like a fiend, pelted him with cobbles, and raced him around the valley three times before I
knocked off for supper. Don’t you see? A racecourse! A man and a mammoth! A hippodrome,
with sun, moon, and stars to referee!
A RELIC OF THE PLIOCENE
8
“It took me two months to do it, but I did it. And that’s no beaver
dream. Round and round I ran him, me traveling on the inner
circle, eating jerked meat and salmon berries on the run, and
snatching winks of sleep between. Of course, he’d get desperate
at times and turn. Then I’d head for soft ground where the creek
spread out, and lay anathema upon him and his ancestry, and
dare him to come. But he was too wise to bog in a mud puddle.
Once he pinned me in against the walls, and I crawled back into
a deep crevice and waited. Whenever he felt for me with his
trunk, I’d belt him with the hand axe till he pulled out, shrieking
fit to split my eardrums, he was that mad. He knew he had me
and didn’t have me, and it near drove him wild. But he was no
man’s fool. He knew he was safe as long as I stayed in the
crevice, and he made up his mind to keep me there. And he was dead right, only he hadn’t
figured on the commissary. There was neither grub nor water around that spot, so on the face of
it he couldn’t keep up the siege. He’d stand before the opening for hours, keeping an eye on me
and flapping mosquitoes away with his big blanket ears. Then the thirst would come on him and
he’d ramp round and roar till the earth shook, calling me every name he could lay tongue to. This
was to frighten me, of course; and when he thought I was sufficiently impressed, he’d back away
softly and try to make a sneak for the creek. Sometimes I’d let him get almost there–only a
couple hundred yards away it was–when out I’d pop and back he’d come, lumbering along like
the old landslide he was. After I’d done this a few times, and he’d figured it out, he changed his
tactics. Grasped the time element, you see. Without a word of warning, away he’d go, tearing for
the water like mad, scheming to get there and back before I ran away. Finally, after cursing me
most horribly, he raised the siege and deliberately stalked off to the waterhole.
“That was the only time he penned me–three days of it–but after that the hippodrome never
stopped. Round, and round, and round, like a six days’ go-as-I-please, for he never pleased. My
clothes went to rags and tatters, but I never stopped to mend, till at last I ran naked as a son of
earth, with nothing but the old hand axe in one hand and a cobble in the other. In fact, I never
stopped, save for peeps of sleep in the crannies and ledges of the cliffs. As for the bull, he got
perceptibly thinner and thinner–must have lost several tons at least–and nervous as a
schoolmarm on the wrong side of matrimony. When I’d come up with him and yell, or lam him
with a rock at long range, he’d jump like a skittish colt and tremble all over. Then he’d pull out
on the run, tail and trunk waving stiff, head over one shoulder and wicked eyes blazing, and the
way he’d swear at me was something dreadful. A most immoral beast he was, a murderer, and a
blasphemer.
“But toward the end he quit all this, and fell to whimpering and crying like a baby. His spirit
broke and he became a quivering jelly mountain of misery. He’d get attacks of palpitation of the
heart, and stagger around like a drunken man, and fall down and bark his shins. And then he’d
cry, but always on the run. O man, the gods themselves would have wept with him, and you
yourself or any other man. It was pitiful, and there was so much of it, but I only hardened my
heart and hit up the pace. At last I wore him clean out, and he lay down, broken-winded,
brokenhearted, hungry and thirsty. When I found he wouldn’t budge, I hamstrung him, and spent
the better part of the day wading into him with the hand axe, he a-sniffing and sobbing till I
A RELIC OF THE PLIOCENE
9
worked in far enough to shut him off. 30 feet long he was, and 20 high, and a man could sling a
hammock between his tusks and sleep comfortably. Barring the fact that I had run most of the
juices out of him, he was fair eating, and his four feet, alone, roasted whole, would have lasted a
man a twelvemonth. I spent the winter there myself.”
“And where is this valley?” I asked.
He waved his hand in the direction of the northeast, and said: “Your tobacco is very good. I carry
a fair share of it in my pouch, but I shall carry the recollection of it until I die. In token of my
appreciation, and in return for the moccasins on your own feet, I will present to you these
mukluks. They commemorate Klooch and the seven blind little beggars. They are also souvenirs
of the oldest breed of animal on earth, and the youngest, and their chief virtue lies in that they
will never wear out.”
Having effected the exchange, he knocked the ashes from his pipe, gripped my hand good night
and wandered off through the snow. Concerning his tale, for which I have already disclaimed
responsibility, I recommend those of little faith to visit the Smithsonian Institute. If they bring
the requisite credentials and do not come during vacation time, they will undoubtedly gain an
audience with Professor Dolvidson. The mukluks are in his possession, and he will verify, not
the manner in which they were obtained, but the material of which they are composed. When he
states that they are made from the skin of the mammoth, the scientific world accepts his verdict.
What more would you have?
TALES OF THE FISH PATROL
1
Tales of the Fish Patrol
By Jack London
TALES OF THE FISH PATROL
2
WHITE AND YELLOW
San Francisco Bay is so large that often its storms are more
disastrous to ocean-going craft than is the ocean itself in its
violent moments. The waters of the bay contain all manner of fish,
wherefore its surface is ploughed by the keels of all manner of
fishing boats manned by all manner of fishermen. To protect the
fish from this motley floating population many wise laws have been
passed, and there is a fish patrol to see that these laws are
enforced. Exciting times are the lot of the fish patrol: in its
history more than one dead patrolman has marked defeat, and more
often dead fishermen across their illegal nets have marked success.
Wildest among the fisher-folk may be accounted the Chinese shrimp-
catchers. It is the habit of the shrimp to crawl along the bottom
in vast armies till it reaches fresh water, when it turns about and
crawls back again to the salt. And where the tide ebbs and flows,
the Chinese sink great bag-nets to the bottom, with gaping mouths,
into which the shrimp crawls and from which it is transferred to
the boiling-pot. This in itself would not be bad, were it not for
the small mesh of the nets, so small that the tiniest fishes,
little new-hatched things not a quarter of an inch long, cannot
pass through. The beautiful beaches of Points Pedro and Pablo,
where are the shrimp-catchers’ villages, are made fearful by the
stench from myriads of decaying fish, and against this wasteful
destruction it has ever been the duty of the fish patrol to act.
When I was a youngster of sixteen, a good sloop-sailor and all-
round bay-waterman, my sloop, the Reindeer, was chartered by the
Fish Commission, and I became for the time being a deputy
patrolman. After a deal of work among the Greek fishermen of the
Upper Bay and rivers, where knives flashed at the beginning of
trouble and men permitted themselves to be made prisoners only
after a revolver was thrust in their faces, we hailed with delight
an expedition to the Lower Bay against the Chinese shrimp-catchers.
There were six of us, in two boats, and to avoid suspicion we ran
down after dark and dropped anchor under a projecting bluff of land
known as Point Pinole. As the east paled with the first light of
dawn we got under way again, and hauled close on the land breeze as
we slanted across the bay toward Point Pedro. The morning mists
TALES OF THE FISH PATROL
3
curled and clung to the water so that we could see nothing, but we