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Lot 159
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Jack London, "The Cruise of the Snark" Annotated Manuscript and Signed Check
Jack London, "The Cruise of the Snark" Annotated Manuscript and Signed Check
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Description:

London Jack

Jack London, The Cruise of the Snark Annotated Manuscript and Signed Check

 

Lot consists of 3pp 1st revision typed manuscript of The Cruise of the Snark with 15+ handwritten edits/words in Jack London's hand; along with a signed check dating from the era of the Snark's construction.

 

In the spring of 1907, Jack London (1876-1916), along with his wife Charmian (1871-1955) and a small crew, set out for a modern maritime adventure aboard the Snark, their 45' long custom built sailboat. Over the next 2 years, the Londons would sail west and south across the Pacific Ocean, exploring Hawaii, the Solomon Islands, Fiji, Tahiti, Australia, and other tropical locales. London later recounted his travel experiences in a non-fiction illustrated account called The Cruise of the Snark, published by The Macmillan Company in New York in 1911.

 

These typed manuscript galleys correspond to pages 256-261 and 264-266 of London's final 1st edition of The Cruise of the Snark. This excerpt, which includes the end of Chapter XIV: "The Amateur Navigator" and the beginning of Chapter XV: "Cruising in the Solomons," describes the Londons' impressions of the New Hebrides. London writes colorfully about Tannese "man-eaters" who unexpectedly boarded the Snark, and about the ornate piercing practices of nearby indigenous peoples.

 

The galley proofs are oversized, measuring 9.25" x 12" on average overall, and have generously sized margins to accommodate handwritten author's edits. The pages are in very good to near fine condition with expected wear including paper folds and isolated light soiling. The manuscripts dates circa spring 1911.

 

London's edits throughout the manuscript are in pencil and blue pen. London has added a comma after the word "mistake" and inserted the word "that" between the words "see" and "they." Throughout, London has drawn arrows pointing to text blocks where he wished corresponding illustrations to appear. Other possibly publisher's edits in red are found throughout.

 

London hand-inscribed captions to 3 remarkable black and white photographs that would become Illustration 86, "A Samoan Policeman," Illustration 87, "Man-eaters," and Illustration 89, "Coast at Maravovo, Guadalcaner."  Illustration 87's caption suggests that London clearly relished the creative possibilities of describing cannibals, and his writing revels in the details of their hair, ornament, and dress.

 

The manuscript pages correspond to the following published text found in The Cruise of the Snark. Areas affected by London's edits are in bold.

 

"--face.

 

I confess my sleep was not

 

“ . . . like a summer sky

That held the music of a lark.”

 

Rather did “I waken to the voiceless dark,” and listen to the creaking of the bulkheads and the rippling of the sea alongside as the Snark logged steadily her six knots an hour.  I went over my calculations again and again, striving to find some mistake, until my brain was in such fever that it discovered dozens of mistakes.  Suppose, instead of being sixty miles off Futuna, that my navigation was all wrong and that I was only six miles off?  In which case my course would be wrong, too, and for all I knew the Snark might be running straight at Futuna.  For all I knew the Snark might strike Futuna the next moment.  I almost sprang from the bunk at that thought; and, though I restrained myself, I know that I lay for a moment, nervous and tense, waiting for the shock.

 

My sleep was broken by miserable nightmares.  Earthquake seemed the favorite affliction, though there was one man, with a bill, who persisted in dunning me throughout the night.  Also, he wanted to fight; and Charmian continually persuaded me to let him alone.  Finally, however, the man with the everlasting dun ventured into a dream from which Charmian was absent.  It was my opportunity, and we went at it, gloriously, all over the sidewalk and street, until he cried enough.  Then I said, “Now how about that bill?”  Having conquered, I was willing to pay.  But the man looked at me and groaned.  “It was all a mistake,” he said; “the bill is for the house next door.”

 

That settled him, for he worried my dreams no more; and it settled me, too, for I woke up chuckling at the episode.  It was three in the morning.  I went up on deck.  Henry, the Rapa islander, was steering.  I looked at the log.  It recorded forty-two miles.  The Snark had not abated her six-knot gait, and she had not struck Futuna yet.  At half-past five I was again on deck.  Wada, at the wheel, had seen no land.  I sat on the cockpit rail, a prey to morbid doubt for a quarter of an hour.  Then I saw land, a small, high piece of land, just where it ought to be, rising from the water on the weather-bow.  At six o’clock I could clearly make it out to be the beautiful volcanic cone of Futuna.  At eight o’clock, when it was abreast, I took its distance by the sextant and found it to be 9.3 miles away.  And I had elected to pass it 10 miles away!

 

Then, to the south, Aneiteum rose out of the sea, to the north, Aniwa, and, dead ahead, Tanna.  There was no mistaking Tanna, for the smoke of its volcano was towering high in the sky.  It was forty miles away, and by afternoon, as we drew close, never ceasing to log our six knots, we saw that it was a mountainous, hazy land, with no apparent openings in its coast-line.  I was looking for Port Resolution, though I was quite prepared to find that as an anchorage, it had been destroyed.  Volcanic earthquakes had lifted its bottom during the last forty years, so that where once the largest ships rode at anchor there was now, by last reports, scarcely space and depth sufficient for the Snark.  And why should not another convulsion, since the last report, have closed the harbor completely?

