July 25, 2025 • 27 mins
Immerse yourself in the captivating tales of Jack and Charmian Londons adventurous journey across the Pacific between 1907 and 1909, detailed in The Cruise of the Snark. This memoir not only introduces and popularizes the royal sport of surf-riding but also vividly depicts the thrill and beauty of the Pacific. Experience the exhilarating rush of riding the crest of a breaker, the sensation of being flung landward by the powerful sea, and the challenge of trying to match the skill of a Kanaka on a surf-board. This striking narrative captures the essence of living life to the fullest, promising a reading experience as invigorating as the pounding surf.
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Chapter eleven of the Crews of the Snark. This is
a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
Recorded by Brian Ness. The Crews of the Snark by
(00:23):
Jack London, Chapter eleven. The Nature Man. I first met
him on Market Street in San Francisco. Was a wet
and drizzly afternoon, and he was striding along, clad solely
in a pair of abbreviated knee trousers and an abbreviated shirt,
his bare feet going slick slick through the pavement slush
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at his heels trooped a score of excited gammons. Every head,
and there were thousands turned to glance curiously at him
as he went by, And I turned too. Never had
I seen such lovely sunburn. He was all sunburn, of
the sort a blonde takes on when his skin does
not peel. His long yellow hair was burnt, so was
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his beard, which sprang from a soil unplowed by any razor.
He was a tawny man, a golden tawny man, all
glowing and radiant with the sun. Another prophet thought, I
come up to town with a message that will save
the world. A few weeks later, I was with some
friends in their bungalow in the Piedmont Hills, overlooking San
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Francisco Bay. We've got him, we've got him, they barked.
We caught him up a tree. But he's all right now,
he'll feed from the hand. Come on and see him.
So I accompanied them up a dizzy hill, and in
a rickety shack in the midst of a eucalyptus grove,
found my sunburned prophet of the city piments. He hastened
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to meet us, arriving in the whirl and blur of
a handspring. He did not shake hands with us. Instead,
his greeting took the form of stunts. He turned more
hand He twisted his body sinuously like a snake, until
having sufficiently limbered up, he bent from the hips, and,
with legs straight and knees touching, beat a tattoo on
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the ground with the palms of his hands. He whirligigged
and pirouetted, dancing and cavorting round like an inebriated ape.
All the sun warmth of his ardent life beamed in
his face. I am so happy was the song without words.
He sang. He sang it all evening, wringing the changes
on it with an endless variety of stunts. A fool,
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A fool, I met a fool in the forest, thought
I and a worthy fool he proved between hand springs
and whirligigs. He delivered his message that would save the world.
It was twofold. First, let suffering humanity strip off its
clothing and run wild in the mountains and valleys, And second,
let the very miserable world adopt phonetic spelling. I caught
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a glimpse of the great social problems being settled by
the city populations swarming naked over the landscape, to the
popping of shotguns, the barking of ranch dogs, and countless
assaults with pitchforks wielded by irate farmers. The years passed,
and one sunny morning, the snark poked her nose into
a narrow opening in a reef that smoked with the
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crashing impact of the trade wind's swell, and beat slowly
up Papaette Harbor. Coming off to us was a boat
flying a yellow flag. We knew it contained the port Doctor,
but quite a distance off in its wake was a
tiny outrigger canoe that puzzled us. It was flying a
red flag. I studied it through the glasses, fearing that
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it marked some hidden danger to navigation, some recent wreck,
or some boy or beacon that had been swept away.
Then the doctor came on board, after he had examined
the state of our health and been assured that we
had no live rats hidden away in the snark. I
asked him the meaning of the red flag. Oh, that
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is darling, answer, and then Darling, earnest darling flying the
red flag that is indicative of the brotherhood of man,
hailed us. Hello, Jackie, called Hello Charmian. He paddled swiftly nearer,
and I saw that he was the tawny prophet of
the Piedmont Hills. He came over the side as sun god,
clad in a scarlet loincloth, with presents of Arcadie and
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greeting in both his hands, a bottle of golden honey
and a leaf basket filled with great golden mangoes, golden
bananas specked with freckles of deeper gold, golden pineapples, and
golden limes, and juicy oranges minted from the same precious
ore of sun and soil. And in this fashion, under
the southern sky, I met once more, darling the nature Man.
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Tahiti is one of the most beautiful spots in the world,
inhabited by thieves and robbers and liars, also by several
honest and truthful men and women. Wherefore, because of the
blight cast upon Tahiti's wonderful beauty by the spidery human
vermin that infested, I am minded to write not of Tahiti,
but of the nature Man. He at least is refreshing
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and wholesome. The spirit that emanates from him is so
gentle and sweet that it would harm nothing, hurt nobody's feelings,
save the feelings of a predatory and plutocratic capitalist. What
does this red flag mean, I asked, Oh, socialism, of course, yes, yes,
I know that, I went on. But what does it
mean in your hands? Why that I've found my message
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and that you are delivering it to Tahiti, I demanded, incredulously. Sure,
he answered simply, And later on I found that he
was too. When we dropped anchor, lowered a small boat
into the water and started ashore, the nature Man joined us.
