The Scarlet Plague

  Produced by David Widger

  THE SCARLET PLAGUE

  By Jack London

  Illustrated By Gordon Grant

  1915

  THE SCARLET PLAGUE

  I

  THE way led along upon what had once been the embankment of a railroad.But no train had run upon it for many years. The forest on either sideswelled up the slopes of the embankment and crested across it in a greenwave of trees and bushes. The trail was as narrow as a man's body, andwas no more than a wild-animal runway. Occasionally, a piece of rustyiron, showing through the forest-mould, advertised that the rail and theties still remained. In one place, a ten-inch tree, bursting through ata connection, had lifted the end of a rail clearly into view. The tiehad evidently followed the rail, held to it by the spike long enoughfor its bed to be filled with gravel and rotten leaves, so that now thecrumbling, rotten timber thrust itself up at a curious slant. Old as theroad was, it was manifest that it had been of the mono-rail type.

  An old man and a boy travelled along this runway. They moved slowly, forthe old man was very old, a touch of palsy made his movements tremulous,and he leaned heavily upon his staff. A rude skull-cap of goat-skinprotected his head from the sun. From beneath this fell a scant fringeof stained and dirty-white hair. A visor, ingeniously made from a largeleaf, shielded his eyes, and from under this he peered at the way ofhis feet on the trail. His beard, which should have been snow-whitebut which showed the same weather-wear and camp-stain as his hair,fell nearly to his waist in a great tangled mass. About his chest andshoulders hung a single, mangy garment of goat-skin. His arms and legs,withered and skinny, betokened extreme age, as well as did their sunburnand scars and scratches betoken long years of exposure to the elements.

  The boy, who led the way, checking the eagerness of his muscles tothe slow progress of the elder, likewise wore a single garment--aragged-edged piece of bear-skin, with a hole in the middle through whichhe had thrust his head. He could not have been more than twelve yearsold. Tucked coquettishly over one ear was the freshly severed tail of apig. In one hand he carried a medium-sized bow and an arrow.

  On his back was a quiverful of arrows. From a sheath hanging about hisneck on a thong, projected the battered handle of a hunting knife. Hewas as brown as a berry, and walked softly, with almost a catlike tread.In marked contrast with his sunburned skin were his eyes--blue, deepblue, but keen and sharp as a pair of gimlets. They seemed to bore intoaft about him in a way that was habitual. As he went along he smelledthings, as well, his distended, quivering nostrils carrying to his brainan endless series of messages from the outside world. Also, his hearingwas acute, and had been so trained that it operated automatically.Without conscious effort, he heard all the slight sounds in the apparentquiet--heard, and differentiated, and classified these sounds--whetherthey were of the wind rustling the leaves, of the humming of bees andgnats, of the distant rumble of the sea that drifted to him only inlulls, or of the gopher, just under his foot, shoving a pouchful ofearth into the entrance of his hole.

  Suddenly he became alertly tense. Sound, sight, and odor had given hima simultaneous warning. His hand went back to the old man, touchinghim, and the pair stood still. Ahead, at one side of the top of theembankment, arose a crackling sound, and the boy's gaze was fixed on thetops of the agitated bushes. Then a large bear, a grizzly, crashed intoview, and likewise stopped abruptly, at sight of the humans. He did notlike them, and growled querulously. Slowly the boy fitted the arrow tothe bow, and slowly he pulled the bowstring taut. But he never removedhis eyes from the bear.

  Slowly he pulled the bowstring taut 020]

  The old man peered from under his green leaf at the danger, and stood asquietly as the boy. For a few seconds this mutual scrutinizing wenton; then, the bear betraying a growing irritability, the boy, with amovement of his head, indicated that the old man must step aside fromthe trail and go down the embankment. The boy followed, going backward,still holding the bow taut and ready. They waited till a crashing amongthe bushes from the opposite side of the embankment told them the bearhad gone on. The boy grinned as he led back to the trail.

  "A big un, Granser," he chuckled.

  The old man shook his head.

