The Cruise of the Snark Read online

  True it is that all the animals whose lives are portrayed [in a story in Roberts’s book]—the bear, the panther, the lynx, the hare, the moose, and others—are simply human beings disguised as animals; they think, feel, plan, suffer, as we do; in fact, exhibit almost the entire human psychology. But in other respects they follow closely the facts of natural history, and the reader is not deceived; he knows where he stands. Of course it is mainly guesswork how far our psychology applies to the lower animals. That they experience many of our emotions there can be no doubt, but that they have intellectual and reasoning processes like our own, except in a very rudimentary form, admits of grave doubt.

  Jack’s own contribution, dated March 1908 at Papeete, and called “The Other Animals,” reports that “. . . when the word nature-faker was coined, I, for one, climbed into my tree and stayed there.” But later comments by Roosevelt and Burroughs’s “Reasonable but Unreasoning Animals,” published in The Outlook in December 1907, got Jack out of his tree. He went at Burroughs tooth and claw, arguing somewhat humorously that if Burroughs could see nothing but instinct in his dog, Jack had certainly observed reason in his. An anecdote of Martin’s suitably closes the controversy, at least as it played out in the Pacific Ocean:

  As we were cruising in a general westerly direction through the New Hebrides, a little incident occurred which throws a side-light on the man, Jack London. One day, when weather conditions were perfect and everyone was on deck enjoying himself, an animated ball of variegated colours dropped slowly down into the cockpit at the feet of Mrs. London, who was at the wheel. She eagerly picked it up, calling out, “Lookie, lookie, what I’ve got!” It proved to be the prettiest little bird we had ever seen. Jack got out his book on ornithology, and proceeded to study book and bird, but nowhere was such a bird described.

  It was evidently a land-bird that had gotten too far from shore and had fallen exhausted on the deck of the Snark. We all stood around looking at it as it lay in Mrs. London’s hand, while she chirped and tried to talk bird-talk to it. At last Jack said: “If it’s a land-bird you are, to the land you go,” and changing the course, we sailed for the island of Mallicolo, just barely visible ten miles out of our way. We sailed as close to the shore as possible, and the little multi-coloured, pigeon-like bird, having regained its strength, flew in among the cocoanut trees. Then we headed out and continued our cruise up through the score of small islands composing the Western New Hebrides.

  Critics of the man, Jack London, may call him an infidel. Colonel Roosevelt may call him a “nature faker.” Others have not agreed with his ideas of life, but I have little doubt that this is the only time a captain ever went twenty miles out of his way when his fuel was low (our gasolene tanks were fast emptying), just to put a poor little bird ashore to go back to its mate and its young. (Chapter XII)

  One wonders what Wolf Larsen would have done.

  Meanwhile Jack kept the periodical market well stocked with Snark material, which as “work performed” continued to be published even after the end of the voyage. Woman’s Home Companion published “Riding the South Sea Surf” (October 1907), “The Lepers of Molokai” (January 1908), “The Nature Man” (September 1908), “The High Seat of Abundance” (November 1908), and “‘Too Much’ English” [“Bêche de Mer English”] (April 1909). Harpers Weekly published “Building of the Boat” (July 1908), “Adventures in Dream Harbor” (August 1908), and “Finding One’s Way on the Sea” (August 1910). Pacific Monthly published “The House of the Sun” (January 1910), “A Pacific Traverse” (February 1910), “Typee” (March 1910), “The Stone Fishing of Bora Bora” (April 1910), “The Amateur Navigator” (May 1910), “Cruising in the Solomons” (July 1910), and “Amateur M.D.” (August 1910). Near the end of 1908 Jack began his novel Adventure, a reworking of the Londons’ August 1908 “blackbirding” cruise and near shipwreck in the Solomon Islands on the Minota.

