
 [Struggling to withdraw her hand and finally 
 succeeding.. Her voice is rather faint.] Ye-es, 
 
160 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 er . . . Bob . . . er . . . glad to see you again. 
 [She looks ruefully at her bruised fingers and 
 sinks into chair. Then, recollecting her part, she 
 crosses her legs in a mannish way.] 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 [Crossing to desk at right, against which he 
 leans, facing her.] You were a wild young ras- 
 cal in those San Francisco days. [Chuckling.] 
 Lord, Lord, how it all comes back to me. 
 
 Maud 
 [Boastfully. ] I was wild — some, 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 [Grinning.] I should say! Remember that 
 night I put you to bed? 
 
 Maud 
 [Forgetting herself, indignantly.] Sir! 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 You were . . .er . . . drunk. 
 
 Maud 
 I never was! 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 Surely you haven't forgotten that night! 
 You began with dropping champagne bottles out 
 
THE BIRTH MARK 161 
 
 of the club windows on the heads of the people 
 on the sidewalk, and you wound up by assaulting 
 a cabman. And let me tell you I saved you from 
 a good licking right there, and squared it with the 
 police. Don't you remember? 
 
 Maud 
 [Nodding hesitatingly.] Yes, it is beginning 
 to come back to me. I was a bit tight that night. 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 {Exultantly.] A bit tight! Why, before I 
 could get you to bed you insisted on telling me 
 the story of your life. 
 
 Maud 
 Did I? I don't remember that. 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 I should say not. You were past remembering 
 anything by that time. You had your arms 
 around my neck — 
 
 Maud 
 [Interrupting,] Oh! 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 And you kept repeating over and over, " Bob, 
 dear Bob." 
 
162 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 Maud 
 [Sprmging to her feet] Oh! I never did! 
 [Recollecting herself.] Perhaps I must have. I 
 was a trifle wild in those days, I admit. But I'm 
 wise now. I've sowed my wild oats and steadied 
 down. 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 I'm glad to hear that, Harry. You were tear- 
 ing off a pretty fast pace in those days. [Pause, 
 in which Maud nods.] Still punch the bag? 
 
 Maud 
 [In quick alarm, glancing at punching hag.] 
 No, I've got out of the hang of it. 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 [Reproachfully.] You haven't forgotten that 
 right-and-left, arm-elbow and shoulder movement 
 I taught you? 
 
 Maud 
 [With hesitation.] N — o — o. 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 [Moving toward hag to left] Then, come on. 
 
 Maud 
 
 [Rising reluctantly and following.] I'd 
 rather see you punch the bag. I'd just love to. 
 
THE BIRTH MARK 163 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 I will, afterward. You go to it first. 
 
 Maud 
 [Eyeing the hag in alarm. ] No ; you. I'm out 
 of practice. 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 [Looking at her sharply.] How many drinks 
 have you had to-night? 
 
 Maud 
 Not a one. I don't drink — that is, er, only 
 occasionally. 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 [Indicating hag.] Then go to it. 
 Maud 
 
 No ; I tell you I am out of practice. I've for- 
 gotten it all. You see, I made a discovery. 
 [Pauses.] 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 Yes? 
 
 Maud 
 I — I — you remember what a light voice I al- 
 ways had — almost soprano? 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 [Nods.] Well, I discovered it was a perfect 
 
164 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 falsetto. I've been practising it ever since. Ex- 
 perts, in another room, would swear it was a 
 woman's voice. So would you, if you turned 
 your back and I sang. 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 [Who has been laughing increduously , now he- 
 comes suspicious.] Look here, kid, I think you 
 are an imposter. You are not Harry Jones at 
 all. 
 
 Maud 
 I am, too. 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 I don't believe it. He was heavier than you. 
 
 Maud 
 I had the fever last summer and lost a lot of 
 weight. 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 You are the Harry Jones that got soused and 
 had to be put to bed? 
 
