would catch him, but off to the south toward Little Yosemite. This meant a plunge
of half a mile.
DUTCH COURAGE AND OTHER STORIES
11
“I’ll try it,” Gus said simply.
They knotted the two lariats together, so that they had over a hundred feet of rope
between them; and then each boy tied an end to his waist.
“If I slide,” Gus cautioned, “come in on the slack and brace yourself. If you don’t,
you’ll follow me, that’s all!”
“Ay, ay!” was the confident response. “Better take a nip before you start?”
Gus glanced at the proffered bottle. He knew himself and of what he was capable.
“Wait till I make the peg and you join me. All ready?”
“Ay. ”
He struck out like a cat, on all fours, clawing energetically as he urged his upward
progress, his comrade paying out the rope carefully. At first his speed was good,
but gradually it dwindled. Now he was fifteen feet from the peg, now ten, now
eight-but going, oh, so slowly! Hazard, looking up from his crevice, felt a
contempt for him and disappointment in him. It did look easy. Now Gus was five
feet away, and after a painful effort, four feet. But when only a yard intervened,
he came to a standstill-not exactly a standstill, for, like a squirrel in a wheel, he
maintained his position on the face of the Dome by the most desperate clawing.
He had failed, that was evident. The question now was, how to save himself. With
a sudden, catlike movement he whirled over on his back, caught his heel in a tiny,
saucer-shaped depression and sat up. Then his courage failed him. Day had at last
penetrated to the floor of the valley, and he was appalled at the frightful distance.
“Go ahead and make it!” Hazard ordered; but Gus merely shook his head.
“Then come down!”
Again he shook his head. This was his ordeal, to sit, nerveless and insecure, on
the brink of the precipice. But Hazard, lying safely in his crevice, now had to face
his own ordeal, but one of a different nature. When Gus began to slide-as he soon
must-would he, Hazard, be able to take in the slack and then meet the shock as the
other tautened the rope and darted toward the plunge? It seemed doubtful. And
there he lay, apparently safe, but in reality harnessed to death. Then rose the
temptation. Why not c ast off the rope about his waist? He would be safe at all
events. It was a simple way out of the difficulty. There was no need that two
should perish. But it was impossible for such temptation to overcome his pride of
race, and his own pride in himself and in his honor. So the rope remained about
him.
“Come down!” he ordered; but Gus seemed to have become petrified.
DUTCH COURAGE AND OTHER STORIES
12
“Come down,” he threatened, “or I’ll drag you down!” He pulled on the rope to
show he was in earnest.
“Don’t you dare!” Gus articulated through his clenched teeth.
“Sure I will, if you don’t come!” Again he jerked the rope.
With a despairing gurgle Gus started, doing his best to work sideways from the
plunge. Hazard, every sense on the alert, almost exulting in his perfect coolness,
took in the slack with deft rapidity. Then, as the rope began to tighten, he braced
himself. The shock drew him half out of the crevice; but he held firm and served
as the center of the circle, while Gus, with the rope as a radius, described the
circumference and ended up on the extreme southern edge of the Saddle. A few
moments later Hazard was offering him the flask.
“Take some yourself,” Gus said.
“No; you. I don’t need it.”
“And I’m past needing it.” Evidently Gus was dubious of the bottle and its
contents.
Hazard put it away in his pocket. “Are you game,” he asked, “or are you going to
give it up?”
“Never!” Gus protested. “I am game. No Lafee ever showed the white feather yet.
And if I did lose my grit up there, it was only for the moment-sort of like
seasickness. I’m all right now, and I’m going to the top.”
“Good!” encouraged Hazard. “You lie in the crevice this time, and I’ll show you
how easy it is.”
But Gus refused. He held that it was easier and safer for him to try again, arguing
that it was less difficult for his one hundred and sixteen pounds to cling to the
smooth rock than for Hazard’s one hundred and sixty-five; also that it was easier
for one hundred and sixty-five pounds to bring a sliding one hundred and sixteen
to a stop than vice versa. And further, that he had the benefit of his previous
experience. Hazard saw the justice of this, although it was with great reluctance
that he gave in.
Success vindicated Gus’s contention. The second time, just as it seemed as if his
slide would be repeated, he made a last supreme effort and gripped the coveted
peg. By means of the rope, Hazard quickly joined him. The next peg was nearly
sixty feet away; but for nearly half that distance the base of some glacier in the
forgotten past had ground a shallow furrow. Taking advantage of this, it was easy
for Gus to lasso the eye-bolt. And it seemed, as was really the case, that the
DUTCH COURAGE AND OTHER STORIES
13
hardest part of the task was over. True, the curve steepened to nearly sixty degrees
above them, but a comparatively unbroken line of eye-bolts, six feet apart,
awaited the lads. They no longer had even to use the lasso. Standing on one peg it
was child’s play to throw the bight of the rope over the next and to draw
themselves up to it.
A bronzed and bearded man met them at the top and gripped their hands in hearty
fellowship.
“Talk about your Mont Blancs!” he exclaimed, pausing in the midst of greeting
them to survey the mighty panorama. “But there’s nothing on all the earth, nor
over it, nor under it, to compare with this! ” Then he recollected himself and
thanked them for coming to his aid. No, he was not hurt or injured in any way.
Simply because of his own carelessness, just as he had arrived at the top the
previous day, he had dropped his climbing rope. Of course it was impossible to
descend without it. Did they understand heliographing? No? That was strange!
How did they
“Oh, we knew something was the matter,” Gus interrupted, “from the way you
flashed when we fired off the shotgun.”
“Find it pretty cold last night without blankets?” Hazard queried.
“I should say so. I’ve hardly thawed out yet.”
“Have some of this.” Hazard shoved the flask over to him.
The stranger regarded him quite seriously for a moment, then said,
“My dear fellow, do you see that row of pegs? Since it is my honest intention to
climb down them very shortly, I am forced to decline. No, I don’t think I’ll have
any, though I thank you just the same.”
Hazard glanced at Gus and then put the flask back in his pocket. But when they
pulled the doubled rope through the last eye-bolt and set foot on the Saddle, he
again drew out the bottle.
“Now that we’re down, we don’t need it,” he remarked, pithily. “And I’ve about
come to the conclusion that there isn’t very much in Dutch courage, after all.” He
gazed up the great curve of the Dome. “Look at what we’ve done without it!”
Several seconds thereafter a party of tourists, gathered at the margin of Mirror
Lake, were astounded at the unwonted phenomenon of a whisky flask descending
upon them like a comet out of a clear sky; and all the way back to the hotel they
marveled greatly at the wonders of nature, especially meteorites.
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14
Typhoon Off the Coast of Japan
(First published in the San Francisco Morning Call, November 11, 1893)
Note: This is Jack London’s first published story.
It was four bells in the morning watch. We had just finished breakfast when the
order came forward for the watch on deck to stand by to heave her to and all
hands stand by the boats.
“Port! hard a port!” cried our sailing-master. “Clew up the topsails! Let the flying
jib run down! Back the jib over to windward and run down the foresail!” And so
was our schooner Sophie Sutherland hove to off the Japan coast, near Cape
Jerimo, on April 10, 1893.
Then came moments of bustle and confusion. There were eighteen men to man
the six boats. Some were hooking on the falls, others casting off the lashings;
boat-steerers appeared with boat-compasses and water-breakers, and boat-pullers
with the lunch boxes. Hunters were staggering under two or three shotguns, a rifle