The Red One Read online

  Transcribed from the 1919 Mills and Boon edition by David Price, [email protected]

  THE RED ONE

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  By JACK LONDON

  Author of “The Valley of the Moon,” “Jerry of the Islands,” “Michael, Brother of Jerry,” etc., etc.

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  MILLS & BOON, LIMITED 49 RUPERT STREET LONDON, W.1.

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  _Published 1919_

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  _Copyright in the United States of America by Jack London_.

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  CONTENTS

  PAGETHE RED ONE 11THE HUSSY 57LIKE ARGUS OF THE ANCIENT TIMES 93THE PRINCESS 141

  THE RED ONE

  THERE it was! The abrupt liberation of sound! As he timed it with hiswatch, Bassett likened it to the trump of an archangel. Walls of cities,he meditated, might well fall down before so vast and compelling asummons. For the thousandth time vainly he tried to analyse thetone-quality of that enormous peal that dominated the land far into thestrong-holds of the surrounding tribes. The mountain gorge which was itssource rang to the rising tide of it until it brimmed over and floodedearth and sky and air. With the wantonness of a sick man’s fancy, helikened it to the mighty cry of some Titan of the Elder World vexed withmisery or wrath. Higher and higher it arose, challenging and demandingin such profounds of volume that it seemed intended for ears beyond thenarrow confines of the solar system. There was in it, too, the clamourof protest in that there were no ears to hear and comprehend itsutterance.

  —Such the sick man’s fancy. Still he strove to analyse the sound.Sonorous as thunder was it, mellow as a golden bell, thin and sweet as athrummed taut cord of silver—no; it was none of these, nor a blend ofthese. There were no words nor semblances in his vocabulary andexperience with which to describe the totality of that sound.

  Time passed. Minutes merged into quarters of hours, and quarters ofhours into half-hours, and still the sound persisted, ever changing fromits initial vocal impulse yet never receiving fresh impulse—fading,dimming, dying as enormously as it had sprung into being. It became aconfusion of troubled mutterings and babblings and colossal whisperings.Slowly it withdrew, sob by sob, into whatever great bosom had birthed it,until it whimpered deadly whispers of wrath and as equally seductivewhispers of delight, striving still to be heard, to convey some cosmicsecret, some understanding of infinite import and value. It dwindled toa ghost of sound that had lost its menace and promise, and became a thingthat pulsed on in the sick man’s consciousness for minutes after it hadceased. When he could hear it no longer, Bassett glanced at his watch.An hour had elapsed ere that archangel’s trump had subsided into tonalnothingness.

  Was this, then, _his_ dark tower?—Bassett pondered, remembering hisBrowning and gazing at his skeleton-like and fever-wasted hands. And thefancy made him smile—of Childe Roland bearing a slug-horn to his lipswith an arm as feeble as his was. Was it months, or years, he askedhimself, since he first heard that mysterious call on the beach atRingmanu? To save himself he could not tell. The long sickness had beenmost long. In conscious count of time he knew of months, many of them;but he had no way of estimating the long intervals of delirium andstupor. And how fared Captain Bateman of the blackbirder _Nari_? hewondered; and had Captain Bateman’s drunken mate died of delirium tremensyet?

  From which vain speculations, Bassett turned idly to review all that hadoccurred since that day on the beach of Ringmanu when he first heard thesound and plunged into the jungle after it. Sagawa had protested. Hecould see him yet, his queer little monkeyish face eloquent with fear,his back burdened with specimen cases, in his hands Bassett’s butterflynet and naturalist’s shot-gun, as he quavered, in Bêche-de-mer English:“Me fella too much fright along bush. Bad fella boy, too much stop’malong bush.”

  Bassett smiled sadly at the recollection. The little New Hanover boy hadbeen frightened, but had proved faithful, following him without hesitancyinto the bush in the quest after the source of the wonderful sound. Nofire-hollowed tree-trunk, that, throbbing war through the jungle depths,had been Bassett’s conclusion. Erroneous had been his next conclusion,namely, that the source or cause could not be more distant than an hour’swalk, and that he would easily be back by mid-afternoon to be picked upby the _Nari’s_ whale-boat.