 Maud 
 Y — e — s. 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 There is one thing I remember very distinctly. 
 
THE BIRTH MARK 165 
 
 Harry Jones had a birth mark on his knee. [He 
 looks at her legs searchingly.] 
 
 Maud 
 [Emharrassedy then resolving to carry it out."] 
 Yes, right here. [/Sf/ie advances right leg and 
 touches it.'\ 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 [Triumphantly.^ Wrong. It was the other 
 knee. 
 
 Maud 
 I ought to know. 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 You haven't any birth mark at all. 
 
 Maud 
 I have, too. 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 [Suddenly springing to her and attempting to 
 seize her leg,] Then we'll prove it. Let me see. 
 
 Maud 
 [In a panic hacks away from him and resists 
 his attempts, until grinning in an aside to the 
 audience, he gives over. She, in an aside to audi- 
 ence.] Fancy his wanting to see my birth mark. 
 
166 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 [Bullying. Then take a go at the bag. [She 
 shakes her head.] You're not Harry Jones. 
 
 Maud 
 [Approaching punching hag.] I am, too. 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 Then hit it. 
 
 Maud 
 
 [Resolving to attempt it, hits hag several nice 
 hlowSj and then is struck on the nose hy it.] Oh ! 
 
 [Recovering herself and riibhing her nose.] I 
 told you I was out of practice. You punch the 
 bag, Bob. 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 I will, if you will show me what you can do 
 with that wonderful soprano voice of yours. 
 
 Maud 
 I don't dare. Everybody would think there 
 was a woman in the club. 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 [Shaking his head.] No, they won't. They've 
 all gone to the fight. There's not a soul in the 
 building. 
 
THE BIRTH MARK 167 
 
 Maud 
 [Alarmed, in a weak voice.] Not — a — soul 
 — in — the building? 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 Not a soul. Only you and I. 
 
 Maud 
 [Starting hurriedly toward door.] Then I 
 must go. 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 What's your hurry? Sing. 
 
 Maud 
 [Turning hack with new resolve.] Let me see 
 you punch the bag, — er — Bob. 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 You sing first. 
 
 Maud 
 No; you punch first. 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 I don't believe you are Harry 
 
 Maud 
 [Hastily.] All right, I'll sing. You sit down 
 over there and turn your back. 
 [FiTZSIMMONS obeys.] 
 
168 THE HUMAN DKIFT 
 
 [Maud walks over to the table toward right. 
 She is about to sing, when she notices 
 FiTZSiMMONS^s cigarette case, picks it up, 
 and in an aside reads his name on it 
 and speaks.] 
 
 Maud 
 ^^ Robert Fitzsimmons." That will prove to 
 my brother that I have been here. 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 Hurry up. 
 
 [Maud hastily puts cigarette case in her 
 pocket and begins to sing.] 
 
 SONG 
 
 [During the song Fitzsimmons turns his 
 head slowly and looks at her with growing 
 admiration.] 
 
 Maud 
 How did you like it? 
 
 Fitzsimmons 
 [ Gruffly. ] Rotten. Anybody could tell it was 
 a boy's voice — 
 
 Maud 
 Oh! 
 
THE BIRTH MARK 169 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 It is rough and coarse and it cracked on every 
 high note. 
 
 Maud 
 
 Oh! Oh! 
 
 [Recollecting herself and shrugging her shoul- 
 ders.] Oh, very well. Now let's see if you can 
 do any better with the bag. 
 
 [FiTZSIMMONS takes off coat and gives exhi- 
 bition.] 
 
 [Maud looks on in an ecstasy of admiration.] 
 
 Maud 
 
 [As he finishes.] Beautiful ! Beautiful ! 
 
 [As he puts on coat and goes over and sits 
 down near table.] Nothing like the bag to lim- 
 ber one up. I feel like a fighting cock. Harry, 
 let's go out on a toot, you and I. 
 
