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The Red One By: Jack London (1876-1916) |
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Contents:
The Red One
The Hussy
Like Argus of the Ancient Times
The Princess
STORY: THE RED ONE
There it was! The abrupt liberation of sound! As he timed it with
his watch, Bassett likened it to the trump of an archangel. Walls
of cities, he meditated, might well fall down before so vast and
compelling a summons. For the thousandth time vainly he tried to
analyse the tone quality of that enormous peal that dominated the
land far into the strong holds of the surrounding tribes. The
mountain gorge which was its source rang to the rising tide of it
until it brimmed over and flooded earth and sky and air. With the
wantonness of a sick man's fancy, he likened it to the mighty cry
of some Titan of the Elder World vexed with misery or wrath.
Higher and higher it arose, challenging and demanding in such
profounds of volume that it seemed intended for ears beyond the
narrow confines of the solar system. There was in it, too, the
clamour of protest in that there were no ears to hear and
comprehend its utterance. Such the sick man's fancy. Still he strove to analyse the sound.
Sonorous as thunder was it, mellow as a golden bell, thin and sweet
as a thrummed taut cord of silver no; it was none of these, nor a
blend of these. There were no words nor semblances in his
vocabulary and experience with which to describe the totality of
that sound. Time passed. Minutes merged into quarters of hours, and quarters
of hours into half hours, and still the sound persisted, ever
changing from its initial vocal impulse yet never receiving fresh
impulse fading, dimming, dying as enormously as it had sprung into
being. It became a confusion of troubled mutterings and babblings
and colossal whisperings. Slowly it withdrew, sob by sob, into
whatever great bosom had birthed it, until it whimpered deadly
whispers of wrath and as equally seductive whispers of delight,
striving still to be heard, to convey some cosmic secret, some
understanding of infinite import and value. It dwindled to a ghost
of sound that had lost its menace and promise, and became a thing
that pulsed on in the sick man's consciousness for minutes after it
had ceased. When he could hear it no longer, Bassett glanced at
his watch. An hour had elapsed ere that archangel's trump had
subsided into tonal nothingness. Was this, then, HIS dark tower? Bassett pondered, remembering his
Browning and gazing at his skeleton like and fever wasted hands.
And the fancy made him smile of Childe Roland bearing a slug horn
to his lips with an arm as feeble as his was. Was it months, or
years, he asked himself, since he first heard that mysterious call
on the beach at Ringmanu? To save himself he could not tell. The
long sickness had been most long. In conscious count of time he
knew of months, many of them; but he had no way of estimating the
long intervals of delirium and stupor. And how fared Captain
Bateman of the blackbirder Nari? he wondered; and had Captain
Bateman's drunken mate died of delirium tremens yet? From which vain speculations, Bassett turned idly to review all
that had occurred since that day on the beach of Ringmanu when he
first heard the sound and plunged into the jungle after it. Sagawa
had protested. He could see him yet, his queer little monkeyish
face eloquent with fear, his back burdened with specimen cases, in
his hands Bassett's butterfly net and naturalist's shot gun, as he
quavered, in Beche de mer English: "Me fella too much fright along
bush. Bad fella boy, too much stop'm along bush." Bassett smiled sadly at the recollection. The little New Hanover
boy had been frightened, but had proved faithful, following him
without hesitancy into the bush in the quest after the source of
the wonderful sound. No fire hollowed tree trunk, that, throbbing
war through the jungle depths, had been Bassett's conclusion.
Erroneous had been his next conclusion, namely, that the source or
cause could not be more distant than an hour's walk, and that he
would easily be back by mid afternoon to be picked up by the Nari's
whale boat... Continue reading book >>
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Genres for this book |
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Fiction |
Literature |
Short stories |
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