Now thought I I shall be pestered to death by
this crank, waking or sleeping. I shall never be quit
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of him until I sail away from here. But never
in my life was I more mistaken. I took a
house and went to live and work in it, and
the nature Man never came near me. He was waiting
for the invitation. In the meantime, he went aboard the
Snark and took possession of her library, delighted by the
quantity of scientific books, and shocked, as I learned afterwards,
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by the inordinate amount of fiction. The nature man never
wastes time on fiction. After a week or so, my
conscience smote me, and I invited him to dinner at
a downtown hotel. He arrived looking unwontedly stiff and uncomfortable
in a cotton jacket. When invited to peel it off,
he beamed his gratitude and joy, and did so, revealing
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his sun gold skin from waist to shoulder, covered only
by a piece of fish net of coarse twine and
large mesh. A scarlet loincloth completed his costume. I began
my acquaintance with him that night, and during my long
stay in Tahiti. That acquaintance ripened into friendship. So you
write books, he said. One day, when tired and sweaty
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I finished my morning's work. I too write books, he announced. Aha,
thought I now, at last he is going to pester
me with his literary efforts. My soul was in revolt.
I had not come all the way to the South
Seas to be a literary bureau. This is the book
I write, he explained, smashing himself a resounding blow on
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the chest with his clenched fist. The gorilla in the
African jungle pounds his chest till the noise of it
can be heard half a mile away. A pretty good chest,
quoth I admiringly. It would even make a gorilla envious.
And then and later I learned the details of the
marvelous book Ernest Darling had written. Twelve years ago, he
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lay close to death. He weighed but ninety pounds and
was too weak to speak. The doctors had given him up.
His father, a practicing physician, had given him up. Consultations
with other physicians had been held upon him. There was
no hope for him. Over study as a school teacher
and as a university student, and two successive attacks of
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pneumonia were responsible for his breakdown. Day by day he
was losing strength. He could extract no nutrition from the
heavy foods they gave him, nor could pellets and powders
help his stomach to do the work of digestion. Not
only was he a physical wreck, but he was a
mental wreck. His mind was overwrought. He was sick and
tired of medicine, and he was sick and tired of persons.
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Human speech jarred upon him, human attentions drove him frantic.
The thought came to him that since he was going
to die, he might as well die in the open,
away from all the bother and irritation. And behind this
idea alerked a sneaking idea that perhaps he would not
die after all, if only he could escape from the
heavy foods, the medicines, and the well intentioned persons who
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made him frantic. So Ernest Darling, a bag of bones
and a death's head, a perambulating corpse with just the
dimmest flutter of life in it to make it perambulate,
turned his back upon men and the habitations of men,
and dragged himself for five miles through the brush, away
from the city of Portland organ. Of course he was crazy.
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Only a lunatic would drag himself out of his death bed.
But in the brush Darling found what he was looking for. Rest.
Nobody bothered him with beef steaks and pork. No physicians
lacerated his tired nerves by feeling his pulse, nor tormented
his tired stomach with pellets and powders. He began to
feel soothed. The sun was shining warm, and he basked
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in it. He had the feeling that the sunshine was
an elixir of health. Then it seemed to him that
his whole, wasted wreck of a body was crying for
the sun. He stripped off his clothes and bathed in
the sunshine. He felt better. It had done him good,
the first relief in weary months of pain. As he
grew better, he set up and began to take notice.
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All about him were the birds fluttering and chirping, the
squirrels chattering and playing. He envied them their health and spirits, there, happy,
carefree existence. That he should contrast their condition with his
was inevitable, and that he should question why they were
splendidly vigorous while he was a feeble dying wraith of
a man was likewise inevitable. His conclusion was the very
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obvious one, namely, that they lived naturally, while he lived
most unnaturally. Therefore, if he intended to live, he must
return to nature. Alone. There in the brush, he worked
out his problem and began to apply it. He stripped
off his clothing and leaped and gamboled about, running on
all fours, climbing trees, in short, doing physical stunts, and
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all the time soaking in the sunshine. He imitated the animals.
He built a nest of dry leaves and grasses in
which to sleep at night, covering it over with bark
as a protection against the early fall rains. Here is
a beautiful exercise, he told me once, flapping his arms
mightily against his sides. I learned it from watching the
rooster's crow. Another time I remarked the loud sucking intake
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with which he drank coconut milk. He explained that he
had noticed the cows drinking that way and concluded there
must be something in it. He tried it and found
it good, and thereafter he drank only in that fashion.
He noted that the squirrels lived on fruits and nuts.
He started on a fruit and nut diet, helped out
by bread, and he grew stronger and put on weight.
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For three months he continued his primordial existence in the brush,
and then the heavy organ rains drove him back to
the habitations of men. Not in three months could a
ninety pound survivor of two attacks of pneumonia develop sufficient
ruggedness to live through an organ winter in the open.
He had accomplished much, but he had been driven in.
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There was no place to go but back to his
father's house, and there, living in close rooms with lungs
that panted for all the air of the open sky,
he was brought down by a third attack of pneumonia.
