The Cruise of the Snark (35 page)

122
Polynesian Researches:
William Ellis,
Polynesian Researches, During a Residence of Nearly Eight Years in the Society and Sandwich Islands
(New York: Harper, 1833)

146
Keeley-Motor:
John W. Keely (1837-1898) claimed to have developed a motor that ran on the vibrations of “luminiferous ether.” Keely duped investors for a quarter of a century; only after his death was his machinery examined and proven to have been fraudulent. JL also mentions the Keely Motor in “The Other Animals” (1908), a response to the “Nature Faker” controversy.

150
thin, small voice:
See note to p. 39.

151
Bowditch:
Nathaniel Bowditch (1773-1838) published the first version of his
New American Practical Navigator
in 1802. It had gone through many editions by the time of JL's reference, and its tables had been published separately.

152
George Francis Train broke Jules Verne's record:
An eccentric reformer and traveler, Train (1829-1904) actually made his eighty-day trip around the world in 1870, three years before Verne published
Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours
(1873).

153
like a summer sky:
From the opening of the second canto of “The Testimony of the Suns” by JL's friend, Oakland poet George Sterling (1869-1926).

156
Mauser:
Besides the weapons encountered in the South Seas (Snider rifles, p. 159; Lee-Enfield and Winchester, p. 160), Charmian relates that the Londons themselves brought a Colt automatic pistol, a Winchester .22 automatic rifle, a shotgun, a Mauser, a five-shot Smith & Wesson revolver, and 15,000 rounds of ammunition.

173
Bêche de Mer:
The
Holothuria,
or sea-cucumber, gathered for export to China as a delicacy.

174
Esperanto:
An artificial language invented by Polish doctor Louis L. Zamenhof (1859-1917).

181
With my own hands:
Cf note to p. 8. Perhaps at this point a parody of his earlier expectations and of
The Sea-Wolf.

181
long pull and a strong pull:
A sailor command to haul on, for instance, halyards

184
licked Russia:
In the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905

188
Sailing Directions:
See note to page 84.

195
Wolf Larsen:
Title character from JL's
The Sea-Wolf
(1904) who rules his crew with a violence born from his version of Spencerian Darwinism.

196
X-ray:
The X ray was discovered and named by Wilhelm Röntgen (1845-1923), who won the first Nobel Prize for physics. Mihran Kassabian (1870-1910) a well-known Philadelphia X-ray practitioner, died of radiation-induced cancer shortly before JL sent his
Snark
book to the press.

APPENDICES

Through all my twenty years of life I had been in pursuit of Adventure. But Adventure eluded me. Many and many a time, when I thought that at last the prize was mine, she turned, and by some trickery slipped from my grasp. The twenty years were passed, and still there she was—Adventure!—in the road ahead of me, and I, unwearied by our many skirmishes, still following. The lure was always golden. I could not give it up. Somewhere, sometime, I knew that the advantage would incline my way, and that I should close down my two hands firmly upon her, and hold her fast. Adventure would be mine!

I thought, when I made it across the Atlantic on a cattle-boat, and trod the soil of several alien countries of the Old World, that I had won. But it was not so. It was but the golden reflection of Adventure that I had caught up with, and not the glorious thing itself. She was still there, ahead of me, and I still must needs pursue.

In my native Independence, Kansas, I sat long hours in my father's jewellry store, and dreamed as I worked. I ranged in vision over all the broad spaces of a world-chart. In this dream-realm, there were no impediments to my journeying. Through long ice-reaches, across frozen rivers, over snow-piled mountains, I forced my way to the Poles. I skimmed over boundless tracts of ocean. Giant continents beckoned me from coast to coast. Here was an island, rearing its grassy back out of the great Pacific. My fancy invaded it. Or here was a lofty mountain-chain, over whose snow-capped summits I roamed at pleasure, communing with the sky. Then there were the valley-deeps; dropping down the steep descents on my mount, I explored their sheltered wonders with unceasing delight. Nothing was inaccessible. I walked in lands where queer people, in costumes unfamiliar, lived out their lives in ways which puzzled me, yet fascinated; my way led often amid strange trees and grasses and shrubs—their names unguessable. To the farthest limits of East and West I sallied, and North and South, knew no barriers but the Poles. I breathed strange airs; I engaged in remarkable pursuits; by night, unfamiliar stars and constellations glittered in the sky. It is so easy, travelling—on the map. There are no rigid limitations. Probabilities do not bother. Latitude and longitude are things unnoticed.

