Jack London - Michael, Brother of Jerry

“It was a long, hard way to get out of the poor-farm and finance my miserable little, pitiful little, adventure of the Wide Awake . Do you know that I worked in the poor-farm laundry for two years, for one dollar and a half a week, with my one available hand and what little I could do with the other, sorting dirty clothes and folding sheets and pillow-slips until I thought a thousand times my poor old back would break in two, and until I knew a million times the location in my chest of every fraction of an inch of my missing ribs.”

“You are a young man yet—”

Daughtry grinned denial as he rubbed his grizzled mat of hair.

“You are a young man yet, steward,” the Ancient Mariner insisted with a show of irritation. “You have never been shut out from life. In the poor-farm one is shut out from life. There is no respect—no, not for age alone, but for human life in the poor-house. How shall I say it? One is not dead. Nor is one alive. One is what once was alive and is in process of becoming dead. Lepers are treated that way. So are the insane. I know it. When I was young and on the sea, a brother-lieutenant went mad. Sometimes he was violent, and we struggled with him, twisting his arms, bruising his flesh, tying him helpless while we sat and panted on him that he might not do harm to us, himself, or the ship. And he, who still lived, died to us. Don’t you understand? He was no longer of us, like us. He was something other. That is it— other . And so, in the poor-farm, we, who are yet unburied, are other . You have heard me chatter about the hell of the longboat. That is a pleasant diversion in life compared with the poor-farm. The food, the filth, the abuse, the bullying, the—the sheer animalness of it!

“For two years I worked for a dollar and a half a week in the laundry. And imagine me, who had melted a silver spoon in my mouth—a sizable silver spoon steward—imagine me, my old sore bones, my old belly reminiscent of youth’s delights, my old palate ticklish yet and not all withered of the deviltries of taste learned in younger days—as I say, steward, imagine me, who had ever been free-handed, lavish, saving that dollar and a half intact like a miser, never spending a penny of it on tobacco, never mitigating by purchase of any little delicacy the sad condition of my stomach that protested against the harshness and indigestibility of our poor fare. I cadged tobacco, poor cheap tobacco, from poor doddering old chaps trembling on the edge of dissolution. Ay, and when Samuel Merrivale I found dead in the morning, next cot to mine, I first rummaged his poor old trousers’ pocket for the half-plug of tobacco I knew was the total estate he left, then announced the news.

“Oh, steward, I was careful of that dollar and a half. Don’t you see?—I was a prisoner sawing my way out with a tiny steel saw. And I sawed out!” His voice rose in a shrill cackle of triumph. “Steward, I sawed out!”

Dag Daughtry held forth and up his beer-bottle as he said gravely and sincerely:

“Sir, I salute you.”

“And I thank you, sir—you understand,” the Ancient Mariner replied with simple dignity to the toast, touching his glass to the bottle and drinking with the steward eyes to eyes.

“I should have had one hundred and fifty-six dollars when I left the poor-farm,” the ancient one continued. “But there were the two weeks I lost, with influenza, and the one week from a confounded pleurisy, so that I emerged from that place of the living dead with but one hundred and fifty-one dollars and fifty cents.”

“I see, sir,” Daughtry interrupted with honest admiration. “The tiny saw had become a crowbar, and with it you were going back to break into life again.”

All the scarred face and washed eyes of Charles Stough Greenleaf beamed as he held his glass up.

“Steward, I salute you. You understand. And you have said it well. I was going back to break into the house of life. It was a crowbar, that pitiful sum of money accumulated by two years of crucifixion. Think of it! A sum that in the days ere the silver spoon had melted, I staked in careless moods of an instant on a turn of the cards. But as you say, a burglar, I came back to break into life, and I came to Boston . You have a fine turn for a figure of speech, steward, and I salute you.”

Again bottle and glass tinkled together, and both men drank eyes to eyes and each was aware that the eyes he gazed into were honest and understanding.

“But it was a thin crowbar, steward. I dared not put my weight on it for a proper pry. I took a room in a small but respectable hotel, European plan. It was in Boston , I think I said. Oh, how careful I was of my crowbar! I scarcely ate enough to keep my frame inhabited. But I bought drinks for others, most carefully selected—bought drinks with an air of prosperity that was as a credential to my story; and in my cups (my apparent cups, steward), spun an old man’s yarn of the Wide Awake , the longboat, the bearings unnamable, and the treasure under the sand.—A fathom under the sand; that was literary; it was psychological; it smacked of the salt sea, and daring rovers, and the loot of the Spanish Main.

“You have noticed this nugget I wear on my watch-chain, steward? I could not afford it at that time, but I talked golden instead, California gold, nuggets and nuggets, oodles and oodles, from the diggings of forty-nine and fifty. That was literary. That was colour. Later, after my first voyage out of Boston I was financially able to buy a nugget. It was so much bait to which men rose like fishes. And like fishes they nibbled. These rings, also—bait. You never see such rings now. After I got in funds, I purchased them, too. Take this nugget: I am talking. I toy with it absently as I am telling of the great gold treasure we buried under the sand. Suddenly the nugget flashes fresh recollection into my mind. I speak of the longboat, of our thirst and hunger, and of the third officer, the fair lad with cheeks virgin of the razor, and that he it was who used it as a sinker when we strove to catch fish.

“But back in Boston . Yarns and yarns, when seemingly I was gone in drink, I told my apparent cronies—men whom I despised, stupid dolts of creatures that they were. But the word spread, until one day, a young man, a reporter, tried to interview me about the treasure and the Wide Awake . I was indignant, angry.—Oh, softly, steward, softly; in my heart was great joy as I denied that young reporter, knowing that from my cronies he already had a sufficiency of the details.

“And the morning paper gave two whole columns and headlines to the tale. I began to have callers. I studied them out well. Many were for adventuring after the treasure who themselves had no money. I baffled and avoided them, and waited on, eating even less as my little capital dwindled away.

“And then he came, my gay young doctor—doctor of philosophy he was, for he was very wealthy. My heart sang when I saw him. But twenty-eight dollars remained to me—after it was gone, the poor-house, or death. I had already resolved upon death as my choice rather than go back to be of that dolorous company, the living dead of the poor-farm. But I did not go back, nor did I die. The gay young doctor’s blood ran warm at thought of the South Seas, and in his nostrils I distilled all the scents of the flower-drenched air of that far-off land, and in his eyes I builded him the fairy visions of the tradewind clouds, the monsoon skies, the palm isles and the coral seas.

“He was a gay, mad young dog, grandly careless of his largess, fearless as a lion’s whelp, lithe and beautiful as a leopard, and mad, a trifle mad of the deviltries and whimsies that tickled in that fine brain of his. Look you, steward. Before we sailed in the Gloucester fishing-schooner, purchased by the doctor, and that was like a yacht and showed her heels to most yachts, he had me to his house to advise about personal equipment. We were overhauling in a gear-room, when suddenly he spoke: