The Sea-Wolf
contributor: Eric Lease Morgan (Infomotions, Inc.)
creator: London, Jack
date: 0000-00-00
extent: 581167
format: text/plain
language: en
publisher: Eris Etext Project
rights: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/GPL/2.0/
source: 4
subject: larsen
subject: wolf
subject: time
subject: eyes
subject: man
subject: particular
subject: january
subject: monday
subject: morning
subject: found
subject: afloat
subject: san
subject: francisco
subject: bay
subject: london
subject: jack
subject: sea
subject: american
subject: literature
type: text
local mirror: london-sea-206.txt
concordance: http://infomotions.com/alex/cgi-bin/concordance.pl
plain html: london-sea-206.htm
sort title: Sea-Wolf, The
full text: 1904 THE SEA-WOLF by Jack London CHAPTER ONE. I SCARCELY KNOW WHERE to begin, though I sometimes facetiously place the cause of it all to Charley Furuseth's credit. He kept a summer cottage in Mill Valley, under the shadow of Mount Tamalpais, and never occupied it except when he loafed through the winter months and read Nietzsche and Schopenhauer to rest his brain. When summer came on, he elected to sweat out a hot and dusty existence in the city and to toil incessantly. Had it not been my custom to run up to see him every Saturday afternoon and to stop over till Monday morning, this particular January Monday morning would not have found me afloat on San Francisco Bay. Not but that I was afloat in a safe craft, for the Martinez was a new ferry-steamer, making her fourth or fifth trip on the run between Sausalito and San Francisco. The danger lay in the heavy fog which blanketed the bay, and of which, as a landsman, I had little apprehension. In fact, I remember the placid exaltation with which I took up my position on the forward upper deck, directly beneath the pilot-house, and allowed the mystery of the fog to lay hold of my imagination. A fresh breeze was blowing, and for a time I was alone in the moist obscurity; yet not alone, for I was dimly conscious of the presence of the pilot, and of what I took to be the captain, in the glass house above my head. I remember thinking how comfortable it was, this division of labor which made it unnecessary for me to study fogs, winds, tides, and navigation in order to visit my friend who lived across an arm of the sea. It was good that men should be specialists, I mused. The peculiar knowledge of the pilot and captain sufficed for many thousands of people who knew no more of the sea and navigation than I knew. On the other hand, instead of having to devote my energy to the learning of a multitude of things, I concentrated it upon a few particular things, such as, for instance, the analysis of Poe's place in American literat…