Jack London--An American Life by Earle Labor

Author:Earle Labor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

20

PARADISE LOST

Life has rotted away in this wonderful garden spot, where the climate is as delightful and healthful as any to be found in the world … When one considers the situation, one is almost driven to the conclusion that the white race flourishes on impurity and corruption.

—THE CRUISE OF THE SNARK

“Ho! for Honolulu!!” begins Charmian’s diary entry for April 23. “Sailed out thru Golden Gate, in fierce tide-rips. ‘Snark’ behaved beautifully.” They were feeling pretty well until later in the day. As the Snark was bobbing along on the high seas, the crew began to feel the symptoms of seasickness. “At first, you fear you will die,” explains Martin Johnson; “then, after it has a good hold on you, you fear you won’t die.” It was more than a matter of simple nausea. “Never had I known anything like it! My head ached, my stomach ached, every muscle in my body ached. There were times when it seemed impossible that I should live.” One by one, the crew members began to drop, precariously clutching the tiny twelve-inch guard rails as they vomited over the sides, then collapsing into their unsteady bunks, for the boat’s sickly rolling was relentless.

By the end of the first week, all except Tochigi had weathered the worst of their vertigo, but on Saturday they encountered their first storm. As the seas grew dangerously higher, the Snark was caught in a gigantic trough and refused to heave to, threatening at every great wave to swamp and sink. She managed to stay afloat—but she was far from watertight: “The sides leaked, the bottom leaked … Even the self-bailing cockpit quickly filled with water that could find no outlet. Our gasoline, stored in non-leakable tanks and sealed behind an air-tight bulkhead, began to filter out, so that we hardly dared to strike a match.” Because the floor of the galley was only two feet above the bottom of the boat, water rose to knee height, and Johnson had to prepare their meals in his rubber boots, while below him saltwater sloshed freely from one “airtight” compartment to another. “Will we ever reach Honolulu alive?” he wondered.

Everyone was black and blue from being knocked about, Charmian the worst hit. She sported a mass of lumps, abrasions, and bruises, the most painful resulting from a spectacular somersault she performed when her wet rubber shoe soles slipped on the top step of the companionway and she landed on her elbow six feet below. Martin openly marveled that she did not cry. “I couldn’t cry. It hurt too much to cry,” she told him—but later at the wheel by herself, she “wailed loud and long.”

The crew’s bruises were more than physical. Tochigi was heartsick when he found the books he had brought along ruined by saltwater. Roscoe Eames grew increasingly sullen after Jack had dressed him down for his navigational incompetence and shirking of his assigned duties. Bert Stolz went into a funk before they were barely a fortnight out: “No ambition—grouchy, neglectful,” Charmian wrote on May 9.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.