But all these dreams were presaging a reality. How it came about I hardly know. I must have tired out that glorious thing, Adventure, with my long pursuit; or else she grew kind to me, and fluttered into my clasp. One evening, during the fall of 1906, while passing away an hour with my favourite magazine, my attention was attracted to an article describing a proposed trip round the world on a little forty-five-foot boat, by Jack London and a party of five. Instantly, I was all aglow with enthusiasm, and before I had finished the article I had mapped out a plan of action. If that boat made a trip such as described, I was going to be on the boat. It is needless to say that the letter I immediately wrote to Mr. Jack London was as strong as I could make it.

I did my best to convince Mr. London that I was the man he needed. I told him all I could do, and some things I couldn't do, laying special stress on the fact that I had at one time made a trip from Chicago to Liverpool, London, and Brussels, returning by way of New York with twenty-five cents of the original five dollars and a half with which I had started. There were other things in that letter, though just what they were I cannot now remember, nor does it matter. My impatience was great as I awaited Mr. London's reply. Yet I dared not believe anything would come of it. That would be impossible. Why, I knew that my letter was one of a host of letters; I knew that among those who had applied must be many who could push far stronger claims than mine; and so, hoping against odds, I looked to the outcome with no particular optimism.

Then, four days later, when hope had about dwindled away, the impossible happened. I was standing in my father's jewellry store after supper on the evening of Monday, November 12, 1906, when a messenger boy came in and handed me a telegram. The instant I saw the little yellow envelope, something told me that this was the turning-point in my life. With trembling hands I tore it open, my heart beating wildly with excitement. It was Jack London's reply, the fateful slip of paper that was to dictate my acts for several years to come.

The telegram was dated from Oakland, California, a few hours earlier in the day. “Can you cook?” it asked. And I had no sooner read it than I had framed the reply. A little later it was burning over the wires in the direction of California. Could I cook? “Sure. Try me,” I replied, with the bold audacity of youth—and then settled myself down to another wait.

The interval was brief. I spent it in learning how to cook. One of my local friends gave me temporary employment in his restaurant; and when, on Friday, the 23rd, the first letter came from Jack London, I had already been through the cook-book from cover to cover, learning the secrets of the cuisine: bread-baking and cake-making, the preparing of sauces and puddings and omelets, fruit, game, and fowl—in short, the “chemistry of the kitchen”; and what of my practical experience in the restaurant, I had even served up two or three experimental messes that seemed to me fairly creditable for a beginner.

The letter was long and detailed. It spoke of the ship, of the crew, of the plans—to use Mr. London's own words, it let me know just what I was in for.

There were to be six aboard, all-told. There were Jack and Mrs. London; Captain Roscoe Eames, who is Mrs. London's uncle; Paul H. Tochigi, a Jap cabin-boy; Herbert Stolz, an all-around athlete, fresh from Stanford University; and lastly, there was to be myself, the cook. We were to sail southern seas and northern seas, bays and inland rivers, lakes and creeks—anything navigable. And we were not to stop until we had circled the planet. We were to visit the principal countries of the world, spending from three to six months in every port. It was planned that we should not be home for at least seven years.

“It is the strongest boat ever built in San Francisco,” ran the letter. “We could go through a typhoon that would wreck a 15,000-ton steamer. . . . Practically, for every week that we are on the ocean, we will be a month in port. For instance, we expect that it will take us three weeks to sail from here to Hawaii, where we expect to remain three months—of course, in various portions of the Islands.

