TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:
Original spelling and grammar has been retained, with a few
exceptions, which are detailed in the Transcriber's Endnote.
* * * * *
THROUGH THE SOUTH SEAS WITH JACK LONDON
* * * * *
[Illustration: MARTIN JOHNSON AND A PATHE MOTION-PICTURE OPERATOR ON
A HUNT IN THE SOLOMONS]
Through the South Seas
With Jack London
BY
MARTIN JOHNSON
With an Introduction and a Postscript
BY
RALPH D. HARRISON
_Numerous Illustrations_
[Illustration]
LONDON
T. WERNER LAURIE, LTD.
CLIFFORD'S INN.
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION ix
CHAPTER
I ON THE TRAIL OF ADVENTURE 1
II THE BUILDING OF THE "SNARK" 13
III ON THE HIGH SEAS 49
IV A PACIFIC PARADISE 84
V MOLOKAI, THE LEPER ISLAND 117
VI THE LONG TRAVERSE 137
VII IN THE MARQUESAS 158
VIII THE SOCIETY ISLANDS 180
IX SOME SOUTH SEA ROYALTY 200
X THE SAMOAN GROUP 242
XI LOST IN THE FIJI ISLANDS 260
XII SOUTH SEA CANNIBALS 268
XIII OCEANIC CRUISING 309
XIV THE END OF THE VOYAGE 334
POSTSCRIPT 368
ILLUSTRATIONS
Martin Johnson and a Pathe
motion-picture operator on a hunt in
the Solomons _Frontispiece_
FACING
PAGE
_Snark_ at Honolulu 8
Complement of the _Snark_ in Solomon Islands 8
A Solomon Island Army 20
On the Ballassona River, Solomon Group 32
A Te Motu Round House, Santa Cruz Group 44
"War and Peace"--Foate Cannibals in Mission Boat.
Artificial Islands off Malaita, Solomon Group 56
War Canoes in Their Shelter 68
Manufactured Islet, with Shrine of a Native
Chief--Solomon Group 80
A Man of Roas. Solomon Group, Island of Malaita 92
Chief of Florida Island, Solomon Group 92
Group of Roas Women, Solomon Islands 100
A Mission School, teacher and members of class 112
Molokai, the Leper Settlement, Hawaiian Islands 122
Leper band at Molokai, the leper island of the
Hawaiian Group 132
Santa Cruz natives in catamaran canoes 146
Canoe House in Solomon Islands 154
Marquesas Islanders 166
The Old Home of Robert Louis Stevenson, Marquesas
Islands 176
The Price of a Wife--feather money 184
A Study in Ornaments 196
Mission Schooner trading among the Islands 210
The Haunt of the Crocodile, Solomon Islands 224
Houses on Outrigger Canoes, Solomon Islands 238
Types of Solomon Islanders 246
At Otivi Village, Santa Cruz Group 256
The Landing Place at Namu, Santa Cruz Group 264
Mrs. Godden and her School people, New Hebrides
Islands 278
Cannibal Village, Foate, Solomon Group 292
Artificial Island, off Malaita, Solomon Group 312
"Penduffryn," the largest cocoanut plantation in
the world. Island of Guadalcanar, Solomon Islands 322
Making copra at "Penduffryn," Solomon Islands 330
A Florida canoe--Solomons 342
Trading station, Langakauld-Ugi--Solomons 354
INTRODUCTION
Accounts of dare-devil exploits have always been read with deep
interest. One of the salient features of human nature is curiosity,
a desire to know what is being said and done outside the narrow
limits of one's individual experience, or, in other words, to learn
the modes of life of persons whose environment and problems are
different from one's own environment and problems. To this natural
curiosity, the book of travel is particularly gratifying.
But when we add to the fact that such a narrative treats of races
and conditions almost unknown to the inhabitants of civilised
countries the consideration that those voyageurs to whom the
adventures fell are men and women already prominently before the
public, and so deserving of that public's special confidence, the
interest and value of such a work will be seen to be extraordinarily
enhanced.
The cruise of Jack London's forty-five-foot ketch _Snark_ was
followed eagerly by the press of several continents. The _Snark_
alone was enough to compel attention, but the _Snark_ sailed by Jack
London, a writer of world-wide celebrity, was irresistible. The
venture caught the world's fancy. Periodicals devoted columns to a
discussion of the _Snark_ and her builder, and to the daring crew
who sailed the tiny craft for two years through the South Seas.
When it became known that such a voyage was in contemplation,
hundreds of persons wrote to Mr. London, begging that he allow them
to accompany him. On the other extreme, they were legion who threw
up their hands in horror at the mere suggestion. The belief was
widespread, and was, indeed, almost universally expressed, that the
famous writer and his fellows were setting out on a cruise from
which there would be no return. As an instance of the capriciousness
of things maritime and the fallibility of human judgment, it is
interesting to reflect that the _Snark_, a ten-ton yacht, the
stanchness of which was greatly doubted, travelled her watery miles
without mishap, and is still afloat, while the _Titanic_, the most
wonderful craft that ever put out to sea, the last word in
shipbuilding, declared unsinkable, bore over a thousand of her
passengers to death, and lies to-day, a twisted mass of wreckage,
irrecoverably lost in the depths of the Atlantic.