  But by then the cruise was over. At nearly every major island group the Snark had suffered a crew change—some leaving of their own accord, others being fired for a variety of incompetences. Only Martin, promoted from cook to engineer, survived aboard with Jack and Charmian. And if all of them had suffered seasickness (another form of romanticism on all fours) on the passages to Hawaii and the Marquesas, on the second half of the voyage intermittent bouts of nausea, exhaustion, and disorientation were complemented by a variety of tropical diseases. But for all the flaws of the Snark, the crew, and the dream, it was only when Jack lost the use of his hands—the indispensable tools through which only could he write—that the voyage was abandoned. “The cruise of the Snark,” in Martin’s words, “was a thing of the past.”

  In a postscript to Martin’s book, Ralph D. Harrison summarizes the disposition of the Snarkites:

  Henry, the Polynesian sailor, left Sydney on March 30, 1909, for Pago-Pago, Samoa. A week before, Tehei, the Society Islander, had gone with a sailor’s bag full of gaudy calico, bound for Bora Bora. Wada San, the Japanese cook, sailed on April 11th for Honolulu.

  Martin Johnson left Sydney on March 31st, on the steamer Asturias, after an unsuccessful attempt to join the South African expedition of Theodore Roosevelt. His letter did not reach Mr. Roosevelt until after all preparations for the trip had been made, when it was of course too late to consider his application. . . . At Port Said, Mr. Johnson made another attempt to get in communication with the Roosevelt party, but found that they had left three days before. . . . At Liverpool, early in September, he stowed away on a cattle-boat, and after a trying thirteen days arrived in Boston, the only member of the Snark crew to make the complete circuit of the world.

  Jack returned a chastened yachtsman, if not a well man. He wrote two of his most successful sea-pieces after his return—“That Dead Men Rise Up Never” (1909) and “The Joy of Small-Boat Sailing” (1911). Once the Snark essays had had their periodical run, Jack assembled them into The Cruise of the Snark (1911). Two years later, Martin finished his book, Through the South Seas With Jack London (1913). Shortly afterwards he eloped with his own mate, Osa, and in 1937, after a short but happy life filled with adventure, Martin was killed in a plane crash. In 1915, a year before Jack’s death, Charmian published her own book, The Log of the Snark, calling it “the one accurate, continuous story of the adventures of the Snark, from San Francisco Bay to the Cannibal Isles.” It may have been.

  Suggestions for Further Reading

  BOOKS BY JACK LONDON:

  Adventure. New York: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1911.

  Martin Eden, ed. Andrew Sinclair. New York: Penguin Classics, 1993.

  Sea-Wolf and Other Stories, The, ed. Andrew Sinclair. New York: Penguin Classics, 1989.

  Tales of the Pacific, ed. Andrew Sinclair. New York: Penguin Classics, 1989.

  BOOKS BY OTHERS:

  Childers, Erskine. The Riddle of the Sands, ed. Geoffrey Household. Penguin Classics, 1978.

  Herbert, T. Walter. Marquesan Encounters. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980.

  Johnson, Irving and Electa. Westward Bound in the Schooner Yankee. New York: Norton, 1936.

  Johnson, Martin. Through the South Seas With Jack London. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1913.

  London, Charmian Kittredge. The Log of the Snark. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1915.

  Melville, Herman. Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life, ed. Harrison Hayford et al. Evanston and Chicago: Northwestern University Press and The Newberry Library, 1968.

  Porter, David. Journal of a Cruise, ed. R. D. Madison and Karen Hamon. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1986.

  Slocum, Joshua. Sailing Alone around the World, ed. Thomas Philbrick. Penguin Classics, 1999.

  Stevenson, Robert Louis. In the South Seas, ed. Neil Rennie. Penguin Classics, 1998.

  A Note on the Texts

  The text for this edition of The Cruise of the Snark is that of the first American edition published by Macmillan in 1911. The collateral Snark texts printed in the appendix are from Martin Johnson, Through the South Sea
s With Jack London (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1913) and Charmian Kittredge London, The Log of the Snark (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1915). The text of “That Dead Men Rise Up Never” is based on that in The Human Drift (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1917); the text of “The Joy of Small Boat Sailing” is based on that in Country Life in America (August 1, 1912).

