Jack London, námořník a dobrodruh

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Jack London: THAT DEAD MEN RISE UP NEVER

The month in which my seventeenth birthday arrived I signed on before the mast on the Sophie Sutherland, a three-topmast schooner bound on a seven-months’ seal-hunting cruise to the coast of Japan.  We sailed from San Francisco, and immediately I found confronting me a problem of no inconsiderable proportions.  There were twelve men of us in the forecastle, ten of whom were hardened, tarry-thumbed sailors.  Not alone was I a youth and on my first voyage, but I had for shipmates men who had come through the hard school of the merchant service of Europe.  As boys, they had had to perform their ship’s duty, and, in addition, by immemorial sea custom, they had had to be the slaves of the ordinary and able-bodied seamen.  When they became ordinary seamen they were still the slaves of the able-bodied.  Thus, in the forecastle, with the watch below, an able seaman, lying in his bunk, will order an ordinary seaman to fetch him his shoes or bring him a drink of water.  Now the ordinary seaman may be lying in his bunk.  He is just as tired as the able seaman.  Yet he must get out of his bunk and fetch and carry.  If he refuses, he will be beaten.  If, perchance, he is so strong that he can whip the able seaman, then all the able seamen, or as many as may be necessary, pitch upon the luckless devil and administer the beating.

My problem now becomes apparent.  These hard-bit Scandinavian sailors had come through a hard school.  As boys they had served their mates, and as able seamen they looked to be served by other boys.  I was a boy—withal with a man’s body.  I had never been to sea before—withal I was a good sailor and knew my business.  It was either a case of holding my own with them or of going under.  I had signed on as an equal, and an equal I must maintain myself, or else endure seven months of hell at their hands.  And it was this very equality they resented.  By what right was I an equal?  I had not earned that high privilege.  I had not endured the miseries they had endured as maltreated boys or bullied ordinaries.  Worse than that, I was a land-lubber making his first voyage.  And yet, by the injustice of fate, on the ship’s articles I was their equal.

My method was deliberate, and simple, and drastic.  In the first place, I resolved to do my work, no matter how hard or dangerous it might be, so well that no man would be called upon to do it for me.  Further, I put ginger in my muscles.  I never malingered when pulling on a rope, for I knew the eagle eyes of my forecastle mates were squinting for just such evidences of my inferiority.  I made it a point to be among the first of the watch going on deck, among the last going below, never leaving a sheet or tackle for some one else to coil over a pin.  I was always eager for the run aloft for the shifting of topsail sheets and tacks, or for the setting or taking in of topsails; and in these matters I did more than my share.

Furthermore, I was on a hair-trigger of resentment myself.  I knew better than to accept any abuse or the slightest patronizing.  At the first hint of such, I went off—I exploded.  I might be beaten in the subsequent fight, but I left the impression that I was a wild-cat and that I would just as willingly fight again.  My intention was to demonstrate that I would tolerate no imposition.  I proved that the man who imposed on me must have a fight on his hands.  And doing my work well, the innate justice of the men, assisted by their wholesome dislike for a clawing and rending wild-cat ruction, soon led them to give over their hectoring.  After a bit of strife, my attitude was accepted, and it was my pride that I was taken in as an equal in spirit as well as in fact.  From then on, everything was beautiful, and the voyage promised to be a happy one.