Adventure by Jack London (best motivational books of all time .txt) š
- Author: Jack London
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āOf course there was a row. It had to come, and I knew it; but it startled me just the same. I never heard such screeching and yelling in my life. The niggers must have just dived for the bush without looking to see what was up, while her Tahitians let loose, shooting in the air and yelling to hurry āem on. And then, just as sudden, came the silence againāall except for some small kiddie that had got dropped in the stampede and that kept crying in the bush for its mother.
āAnd then I heard them coming through the mangroves, and an oar strike on a gunwale, and Miss Lackland laugh, and I knew everything was all right. We pulled on board without a shot being fired. And, by God! she had made the books come true, for there was old Kina-Kina himself being hoisted over the rail, shivering and chattering like an ape. The rest was easy. Kina-Kinaās word was law, and he was scared to death. And we kept him on board issuing proclamations all the time we were in Poonga-Poonga.
āIt was a good move, too, in other ways. She made Kina-Kina order his people to return all the gear theyād stripped from the Martha. And back it came, day after day, steering compasses, blocks and tackles, sails, coils of rope, medicine chests, ensigns, signal flagsāeverything, in fact, except the trade goods and supplies which had already been kai-kaiād. Of course, she gave them a few sticks of tobacco to keep them in good humour.ā
āSure she did,ā Sparrowhawk broke forth. āShe gave the beggars five fathoms of calico for the big mainsail, two sticks of tobacco for the chronometer, and a sheath-knife worth elevenpence haāpenny for a hundred fathoms of brand new five-inch manila. She got old Kina-Kina with that strong hand on the go off, and she kept him going all the time. Sheāhere she comes now.ā
It was with a shock of surprise that Sheldon greeted her appearance. All the time, while the tale of happening at Poonga-Poonga had been going on, he had pictured her as the woman he had always known, clad roughly, skirt made out of window-curtain stuff, an undersized manās shirt for a blouse, straw sandals for foot covering, with the Stetson hat and the eternal revolver completing her costume. The ready-made clothes from Sydney had transformed her. A simple skirt and shirt-waist of some sort of wash-goods set off her trim figure with a hint of elegant womanhood that was new to him. Brown slippers peeped out as she crossed the compound, and he once caught a glimpse to the ankle of brown open-work stockings. Somehow, she had been made many times the woman by these mere extraneous trappings; and in his mind these wild Arabian Nights adventures of hers seemed thrice as wonderful.
As they went in to breakfast he became aware that Munster and Sparrowhawk had received a similar shock. All their air of camaraderie was dissipated, and they had become abruptly and immensely respectful.
āIāve opened up a new field,ā she said, as she began pouring the coffee. āOld Kina-Kina will never forget me, Iām sure, and I can recruit there whenever I want. I saw Morgan at Guvutu. Heās willing to contract for a thousand boys at forty shillings per head. Did I tell you that Iād taken out a recruiting license for the Martha? I did, and the Martha can sign eighty boys every trip.
Sheldon smiled a trifle bitterly to himself. The wonderful woman who had tripped across the compound in her Sydney clothes was gone, and he was listening to the boy come back again.
āWell,ā Joan said with a sigh, āIāve shown you hustling American methods that succeed and get somewhere, and here you are beginning your muddling again.ā
Five days had passed, and she and Sheldon were standing on the veranda watching the Martha, close-hauled on the wind, laying a tack off shore. During those five days Joan had never once broached the desire of her heart, though Sheldon, in this particular instance reading her like a book, had watched her lead up to the question a score of times in the hope that he would himself suggest her taking charge of the Martha. She had wanted him to say the word, and she had steeled herself not to say it herself. The matter of finding a skipper had been a hard one. She was jealous of the Martha, and no suggested man had satisfied her.
āOleson?ā she had demanded. āHe does very well on the Flibberty, with me and my men to overhaul her whenever sheās ready to fall to pieces through his slackness. But skipper of the Martha? Impossible!ā
āMunster? Yes, heās the only man I know in the Solomons Iād care to see in charge. And yet, thereās his record. He lost the Umbawaāone hundred and forty drowned. He was first officer on the bridge. Deliberate disobedience to instructions. No wonder they broke him.
āChristian Young has never had any experience with large boats. Besides, we canāt afford to pay him what heās clearing on the Minerva. Sparrowhawk is a good manāto take orders. He has no initiative. Heās an able sailor, but he canāt command. I tell you I was nervous all the time he had charge of the Flibberty at Poonga-Poonga when I had to stay by the Martha.ā
And so it had gone. No name proposed was satisfactory, and, moreover, Sheldon had been surprised by the accuracy of her judgments. A dozen times she almost drove him to the statement that from the showing she made of Solomon Islands sailors, she was the only person fitted to command the Martha. But each time he restrained himself, while her pride prevented her from making the suggestion.