He grew weaker even than before in that tottering tabernacle
of flesh. His brain collapsed. He lay like a corpse,
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too weak to stand the fatigue of speaking to irritate it,
and tired in his miserable brain to care to listen
to the speech of others. The only act of will
which he was capable was to stick his fingers in
his ears and resolutely to refuse to hear a single
word that was spoken to him. They sent for the
insanity experts. He was adjudged insane, and also the verdict
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was given that he would not live a month by
one such mental expert. He was carted off to a
sanatorium on Mount Tabor. Here, when they learned that he
was harmless, they gave him his own way. They no
longer dictated as to the food he ate, so he
resumed his fruits and nuts, Olive oil, peanut butter and
bananas the chief articles of his diet. As he regained
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his strength, he made up his mind to live thenceforth
his own life. If he lived like others according to
social conventions, he would surely die, and he did not
want to die. The fear of death was one of
the strongest factors in the genesis of the nature man.
To live, he must have a natural diet, the open
air and the blessed sunshine. Now an organ winter has
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no inducements for those who wished to return to nature,
So Darling started out in search of a climate. He
mounted a bicycle and headed south for the sun Lands.
Stanford University claimed him for a year. Here he studied
and worked his way, attending lectures in as scant garb
as the authorities would allow, and applying as much as
possible the principles of living that he had learned in
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Squirrel Town. His favorite method of study was to go
off in the hills back of the university, and there
to strip off his clothes and lie on the grass,
soaking in sunshine and health at the same time that
he soaked in knowledge. But Central California has her winters,
and the quest for a nature man's climate drew him on.
He tried Los Angeles and southern California, being arrested a
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few times and brought before the insanity Commissions because forsooth
his mode of life was not modeled after the mode
of life of his fellow men. He tried Hawaii, where,
unable to prove him insane, the authorities deported him. Was
not exactly a deportation. He could have remained by serving
a year in prison. They gave him his choice. Now
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prison is death to the nature man, who thrives only
in the open air and in God's sunshine. The authorities
of Hawaii are not to be blamed. Darling was an
undesirable citizen. Any man is undesirable who disagrees with one,
and that any man should disagree to the extent Darling
did in his philosophy of the simple life is ample
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vindication of the Hawaiian authority's verdict of his undesirableness. So
Darling went, thence in search of a climate which would
not only be desirable, but wherein he would not be undesirable.
And he found it in Tahiti, the garden spot of
garden spots. And so it was, according to the narrative,
as given that he wrote the pages of his book.
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He wears only a loincloth and a sleeveless fishnet shirt.
His stripped weight is one hundred and sixty five pounds.
His health is perfect. His eyesight, that at one time
was considered ruined, is excellent. The lungs that were practically
destroyed by three attacks of pneumonia have not only recovered,
but are stronger than ever before. I shall never forget
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the first time, while talking to me that he squashed
a mosquito. The stinging pest had settled in the middle
of his back, between his shoulders, without interrupting the flow
of conversation, without dropping even a syllable, his clenched fists
shot up in the air, curved backward, and smote his
back between the shoulders, killing the mosquito and making his
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frame resound like a bass drum. It reminded me of
nothing so much as of horses kicking the woodwork in
their stalls. The gorilla in the African jungle pounds his
chest until the noise of it can be heard half
a mile away. He will announce suddenly and thereat beat
a hair raising devil's tattoo on his own chest. One
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day he noticed a set of boxing gloves hanging on
the wall, and promptly his eyes brightened. Do you box?
I asked? I used to give lessons in boxing when
I was at Stanford, was the reply. And there and
then we stripped and put on the gloves. Bang, A
long gorilla arm flashed out, landing the gloved end on
my nose. Biff. He caught me in a duck on
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the side of the head, nearly knocking me over sidewise,
I carried the lump raised by that blow for a week.
I ducked under a straight left and landed a straight
right on his stomach. It was a fearful blow. The
whole weight of my body was behind it, and his
body had been met as it lunged forward. I looked
for him to crumple up and go down instead, of
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which his face beamed approval, and he said that was beautiful.
The next instant I was covering up and striving to
protect myself from a hurricane of hooks, jolts and uppercuts.
Then I watched my chance and drove in for the
solar plexus. I hit the mark. The nature man dropped
his arms, gasped, and sat down. Suddenly, I'll be all right,
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he said, just wait a moment, and inside thirty seconds
he was on his feet a and returning the compliment.
For he hooked me in the solar plexus, and I gasped,
dropped my hands, and sat down just a trifle more
suddenly than he had. All of which I submit his
evidence that the man I boxed with was a totally
different man from the poor ninety pound weight of eight
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years before, who, given up by physicians and alienists, lay
gasping his life away in a closed room in Portland, Organ.
The book that Ernest Darling has written is a good book,
and the binding is good too. Hawaii has wailed for
years her need for desirable immigrants. She has spent much
time and thought and money in importing desirable citizens. And
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she has as yet nothing much to show for it.
Yet Hawaii deported the nature Man. She refused to give
him a chance. So it is to chase in Hawaii's
proud spirit that I take this opportunity to show her
what she has lost in the nature Man. When he
arrived in Tahiti, he proceeded to seek out a piece
of land on which to grow the food he ate.
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But land was difficult to find. That is inexpensive land.
The nature Man was not rolling in wealth. He spent
weeks in wandering over the steep hills until high up
the mountain, where clustered several tiny canyons, he found eighty
acres of breast jungle, which were apparently unrecorded as the
property of any one. The government officials told him that
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if he would clear the land and till it for
thirty years, he would be given a title for it.
Immediately he set to work, and never was there such work.
Nobody farmed that high up. The land was covered with
matta jungle and overrun by wild pigs and countless rats.