  "They get thicker every day," he complained in a thin, undependablefalsetto. "Who'd have thought I'd live to see the time when a man wouldbe afraid of his life on the way to the Cliff House. When I was a boy,Edwin, men and women and little babies used to come out here from SanFrancisco by tens of thousands on a nice day. And there weren't anybears then. No, sir. They used to pay money to look at them in cages,they were that rare."

  "What is money, Granser?"

  Before the old man could answer, the boy recollected and triumphantlyshoved his hand into a pouch under his bear-skin and pulled forth abattered and tarnished silver dollar. The old man's eyes glistened, ashe held the coin close to them.

  "I can't see," he muttered. "You look and see if you can make out thedate, Edwin."

  The boy laughed.

  "You're a great Granser," he cried delightedly, "always making believethem little marks mean something."

  The old man manifested an accustomed chagrin as he brought the coin backagain close to his own eyes.

  "2012," he shrilled, and then fell to cackling grotesquely. "That wasthe year Morgan the Fifth was appointed President of the United Statesby the Board of Magnates. It must have been one of the last coinsminted, for the Scarlet Death came in 2013. Lord! Lord!--think of it!Sixty years ago, and I am the only person alive to-day that lived inthose times. Where did you find it, Edwin?"

  The boy, who had been regarding him with the tolerant curiousness oneaccords to the prattlings of the feeble-minded, answered promptly.

  "I got it off of Hoo-Hoo. He found it when we was herdin' goats downnear San Jose last spring. Hoo-Hoo said it was _money_. Ain't youhungry, Granser?"

  The ancient caught his staff in a tighter grip and urged along thetrail, his old eyes shining greedily.

  "I hope Har-Lip 's found a crab... or two," he mumbled. "They're goodeating, crabs, mighty good eating when you've no more teeth and you'vegot grandsons that love their old grandsire and make a point of catchingcrabs for him. When I was a boy--"

  But Edwin, suddenly stopped by what he saw, was drawing the bowstringon a fitted arrow. He had paused on the brink of a crevasse in theembankment. An ancient culvert had here washed out, and the stream, nolonger confined, had cut a passage through the fill. On the oppositeside, the end of a rail projected and overhung. It showed rustilythrough the creeping vines which overran it. Beyond, crouching by abush, a rabbit looked across at him in trembling hesitancy. Fully fiftyfeet was the distance, but the arrow flashed true; and the transfixedrabbit, crying out in sudden fright and hurt, struggled painfully awayinto the brush. The boy himself was a flash of brown skin and flying furas he bounded down the steep wall of the gap and up the other side.His lean muscles were springs of steel that released into gracefuland efficient action. A hundred feet beyond, in a tangle of bushes,he overtook the wounded creature, knocked its head on a convenienttree-trunk, and turned it over to Granser to carry.

  Rabbit is good, very good 026]

  "Rabbit is good, very good," the ancient quavered, "but when it comes toa toothsome delicacy I prefer crab. When I was a boy--"

  "Why do you say so much that ain't got no sense?" Edwin impatientlyinterrupted the other's threatened garrulousness.

  The boy did not exactly utter these words, but something that remotelyresembled them and that was more guttural and explosive and economicalof qualifying phrases. His speech showed distant kinship with that ofthe old man, and the latter's speech was approximately an English thathad gone through a bath of corrupt usage.

  "What I want to
know," Edwin continued, "is why you call crab 'toothsomedelicacy'? Crab is crab, ain't it? No one I never heard calls it suchfunny things."

  The old man sighed but did not answer, and they moved on in silence.The surf grew suddenly louder, as they emerged from the forest upon astretch of sand dunes bordering the sea. A few goats were browsing amongthe sandy hillocks, and a skin-clad boy, aided by a wolfish-lookingdog that was only faintly reminiscent of a collie, was watching them.Mingled with the roar of the surf was a continuous, deep-throatedbarking or bellowing, which came from a cluster of jagged rocks ahundred yards out from shore. Here huge sea-lions hauled themselvesup to lie in the sun or battle with one another. In the immediateforeground arose the smoke of a fire, tended by a third savage-lookingboy. Crouched near him were several wolfish dogs similar to the one thatguarded the goats.