“Now as to the crew: All of us will be the crew. There is my wife, and myself. We will stand our watches and do our trick at the wheel. . . . When it comes to doing the trick at the wheel, I want to explain that this will not be arduous as it may appear at first. It is our intention, by sail-trimming, to make the boat largely sail herself, without steering. Next, in bad weather, there will be no steering, for then we will be hove-to. But watches, or rather lookouts, must be kept at night, when we are sailing. Suppose we divide day and night into twelve hours each. There are six of us all-told on the boat. Each will take a two-hour turn on deck.

“Of course, when it comes to moments of danger, or to doing something ticklish, or to making port, etc., the whole six of us will then become the crew. I will not be a writer, but a sailor. The same with my wife. The cabin-boy will be a sailor, and so also, the cook. In fact, when it's a case for all hands, all hands it will be.

“From the present outlook, we shall sail out of San Francisco Bay on December 15. So you see, if you accompany us, you will miss your Christmas at home. . . . Incidentally, if you like boxing, I may tell you that all of us box, and we'll have the gloves along. You'll have the advantage of us on reach. Also, I may say that we should all of us have lots of good times together, swimming, fishing, adventuring, doing a thousand-and-one things.

“Now, about clothes. Remember that the boat is small, also that we are going into hot weather and shall be in hot weather all the time. So bring a small outfit, and one for use in warm weather.”

Thereafter, my days and nights were more golden than ever with dreams. The days flew by swiftly, but their heels seemed heavy to the anxious wight who spent his hours grubbing in a restaurant. It appeared to me that the time for my departure would never come. I shudder as I think of what weird messes I may have served up to my friend's customers in the moments of my abstraction. Meanwhile, a letter from Mrs. London dropped in, telling me how to get my passport. At last the day came for my going. A letter was pressed into my hands by one of my local friends, who was an Elk, even as I. When I opened it, I found it to be an introduction for me wherever I might find myself. Surely here was goodwill and loyalty of which to be proud; and doubly proud was I when I found that the letter was endorsed by the Grand Exalted Ruler of the Elks. As I was later to find, this little slip of paper would open many a door which otherwise had remained shut to me.

With only a small satchel of clothing and a camera, I boarded a Santa Fé train, said the last good-byes, and sped westward toward California. The dreams did not cease as I passed through the several states that intervened. Whether by day or by night, they persisted. That glorious will-o'-the-wisp, Adventure, was still before me, though now much nearer and more tantalising. But the advantage was mine. Mounted on that monster of steam and iron, the modern train, I felt that Adventure would be hard put for speed in a race with me. And yet, that train seemed to me the slowest thing that ever ran on two rails.

My thoughts kept constantly turning upon the man whom I was journeying to meet. What sort of being was he, that had compelled the attention of the world by the magic of his pen, and by the daring of his exploits? One thing I knew. The places I had roamed in fancy, his foot had trod in reality. And he had sailed over the seas. In '97, he was a gold-seeker in the far North. He had been a sailor and a tramp, an oyster-pirate, a Socialist agitator, and a member of the San Francisco Bay fish-patrol. His voyages up to this time had carried him far over the earth, and his experiences would overlap the experiences of an ordinary man a score of times and more. Above all, he was a student, and a writer of worldwide celebrity. Wherever civilised men congregated, wherever books were read, the name of Jack London was familiar.

Why he was making this trip in so tiny a craft? That question he answered shortly afterward . . . [
Here Martin quotes loosely from Jack's justification of the trip in the Foreword to
The Cruise of the
Snark.
]

The article in the magazine, which had first drawn my attention to the proposed trip, had given me little knowledge of the man with whom in all probability I was to spend the next seven years of my life. The nearer I came to Oakland, the California city in which the Londons were then living, the more intense grew my curiosity. Worst of all, I was haunted by a fear that if I didn't hustle and get there, Jack London would have changed his mind, and I should be obliged to come back in humiliation to Independence.