The view of Papaette and the sea was magnificent, but
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the outlook was not encouraging. He spent weeks in building
a road in order to make the plantation accessible. The
pigs and the rats ate up whatever he planted as
fast as it sprouted. He shot the pigs and trapped
the rats of the latter. In two weeks he caught
fifteen hundred. Everything had to be carried up on his back.
He usually did his pack horse work at night. Gradually
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he began to win out. A grass walled house was
built on the fertile volcanic soil he had rested from
the jungle, and jungle beasts were growing. Five hundred coconut trees,
five hundred papaya trees, three hundred mango trees, many bread
fruit trees, and alligator pear trees, to say nothing of vines,
bushes and vegetables. He developed the drip of the hills
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in the canyons and worked out an efficient irrigation scheme,
ditching the water from canyon to canyon and paralleling the
ditches at different altitudes. His narrow canyons became botanical gardens.
The arid shoulders of the hills, where formerly the blazing
sun had parched the jungle and beaten it close to earth,
blossomed into trees and shrubs, and flowers. Not only had
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the nature Man become self supporting, but he was now
a prosperous agriculturist with produce to sell to the city
dwellers of Papeete. Then it was discovered that his land,
which the government officials had informed him was without an owner,
really had an owner, and that deed's descriptions, et cetera
were on record. All his work bade fair to be lost.
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The land had been valueless when he took it up,
and the owner, a large landholder, was unaware of the
extent to which the nature Man had developed it. A
just price was agreed upon and Darling's deed was officially filed.
Next came a more crushing blow. Darling's access to market
was destroyed. The road he had built was fenced across
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by triple barbed wire fences. It was one of those
jumbles in human affairs that is so common in this
absurdist of sath social systems. Behind it was the fine
hand of the same conservative element that hailed the nature
Man before the Insanity Commission in Los Angeles and that
deported him from Hawaii. It is so hard for self
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satisfied men to understand any man whose satisfactions are fundamentally different.
It seems clear that the officials have connived with the
conservative element. For to this day the road the nature
man built is closed. Nothing has been done about it,
while an adamant unwillingness to do anything about it is
evidenced on every hand. But the nature man dances and
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sings along his way. He does not sit up nights
thinking about the wrong which has been done him. He
leaves the worrying to the doers of the wrong. He
has no time for bitterness. He believes he is in
the world for the purpose of being happy, and he
has not a moment to waste in any other pursuit.
The road to his plantation is blocked. He cannot build
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a new road, for there is no ground on which
he can build it. The government has restricted him to
a wild pig trail which runs precipitously up the mountain.
I climbed the trail with him, and we had to
climb with hands and feet in order to get up.
Nor can that wild pig trail be made into a
road by any amount of toil less than that of
an engineer, a steam engine and a steel cable. But
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what does the nature man care in his gentle ethics.
The evil men do him. He requites with goodness, and
who shall say he is not happier than they? Never
mind their pesky road, he said to me, as we
dragged ourselves up a shelf of rock and sat down
panting to rest. I'll get an air machine soon and
fool them. I'm clearing a level space for a landing
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stage for airships. And next time you come to Tahiti,
you will alight right at my door. Yes, the nature
man has some strange ideas besides that of the gorilla
pounding his chest in the African jungle. The nature man
has ideas about levitation. Yes, sir, he said to me.
Levitation is not impossible, And think of the glory of it,
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lifting one's self from the ground by an act of will.
Think of it. The astronomers tell us that our whole
solar system is dying, that barring accidents, it will all
be so cold that no life can live upon it.
Very well, in that day all men will be accomplished levitationists,
and they will leave this perishing planet and seek more
hospitable worlds. How can levitation be accomplished by progressive fasts? Yes,
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I have tried them, and toward the end I could
feel myself actually getting lighter. The man is a maniac,
I thought, of course, he added, these are only theories
of mine. I like to speculate upon the glorious future
of man. Levitation may not be possible, but I like
to think of it as possible. One evening, when he yawned,
I asked him how much sleep he allowed himself. Seven
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hours was the answer. But in ten years I'll be
sleeping only six hours, and in twenty years only five hours.
You see, I shall cut off an hour's sleep every
ten years. Then when you are a hundred, you won't
be sleeping at all. I interjected, just that exactly, that
when I'm a hundred, I shall not require sleep. Also,
I shall be living on air. There are plants that
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live on air, you know. But has any man ever
succeeded in doing it? He shook his head. I never
heard of him if he did. But it is only
a theory of mine, this living on air. It would
be fine, wouldn't it. Of course, it may be impossible,
most likely it is. You see, I'm not unpractical. I
never forget the present when I soar ahead into the future.
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I always leave a string by which to find my
way back again. I fear me. The nature man is
a joker. At any rate. He lives the simple life.
His laundry bill cannot be large up on his plantation.
He lives on fruit, the labor cost of which in
cash he estimates at five cents a day at present,
because of his obstructed road, and because he is head
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over heels in the propaganda of socialism, is living in
town where his expenses, including rent, are twenty five cents
a day. In order to pay those expenses, he is
running a night school for Chinese. The nature man is
not bigoted when there is nothing better to eat than meat.
