The Cruise of the SnarkIn April 1907 Jack London set out to sail around the world in the 45-foot ship The Snark, accompanied by his wife and a small crew. Although suffering from seasickness and tropical disease, London wrote prolifically, including a series of entertaining sketches of the voyage itself. These were later collected as The Cruise of the Snark, a remarkable record of adventure and love among the islands of the South Pacific. - Publisher. |
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Common terms and phrases
Adam anchor ashore beach bęche big fella Bihaura boat bonitas Bora Bora breadfruit breaker bushmen cabin-boy canoe Captain Jansen caught Charmian chronometer climbed cocoanut course crater crew deck disease ditch dolphin dozen east elephantiasis engine fella marster fever Fiji flying fish gasolene Haleakala half hands Hawaii Hawaiian head heave Honolulu horses hundred feet island jungle Kalaupapa Kanaka knew lagoon land Langa latitude learned legs lepers leprosy live longitude looked mainsail Malaita Marquesas Martin miles mind Minota mizzen Molokai morning native Naulu navigation never night o'clock ocean paddled Raiatea reef rolling Roscoe sailed sea-anchor sharks shore side Snark Solomon Solomon Islands squall staysail steering Suva Tahaa Tahiti Taiohae Tehei thing thousand took trade trade-wind trail trees Ukiukiu village voyage Wada wave weeks whale-boat wheel wind
Popular passages
Page 160 - But the slight glimpse sufficed; my eyes fell upon the disordered members of a human skeleton, the bones still fresh with moisture, and with particles of flesh clinging to them here and there!
Page 78 - bitted the bull-mouthed breaker" and ridden it in, and the pride in the feat shows in the carriage of his magnificent body as he glances for a moment carelessly at you who sit in the shade of the shore. He is a Kanaka— and more, he is a man, a member of the kingly species that has mastered matter and the brutes and lorded it over creation. And one sits and thinks of Tristram's last wrestle with the sea on that fatal morning; and one thinks further, to the fact that that Kanaka has done what Tristram...
Page 170 - And now all this strength and beauty has departed, and the valley of Typee is the abode of some dozen wretched creatures, afflicted by leprosy, elephantiasis, and tuberculosis. Melville estimated the population at two thousand, not taking into consideration the small adjoining valley of Ho-o-umi. Life has rotted away in this wonderful garden spot, where the climate is as delightful and healthful as any to be found in the world.
Page 3 - The ultimate word is I LIKE. It lies beneath philosophy, and is twined about the heart of life. When philosophy has maundered ponderously for a month, telling the individual what he must do, the individual says, in an instant, "I LIKE," and does something else, and philosophy goes glimmering. It is I LIKE that makes the drunkard drink and the martyr wear a hair shirt; that makes one man a reveller and another man an anchorite; that makes one man pursue fame, another gold, another love, and another...
Page 4 - With my own hands I had done my trick at the wheel and guided a hundred tons of wood and iron through a few million tons of wind and waves. My delight was in that I had done it — not in the fact that twenty-two men knew I had done it.
Page 6 - 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.
Page 82 - In truth, one is caught up and hurled shoreward as by some Titan's hand. I deserted the cool shade, put on a swimming suit, and got hold of a surf-board. It was too small a board. But I didn't know, and nobody told me. I joined some little Kanaka boys in shallow water, where the breakers were well spent and small — a regular kindergarten school. I watched the little Kanaka boys. When a likely-looking breaker came along, they flopped upon their stomachs on their boards, kicked like mad with their...
Page 7 - ... aboard the largest crafts that float, crushing humans to pulp or licking them off into the sea and to death — and these insensate monsters do not know that tiny sensitive creature, all nerves and weaknesses, whom men call Jack London, and who himself thinks he is all right and quite a superior being. "In the maze and chaos of the conflict of these vast and draughty Titans, it is for me to thread my precarious way. The bit of life that is I will exult over them.