  The old man accelerated his pace, sniffing eagerly as he neared thefire.

  "Mussels!" he muttered ecstatically. "Mussels! And ain't that a crab,Hoo-Hoo? Ain't that a crab? My, my, you boys are good to your oldgrandsire."

  Hoo-Hoo, who was apparently of the same age as Edwin, grinned.

  "All you want, Granser. I got four."

  The old man's palsied eagerness was pitiful. Sitting down in the sand asquickly as his stiff limbs would let him, he poked a large rock-musselfrom out of the coals. The heat had forced its shells apart, andthe meat, salmon-colored, was thoroughly cooked. Between thumb andforefinger, in trembling haste, he caught the morsel and carried itto his mouth. But it was too hot, and the next moment was violentlyejected. The old man spluttered with the pain, and tears ran out of hiseyes and down his cheeks.

  The boys were true savages, possessing only the cruel humor of thesavage. To them the incident was excruciatingly funny, and they burstinto loud laughter. Hoo-Hoo danced up and down, while Edwin rolledgleefully on the ground. The boy with the goats came running to join inthe fun.

  "Set 'em to cool, Edwin, set 'em to cool," the old man besought, in themidst of his grief, making no attempt to wipe away the tears thatstill flowed from his eyes. "And cool a crab, Edwin, too. You know yourgrandsire likes crabs."

  From the coals arose a great sizzling, which proceeded from the manymussels bursting open their shells and exuding their moisture. They werelarge shellfish, running from three to six inches in length. The boysraked them out with sticks and placed them on a large piece of driftwoodto cool.

  "When I was a boy, we did not laugh at our elders; we respected them."

  The boys took no notice, and Granser continued to babble an incoherentflow of complaint and censure. But this time he was more careful, anddid not burn his mouth. All began to eat, using nothing but their handsand making loud mouth-noises and lip-smackings. The third boy, who wascalled Hare-Lip, slyly deposited a pinch of sand on a mussel the ancientwas carrying to his mouth; and when the grit of it bit into the oldfellow's mucous membrane and gums, the laughter was again uproarious. Hewas unaware that a joke had been played on him, and spluttered and spatuntil Edwin, relenting, gave him a gourd of fresh water with which towash out his mouth.

  "Where's them crabs, Hoo-Hoo?" Edwin demanded. "Granser's set uponhaving a snack."

  Again Granser's eyes burned with greediness as a large crab was handedto him. It was a shell with legs and all complete, but the meat had longsince departed. With shaky fingers and babblings of anticipation, theold man broke off a leg and found it filled with emptiness.

  "The crabs, Hoo-Hoo?" he wailed. "The crabs?"

  "I was fooling Granser. They ain't no crabs! I never found one."

  The boys were overwhelmed with delight at sight of the tears of seniledisappointment that dribbled down the old man's cheeks. Then, unnoticed,Hoo-Hoo replaced the empty shell with a fresh-cooked crab. Alreadydismembered, from the cracked legs the white meat sent forth a smallcloud of savory steam. This attracted the old man's nostrils, and helooked down in amazement.

  This attracted the old man's nostrils 033]

  The change of his mood to one of joy was immediate. He snuffled andmuttered and mumbled, making almost a croon of delight, as he beganto eat. Of this the boys took little notice, for it was an accustomedspectacle. Nor did they notice his occasional exclamations andutterances of phrases which meant nothing to them, as, for instance,when he smacked his lips and champed his gums while muttering:"Mayonnaise! Just think--mayonnaise! And it's sixty years since the lastwas ever made! Two generations and never a smell of it! Why, in thosedays it was served in every restaurant with crab."

  When he could eat no more, the old man sighed, wiped his hands on hisnaked legs, and gazed out over the sea. With the content of a fullstomach, he waxed reminiscent.

