A thousand deaths by Jack London

one of the eighty-five deck passengers either. All had done well, and all

were looking forward to a rest-off and a good time in Papeete.

Of course, the Petite Jeanne was overloaded. She was only seventy tons, and

she had no right to carry a tithe of the mob she had on board. Beneath her

hatches she was crammed and jammed with pearl shell and copra. Even the trade

room was packed full with shell. It was a miracle that the sailors could work

her. There was no moving about the decks. They simply climbed back and forth

along the rails.

In the night time they walked upon the sleepers, who carpeted the deck, I’ll

swear, two deep. Oh! And there were pigs and chickens on deck, and sacks of

yams, while every conceivable place was festooned with strings of drinking

cocoanuts and bunches of bananas. On both sides, between the fore and main

shrouds, guys had been stretched, just low enough for the foreboom to swing

clear; and from each of these guys at least fifty bunches of bananas were

suspended.

It promised to be a messy passage, even if we did make it in the two or three

days that would have been required if the southeast trades had been blowing

SOUTH SEA TALES

45

fresh. But they weren’t blowing fresh. After the first five hours the trade

died away in a dozen or so gasping fans. The calm continued all that night and

the next day–one of those glaring, glassy, calms, when the very thought of

opening one’s eyes to look at it is sufficient to cause a headache.

The second day a man died–an Easter Islander, one of the best divers that

season in the lagoon. Smallpox–that is what it was; though how smallpox could

come on board, when there had been no known cases ashore when we left

Rangiroa, is beyond me. There it was, though–smallpox, a man dead, and three

others down on their backs.

There was nothing to be done. We could not segregate the sick, nor could we

care for them. We were packed like sardines. There was nothing to do but rot

and die–that is, there was nothing to do after the night that followed the

first death. On that night, the mate, the supercargo, the Polish Jew, and four

native divers sneaked away in the large whale boat. They were never heard of

again. In the morning the captain promptly scuttled the remaining boats, and

there we were.

That day there were two deaths; the following day three; then it jumped to

eight. It was curious to see how we took it. The natives, for instance, fell

into a condition of dumb, stolid fear. The captain–Oudouse, his name was, a

Frenchman–became very nervous and voluble. He actually got the twitches. He

was a large fleshy man, weighing at least two hundred pounds, and he quickly

became a faithful representation of a quivering jelly-mountain of fat.

The German, the two Americans, and myself bought up all the Scotch whiskey,

and proceeded to stay drunk. The theory was beautiful–namely, if we kept

ourselves soaked in alcohol, every smallpox germ that came into contact with

us would immediately be scorched to a cinder. And the theory worked, though I

must confess that neither Captain Oudouse nor Ah Choon were attacked by the

disease either. The Frenchman did not drink at all, while Ah Choon restricted

himself to one drink daily.

It was a pretty time. The sun, going into northern declination, was straight

overhead. There was no wind, except for frequent squalls, which blew fiercely

for from five minutes to half an hour, and wound up by deluging us with rain.

After each squall, the awful sun would come out, drawing clouds of steam from

the soaked decks.

The steam was not nice. It was the vapor of death, freighted with millions and

millions of germs. We always took another drink when we saw it going up from

the dead and dying, and usually we took two or three more drinks, mixing them

exceptionally stiff. Also, we made it a rule to take an additional several

each time they hove the dead over to the sharks that swarmed about us.

We had a week of it, and then the whiskey gave out. It is just as well, or I

shouldn’t be alive now. It took a sober man to pull through what followed, as

you will agree when I mention the little fact that only two men did pull

through. The other man was the heathen–at least, that was what I heard

Captain Oudouse call him at the moment I first became aware of the heathen’s

existence. But to come back.

SOUTH SEA TALES

46

It was at the end of the week, with the whiskey gone, and the pearl buyers

sober, that I happened to glance at the barometer that hung in the cabin

companionway. Its normal register in the Paumotus was 29.90, and it was quite

customary to see it vacillate between 29.85 and 30.00, or even 30.05; but to

see it as I saw it, down to 29.62, was sufficient to sober the most drunken

pearl buyer that ever incinerated smallpox microbes in Scotch whiskey.

I called Captain Oudouse’s attention to it, only to be informed that he had

watched it going down for several hours. There was little to do, but that

little he did very well, considering the circumstances. He took off the light

sails, shortened right down to storm canvas, spread life lines, and waited for

the wind. His mistake lay in what he did after the wind came. He hove to on

the port tack, which was the right thing to do south of the Equator, if–and

there was the rub–IF one were NOT in the direct path of the hurricane.

We were in the direct path. I could see that by the steady increase of the

wind and the equally steady fall of the barometer. I wanted him to turn and

run with the wind on the port quarter until the barometer ceased falling, and

then to heave to. We argued till he was reduced to hysteria, but budge he

would not. The worst of it was that I could not get the rest of the pearl

buyers to back me up. Who was I, anyway, to know more about the sea and its

ways than a properly qualified captain? was what was in their minds, I knew.

Of course, the sea rose with the wind frightfully; and I shall never forget

the first three seas the Petite Jeanne shipped. She had fallen off, as vessels

do at times when hove to, and the first sea made a clean breach. The life

lines were only for the strong and well, and little good were they even for

them when the women and children, the bananas and cocoanuts, the pigs and

trade boxes, the sick and the dying, were swept along in a solid, screeching,

groaning mass.

The second sea filled the Petite Jeanne’S decks flush with the rails; and, as

her stern sank down and her bow tossed skyward, all the miserable dunnage of

life and luggage poured aft. It was a human torrent. They came head first,

feet first, sidewise, rolling over and over, twisting, squirming, writhing,

and crumpling up. Now and again one caught a grip on a stanchion or a rope;

but the weight of the bodies behind tore such grips loose.

One man I noticed fetch up, head on and square on, with the starboard bitt.

His head cracked like an egg. I saw what was coming, sprang on top of the

cabin, and from there into the mainsail itself. Ah Choon and one of the

Americans tried to follow me, but I was one jump ahead of them. The American

was swept away and over the stern like a piece of chaff. Ah Choon caught a

spoke of the wheel, and swung in behind it. But a strapping Raratonga vahine

(woman)–she must have weighed two hundred and fifty–brought up against him,

and got an arm around his neck. He clutched the kanaka steersman with his

other hand; and just at that moment the schooner flung down to starboard.

The rush of bodies and sea that was coming along the port runway between the

cabin and the rail turned abruptly and poured to starboard. Away they

went–vahine, Ah Choon, and steersman; and I swear I saw Ah Choon grin at me

with philosophic resignation as he cleared the rail and went under.

SOUTH SEA TALES

47

The third sea–the biggest of the three–did not do so much damage. By the

time it arrived nearly everybody was in the rigging. On deck perhaps a dozen

gasping, half-drowned, and half-stunned wretches were rolling about or

attempting to crawl into safety. They went by the board, as did the wreckage

of the two remaining boats. The other pearl buyers and myself, between seas,

managed to get about fifteen women and children into the cabin, and battened