was in for.

There were to be six aboard, all-told. There were Jack and Mrs. London; Captain Roscoe Eames, who is Mrs. London's uncle; Paul H. Tochigi, a Jap cabin-boy; Herbert Stolz, an all-around athlete, fresh from Stanford University; and lastly, there was to be myself, the cook. We were to sail southern seas and northern seas, bays and inland rivers, lakes and creeks—anything navigable. And we were not to stop until we had circled the planet. We were to visit the principal countries of the world, spending from three to six months in every port. It was planned that we should not be home for at least seven years.

"It is the strongest boat ever built in San Francisco," ran the letter. "We could go through a typhoon that would wreck a 15,000-ton steamer. . . . Practically, for every week that we are on the ocean, we will be a month in port. For instance, we expect that it will take us three weeks to sail from here to Hawaii, where we expect to remain three months—of course, in various portions of the Islands.

"Now as to the crew: All of us will be the crew. There is my wife, and myself. We will stand our watches and do our trick at the wheel. . . . When it comes to doing the trick at the wheel, I want to explain that this will not be arduous as it may appear at first. It is our intention, by sail-trimming, to make p006 the boat largely sail herself, without steering. Next, in bad weather, there will be no steering, for then we will be hove-to. But watches, or rather lookouts, must be kept at night, when we are sailing. Suppose we divide day and night into twelve hours each. There are six of us all-told on the boat. Each will take a two-hour turn on deck.

"Of course, when it comes to moments of danger, or to doing something ticklish, or to making port, etc., the whole six of us will then become the crew. I will not be a writer, but a sailor. The same with my wife. The cabin-boy will be a sailor, and so also, the cook. In fact, when it's a case for all hands, all hands it will be.

"From the present outlook, we shall sail out of San Francisco Bay on December 15. So you see, if you accompany us, you will miss your Christmas at home. . . . Incidentally, if you like boxing, I may tell you that all of us box, and we'll have the gloves along. You'll have the advantage of us on reach. Also, I may say that we should all of us have lots of good times together, swimming, fishing, adventuring, doing a thousand-and-one things.

"Now, about clothes. Remember that the boat is small, also that we are going into hot weather and shall be in hot weather all the time. So bring a small outfit, and one for use in warm weather."

Thereafter, my days and nights were more golden than ever with dreams. The days flew by swiftly, but p007 their heels seemed heavy to the anxious wight who spent his hours grubbing in a restaurant. It appeared to me that the time for my departure would never come. I shudder as I think of what weird messes I may have served up to my friend's customers in the moments of my abstraction. Meanwhile, a letter from Mrs. London dropped in, telling me how to get my passport. At last the day came for my going. A letter was pressed into my hands by one of my local friends, who was an Elk, even as I. When I opened it, I found it to be an introduction for me wherever I might find myself. Surely here was good-will and loyalty of which to be proud; and doubly proud was I when I found that the letter was endorsed by the Grand Exalted Ruler of the Elks. As I was later to find, this little slip of paper would open many a door which otherwise had remained shut to me.

With only a small satchel of clothing and a camera, I boarded a Santa Fé train, said the last good-byes, and sped westward toward California. The dreams did not cease as I passed through the several states that intervened. Whether by day or by night, they persisted. That glorious will-o'-the-wisp, Adventure, was still before me, though now much nearer and more tantalising. But the advantage was mine. Mounted on that monster of steam and iron, the modern train, I felt that Adventure would be hard put for speed in a race with me. And yet, that train seemed to me the slowest thing that ever ran on two rails. p008

My thoughts kept constantly turning upon the man whom I was journeying to meet. What sort of being was he, that had compelled the attention of the world by the magic of his pen, and by the daring of his exploits? One thing I knew. The places I had roamed in fancy, his foot had trod in reality. And he had sailed over the seas. In '97, he was a gold-seeker in the far North. He had been a sailor and a tramp, an oyster-pirate, a Socialist agitator, and a member of the San Francisco Bay fish-patrol. His voyages up to this time had carried him far over the earth, and his experiences would overlap the experiences of an ordinary man a score of times and more. Above all, he was a student, and a writer of world-wide celebrity. Wherever civilised men congregated, wherever books were read, the name of Jack London was familiar.

Why he was making this trip in so tiny a craft? That question he answered shortly afterward, when he wrote: "Life that lives is life successful, and success is the breath of its nostrils. The achievement of a difficult feat is successful adjustment to a sternly exacting environment. The more difficult the feat, the greater the satisfaction at its accomplishment. That is why I am building the Snark. I am so made. The trip around the world means big moments of living. Bear with me a moment and look at it. Here am I, a little animal called a man—a bit of vitalised matter, one hundred and sixty-five pounds of meat and blood, p009 nerve, sinew, bones and brain—all of it soft and tender, susceptible to hurt, fallible and frail. I strike a light back-handed blow on the nose of an obstreperous horse, and a bone in my hand is broken. I put my head under the water for five minutes, and I am drowned. I fall twenty feet through the air, and I am smashed. I am a creature of temperature. A few degrees one way, and my fingers and ears and toes blacken and drop off. A few degrees the other way, and my skin blisters and shrivels away from the raw, quivering flesh. A few additional degrees either way, and the light and life in me go out. A drop of poison injected into my body from a snake, and I cease to move—forever I cease to move. A splinter of lead from a rifle enters my head, and I am wrapped around in the eternal blackness.

"Fallible and frail, a bit of pulsating, jelly-like life—it is all I am. About me are the great natural forces—colossal menaces, Titans of destruction, unsentimental monsters that have less concern for me than I have for the grain of sand I crush under my foot. They have no concern for me at all. They do not know me. They are unconscious, unmerciful, and unmoral. They are the cyclones and tornadoes, lightning flashes and cloudbursts, tide-rips and tidal waves, undertows and waterspouts, great whirls and sucks and eddies, earthquakes and volcanoes, surfs that thunder on rock-ribbed coasts, and seas that leap aboard the largest crafts that float, crushing humans p010 to pulp or licking them off into the sea and to death—and these insensate monsters do