 Maud 
 Wh — a — a— -t? 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 A toot. You know — one of those rip-snort- 
 ing nights you used to make. 
 
 Maud 
 [Emphatically^ as she picks up newspapers 
 
170 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 from leather chair, sits down, and places them on 
 her lap.] I'll do nothing of the sort. IVe — 
 I've reformed. 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 You used to joy-ride like the very devil. 
 
 Maud 
 I know it. 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 And you always had a pretty girl or two along. 
 
 Maud 
 [Boastfully, in mannish fashion.] Oh, I still 
 have my fling. Do you know any — well, — er, 
 — nice girls? 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 Sure. 
 
 Maud 
 Put me wise. 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 Sure. You know Jack Sylvester? 
 
 Maud 
 [Forgetting herself. ] He's my brother — 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 [Exploding.] What! 
 
THE BIRTH MARK 171 
 
 Maud 
 — In-law's first cousin. 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 Oh! 
 
 Maud 
 So you see I don't know liim very well. I only 
 met him once — at the club. We had a drink to- 
 gether. 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 Then you don't know his sister? 
 
 Maud 
 [Starting.] His sister? I — I didn't know 
 he had a sister. 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 [Enthusiastically.] She's a peach. A queen. 
 A little bit of all right. A — a loo-loo. 
 
 Maud 
 [Flattered.] She is, is she? 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 She's a scream. You ought to get acquainted 
 with her. 
 
 Maud 
 [Slyly.] You know her, then? 
 
172 THE HUMAN DKIFT 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 You bet. 
 
 Maud 
 [Aside.] Oh, ho! [To Fitzsimmons.] Know 
 her very well? 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 I've taken her out more times than I can re- 
 member. You'll like her, I'm sure. 
 
 Maud 
 Thanks. Tell me some more about her. 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 She dresses a bit loud. But you won't mind 
 that. And whatever you do, don't take her to eat. 
 
 Maud 
 [Hiding her chagrin.] Why not? 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 I never saw such an appetite — 
 
 Maud 
 Oh! 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 It's fair sickening. She must have a tape- 
 worm. And she thinks she can sing. 
 
THE BIRTH MARK 173 
 
 Maud 
 Yes? 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 Rotten. You can do better yourself, and that's 
 not saying much. She's a nice girl, really she is, 
 but she is the black sheep of the family. Funny, 
 isn't it? 
 
 Maud 
 
 [Weak voice.] Yes, funny. 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 Her brother Jack is all right. But he can't do 
 anything with her. She's a — a — 
 
 Maud 
 [Grimly.] Yes. Go on. 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 A holy terror. She ought to be in a reform 
 school. 
 
 Maud 
 
 [Springing to her feet and slamming news- 
 papers in his face.] Oh! Oh! Oh! You liar! 
 She isn't anything of the sort ! 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 [Recovering from the onslaught and making 
 helieve he is angry, advancing threateningly on 
 
174 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 her.] Now I'm going to put a head on you. You 
 young hoodlum. 
 
 Maud 
 [All alarm and contrition, hacking away from 
 him.] Don't! Please don't! I'm sorry! I apol- 
 ogise. I — I beg your pardon, Bob. Only I 
 don't like to hear girls talked about that way, 
 even — even if it is true. And you ought to 
 know. 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 [Subsiding and resuming seat.] You've 
 changed a lot, I must say. 
 
 Maud 
 [Sitting down in leather chair.] I told you 
 I'd reformed. Let us talk about something else. 
 Why is it girls like prize fighters? I should 
 think — ahem — I mean it seems to me that girls 
 would think prize fighters horrid. 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 They are men. 
 
 Maud 
 But there is so much crookedness in the game. 
 One hears about it all the time. 
 
THE BIRTH MARK 175 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 There are crooked men in every business and 
 profession. The best fighters are not crooked. 
 
 Maud 
 I — er — I thought they all faked fights when 
 there was enough in it. 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 Not the best ones. 
 
 Maud 
 Did you — er — ever fake a fight? 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 [LooJdng at her sharply ^ then speaking 
 solemnly. 1 Yes. Once. 
 
 Maud 
 [Shocked^ speaking sadly.] And I always 
 heard of you and thought of you as the one clean 
 champion who never faked. 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 [Gently and seriously.] Let me tell you about 
 it. It was down in Australia. I had just begun 
 to fight my way up. It was with old Bill Hobart 
 out at Rushcutters Bay. I threw the fight to 
 him. 
 
176 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 Maud 
 [Repelled^ disgusted.] Oh! I could not have 
 believed it of you. 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 Let me tell you about it. Bill was an old 
 fighter. Not an old man, you know, but he'd 
 been in the fighting game a long time. He was 
 about thirty-eight and a gamer man never entered 
 the ring. But he was in hard luck. Younger 
 fighters were coming up, and he was being 
 crowded out. At that time it wasn't often he got 
 a fight and the purses were small. Besides it was 
 a drought year in Australia. You don't know 
 what that means. It means that the rangers are 
 starved. It means that, the sheep are starved 
 and die by the millions. It means that there is 
 no money and no work, and that the men and 
 women and kiddies starve. 
 
 Bill Hobart had a missus and three kids and at 
 the time of his fight with me they were all starv- 
 ing. They did not have enough to eat. Do you 
 understand? They did not have enough to eat. 
 And Bill did not have enough to eat. He trained 
 on an empty stomach, which is no way to train 
 you'll admit. During that drought year there 
 was little enough money in the ring, but he had 
 
THE BIRTH MARK 177 
 
 failed to get any fights. He had worked at long- 
 shoring, ditch-digging, coal-shovelling — any- 
 thing, to keep the life in the missus and the kid- 
 dies. The trouble was the jobs didn't hold out. 
 And there he was, matched to fight with me, be- 
 hind in his rent, a tough old chopping-block, but 
 weak from lack of food. If he did not win the 
 fight, the landlord was going to put them into the 
 street. 
 
 Maud 
 But why would you want to fight with him in 
 such weak condition? 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 I did not know. I did not learn till at the 
 ringside just before the fight. It was in the 
 dressing rooms, waiting our turn to go on. Bill 
 came out of his room, ready for the ring. " Bill," 
 I said — in fun, you know. " Bill, I've got to do 
 you to-night." He said nothing, but he looked at 
 me with the saddest and most pitiful face I have 
 ever seen. He went back into his dressing room 
 and sat down. 
 
 " Poor Bill ! " one of my seconds said. " He's 
 been fair starving these last weeks. And I've 
 got it straight, the landlord chucks him out if he 
 loses to-night." 
 
178 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 Then the call came and we went into the ring. 
 Bill was desperate. He fought like a tiger, a 
 madman. He was fair crazy. He was fighting 
 for more than I was fighting for. I was a rising 
 fighter, and I was fighting for the money and the 
 recognition. But Bill was fighting for life — for 
 the life of his loved ones. 
 
 Well, condition told. The strength went out 
 of him, and I was fresh as a daisy. " What's 
 the matter. Bill?" I said to him in a clinch. 
 " You're weak." " I ain't had a bit to eat this 
 day," he answered. That was all. 
 
 By the seventh round he was about all in, hang- 
 ing on and panting and sobbing for breath in the 
 clinches, and I knew I could put him out any 
 time. I drew my right for the short arm jab 
 that would do the business. He knew it was 
 coming, and he was powerless to prevent it. 
 " For the love of God, Bob," he said ; and — 
 [Pause,] 
 
 Maud 
 Yes? Yes? 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 I held back the blow. We were in a clinch. 
 " For the love of God, Bob," he said again, " the 
 missus and the kiddies ! " 
 
THE BIRTH MARK 179 
 
 And right there I saw and knew it all. I saw 
 the hungry children asleep, and the missus sitting 
 up and waiting for Bill to come home, waiting 
 to know whether they were to have food to eat or 
 be thrown out in the street. 
 
 " Bill," I said, in the next clinch, so low only 
 he could hear. " Bill, remember the La Blanche 
 swing. Give it to me, hard.'' 
 
 We broke away, and he was tottering and 
 groggy. He staggered away and started to whirl 
 the swing. I saw it coming. I made believe I 
 didn't and started after him in a rush. Biff! 
 It caught me on the jaw, and I went down. I 
 was young and strong. I could eat punishment. 
 I could have got up the first second. But I lay 
 there and let them count me out. And making 
 believe I was still dazed, I let them carry me to 
 my corner and work to bring me to. [Pause.] 
 Well, I faked that fight. 
 
 Maud 
 [Springing to him and shaking his hand.] 
 Thank God ! Oh ! You are a man ! A — a — a 
 hero! 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 [Dryly y feeling in his pocket.] Let's have a 
 smoke. [He fails to find cigarette case.] 
 
180 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 Maud 
 I can't tell you how glad I am you told me that. 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 [Gruffly.] Forget it. [He looks on tableland 
 fails to find cigarette case. Looks at her sus- 
 piciousli/y then crosses to desk at right and 
 reaches for telephone.] 
 
 Maud 
 [Curiously.] What are you going to do? 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 Call the police. 
 
 Maud 
 What for? 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 For you. 
 
 Maud 
 For me? 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 You are not Harry Jones. And not only are 
 you an imposter, but you are a thief. 
 
 Maud 
 [Indignantly.] How dare you? 
 
THE BIETH MARK 181 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 You have stolen my cigarette case. 
 
 Maud 
 [Remembering and taken ahacky pulls out 
 cigarette case.] Here it is. 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 Too late. It won't save you. This club must 
 be kept respectable. Thieves cannot be tolerated. 
 
 Maud 
 [Growing alarm.] But you won't have me ar- 
 rested? 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 I certainly will. 
 
 Maud 
 [Pleadingly.] Please! Please! 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 [Obdurately.] I see no reason why I should 
 not. 
 
 Maud 
 [Hurriedly y in a panic] I'll give you a rea- 
 son — a — a good one. I — I — am not Harry 
 Jones. 
 
182 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 [Grimly.] A good reason in itself to call in 
 the police. 
 
 Maud 
 
 That isn't the reason. I'm — a — Oh ! I'm so 
 ashamed. 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 [Sternly.] I should say you ought to be. 
 [Reaches for telephone receiver.] 
 
 Maud 
 [In rush of desperation.] Stop! I'm a — 
 I'm a — a girl. There! [Sinks down in chair, 
 burying her face in her hands.] 
 
 [FiTZSIMMONS hanging up receiver, grunts.] 
 [Maud removes hands and looks at him in- 
 dignantly. As she speaks her indignation 
 grows.] 
 
 Maud 
 I only wanted your cigarette case to prove to 
 my brother that I had been here. I — I'm Maud 
 Sylvester, and you never took me out once. And 
 I'm not a black sheep. And I don't dress loudly, 
 and I haven't a — a tapeworm. 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 [Grinning and pulling out card from vest 
 
THE BIRTH MARK 183 
 
 pocket.] I knew you were Miss Sylvester all the 
 time. 
 
 Maud 
 Oh! You brute! I'll never speak to you 
 again. 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 [Gently.] You'll let me see you safely out of 
 here. 
 
 Maud 
 [Relenting.] Ye-e-s. [She rises ^ crosses to 
 table, and is about to stoop for motor cloak and 
 bonnet, but he forestalls her, holds cloak and 
 helps her into it.] Thank you. [She takes off 
 wig, fluffs her oicn hair becomingly , and puts on 
 bonnet, looking every inch a pretty young girl, 
 ready for an automobile ride.] 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 [Who, all the time, watching her transforma- 
 tion, has been growing bashful, now handing her 
 the cigarette case.] Here's the cigarette case. 
 You may k — k — keep it. 
 
 Maud 
 [Looking at him, hesitates, then takes it.] I 
 thank you — er — Bob. I shall treasure it all 
 
184 THE HUMAN DRIFT 
 
 my life. [He is very embarrassed. 1 Why, I do 
 believe you're bashful. What is the matter. 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 [Stammering. 1 Why — I — you — You are 
 a girl — and — a — a — deuced pretty one. 
 
 Maud 
 [Taking his arm, ready to start for door."] 
 But you knew it all along. 
 
 FiTZSIMMONS 
 
 But it's somehow different now when you've 
 got your girl's clothes on. 
 
 Maud 
 But you weren't a bit bashful — or nice, when 
 — you — you — [Blurting it out.^ Were so 
 anxious about birth marks 
 [They start to make exit.] 
 
 CUETAIN 
 
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 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 $I.2J 
 
 " Jack London is at his best — that peculiar best which 
 is inimitable. . . . Nothing is more important to note, 
 however, than the soundness of the psychology of all these 
 stories. They are made out of the deep fibre of humanity. 
 By command over such material does Jack London hold 
 his place in our literature. By command over the knack 
 of clearly flowing, acid-biting English that often takes rich 
 color." — Boston Transcript. 
 
 ^' Few collections of short stories from the pen of this 
 author show a greater versatility of thought and literary 
 style than The Turtles of Tasman.'''' — Boston Daily Ad- 
 vertiser. 
 
 THE ACORN-PLANTER: A California 
 Forest Play 
 
 Cloth, i2mo, $.y_5 
 
 " A fine and a beautiful play — a call to the world of men 
 to awaken and know that constructive effort is the highest 
 duty man can realize." — Review of Reviews. 
 
 " The play is well constructed, and the songs and recit- 
 atives are written with an intelligent appreciation of Indian 
 feeling, and follow with some closeness Indian technique." 
 — New York Times. 
 
 " An excursion into the poetic dramatic field, and is of 
 unusual originality and interest." — San Francisco Bul- 
 letin. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 
 
JACK LONDON'S WRITINGS 
 
 The Little Lady of the Big House 
 
 Price $i.SO 
 
 In this story of a woman whose Ufe is shaped by 
 a great love, Mr. London adds at least three charac- 
 ters to his already notable list of literary portraits — 
 Dick Forrest, master of broad acres, a man of intel- 
 lect, training, and wealth ; Paula, his wife, young, 
 attractive, bound up in her husband and his affairs ; 
 and Evan Graham, traveled, of easy manners and in- 
 gratiating personality, a sort of Prince Charming. 
 The problem comes with Graham's entrance into 
 the Forrest family circle and it is a problem that 
 must be solved. 
 
 The Star Rover 
 
 JACK LONDON'S MOST DARING NOVEL 
 
 Cloth, frontispiece in colors, i2mo, $1.50 
 
 " But the artistic triumph of ' The Star Rover ' is 
 in its new use of the reincarnation idea. It is upon 
 this that the author has lavished his best work, car- 
 rying it through with a skill and plausibility that win 
 the reader. Jack London has done something origi- 
 nal in ' The Star Rover ' and done it supremely well." 
 — New York Times. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 
 
JACK LONDON'S WRITINGS 
 
 THE SCARLET PLAGUE Decorated cloth, ilhtstrated I2mo,%i.oo 
 
 The relapse of civilization into barbarism is a theme which, as those fa- 
 miliar with Mr. London's style will at once see, is admirably suited to his 
 powers as a novelist. 
 
 " Mr. London has never done a truer or more consistent piece of imag- 
 inative work." — The Outlook. 
 
 THE MUTINY OF THE ELSINORE 
 
 Decorated cloth, illustrated, i2mo, $1.35 
 Mr. Lorvdon is here writing of scenes and types of people with which he 
 is very familiar, the sea and ships and sailors. In addition to the adventure 
 element, of which there is an abundance of a most satisfying kind, there is a 
 thread of romance involving a wealthy young man who takes the trip on the 
 Elsinore and the captain's daugher. 
 