  THE CRUISE OF THE SNARK

  BY

  JACK LONDON

  AUTHOR OF “BURNING DAYLIGHT,” “MARTIN EDEN,” “THE CALL OF THE WILD,” ETC.

  ILLUSTRATE

  New York

  THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

  1911

  All rights reserved

  TO

  CHARMIAN

  THE MATE OF THE SNARK

  WHO TOOK THE WHEEL, NIGHT OR DAY, WHEN ENTERING

  OR LEAVING PORT OR RUNNING A PASSAGE, WHO

  TOOK THE WHEEL IN EVERY EMERGENCY, AND WHO WEPT

  AFTER TWO YEARS OF SAILING, WHEN THE

  VOYAGE WAS DISCONTINUED

  “You have heard the beat of the offshore wind, And the thresh of the deep-sea rain; You have heard the song—how long! how long! Pull out on the trail again!”

  [Rudyard Kipling, “The Long Trail”]

  CHAPTER I

  FOREWORD

  It began in the swimming pool at Glen Ellen. Between swims it was our wont to come out and lie in the sand and let our skins breathe the warm air and soak in the sunshine. Roscoe was a yachtsman. I had followed the sea a bit. It was inevitable that we should talk about boats. We talked about small boats, and the seaworthiness of small boats. We instanced Captain Slocum and his three years’ voyage around the world in the Spray.

  We asserted that we were not afraid to go around the world in a small boat, say forty feet long. We asserted furthermore that we would like to do it. We asserted finally that there was nothing in this world we’d like better than a chance to do it.

  “Let us do it,” we said . . . in fun.

  Then I asked Charmian privily if she’d really care to do it, and she said that it was too good to be true.

  The next time we breathed our skins in the sand by the swimming pool I said to Roscoe, “Let us do it.”

  I was in earnest, and so was he, for he said:

  “When shall we start?”

  I had a house to build on the ranch, also an orchard, a vineyard, and several hedges to plant, and a number of other things to do. We thought we would start in four or five years. Then the lure of the adventure began to grip us. Why not start at once? We’d never be younger, any of us. Let the orchard, vineyard, and hedges be growing up while we were away. When we came back, they would be ready for us, and we could live in the barn while we built the house.

  So the trip was decided upon, and the building of the Snark began. We named her the Snark because we could not think of any other name—this information is given for the benefit of those who otherwise might think there is something occult in the name.

  Our friends cannot understand why we make this voyage. They shudder, and moan, and raise their hands. No amount of explanation can make them comprehend that we are moving along the line of least resistance; that it is easier for us to go down to the sea in a small ship than to remain on dry land, just as it is easier for them to remain on dry land than to go down to the sea in the small ship. This state of mind comes of an undue prominence of the ego. They cannot get away from themselves. They cannot come out of themselves long enough to see that their line of least resistance is not necessarily everybody else’s line of least resistance. They make of their own bundle of desires, likes, and dislikes a yardstick wherewith to measure the desires, likes, and dislikes of all creatures. This is unfair. I tell them so. But they cannot get away from their own miserable egos long enough to hear me. They think I am crazy. In return, I am sympathetic. It is a state of mind familiar to me. We are all prone to think there is something wrong with the mental processes of the man who disagrees with us.

  The ultimate word is I LIKE. It lies beneath philosophy, and is twined about the heart of life. When philosophy has maundered ponderously for a month, telling the individual what he must do, the individual says, in an instant, “I LIKE,” and does something else, and philosophy goes glimmering. It is I LIKE that makes the drunkard drink and the martyr wear a hair shirt; that makes one man a reveller and another man an anchorite; that makes one man pursue fame, another gold, another love, and another God. Philosophy is very often a man’s way of explaining his own I LIKE.

  But to return to the Snark, and why I, for one, want to journey in her around the world. The things I like constitute my set of values. The thing I like most of all is personal achievement—not achievement for the world’s applause, but achievement for my own delight. It is the old “I did it! I did it! With my own hands I did it!” But personal achievement, with me, must be concrete. I’d rather win a water-fight in the swimming pool, or remain astride a horse that is trying to get out from under me, than write the great American novel. Each man to his liking. Some other fellow would prefer writing the great American novel to winning the water-fight or mastering the horse.

