The Cruise of the Snark (3 page)

 

Some hundreds of persons wrote to Jack, begging him to let them go with him on the cruise. Every mail contained such letters. They continued to pour in almost up to the day we sailed out of the Golden Gate. Most of the letters Jack showed to me. Here was a chef in a big hotel in Philadelphia, a man getting over two hundred dollars a month, who offered his services free. A college professor volunteered to do any kind of work, and give one thousand dollars for the privilege. Another man, the son of a millionaire, offered five hundred dollars to go along. Still another declared that he would put up any amount of money if Jack would allow his son to be one of the crew. And there were offers and solicitations from school-teachers, draftsmen, authors, photographers, secretaries, stenographers, physicians, surgeons, civil engineers, cooks, typists, dentists, compositors, reporters, adventurers, sailors, valets, “lady companions” for Mrs. London, stewards, machinists, engineers, high-school and university students, electricians—men and women of every imaginable trade, profession or inclination. I began to have misgivings when I thought of the fine chefs who had applied. I contrasted their skilled ability with the little that I had learned from the cook-book! It was just such things as these that made me feel how lucky I was to be a member of the crew of the
Snark.
(Chapter II)

 

Among those who came were George Sterling, the man whom the Londons had pronounced one of the greatest of living poets, Martinez, the artist, Dick Partington, another artist, Johannes Reimers, writer, and Jimmie Hopper, famous first as a football hero and then as a writer of short stories, and others, whose names I have forgotten. I did my very best to prepare them a good dinner; and if their expressions of satisfaction were any indication, I succeeded. (Chapter II)

 

We began provisioning and buying all kinds of photographic supplies, done up in tropical form—that is, with the film wrapped in tin-foil and sealed in tins, and the paper triple-wrapped and protected with foil. . . . We bought clothing, and we bought fishing tackle, and harpoons, and guns, and pistols, and we bought paper, paper for Jack's writing, and paper for the typewriter, hundreds of reams of it. (Chapter II)

 

He smiled

“Well, if we're boarded by pirates and fight it out until our deck becomes a shambles, I don't think I'll write about it. And if we're wrecked at sea, and are driven by starvation into eating one another, I'll keep it quiet for the sake of our relatives. And if we're killed and eaten by cannibals, of course, I shan't let the American public get an inkling of it.” (Chapter II)

 

Jack was writing a new book. While in Honolulu, he had told me of it, and he was then preparing his notes for it.

“Look here, Martin,” he called to me one day, at the Seaside Hotel.

I came to where he was writing.

“Look at this,” he directed, holding out a sheet of paper. “There's the title of something new I'm going to write. And I'm going to make you half-hero of it, what's more.”

I looked at the paper. On it was the title, “Martin Eden.”

Jack then went on to explain. The name was a combination. Jack had used my Christian name and the surname of an old friend of his called Eden. The story, he said, would be drawn largely from his own experience; it would treat of the struggles of a young fellow who was determined to “make good” at writing; of his eventual success; and of his unhappy death. But it was to be more than a story. Through it was to run a certain cosmic undertone that would make of it a record of universal truths. Beyond the mere recital of details incident to the plot would be a biological and sociological significance. The thing would be true, not only of Martin Eden, but of all life, of all time. In a way, a value would be put upon life and the things of life that would ring true, even though the view-point would not be that of the smug bourgeoisie.

When he was not too sick, Jack worked on this book. (Chapter VI)

 

A small closet contained his clothes and the books he had accumulated and for which there was no room on the table or under the table. Hand in hand with reading, he had developed the habit of making notes, and so copiously did he make them that there would have been no existence for him in the confined quarters had he not rigged several clothes-lines across the room on which the notes were hung. Even so, he was crowded until navigating the room was a difficult task. He could not open the door without first closing the closet door, and
vice versa.
It was impossible for him anywhere to traverse the room in a straight line. To go from the door to the head of the bed was a zigzag course that he was never quite able to accomplish in the dark without collisions. Having settled the difficulty of the conflicting doors, he had to steer sharply to the right to avoid the kitchen. Next, he sheered to the left, to escape the foot of the bed; but this sheer, if too generous, brought him against the corner of the table. With a sudden twitch and lurch, he terminated the sheer and bore off to the right along a sort of canal, one bank of which was the bed, the other the table. When the one chair in the room was at its usual place before the table, the canal was unnavigable. When the chair was not in use, it reposed on top of the bed, though sometimes he sat on the chair when cooking, reading a book while the water boiled, and even becoming skillful enough to manage a paragraph or two while steak was frying. Also, so small was the little corner that constituted the kitchen, he was able, sitting down, to reach anything he needed. In fact, it was expedient to cook sitting down; standing up, he was too often in his own way. (Chapter 23)

 

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.