 " Strong characterizations and a splendid picture of indomitable sailing- 
 masters." — Spring/ield Republican, 
 
 THE STRENGTH OF THE STRONG 
 
 Decorated cloth, frontispiece, $1.25 
 " The Strength of the Strong " is a collection of short stories containing 
 some of Jack London's best work. Besides the title piece there are six tales: 
 South of the Slot, The Unparalleled Invasion, The Enemy of all the World, 
 The Dream of Debs, The Sea Farmer, and Samuel. They are representative 
 London stories — his most mature and interesting work — startlingly original 
 as to theme and masterly as to treatment. 
 
 ADVENTURE 
 
 Decorated cloth, illustrated, $i.jo; Fiction Library, $0.J0 
 A thrilling absorbing tale of rapid and exciting plot, with lots of excite- 
 ment, no little humor and considerable sentiment. It is written with a sure 
 and ready hand, and is altogether a remarkable piece of imaginative writing. 
 
 BURNING DAYLIGHT Decorated cloth, illustrated, i2mo, $z.so 
 
 Fiction Library Edition, $0.30 
 
 " A gripping story of Millions and a Maid." — IVew York Herald, 
 THE VALLEY OF THE MOON 
 
 Decorated cloth, frontispiece in colors, $1.^0 
 
 " The most wholesome, the most interesting, the most acceptable book 
 that Mr. London has written."— The Dial, 
 
 " Read * The Valley of the Moon.' Once begin it and you can't let it 
 alone until you have finished it. . . . ' The Valley of the Moon ' is that kind 
 of a book." — Pittsburgh Post. 
 
 MARTIN EDEN Cloth, i2mo,%i. 50 
 
 " The story possesses substance, form, vigor, and vitality as does every- 
 thing that Mr. London writes. It is filled with the wine of life, with a life 
 that Mr. London has himself lived, and to which he never wearies of giving 
 every part of himself." — Boston Eveni7ig Transcript. 
 
 THE HOUSE OF PRIDE Decorated cloth, illustrated, i2mo, $1.20 
 
 Honolulu, Molokai, the Lepers' Island, and others of the Hawaiian 
 group afford splendid setting for the tales. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 
 
JACK LONDON'S WRITINGS 
 
 WHEN GOD LAUGHS Decorated cloth, i2mo, illustrated, $1.50 
 
 It is doubtful if anything will ever be written that will do as much toward 
 making known and felt the awful process of destruction resulting from child- 
 labor as will this one comparatively brief sketch. 
 
 THE CRUISE OF THE SNARK 
 
 Decorated cloth, illustrated, Svo, $2.00 
 An exhilarating story of one of the most adventurous voyages ever 
 planned — the passage of the Snark around the world. 
 
 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 Decorated cloth, illustrated in colors, $i.j:o 
 
 " A big story in sober English, and with thorough art in the construction ; 
 
 a wonderfully perfect bit of work; a book that will be heard of long. The 
 
 dog's adventures are as exciting as any man's exploits could be, and Mr. 
 
 London's workmanship is wholly satisfying." — The New York Sztn. 
 
 THE SEA-WOLF Decorated cloth, illustrated in colors, $1.50 
 
 "Jack London's 'The Sea-Wolf is marvelously truthful. . . „ Read- 
 ing it through at a sitting, we have found it poignantly interesting; ... a 
 superb piece of craftsmanship." — The New York Tribune. 
 
 WHITE FANG Decorated cloth, illustrated in colors, $1.50 
 
 " A thrilling story of adventure , . . stirring indeed . . . and it touches 
 a chord of tenderness that is all too rare in Mr. London's work." — Record- 
 Herald, Chicago. 
 