  Possibly the proudest achievement of my life, my moment of highest living, occurred when I was seventeen. I was in a three-masted schooner off the coast of Japan. We were in a typhoon. All hands had been on deck most of the night. I was called from my bunk at seven in the morning to take the wheel. Not a stitch of canvas was set. We were running before it under bare poles, yet the schooner fairly tore along. The seas were all of an eighth of a mile apart and the wind snatched the whitecaps from their summits, filling the air so thick with driving spray that it was impossible to see more than two waves at a time The schooner was almost unmanageable, rolling her rail under to starboard and to port, veering and yawing anywhere between southeast and southwest, and threatening, when the huge seas lifted under her quarter, to broach to. Had she broached to, she would ultimately have been reported lost with all hands and no tidings.

  I took the wheel. The sailing-master watched me for a space. He was afraid of my youth, feared that I lacked the strength and the nerve. But when he saw me successfully wrestle the schooner through several bouts, he went below to breakfast. Fore and aft, all hands were below at breakfast. Had she broached to, not one of them would ever have reached the deck. For forty minutes I stood there alone at the wheel, in my grasp the wildly careering schooner and the lives of twenty-two men. Once we were pooped. I saw it coming and, half-drowned, with tons of water crushing me, I checked the schooner’s rush to broach to. At the end of the hour, sweating and played out, I was relieved. But I had done it! With my own hands I had done my trick at the wheel and guided a hundred tons of wood and iron through a few million tons of wind and waves.

  My delight was in that I had done it—not in the fact that twenty-two men knew I had done it. Within the year over half of them were dead and gone, yet my pride in the thing performed was not diminished by half. I am willing to confess, however, that I do like a small audience. But it must be a very small audience, composed of those who love me and whom I love. When I then accomplish personal achievement, I have a feeling that I am justifying their love for me. But this is quite apart from the delight of the achievement itself. This delight is peculiarly my own and does not depend upon witnesses. When I have done some such thing, I am exalted. I glow all over. I am aware of a pride in myself that is mine, and mine alone. It is organic. Every fibre of me is thrilling with it. It is very natural. It is a mere matter of satisfaction at adjustment to environment. It is success.

  Life that lives is life successful, and success is the breath of its nostrils. The achievement of a difficult feat is successful adjustment to a sternly exacting environment. The more difficult the feat, the greater the satisfaction at its accomplishment. Thus it is with the man who leaps forward from the springboard, out over the swimming pool, and with a backward half-revolution of the body, enters the water head first. Once he left the springboard his environment became immedi
ately savage, and savage the penalty it would have exacted had he failed and struck the water flat. Of course, the man did not have to run the risk of the penalty. He could have remained on the bank in a sweet and placid environment of summer air, sunshine, and stability. Only he was not made that way. In that swift mid-air moment he lived as he could never have lived on the bank.

  As for myself, I’d rather be that man than the fellows who sat on the bank and watched him. That is why I am building the Snark. I am so made. I like, that is all. The trip around the world means big moments of living. Bear with me a moment and look at it. Here am I, a little animal called a man—a bit of vitalized matter, one hundred and sixty-five pounds of meat and blood, nerve, sinew, bones, and brain,—all of it soft and tender, susceptible to hurt, fallible, and frail. I strike a light back-handed blow on the nose of an obstreperous horse, and a bone in my hand is broken. I put my head under the water for five minutes, and I am drowned. I fall twenty feet through the air, and I am smashed. I am a creature of temperature. A few degrees one way, and my fingers and ears and toes blacken and drop off. A few degrees the other way, and my skin blisters and shrivels away from the raw, quivering flesh. A few additional degrees either way, and the life and the light in me go out. A drop of poison injected into my body from a snake, and I cease to move—forever I cease to move. A splinter of lead from a rifle enters my head, and I am wrapped around in the eternal blackness.