He eats meat, as for instance, when in jail or
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on shipboard, and the nuts and fruits give out. Nor
does he seem to crystallize into anything except sunburn, drop
anchor anywhere, and the anchor will drag. That is, if
your soul is a limitless, fathomless sea and not dog pound.
He quoted to me, then added, you see my anchor
as always dragging. I live for human health and progress,
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and I strive to drag my anchor always in that direction.
To me, the two are identical. Dragging anchor is what
has saved me. My anchor did not hold me to
my deathbed. I dragged anchor into the brush and fooled
the doctor's. When I recovered health and strength, I started
by preaching and by example to teach the people to
become nature men and nature women. But they had deaf ears.
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Then on the steamer coming to Tahiti, a quarter master
expounded socialism to me. He showed me that an economic
square deal was necessary before men and women could live naturally.
So I dragged anchor once more, and now I am
working for the co Operative Commonwealth. When that arrives, it
will be easy to bring about nature living. I had
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a dream last night, he went on thoughtfully, his face
slowly breaking into a glow. It seemed that twenty five
nature men and nature women had just arrived on the
steamer from California, and that I was starting to go
with them up the wild pig trail to the plantation.
Ah me, ernest darling, sun worshiper, and nature man. There
are times when I am compelled to envy you and
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your care free existence. I see you now dancing up
the steps and cutting antics on the Verandah, your hair
dripping from a plunge in the salt sea, your eyes sparkling,
your sun gilded body flashing, your chest resounding to the
devil's own tattoo as you chant. The gorilla in the
African jungle pounds his chest until the noise of it
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can be heard half a mile away. And I shall
see you always as I saw you that last day
when the snark poked her nose once more through the
passage in the smoking reef outward bound, And I wave
good bye to those on shore, not least in good
will and affection. Was the wave I gave to the
golden sun God in the scarlet loincloth, standing upright in
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his tiny outrigger canoe. End of Chapter eleven, recorded by
Brian Ness. This recording is in the public domain.
Chapter eleven of the Crews of the Snark. This is
a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
Recorded by Brian Ness. The Crews of the Snark by
(00:23):
Jack London, Chapter eleven. The Nature Man. I first met
him on Market Street in San Francisco. Was a wet
and drizzly afternoon, and he was striding along, clad solely
in a pair of abbreviated knee trousers and an abbreviated shirt,
his bare feet going slick slick through the pavement slush
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at his heels trooped a score of excited gammons. Every head,
and there were thousands turned to glance curiously at him
as he went by, And I turned too. Never had
I seen such lovely sunburn. He was all sunburn, of
the sort a blonde takes on when his skin does
not peel. His long yellow hair was burnt, so was
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his beard, which sprang from a soil unplowed by any razor.
He was a tawny man, a golden tawny man, all
glowing and radiant with the sun. Another prophet thought, I
come up to town with a message that will save
the world. A few weeks later, I was with some
friends in their bungalow in the Piedmont Hills, overlooking San
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Francisco Bay. We've got him, we've got him, they barked.
We caught him up a tree. But he's all right now,
he'll feed from the hand. Come on and see him.
So I accompanied them up a dizzy hill, and in
a rickety shack in the midst of a eucalyptus grove,
found my sunburned prophet of the city piments. He hastened
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to meet us, arriving in the whirl and blur of
a handspring. He did not shake hands with us. Instead,
his greeting took the form of stunts. He turned more
hand He twisted his body sinuously like a snake, until
having sufficiently limbered up, he bent from the hips, and,
with legs straight and knees touching, beat a tattoo on
(02:11):
the ground with the palms of his hands. He whirligigged
and pirouetted, dancing and cavorting round like an inebriated ape.
All the sun warmth of his ardent life beamed in
his face. I am so happy was the song without words.
He sang. He sang it all evening, wringing the changes
on it with an endless variety of stunts. A fool,
(02:33):
A fool, I met a fool in the forest, thought
I and a worthy fool he proved between hand springs
and whirligigs. He delivered his message that would save the world.
It was twofold. First, let suffering humanity strip off its
clothing and run wild in the mountains and valleys, And second,
let the very miserable world adopt phonetic spelling. I caught
(02:56):
a glimpse of the great social problems being settled by
the city populations swarming naked over the landscape, to the
popping of shotguns, the barking of ranch dogs, and countless
assaults with pitchforks wielded by irate farmers. The years passed,
and one sunny morning, the snark poked her nose into
a narrow opening in a reef that smoked with the
(03:18):
crashing impact of the trade wind's swell, and beat slowly
up Papaette Harbor. Coming off to us was a boat
flying a yellow flag. We knew it contained the port Doctor,
but quite a distance off in its wake was a
tiny outrigger canoe that puzzled us. It was flying a
red flag. I studied it through the glasses, fearing that
(03:39):
it marked some hidden danger to navigation, some recent wreck,
or some boy or beacon that had been swept away.
Then the doctor came on board, after he had examined
the state of our health and been assured that we
had no live rats hidden away in the snark. I
asked him the meaning of the red flag. Oh, that
(03:59):
is darling, answer, and then Darling, earnest darling flying the
red flag that is indicative of the brotherhood of man,
hailed us. Hello, Jackie, called Hello Charmian. He paddled swiftly nearer,
and I saw that he was the tawny prophet of
the Piedmont Hills. He came over the side as sun god,
clad in a scarlet loincloth, with presents of Arcadie and
(04:22):
greeting in both his hands, a bottle of golden honey
and a leaf basket filled with great golden mangoes, golden
bananas specked with freckles of deeper gold, golden pineapples, and
golden limes, and juicy oranges minted from the same precious
ore of sun and soil. And in this fashion, under
the southern sky, I met once more, darling the nature Man.