 BEFORE ADAM Decorated cloth, illustrated in colors, $1.50 
 
 " The marvel of it is not in the story itself, but in the audacity of the 
 man who undertook such a task as the writing of it. . . . From an artistic 
 standpoint the book is an undoubted success. And it is no less a success 
 from the standpoint of the reader w'no seeks to be entertained." — The Plain 
 Dealer, Cleveland. 
 
 THE IRON HEEL Decorated cloth, $1.50 
 
 " Power is certainly the keynote of this book. Every word tingles with 
 
 it. It is a great book, one that deserves to be read and pondered. ... It 
 
 contains a mighty lesson and a most impressive warning." — Indianapolis 
 
 News. 
 
 REVOLUTION Cloth, i2mo, $1.50; Standard Library Edition, $0.30 
 " Here is a field wherein London is entirely at home, and the narrative 
 radiates with picturesque description and vivid characterization." — Brook- 
 lyn Daily Eagle. 
 
 THE WAR OF THE CLASSES 
 
 Cloth, i2nio. $i.jo; Standard Library Edition, $0.J0 
 " Mr. London's book is thoroughly interesting, and Mr. London's point 
 of view is, as may be surmised, very different from that of the closet the- 
 orist." — Springfield Republican. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 
 
JACK LONDON'S WRITINGS 
 
 PEOPLE OF THE ABYSS Uoi/i, illustrated, $1.30 
 
 "This life has been pictured many times before — complacently and 
 soothingly by Professor Walter A. Wyckoff, luridly by Mr. Stead, scientific- 
 ally by Mr. Charles Booth. But Mr. London alone has made it real and 
 present to us." — The Independent. 
 
 THE ROAD Cloth, 127710, illustrated, $2.00 
 
 A literal record of life am.ong tramps, of travel from end to end of the 
 country. 
 
 JACK LONDON'S SHORT STORIES 
 
 THE GAME Each, cloth, i2tno, illustrated, $r.jo 
 
 A Transcript from Real Life. 
 
 " It is told with such a glow of imaginative illusion, with such intense 
 dramatic vigor, with such effective audacity of phrase, that it almost seems 
 as if the author's appeal was to the bodily eye as much as to the inner men- 
 tality, and that the events are actually happening before the reader." — I^ew 
 York Herald. 
 
 CHILDREN OF THE FROST 
 
 " Told with something of that same vigorous and honest manliness and 
 indifference with which Mr. Kipling makes unbegging yet direct and unfail- 
 ing appeal to the sympathy of his reader." — Richmo7id Despatch. 
 
 THE FAITH OF MEN 
 
 " Mr. London's art as a story-teller nowhere manifests more strongly 
 than in the swift, dramatic close of his stories. There is no hesitancy or un- 
 certainty of touch. From the start the story moves straight to the inevitable 
 conclusion." — Courier-Journal. 
 
 MOON FACE 
 
 " Each of the stories is unique in its individual way, weird and uncanny, 
 and told in Mr. London's vigorous, compelling style." — htterior. 
 
 TALES OF THE FISH PATROL 
 
 " That they are vividly told, hardly need be said, for Jack London is a 
 realist as well as a writer of thrilling romances." — Clevelatid Plai7i Dealer. 
 
 LOVE OF LIFE 
 
 " Jack London is at his best with the short story . . . clear-cut, sharp, 
 incisive with the tang of the frost in it." — Record-Herald, Chicago. 
 
 LOST FACE 
 
 The stories are strong and robust and the characterizations are not fanci- 
 ful creations, but the actual happenings of an existence which the author has 
 lived and now vividly describes. 
 SOUTH SEA TALES Decorated cloth, i2mo, illustrated, $1.23 
 
 Jack London's stories of the South Seas have a sense of reality about 
 them which prove that he has been on the ground and has himself taken part 
 in the combats, physical and mental, which he describes. 
 
 PLAYS BY JACK LONDON 
 
 THEFT $1.25 I SCORN OF WOMEN $1.25 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 
 
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