āGood whale-boat sailors do not necessarily make good schooner-handlers,ā she replied to one of his arguments. āBesides, the captain of a boat like the Martha must have a large mind, see things in a large way; he must have capacity and enterprise.ā
āBut with your Tahitians on boardāā Sheldon had begun another argument.
āThere wonāt be any Tahitians on board,ā she had returned promptly. āMy men stay with me. I never know when I may need them. When I sail, they sail; when I remain ashore, they remain ashore. Iāll find plenty for them to do right here on the plantation. Youāve seen them clearing bush, each of them worth half a dozen of your cannibals.ā
So it was that Joan stood beside Sheldon and sighed as she watched the Martha beating out to sea, old Kinross, brought over from Savo, in command.
āKinross is an old fossil,ā she said, with a touch of bitterness in her voice. āOh, heāll never wreck her through rashness, rest assured of that; but heās timid to childishness, and timid skippers lose just as many vessels as rash ones. Some day, Kinross will lose the Martha because thereāll be only one chance and heāll be afraid to take it. I know his sort. Afraid to take advantage of a proper breeze of wind that will fetch him in in twenty hours, heāll get caught out in the calm that follows and spend a whole week in getting in. The Martha will make money with him, thereās no doubt of it; but she wonāt make near the money that she would under a competent master.ā
She paused, and with heightened colour and sparkling eyes gazed seaward at the schooner.
āMy! but she is a witch! Look at her eating up the water, and thereās no wind to speak of. Sheās not got ordinary white metal either. Itās man-of-war copper, every inch of it. I had them polish it with cocoanut husks when she was careened at Poonga-Poonga. She was a seal-hunter before this gold expedition got her. And seal-hunters had to sail. Theyāve run away from second class Russian cruisers more than once up there off Siberia.
āHonestly, if Iād dreamed of the chance waiting for me at Guvutu when I bought her for less than three hundred dollars, Iād never have gone partners with you. And in that case Iād be sailing her right now.
The justice of her contention came abruptly home to Sheldon. What she had done she would have done just the same if she had not been his partner. And in the saving of the Martha he had played no part. Single-handed, unadvised, in the teeth of the laughter of Guvutu and of the competition of men like Morgan and Raff, she had gone into the adventure and brought it through to success.
āYou make me feel like a big man who has robbed a small child of a lolly,ā he said with sudden contrition.
āAnd the small child is crying for it.ā She looked at him, and he noted that her lip was slightly trembling and that her eyes were moist. It was the boy all over, he thought; the boy crying for the wee bit boat with which to play. And yet it was a woman, too. What a maze of contradiction she was! And he wondered, had she been all woman and no boy, if he would have loved her in just the same way. Then it rushed in upon his consciousness that he really loved her for what she was, for all the boy in her and all the rest of herāfor the total of her that would have been a different total in direct proportion to any differing of the parts of her.
āBut the small child wonāt cry any more for it,ā she was saying. āThis is the last sob. Some day, if Kinross doesnāt lose her, youāll turn her over to your partner, I know. And I wonāt nag you any more. Only I do hope you know how I feel. It isnāt as if Iād merely bought the Martha, or merely built her. I saved her. I took her off the reef. I saved her from the grave of the sea when fifty-five pounds was considered a big risk. She is mine, peculiarly mine. Without me she wouldnāt exist. That big norāwester would have finished her the first three hours it blew. And then Iāve sailed her, too; and she is a witch, a perfect witch. Why, do you know, sheāll steer by the wind with half a spoke, give and take. And going about! Well, you donāt have to baby her, starting head-sheets, flattening mainsail, and gentling her with the wheel. Put your wheel down, and around she comes, like a colt with the bit in its teeth. And you can back her like a steamer. I did it at Langa-Langa, between that shoal patch and the shore-reef. It was wonderful.
āBut you donāt love boats like I do, and I know you think Iām making a fool of myself. But some day Iām going to sail the Martha again. I know it. I know it.ā
In reply, and quite without premeditation, his hand went out to hers, covering it as it lay on the railing. But he knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that it was the boy that returned the pressure he gave, the boy sorrowing over the lost toy. The thought chilled him. Never had he been actually nearer to her, and never had she
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