(04:45):
Tahiti is one of the most beautiful spots in the world,
inhabited by thieves and robbers and liars, also by several
honest and truthful men and women. Wherefore, because of the
blight cast upon Tahiti's wonderful beauty by the spidery human
vermin that infested, I am minded to write not of Tahiti,
but of the nature Man. He at least is refreshing
(05:07):
and wholesome. The spirit that emanates from him is so
gentle and sweet that it would harm nothing, hurt nobody's feelings,
save the feelings of a predatory and plutocratic capitalist. What
does this red flag mean, I asked, Oh, socialism, of course, yes, yes,
I know that, I went on. But what does it
mean in your hands? Why that I've found my message
(05:31):
and that you are delivering it to Tahiti, I demanded, incredulously. Sure,
he answered simply, And later on I found that he
was too. When we dropped anchor, lowered a small boat
into the water and started ashore, the nature Man joined us.
Now thought I I shall be pestered to death by
this crank, waking or sleeping. I shall never be quit
(05:53):
of him until I sail away from here. But never
in my life was I more mistaken. I took a
house and went to live and work in it, and
the nature Man never came near me. He was waiting
for the invitation. In the meantime, he went aboard the
Snark and took possession of her library, delighted by the
quantity of scientific books, and shocked, as I learned afterwards,
(06:14):
by the inordinate amount of fiction. The nature man never
wastes time on fiction. After a week or so, my
conscience smote me, and I invited him to dinner at
a downtown hotel. He arrived looking unwontedly stiff and uncomfortable
in a cotton jacket. When invited to peel it off,
he beamed his gratitude and joy, and did so, revealing
(06:35):
his sun gold skin from waist to shoulder, covered only
by a piece of fish net of coarse twine and
large mesh. A scarlet loincloth completed his costume. I began
my acquaintance with him that night, and during my long
stay in Tahiti. That acquaintance ripened into friendship. So you
write books, he said. One day, when tired and sweaty
(06:57):
I finished my morning's work. I too write books, he announced. Aha,
thought I now, at last he is going to pester
me with his literary efforts. My soul was in revolt.
I had not come all the way to the South
Seas to be a literary bureau. This is the book
I write, he explained, smashing himself a resounding blow on
(07:18):
the chest with his clenched fist. The gorilla in the
African jungle pounds his chest till the noise of it
can be heard half a mile away. A pretty good chest,
quoth I admiringly. It would even make a gorilla envious.
And then and later I learned the details of the
marvelous book Ernest Darling had written. Twelve years ago, he
(07:39):
lay close to death. He weighed but ninety pounds and
was too weak to speak. The doctors had given him up.
His father, a practicing physician, had given him up. Consultations
with other physicians had been held upon him. There was
no hope for him. Over study as a school teacher
and as a university student, and two successive attacks of
(08:00):
pneumonia were responsible for his breakdown. Day by day he
was losing strength. He could extract no nutrition from the
heavy foods they gave him, nor could pellets and powders
help his stomach to do the work of digestion. Not
only was he a physical wreck, but he was a
mental wreck. His mind was overwrought. He was sick and
tired of medicine, and he was sick and tired of persons.
(08:23):
Human speech jarred upon him, human attentions drove him frantic.
The thought came to him that since he was going
to die, he might as well die in the open,
away from all the bother and irritation. And behind this
idea alerked a sneaking idea that perhaps he would not
die after all, if only he could escape from the
heavy foods, the medicines, and the well intentioned persons who
(08:47):
made him frantic. So Ernest Darling, a bag of bones
and a death's head, a perambulating corpse with just the
dimmest flutter of life in it to make it perambulate,
turned his back upon men and the habitations of men,
and dragged himself for five miles through the brush, away
from the city of Portland organ. Of course he was crazy.
(09:08):
Only a lunatic would drag himself out of his death bed.
But in the brush Darling found what he was looking for. Rest.
Nobody bothered him with beef steaks and pork. No physicians
lacerated his tired nerves by feeling his pulse, nor tormented
his tired stomach with pellets and powders. He began to
feel soothed. The sun was shining warm, and he basked
(09:31):
in it. He had the feeling that the sunshine was
an elixir of health. Then it seemed to him that
his whole, wasted wreck of a body was crying for
the sun. He stripped off his clothes and bathed in
the sunshine. He felt better. It had done him good,
the first relief in weary months of pain. As he
grew better, he set up and began to take notice.
(09:52):
All about him were the birds fluttering and chirping, the
squirrels chattering and playing. He envied them their health and spirits, there, happy,
carefree existence. That he should contrast their condition with his
was inevitable, and that he should question why they were
splendidly vigorous while he was a feeble dying wraith of
a man was likewise inevitable. His conclusion was the very
(10:15):
obvious one, namely, that they lived naturally, while he lived
most unnaturally. Therefore, if he intended to live, he must
return to nature. Alone. There in the brush, he worked
out his problem and began to apply it. He stripped
off his clothing and leaped and gamboled about, running on
all fours, climbing trees, in short, doing physical stunts, and
(10:38):
all the time soaking in the sunshine. He imitated the animals.