Hardships there were a-plenty for the little yacht's crew, of which
seasickness was not the least. The _Snark_ was not a "painted ship
upon a painted ocean." Even a seasoned sailor would find it
difficult to accustom himself to the pitch and toss of so small a
boat. The effect upon the _Snark's_ complement, composed mainly of
"landlubbers," may easily be imagined.
Mr. Martin Johnson, who started in as cook, soon became the close
friend and chief companion of Mr. London. He was thus enabled to
make studies of the South Sea natives, many of whom are
unquestionably the strangest creatures in existence. His
photographic records--over seven thousand different negatives--are
the finest in the world: they are absolutely unique. We have read of
some few of the little-known places visited by the voyageurs, in Mr.
London's "Cruise of the _Snark_"; but the present work, being much
more detailed and complete, gives the first real insight into life
aboard the yacht and among the myriad islands of the South Pacific.
The illustrations are from photographs made by Mr. Johnson, with a
few from prints by Mr. J. W. Beattie, of Tasmania.
After reading such a narrative, we seem to lose our wonder at the
voyages of vessels like the _Half Moon_, the _Pinta_, and the _Santa
Maria_. Surely the playing of sea-pranks can go no further. The
conclusion seems justifiable that if men are to outdo the exploits
of the past, they will only succeed by forsaking the water and
mastering the air.
RALPH D. HARRISON.
Indianapolis, U. S. A., April 5, 1913.
THROUGH THE SOUTH SEAS WITH JACK LONDON
CHAPTER I
ON THE TRAIL OF ADVENTURE
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 good-will 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 world-wide
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, when he wrote: "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. That is why I am
building the _Snark_. I am so made. 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 vitalised 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 light and life 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.
[Illustration: SNARK AT HONOLULU] [Illustration: COMPLEMENT OF THE
SNARK IN SOLOMON ISLANDS: MRS. JACK LONDON, MR. JACK LONDON AND
MARTIN JOHNSON IN THE CENTRE]
"Fallible and frail, a bit of pulsating, jelly-like life--it is all
I am. About me are the great natural forces--colossal menaces,
Titans of destruction, unsentimental monsters that have less concern
for me than I have for the grain of sand I crush under my foot. They
have no concern for me at all. They do not know me. They are
unconscious, unmerciful, and unmoral. They are the cyclones and
tornadoes, lightning flashes and cloudbursts, tide-rips and tidal
waves, undertows and waterspouts, great whirls and sucks and eddies,
earthquakes and volcanoes, surfs that thunder on rock-ribbed coasts,
and seas that leap aboard the largest crafts that float, crushing
humans to pulp or licking them off into the sea and to death--and
these insensate monsters do not know that tiny sensitive creature,
all nerves and weaknesses, whom men call Jack London, and who
himself thinks he is all right and quite a superior being.
"In the maze and chaos of the conflict of these vast and draughty
Titans, it is for me to thread my precarious way. The bit of life
that is I will exult over them."
And again:
"Being alive, I want to see, and all the world is a bigger thing to
see than one small town or valley. We have done little outlining of
the voyage. Only one thing is definite, and that is that our first
port of call will be Honolulu. Beyond a few general ideas, we have
no thought of our next port after Hawaii. We shall make up our minds
as we get nearer. In a general way, we know that we shall wander
through the South Seas, take in Samoa, New Zealand, Tasmania,
Australia, New Guinea, Borneo, and Sumatra, and go on up through the
Philippines to Japan. Then will come Korea, China, India, the Red
Sea, and the Mediterranean. After that the voyage becomes too vague
to describe, though we know a number of things we shall surely do,
and we expect to spend from one to several months in every country
in Europe."
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.
It was about nine o'clock in the evening when I arrived in Oakland.
As soon as I was off the train, I hunted a telephone and called up
Jack London. It was London himself who came to the 'phone. When I
told him who I was, I heard a pleasant voice say: "Hello, boy; come
right along up," and then followed instructions as to how to find
the house.
They lived in a splendid section of the town. I had no difficulty in
finding them. When I rapped at the door, a neat little woman opened
it, and grabbing my hand, almost wrung it off.
"Come right in," cried Mrs. London. "Jack's waiting for you."
At that moment a striking young man of thirty, with very broad
shoulders, a mass of wavy auburn hair, and a general atmosphere of
boyishness, appeared at the doorway, and shot a quick, inquisitive
look at me from his wide grey eyes. Inside, I could see all manner
of oars, odd assortments of clothing, books, papers, charts, guns,
cameras, and folding canoes, piled in great stacks upon the floor.
"Hello, Martin," he said, stretching out his hand.
"Hello, Jack," I answered. We gripped.
And that is how I met Jack London, traveller, novelist, and social
reformer; and that is how, for the first time, I really ran shoulder
to shoulder with Adventure, which I had been pursuing all my days.