  "To think of it! I've seen this beach alive with men, women, andchildren on a pleasant Sunday. And there weren't any bears to eat themup, either. And right up there on the cliff was a big restaurant whereyou could get anything you wanted to eat. Four million people lived inSan Francisco then. And now, in the whole city and county there aren'tforty all told. And out there on the sea were ships and ships always tobe seen, going in for the Golden Gate or coming out. And airships in theair--dirigibles and flying machines. They could travel two hundred milesan hour. The mail contracts with the New York and San Francisco Limiteddemanded that for the minimum. There was a chap, a Frenchman, I forgethis name, who succeeded in making three hundred; but the thing wasrisky, too risky for conservative persons. But he was on the right clew,and he would have managed it if it hadn't been for the Great Plague.When I was a boy, there were men alive who remembered the coming of thefirst aeroplanes, and now I have lived to see the last of them, and thatsixty years ago."

  The old man babbled on, unheeded by the boys, who were long accustomedto his garrulousness, and whose vocabularies, besides, lacked thegreater portion of the words he used. It was noticeable that in theserambling soliloquies his English seemed to recrudesce into betterconstruction and phraseology. But when he talked directly with the boysit lapsed, largely, into their own uncouth and simpler forms.

  "But there weren't many crabs in those days," the old man wandered on."They were fished out, and they were great delicacies. The open seasonwas only a month long, too. And now crabs are accessible the whole yeararound. Think of it--catching all the crabs you want, any time you want,in the surf of the Cliff House beach!"

  A sudden commotion among the goats brought the boys to their feet. Thedogs about the fire rushed to join their snarling fellow who guarded thegoats, while the goats themselves stampeded in the direction of theirhuman protectors. A half dozen forms, lean and gray, glided about on thesand hillocks and faced the bristling dogs. Edwin arched an arrow thatfell short. But Hare-Lip, with a sling such as David carried into battleagainst Goliath, hurled a stone through the air that whistled from thespeed of its flight. It fell squarely among the wolves and caused themto slink away toward the dark depths of the eucalyptus forest.

  With a sling such as David carried 036]

  The boys laughed and lay down again in the sand, while Granser sighedponderously. He had eaten too much, and, with hands clasped on hispaunch, the fingers interlaced, he resumed his maunderings.

  "'The fleeting systems lapse like foam,'" he mumbled what was evidentlya quotation. "That's it--foam, and fleeting. All man's toil upon theplanet was just so much foam. He domesticated the serviceable animals,destroyed the hostile ones, and cleared the land of its wild vegetation.And then he passed, and the flood of primordial life rolled back again,sweeping his handiwork away--the weeds and the forest inundated hisfields, the beasts of prey swept over his flocks, and now there arewolves on the Cliff House beach." He was appalled by the thought. "Wherefour million people disported themselves, the wild wolves roam to-day,and the savage progeny of our loins, with prehistoric weapons, defendthemselves against the fanged despoilers. Think of it! And all becauseof the Scarlet Death--"

  The adjective had caught Hare-Lip's ear.

  "He's always saying that," he said to Edwin. "What is _scarlet?_"

  "'The scar
let of the maples can shake me like the cry of bugles goingby,'" the old man quoted.

  "It's red," Edwin answered the question. "And you don't know it becauseyou come from the Chauffeur Tribe. They never did know nothing, none ofthem. Scarlet is red--I know that."

  "Red is red, ain't it?" Hare-Lip grumbled. "Then what's the good ofgettin' cocky and calling it scarlet?"

  "Granser, what for do you always say so much what nobody knows?" heasked. "Scarlet ain't anything, but red is red. Why don't you say red,then?"

  "Red is not the right word," was the reply. "The plague was scarlet.The whole face and body turned scarlet in an hour's time. Don't Iknow? Didn't I see enough of it? And I am telling you it was scarletbecause--well, because it _was_ scarlet. There is no other word for it."

  "Red is good enough for me," Hare-Lip muttered obstinately. "My dadcalls red red, and he ought to know. He says everybody died of the RedDeath."

  "Your dad is a common fellow, descended from a common fellow," Granserretorted heatedly. "Don't I know the beginnings of the Chauffeurs? Yourgrandsire was a chauffeur, a servant, and without education. He workedfor other persons. But your grandmother was of good stock, only thechildren did not take after her. Don't I remember when I first met them,catching fish at Lake Temescal?"

  "What is _education?_" Edwin asked.

  "Calling red scarlet," Hare-Lip sneered, then returned to the attack onGranser. "My dad told me, an' he got it from his dad afore he croaked,that your wife was a Santa Rosan, an' that she was sure no account. Hesaid she was a _hash-slinger_ before the Red Death, though I don't knowwhat a _hash-slinger_ is. You can tell me, Edwin."

  But Edwin shook his head in token of ignorance.

  "It is true, she was a waitress," Granser acknowledged. "But she was agood woman, and your mother was her daughter. Women were very scarce inthe days after the Plague. She was the only wife I could find, even ifshe was a _hash-slinger_, as your father calls it. But it is not nice totalk about our progenitors that way."

  "Dad says that the wife of the first Chauffeur was a _lady_--"

  "What's a _lady?_" Hoo-Hoo demanded.

  "A _lady_ 's a Chauffeur squaw," was the quick reply of Hare-Lip.

  "The first Chauffeur was Bill, a common fellow, as I said before," theold man expounded; "but his wife was a lady, a great lady. Before theScarlet Death she was the wife of Van Worden. He was President of theBoard of Industrial Magnates, and was one of the dozen men whoruled America. He was worth one billion, eight hundred millions ofdollars--coins like you have there in your pouch, Edwin. And then camethe Scarlet Death, and his wife became the wife of Bill, the firstChauffeur. He used to beat her, too. I have seen it myself."

  Hoo-Hoo, lying on his stomach and idly digging his toes in the sand,cried out and investigated, first, his toe-nail, and next, the smallhole he had dug. The other two boys joined him, excavating the sandrapidly with their hands till there lay three skeletons exposed. Twowere of adults, the third being that of a part-grown child. The old manhudged along on the ground and peered at the find.

  "Plague victims," he announced. "That's the way they died everywherein the last days. This must have been a family, running away from thecontagion and perishing here on the Cliff House beach. They--what areyou doing, Edwin?"

  This question was asked in sudden dismay, as Edwin, using the back ofhis hunting knife, began to knock out the teeth from the jaws of one ofthe skulls.

  "Going to string 'em," was the response.

  The three boys were now hard at it; and quite a knocking and hammeringarose, in which Granser babbled on unnoticed.

  "You are true savages. Already has begun the custom of wearing humanteeth. In another generation you will be perforating your noses andears and wearing ornaments of bone and shell. I know. The human raceis doomed to sink back farther and farther into the primitive nightere again it begins its bloody climb upward to civilization. When weincrease and feel the lack of room, we will proceed to kill one another.And then I suppose you will wear human scalp-locks at your waist, aswell--as you, Edwin, who are the gentlest of my grandsons, have alreadybegun with that vile pigtail. Throw it away, Edwin, boy; throw it away."

  "What a gabble the old geezer makes," Hare-Lip remarked, when, the teethall extracted, they began an attempt at equal division.

  They were very quick and abrupt in their actions, and their speech, inmoments of hot discussion over the allotment of the choicer teeth, wastruly a gabble. They spoke in monosyllables and short jerky sentencesthat was more a gibberish than a language. And yet, through it ran hintsof grammatical construction, and appeared vestiges of the conjugationof some superior culture. Even the speech of Granser was so corrupt thatwere it put down literally it would be almost so much nonsense to thereader. This, however, was when he talked with the boys.

  When he got into the full swing of babbling to himself, it slowly purgeditself into pure English. The sentences grew longer and were enunciatedwith a rhythm and ease that was reminiscent of the lecture platform.

  "Tell us about the Red Death, Granser," Hare-Lip demanded, when theteeth affair had been satisfactorily concluded.

  "The Scarlet Death," Edwin corrected.

  "An' don't work all that funny lingo on us," Hare-Lip went on. "Talksensible, Granser, like a Santa Rosan ought to talk. Other Santa Rosansdon't talk like you."