He built a nest of dry leaves and grasses in
which to sleep at night, covering it over with bark
as a protection against the early fall rains. Here is
a beautiful exercise, he told me once, flapping his arms
mightily against his sides. I learned it from watching the
rooster's crow. Another time I remarked the loud sucking intake
(11:03):
with which he drank coconut milk. He explained that he
had noticed the cows drinking that way and concluded there
must be something in it. He tried it and found
it good, and thereafter he drank only in that fashion.
He noted that the squirrels lived on fruits and nuts.
He started on a fruit and nut diet, helped out
by bread, and he grew stronger and put on weight.
(11:25):
For three months he continued his primordial existence in the brush,
and then the heavy organ rains drove him back to
the habitations of men. Not in three months could a
ninety pound survivor of two attacks of pneumonia develop sufficient
ruggedness to live through an organ winter in the open.
He had accomplished much, but he had been driven in.
(11:46):
There was no place to go but back to his
father's house, and there, living in close rooms with lungs
that panted for all the air of the open sky,
he was brought down by a third attack of pneumonia.
He grew weaker even than before in that tottering tabernacle
of flesh. His brain collapsed. He lay like a corpse,
(12:06):
too weak to stand the fatigue of speaking to irritate it,
and tired in his miserable brain to care to listen
to the speech of others. The only act of will
which he was capable was to stick his fingers in
his ears and resolutely to refuse to hear a single
word that was spoken to him. They sent for the
insanity experts. He was adjudged insane, and also the verdict
(12:29):
was given that he would not live a month by
one such mental expert. He was carted off to a
sanatorium on Mount Tabor. Here, when they learned that he
was harmless, they gave him his own way. They no
longer dictated as to the food he ate, so he
resumed his fruits and nuts, Olive oil, peanut butter and
bananas the chief articles of his diet. As he regained
(12:51):
his strength, he made up his mind to live thenceforth
his own life. If he lived like others according to
social conventions, he would surely die, and he did not
want to die. The fear of death was one of
the strongest factors in the genesis of the nature man.
To live, he must have a natural diet, the open
air and the blessed sunshine. Now an organ winter has
(13:14):
no inducements for those who wished to return to nature,
So Darling started out in search of a climate. He
mounted a bicycle and headed south for the sun Lands.
Stanford University claimed him for a year. Here he studied
and worked his way, attending lectures in as scant garb
as the authorities would allow, and applying as much as
possible the principles of living that he had learned in
(13:36):
Squirrel Town. His favorite method of study was to go
off in the hills back of the university, and there
to strip off his clothes and lie on the grass,
soaking in sunshine and health at the same time that
he soaked in knowledge. But Central California has her winters,
and the quest for a nature man's climate drew him on.
He tried Los Angeles and southern California, being arrested a
(14:00):
few times and brought before the insanity Commissions because forsooth
his mode of life was not modeled after the mode
of life of his fellow men. He tried Hawaii, where,
unable to prove him insane, the authorities deported him. Was
not exactly a deportation. He could have remained by serving
a year in prison. They gave him his choice. Now
(14:21):
prison is death to the nature man, who thrives only
in the open air and in God's sunshine. The authorities
of Hawaii are not to be blamed. Darling was an
undesirable citizen. Any man is undesirable who disagrees with one,
and that any man should disagree to the extent Darling
did in his philosophy of the simple life is ample
(14:42):
vindication of the Hawaiian authority's verdict of his undesirableness. So
Darling went, thence in search of a climate which would
not only be desirable, but wherein he would not be undesirable.
And he found it in Tahiti, the garden spot of
garden spots. And so it was, according to the narrative,
as given that he wrote the pages of his book.
(15:04):
He wears only a loincloth and a sleeveless fishnet shirt.
His stripped weight is one hundred and sixty five pounds.
His health is perfect. His eyesight, that at one time
was considered ruined, is excellent. The lungs that were practically
destroyed by three attacks of pneumonia have not only recovered,
but are stronger than ever before. I shall never forget
(15:27):
the first time, while talking to me that he squashed
a mosquito. The stinging pest had settled in the middle
of his back, between his shoulders, without interrupting the flow
of conversation, without dropping even a syllable, his clenched fists
shot up in the air, curved backward, and smote his
back between the shoulders, killing the mosquito and making his
(15:48):
frame resound like a bass drum. It reminded me of
nothing so much as of horses kicking the woodwork in
their stalls. The gorilla in the African jungle pounds his
chest until the noise of it can be heard half
a mile away. He will announce suddenly and thereat beat
a hair raising devil's tattoo on his own chest. One
(16:08):
day he noticed a set of boxing gloves hanging on
the wall, and promptly his eyes brightened. Do you box?
I asked? I used to give lessons in boxing when
I was at Stanford, was the reply. And there and
then we stripped and put on the gloves. Bang, A
long gorilla arm flashed out, landing the gloved end on
my nose. Biff. He caught me in a duck on
(16:30):
the side of the head, nearly knocking me over sidewise,
I carried the lump raised by that blow for a week.