  “That big fella noise no good, all the same devil-devil,” Sagawa hadadjudged. And Sagawa had been right. Had he not had his head hacked offwithin the day? Bassett shuddered. Without doubt Sagawa had been eatenas well by the “bad fella boys too much” that stopped along the bush. Hecould see him, as he had last seen him, stripped of the shot-gun and allthe naturalist’s gear of his master, lying on the narrow trail where hehad been decapitated barely the moment before. Yes, within a minute thething had happened. Within a minute, looking back, Bassett had seen himtrudging patiently along under his burdens. Then Bassett’s own troublehad come upon him. He looked at the cruelly healed stumps of the firstand second fingers of his left hand, then rubbed them softly into theindentation in the back of his skull. Quick as had been the flash of thelong handled tomahawk, he had been quick enough to duck away his head andpartially to deflect the stroke with his up-flung hand. Two fingers anda hasty scalp-wound had been the price he paid for his life. With onebarrel of his ten-gauge shot-gun he had blown the life out of the bushmanwho had so nearly got him; with the other barrel he had peppered thebushmen bending over Sagawa, and had the pleasure of knowing that themajor portion of the charge had gone into the one who leaped away withSagawa’s head. Everything had occurred in a flash. Only himself, theslain bushman, and what remained of Sagawa, were in the narrow, wild-pigrun of a path. From the dark jungle on either side came no rustle ofmovement or sound of life. And he had suffered distinct and dreadfulshock. For the first time in his life he had killed a human being, andhe knew nausea as he contemplated the mess of his handiwork.

  Then had begun the chase. He retreated up the pig-run before hishunters, who were between him and the beach. How many there were, hecould not guess. There might have been one, or a hundred, for aught hesaw of them. That some of them took to the trees and travelled alongthrough the jungle roof he was certain; but at the most he never glimpsedmore than an occasional flitting of shadows. No bow-strings twangedthat he could hear; but every little while, whence discharged he knewnot, tiny arrows whispered past him or struck tree-boles and fluttered tothe ground beside him. They were bone-tipped and feather shafted, andthe feathers, torn from the breasts of humming-birds, iridesced likejewels.

  Once—and now, after the long lapse of time, he chuckled gleefully at therecollection—he had detected a shadow above him that came to instant restas he turned his gaze upward. He could make out nothing, but, decidingto chance it, had fired at it a heavy charge of number five shot.Squalling like an infuriated cat, the shadow crashed down throughtree-ferns and orchids and thudded upon the earth at his feet, and, stillsqualling its rage and pain, had sunk its human teeth into the ankle ofhis stout tramping boot. He, on the other hand, was not idle, and withhis free foot had done what reduced the squalling to silence. So inuredto savagery has Bassett since become, that he chuckled again with theglee of the recollection.

  What a night had followed! S
mall wonder that he had accumulated such avirulence and variety of fevers, he thought, as he recalled thatsleepless night of torment, when the throb of his wounds was as nothingcompared with the myriad stings of the mosquitoes. There had been noescaping them, and he had not dared to light a fire. They had literallypumped his body full of poison, so that, with the coming of day, eyesswollen almost shut, he had stumbled blindly on, not caring much when hishead should be hacked off and his carcass started on the way of Sagawa’sto the cooking fire. Twenty-four hours had made a wreck of him—of mindas well as body. He had scarcely retained his wits at all, so maddenedwas he by the tremendous inoculation of poison he had received. Severaltimes he fired his shot-gun with effect into the shadows that dogged him.Stinging day insects and gnats added to his torment, while his bloodywounds attracted hosts of loathsome flies that clung sluggishly to hisflesh and had to be brushed off and crushed off.

  Once, in that day, he heard again the wonderful sound, seemingly moredistant, but rising imperiously above the nearer war-drums in the bush.Right