A thousand deaths by Jack London

out at the siege of Ladysmith.

Captain Woodward, short and squat, elderly, burned by forty years of tropic

sun, and with the most beautiful liquid brown eyes I ever saw in a man, spoke

from a vast experience. The crisscross of scars on his bald pate bespoke a

tomahawk intimacy with the black, and of equal intimacy was the advertisement,

front and rear, on the right side of his neck, where an arrow had at one time

entered and been pulled clean through. As he explained, he had been in a hurry

on that occasion–the arrow impeded his running–and he felt that he could not

take the time to break off the head and pull out the shaft the way it had come

in. At the present moment he was commander of the SAVAII, the big steamer that

recruited labor from the westward for the German plantations on Samoa.

“Half the trouble is the stupidity of the whites,” said Roberts, pausing to

take a swig from his glass and to curse the Samoan bar-boy in affectionate

terms. “If the white man would lay himself out a bit to understand the

workings of the black man’s mind, most of the messes would be avoided.”

“I’ve seen a few who claimed they understood niggers,” Captain Woodward

retorted, “and I always took notice that they were the first to be kai-kai’d

(eaten). Look at the missionaries in New Guinea and the New Hebrides–the

martyr isle of Erromanga and all the rest. Look at the Austrian expedition

that was cut to pieces in the Solomons, in the bush of Guadalcanar. And look

at the traders themselves, with a score of years’ experience, making their

brag that no nigger would ever get them, and whose heads to this day are

ornamenting the rafters of the canoe houses. There was old Johnny

Simons–twenty-six years on the raw edges of Melanesia, swore he knew the

niggers like a book and that they’d never do for him, and he passed out at

Marovo Lagoon, New Georgia, had his head sawed off by a black Mary (woman) and

an old nigger with only one leg, having left the other leg in the mouth of a

shark while diving for dynamited fish. There was Billy Watts, horrible

reputation as a nigger killer, a man to scare the devil. I remember lying at

Cape Little, New Ireland you know, when the niggers stole half a case of

trade-tobacco–cost him about three dollars and a half. In retaliation he

turned out, shot six niggers, smashed up their war canoes and burned two

villages. And it was at Cape Little, four years afterward, that he was jumped

along with fifty Buku boys he had with him fishing bˆche-de-mer. In five

minutes they were all dead, with the exception of three boys who got away in a

canoe. Don’t talk to me about understanding the nigger. The white man’s

mission is to farm the world, and it’s a big enough job cut out for him. What

time has he got left to understand niggers anyway?”

“Just so,” said Roberts. “And somehow it doesn’t seem necessary, after all, to

understand the niggers. In direct proportion to the white man’s stupidity is

his success in farming the world–”

“And putting the fear of God into the nigger’s heart,” Captain Woodward

blurted out. “Perhaps you’re right, Roberts. Perhaps it’s his stupidity that

makes him succeed, and surely one phase of his stupidity is his inability to

understand the niggers. But there’s one thing sure, the white has to run the

SOUTH SEA TALES

172

niggers whether he understands them or not. It’s inevitable. It’s fate.”

“And of course the white man is inevitable–it’s the niggers’ fate,” Roberts

broke in. “Tell the white man there’s pearl shell in some lagoon infested by

ten-thousand howling cannibals, and he’ll head there all by his lonely, with

half a dozen kanaka divers and a tin alarm clock for chronometer, all packed

like sardines on a commodious, five-ton ketch. Whisper that there’s a gold

strike at the North Pole, and that same inevitable white-skinned creature will

set out at once, armed with pick and shovel, a side of bacon, and the latest

patent rocker–and what’s more, he’ll get there. Tip it off to him that

there’s diamonds on the red-hot ramparts of hell, and Mr. White Man will storm

the ramparts and set old Satan himself to pick-and-shovel work. That’s what

comes of being stupid and inevitable.”

“But I wonder what the black man must think of the–the inevitableness,” I

said.

Captain Woodward broke into quiet laughter. His eyes had a reminiscent gleam.

“I’m just wondering what the niggers of Malu thought and still must be

thinking of the one inevitable white man we had on board when we visited them

in the DUCHESS,” he explained.

Roberts mixed three more Abu Hameds.

“That was twenty years ago. Saxtorph was his name. He was certainly the most

stupid man I ever saw, but he was as inevitable as death. There was only one

thing that chap could do, and that was shoot. I remember the first time I ran

into him–right here in Apia, twenty years ago. That was before your time,

Roberts. I was sleeping at Dutch Henry’s hotel, down where the market is now.

Ever heard of him? He made a tidy stake smuggling arms in to the rebels, sold

out his hotel, and was killed in Sydney just six weeks afterward in a saloon

row.

“But Saxtorph. One night I’d just got to sleep, when a couple of cats began to

sing in the courtyard. It was out of bed and up window, water jug in hand. But

just then I heard the window of the next room go up. Two shots were fired, and

the window was closed. I fail to impress you with the celerity of the

transaction. Ten seconds at the outside. Up went the window, bang bang went

the revolver, and down went the window. Whoever it was, he had never stopped

to see the effect of his shots. He knew. Do you follow me?–he KNEW. There was

no more cat concert, and in the morning there lay the two offenders, stone

dead. It was marvelous to me. It still is marvelous. First, it was starlight,

and Saxtorph shot without drawing a bead; next, he shot so rapidly that the

two reports were like a double report; and finally, he knew he had hit his

marks without looking to see.

“Two days afterward he came on board to see me. I was mate, then, on the

Duchess, a whacking big one-hundred-and fifty-ton schooner, a blackbirder. And

let me tell you that blackbirders were blackbirders in those days. There

weren’t any government protection for US, either. It was rough work, give and

take, if we were finished, and nothing said, and we ran niggers from every

SOUTH SEA TALES

173

south sea island they didn’t kick us off from. Well, Saxtorph came on board,

John Saxtorph was the name he gave. He was a sandy little man, hair sandy,

complexion sandy, and eyes sandy, too. Nothing striking about him. His soul

was as neutral as his color scheme. He said he was strapped and wanted to ship

on board. Would go cabin boy, cook, supercargo, or common sailor. Didn’t know

anything about any of the billets, but said that he was willing to learn. I

didn’t want him, but his shooting had so impressed me that I took him as

common sailor, wages three pounds per month.

“He was willing to learn all right, I’ll say that much. But he was

constitutionally unable to learn anything. He could no more box the compass

than I could mix drinks like Roberts here. And as for steering, he gave me my

first gray hairs. I never dared risk him at the wheel when we were running in

a big sea, while full-and-by and close-and-by were insoluble mysteries.

Couldn’t ever tell the difference between a sheet and a tackle, simply

couldn’t. The fore-throat-jig and the jib-jig were all one to him. Tell him to

slack off the mainsheet, and before you know it, he’d drop the peak. He fell

overboard three times, and he couldn’t swim. But he was always cheerful, never

seasick, and he was the most willing man I ever knew. He was an

uncommunicative soul. Never talked about himself. His history, so far as we

were concerned, began the day he signed on the DUCHESS. Where he learned to

shoot, the stars alone can tell. He was a Yankee–that much we knew from the

twang in his speech. And that was all we ever did know.

“And now we begin to get to the point. We had bad luck in the New Hebrides,

only fourteen boys for five weeks, and we ran up before the southeast for the

Solomons. ‘malaita, then as now, was good recruiting ground, and we ran into

Malu, on the northwestern corner. There’s a shore reef and an outer reef, and