I ducked under a straight left and landed a straight
right on his stomach. It was a fearful blow. The
whole weight of my body was behind it, and his
body had been met as it lunged forward. I looked
for him to crumple up and go down instead, of
(16:51):
which his face beamed approval, and he said that was beautiful.
The next instant I was covering up and striving to
protect myself from a hurricane of hooks, jolts and uppercuts.
Then I watched my chance and drove in for the
solar plexus. I hit the mark. The nature man dropped
his arms, gasped, and sat down. Suddenly, I'll be all right,
(17:14):
he said, just wait a moment, and inside thirty seconds
he was on his feet a and returning the compliment.
For he hooked me in the solar plexus, and I gasped,
dropped my hands, and sat down just a trifle more
suddenly than he had. All of which I submit his
evidence that the man I boxed with was a totally
different man from the poor ninety pound weight of eight
(17:36):
years before, who, given up by physicians and alienists, lay
gasping his life away in a closed room in Portland, Organ.
The book that Ernest Darling has written is a good book,
and the binding is good too. Hawaii has wailed for
years her need for desirable immigrants. She has spent much
time and thought and money in importing desirable citizens. And
(17:58):
she has as yet nothing much to show for it.
Yet Hawaii deported the nature Man. She refused to give
him a chance. So it is to chase in Hawaii's
proud spirit that I take this opportunity to show her
what she has lost in the nature Man. When he
arrived in Tahiti, he proceeded to seek out a piece
of land on which to grow the food he ate.
(18:20):
But land was difficult to find. That is inexpensive land.
The nature Man was not rolling in wealth. He spent
weeks in wandering over the steep hills until high up
the mountain, where clustered several tiny canyons, he found eighty
acres of breast jungle, which were apparently unrecorded as the
property of any one. The government officials told him that
(18:40):
if he would clear the land and till it for
thirty years, he would be given a title for it.
Immediately he set to work, and never was there such work.
Nobody farmed that high up. The land was covered with
matta jungle and overrun by wild pigs and countless rats.
The view of Papaette and the sea was magnificent, but
(19:01):
the outlook was not encouraging. He spent weeks in building
a road in order to make the plantation accessible. The
pigs and the rats ate up whatever he planted as
fast as it sprouted. He shot the pigs and trapped
the rats of the latter. In two weeks he caught
fifteen hundred. Everything had to be carried up on his back.
He usually did his pack horse work at night. Gradually
(19:24):
he began to win out. A grass walled house was
built on the fertile volcanic soil he had rested from
the jungle, and jungle beasts were growing. Five hundred coconut trees,
five hundred papaya trees, three hundred mango trees, many bread
fruit trees, and alligator pear trees, to say nothing of vines,
bushes and vegetables. He developed the drip of the hills
(19:47):
in the canyons and worked out an efficient irrigation scheme,
ditching the water from canyon to canyon and paralleling the
ditches at different altitudes. His narrow canyons became botanical gardens.
The arid shoulders of the hills, where formerly the blazing
sun had parched the jungle and beaten it close to earth,
blossomed into trees and shrubs, and flowers. Not only had
(20:09):
the nature Man become self supporting, but he was now
a prosperous agriculturist with produce to sell to the city
dwellers of Papeete. Then it was discovered that his land,
which the government officials had informed him was without an owner,
really had an owner, and that deed's descriptions, et cetera
were on record. All his work bade fair to be lost.
(20:32):
The land had been valueless when he took it up,
and the owner, a large landholder, was unaware of the
extent to which the nature Man had developed it. A
just price was agreed upon and Darling's deed was officially filed.
Next came a more crushing blow. Darling's access to market
was destroyed. The road he had built was fenced across
(20:53):
by triple barbed wire fences. It was one of those
jumbles in human affairs that is so common in this
absurdist of sath social systems. Behind it was the fine
hand of the same conservative element that hailed the nature
Man before the Insanity Commission in Los Angeles and that
deported him from Hawaii. It is so hard for self
(21:13):
satisfied men to understand any man whose satisfactions are fundamentally different.
It seems clear that the officials have connived with the
conservative element. For to this day the road the nature
man built is closed. Nothing has been done about it,
while an adamant unwillingness to do anything about it is
evidenced on every hand. But the nature man dances and
(21:35):
sings along his way. He does not sit up nights
thinking about the wrong which has been done him. He
leaves the worrying to the doers of the wrong. He
has no time for bitterness. He believes he is in
the world for the purpose of being happy, and he
has not a moment to waste in any other pursuit.
The road to his plantation is blocked. He cannot build
(21:55):
a new road, for there is no ground on which
he can build it. The government has restricted him to
a wild pig trail which runs precipitously up the mountain.
I climbed the trail with him, and we had to
climb with hands and feet in order to get up.
Nor can that wild pig trail be made into a
road by any amount of toil less than that of
an engineer, a steam engine and a steel cable. But
(22:19):
what does the nature man care in his gentle ethics.
The evil men do him. He requites with goodness, and
who shall say he is not happier than they? Never
mind their pesky road, he said to me, as we
dragged ourselves up a shelf of rock and sat down
panting to rest. I'll get an air machine soon and
fool them. I'm clearing a level space for a landing
(22:42):
stage for airships. And next time you come to Tahiti,
you will alight right at my door. Yes, the nature
man has some strange ideas besides that of the gorilla
pounding his chest in the African jungle. The nature man
has ideas about levitation. