measure her in gold-dust, nor in dogs, and tents, and furs.”
The old men debated among themselves and mumbled in undertones.
“These old men are ice,” Akoon said in English. “I will not listen to their
judgment, Porportuk. If you take El-Soo, I will surely kill you.”
The old men ceased and regarded him suspiciously. “We do not know the
speech you make,” one said.
“He but said that he would kill me,” Porportuk volunteered. “So it were
well to take from him his rifle, and to have some of your young men sit by
LOST FACE
88
him, that he may not do me hurt. He is a young man, and what are broken
bones to youth!”
Akoon, lying helpless, had rifle and knife taken from him, and to either
side of his shoulders sat young men of the Mackenzies. The one-eyed old
man arose and stood upright. “We marvel at the price paid for one mere
woman,” he began; “but the wisdom of the price is no concern of ours. We
are here to give judgment, and judgment we give. We have no doubt. It is
known to all that Porportuk paid a heavy price for the woman El-Soo.
Wherefore does the woman El-Soo belong to Porportuk and none other.”
He sat down heavily, and coughed. The old men nodded and coughed.
“I will kill you,” Akoon cried in English.
Porportuk smiled and stood up. “You have given true judgment,” he said
to the council, “and my young men will give to you much tobacco. Now
let the woman be brought to me.”
Akoon gritted his teeth. The young men took El-Soo by the arms. She did
not resist, and was led, her face a sullen flame, to Porportuk.
“Sit there at my feet till I have made my talk,” he commanded. He paused
a moment. “It is true,” he said, “I am an old man. Yet can understand the
ways of youth. The fire has not all gone out of me. Yet am I no longer
young, nor am I minded to run these old legs of mine through all the years
that remain to me. El-Soo can run fast and well. She is a deer. This I
know, for I have seen and run after her. It is not good that a wife should
run so fast. I paid for her a heavy price, yet does she run away from me.
Akoon paid no price at all, yet does she run to him.
“When I came among you people of the Mackenzie, I was of one mind. As
I listened in the council and thought of the swift legs of El-Soo, I was of
many minds. Now am I of one mind again, but it is a different mind from
the one I brought to the council. Let me tell you my mind. When a dog
runs once away from a master, it will run away again. No matter how
many times it is brought back, each time it will run away again. When we
have such dogs, we sell them. El-Soo is like a dog that runs away. I will
sell her. Is there any man of the council that will buy?”
The old men coughed and remained silent.
“Akoon would buy,” Porportuk went on, “but he has no money. Wherefore
I will give El-Soo to him, as he said, without price. Even now will I give
her to him.”
LOST FACE
89
Reaching down, he took El-Soo by the hand and led her across the space
to where Akoon lay on his back.
“She has a bad habit, Akoon,” he said, seating her at Akoon’s feet. “As she
has run away from me in the past, in the days to come she may run away
from you. But there is no need to fear that she will ever run away, Akoon.
I shall see to that. Never will she run away from you — this the word of
Porportuk. She has great wit. I know, for often has it bitten into me. Yet
am I minded myself to give my wit play for once. And by my wit will I
secure her to you, Akoon.”
Stooping, Porportuk crossed El-Soo’s feet, so that the instep of one lay
over that of the other; and then, before his purpose could be divined, he
discharged his rifle through the two ankles. As Akoon struggled to rise
against the weight of the young men, there was heard the crunch of the
broken bone rebroken. “It is just,” said the old men, one to another.
El-Soo made no sound. She sat and looked at her shattered ankles, on
which she would never walk again.
“My legs are strong, El-Soo,” Akoon said. “But never will they bear me
away from you.”
El-Soo looked at him, and for the first time in all the time he had known
her, Akoon saw tears in her eyes.
“Your eyes are like deer’s eyes, El-Soo,” he said.
“Is it just?” Porportuk asked, and grinned from the edge of the smoke as
he prepared to depart.
“It is just,” the old men said. And they sat on in the silence.
DUTCH COURAGE AND OTHER STORIES
1
Dutch Courage and Other Stories
By Jack London
DUTCH COURAGE AND OTHER STORIES
2
Dutch Courage
(Published posthumously by Macmillan, 1922)
[ Go to London’s Writings ]
Contents
· Preface (by Charmian London)
· Dutch Courage
· Typhoon Off the Coast of Japan
· The Lost Poacher
· The Banks of the Sacramento
· Chris Farrington, Able Seaman
· To Repel Boarders
· An Adventure in the Upper Sea
· Bald-Face
· In Yeddo Bay
· Whose Business Is To Live
DUTCH COURAGE AND OTHER STORIES
3
Preface
“I’ve never written a line that I’d be ashamed for my young daughters to read, and
I never shall write such a line!”
Thus Jack London, well along in his career. And thus almost any collection of his
adventure stories is acceptable to young readers as well as to their elders. So, in
sorting over the few manuscripts still unpublished in book form, while most of
them were written primarily for boys and girls, I do not hesitate to include as
appropriate a tale such as “Whose Business Is to Live.”
Number two of the present group, “Typhoon Off the Coast of Japan,” is the first
story ever written by Jack London for publication. At the age of seventeen he had
returned from his deep-water voyage in the sealing schooner Sophie Sutherland,
and was working thirteen hours a day for forty dollars a month in an Oakland,
California, jute mill. The San Francisco Call offered a prize of twenty-five dollars
for the best written descriptive article. Jack’s mother, Flora London, remembering
that he had excelled in his school “compositions,” urged him to enter the contest
by recalling some happening of his travels. Grammar school, years earlier, had
been his sole disciplined education. But his wide reading, worldly experience, and
extraordinary powers of observation and correlation, enabled him to command
first prize. It is notable that the second and third awards went to students at
California and Stanford universities.
Jack never took the trouble to hunt up that old San Francisco Call of November
12, 1893; but when I came to write his biography, “The Book of Jack London,” I
unearthed the issue, and the tale appears intact in my English edition, published in
1921. And now, gathering material for what will be the final Jack London
collections, I cannot but think that his first printed story will have unusual interest
for his readers of all ages.
The boy Jack’s unexpected success in that virgin venture naturally spurred him to
further effort. It was, for one thing, the pleasantest way he had ever earned so
much money, even if it lacked the element of physical prowess and danger that
had marked those purple days with the oyster pirates, and, later, equally exciting
passages with the Fish Patrol. He only waited to catch up on sleep lost while
hammering out “Typhoon Off the Coast of Japan,” before applying himself to
new fiction. That was what was the matter with it: it was sheer fiction in place of
the white-hot realism of the “true story” that had brought him distinction. This
second venture he afterward termed “gush.” It was promptly rejected by the editor
of the Call. Lacking experience in such matters, Jack could not know why. And it
DUTCH COURAGE AND OTHER STORIES
4
did not occur to him to submit his manuscript elsewhere. His fire was dampened;
he gave over writing and continued with the jute mill and innocent social
diversion in company with Louis Shattuck and his friends, who had superseded
Jack’s wilder comrades and hazards of bay- and sea-faring. This period, following
the publication of `Typhoon Off the Coast of Japan,” is touched upon in his book
“John Barleycorn.”
The next that one hears of attempts at writing is when, during his tramping