 

I ran in close to the unbroken coast, fringed with rocks awash upon which the crashing trade-wind sea burst white and high.  I searched with my glasses for miles, but could see no entrance.  I took a compass bearing of Futuna, another of Aniwa, and laid them off on the chart.  Where the two bearings crossed was bound to be the position of the Snark.  Then, with my parallel rulers, I laid down a course from the Snark’s position to Port Resolution.  Having corrected this course for variation and deviation, I went on deck, and lo, the course directed me towards that unbroken coast-line of bursting seas.  To my Rapa islander’s great concern, I held on till the rocks awash were an eighth of a mile away.

 

“No harbor this place,” he announced, shaking his head ominously.

 

But I altered the course and ran along parallel with the coast.  Charmian was at the wheel.  Martin was at the engine, ready to throw on the propeller.  A narrow silt of an opening showed up suddenly.  Through the glasses I could see the seas breaking clear across.  Henry, the Rapa man, looked with troubled eyes; so did Tehei, the Tahaa man.

 

“No passage, there,” said Henry.  “We go there, we finish quick, sure.”

 

I confess I thought so, too; but I ran on abreast, watching to see if the line of breakers from one side the entrance did not overlap the line from the other side.  Sure enough, it did.  A narrow place where the sea ran smooth appeared.   Charmian put down the wheel and steadied for the entrance.  Martin threw on the engine, while all hands and the cook sprang to take in sail.

 

A trader’s house showed up in the bight of the bay.  A geyser, on the shore, a hundred yards away; spouted a column of steam.  To port, as we rounded a tiny point, the mission station appeared.

 

“Three fathoms,” cried Wada at the lead-line. 

 

 “Three fathoms,” “two fathoms,” came in quick succession.

 

Charmian put the wheel down, Martin stopped the engine, and the Snark rounded to and the anchor rumbled down in three fathoms.  Before we could catch our breaths a swarm of black Tannese was alongside and aboard—grinning, apelike creatures, with kinky hair--"

 

…

 

"--munition going on board the Minota.  He knew about the Minota and her Malaita cruises.  He knew that she had been captured six months before on the Malaita coast, that her captain had been chopped to pieces with tomahawks, and that, according to the barbarian sense of equity on that sweet isle, she owed two more heads.  Also, a laborer on Penduffryn Plantation, a Malaita boy, had just died of dysentery, and Wada knew that Penduffryn had been put in the debt of Malaita by one more head.  Furthermore, in stowing our luggage away in the skipper’s tiny cabin, he saw the axe gashes on the door where the triumphant bushmen had cut their way in.  And, finally, the galley stove was without a pipe—said pipe having been part of the loot.

 

The Minota was a teak-built, Australian yacht, ketch-rigged, long and lean, with a deep fin-keel, and designed for harbour racing rather than for recruiting blacks.  When Charmian and I came on board, we found her crowded.  Her double boat’s crew, including substitutes, was fifteen, and she had a score and more of “return” boys, whose time on the plantations was served and who were bound back to their bush villages.  To look at, they were certainly true head-hunting cannibals.  Their perforated nostrils were thrust through with bone and wooden bodkins the size of lead-pencils.  Numbers of them had punctured the extreme meaty point of the nose, from which protruded, straight out, spikes of turtle-shell or of beads strung on stiff wire.  A few had further punctured their noses with rows of holes following the curves of the nostrils from lip to point.  Each ear of every man had from two to a dozen holes in it—holes large enough to carry wooden plugs three inches in diameter down to tiny holes in which were carried clay-pipes and similar trifles.  In fact, so many holes did they possess that they lacked ornaments to fill them; and when, the following day, as we neared Malaita, we tried out our rifles to see that they were in working order, there was a general scramble for the empty cartridges, which were thrust forthwith into the many aching voids in our passengers’ ears.

 

At the time we tried out our rifles we put up our barbed wire railings.  The Minota, crown-decked, without any house, and with a rail six inches high, was too accessible to boarders.  So brass stanchions were screwed into the rail and a double row of barbed wire stretched around her from stem to stern and back again.  Which was all very well as a protection from savages, but it was mighty uncomfortable to those on board when the Minota took to jumping and plunging--".

 

In addition to the hand-corrected manuscript is an unnumbered check inscribed overall and signed “Jack London” on the payee line. Issued from the Central Bank of Oakland, California on June 20, 1905 in the amount of $11.15 payable to “The Burrows Bros. Co.” The plain cream check is stamped in blue, maroon, and purple recto and verso, and bears a x-shaped cancellation mark at center. In very good to near fine condition, with expected folds and minor loss to upper edge. Check measures 6.5" x 2.875".

 

London wrote this check to Burrow Bros., a prominent book store and stationer's shop located on Cleveland's fashionable Euclid Avenue. The company operated between 1873-1993, transitioning from retail to publishing and wholesale around the turn-of-the-century.

 

Jack London must have required an inexhaustible supply of writing materials, if one considers the considerable output produced over his short lifetime. In the year 1905 alone, London published one novel, one essay, three short stories, and three poems. He would later write while aboard the Snark.

 

Jack London grew up in Oakland, California. He attended elementary school through high school there, and studied at a local waterfront bar named Heinold's First and Last Saloon; the proprietor later lent him tuition money to Berkeley.

 

Jack London wrote dozens of poems, short stories, essays, and novels over a prolific career curtailed by chronic ill-health. With income generated from adventure classics like Call of the Wild (1903) and White Fang (1906), London was able to purchase a ranch and outfit the Snark.

 

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