The Man behind the Legend: Memoirs, Autobiographical Novels & Essays of Jack London. Jack London
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Mulligan Jacobs? How dare he—with no hope of any profit, not a hero, not a leader of a forlorn hope nor a martyr to God, but a mere filthy, malignant rat—how dare he, I ask myself, be so defiant, so death-inviting? The spectacle of him makes me doubt all the schools of the metaphysicians and the realists. No philosophy has a leg to stand on that does not account for Mulligan Jacobs. And all the midnight oil of philosophy I have burned does not enable me to account for Mulligan Jacobs . . . unless he be insane. And then I don’t know.
Was there ever such a freight of human souls on the sea as these humans with whom I am herded on the Elsinore?
And now, working in my rooms, white-leading and turpentining, is another one of them. I have learned his name. It is Arthur Deacon. He is the pallid, furtive-eyed man whom I observed the first day when the men were routed out of the forecastle to man the windlass—the man I so instantly adjudged a drug-fiend. He certainly looks it.
I asked Mr. Pike his estimate of the man.
“White slaver,” was his answer. “Had to skin outa New York to save his skin. He’ll be consorting with those other three larrakins I gave a piece of my mind to.”
“And what do you make of them?” I asked.
“A month’s wages to a pound of tobacco that a district attorney, or a committee of some sort investigating the New York police is lookin’ for ’em right now. I’d like to have the cash somebody’s put up in New York to send them on this get-away. Oh, I know the breed.”
“Gangsters?” I queried.
“That’s what. But I’ll trim their dirty hides. I’ll trim ’em. Mr. Pathurst, this voyage ain’t started yet, and this old stiff’s a long way from his last legs. I’ll give them a run for their money. Why, I’ve buried better men than the best of them aboard this craft. And I’ll bury some of them that think me an old stiff.”
He paused and looked at me solemnly for a full half minute.
“Mr. Pathurst, I’ve heard you’re a writing man. And when they told me at the agents’ you were going along passenger, I made a point of going to see your play. Now I’m not saying anything about that play, one way or the other. But I just want to tell you, that as a writing man you’ll get stuff in plenty to write about on this voyage. Hell’s going to pop, believe me, and right here before you is the stiff that’ll do a lot of the poppin’. Some several and plenty’s going to learn who’s an old stiff.”
Chapter XV
How I have been sleeping! This relief of renewed normality is delicious—thanks to Miss West. Now why did not Captain West, or Mr. Pike, both experienced men, diagnose my trouble for me? And then there was Wada. But no; it required Miss West. Again I contemplate the problem of woman. It is just such an incident among a million others that keeps the thinker’s gaze fixed on woman. They truly are the mothers and the conservers of the race.
Rail as I will at Miss West’s red-blood complacency of life, yet I must bow my head to her life-giving to me. Practical, sensible, hard-headed, a comfort-maker and a nest-builder, possessing all the distressing attributes of the blind-instinctive race-mother, nevertheless I must confess I am most grateful that she is along. Had she not been on the Elsinore, by this time I should have been so overwrought from lack of sleep that I would be biting my veins and howling—as mad a hatter as any of our cargo of mad hatters. And so we come to it—the everlasting mystery of woman. One may not be able to get along with her; yet is it patent, as of old time, that one cannot get along without her. But, regarding Miss West, I do entertain one fervent hope, namely, that she is not a suffragette. That would be too much.
Captain West may be a Samurai, but he is also human. He was really a bit fluttery this morning, in his reserved, controlled way, when he regretted the plague of vermin I had encountered in my rooms. It seems he has a keen sense of hospitality, and that he is my host on the Elsinore, and that, although he is oblivious of the existence of the crew, he is not oblivious of my comfort. By his few expressions of regret it appears that he cannot forgive himself for his careless acceptance of the erroneous diagnosis of my affliction. Yes; Captain West is a real human man. Is he not the father of the slender-faced, strapping-bodied Miss West?
“Thank goodness that’s settled,” was Miss West’s exclamation this morning, when we met on the poop and after I had told her how gloriously I had slept.
And then, that nightmare episode dismissed because, forsooth, for all practical purposes—it was settled, she next said:
“Come on and see the chickens.”
And I accompanied her along the spidery bridge to the top of the ’midship-house, to look at the one rooster and the four dozen fat hens in the ship’s chicken-coop.
As I accompanied her, my eyes dwelling pleasurably on that vital gait of hers as she preceded me, I could not help reflecting that, coming down on the tug from Baltimore, she had promised not to bother me nor require to be entertained.
Come and see the chickens!—Oh, the sheer female possessiveness of that simple invitation! For effrontery of possessiveness is there anything that can exceed the nest-making, planet-populating, female, human woman?—Come and see the chickens! Oh, well, the sailors for’ard may be hard-bitten, but I can promise Miss West that here, aft, is one male passenger, unmarried and never married, who is an equally hard-bitten adventurer on the sea of matrimony. When I go over the census I remember at least several women, superior to Miss West, who trilled their song of sex and failed to shipwreck me.
As I read over what I have written I notice how the terminology of the sea has stolen into my mental processes. Involuntarily I think in terms of the sea. Another thing I notice is my excessive use of superlatives. But then, everything on board the Elsinore is superlative. I find myself continually combing my vocabulary in quest of just and adequate words. Yet am I aware of failure. For example, all the words of all the dictionaries would fail to approximate the exceeding terribleness of Mulligan Jacobs.
But to return to the chickens. Despite every precaution, it was evident that they had had a hard time during the past days of storm. It was equally evident that Miss West, even during her sea-sickness, had not neglected them. Under her directions the steward had actually installed a small oil-stove in the big coop, and she now beckoned him up to the top of the house as he was passing for’ard to the galley. It was for the purpose of instructing him further in the matter of feeding them.
Where were the grits? They needed grits. He didn’t know. The sack had been lost among the miscellaneous stores, but Mr. Pike had promised a couple of sailors that afternoon to overhaul the lazarette.
“Plenty of ashes,” she told the steward. “Remember. And if a sailor doesn’t clean the coop each day, you report to me. And give them only clean food—no spoiled scraps, mind. How many eggs yesterday?”
The steward’s eyes glistened with enthusiasm as he said he had got nine the day before and expected fully a dozen to-day.
“The poor things,” said Miss West—to me. “You’ve no idea how bad weather reduces their laying.” She turned back upon the steward. “Mind now, you watch and find out which hens don’t lay, and kill them first. And you ask me each time before you kill one.”
I found myself neglected, out there on top the draughty house, while Miss West talked chickens with the Chinese ex-smuggler. But it gave me opportunity to observe her. It is the length of her eyes that accentuates their steadiness of gaze—helped, of course, by the dark brows and lashes. I noted again the warm gray of her eyes. And I began to identify her, to locate her. She is a physical type of the best of the womanhood of old New England. Nothing spare nor meagre, nor bred out, but generously strong, and yet not quite what one would call robust. When I said she was strapping-bodied I erred. I must fall back on my other word, which will have to be the last: Miss West is vital-bodied. That is the key-word.
When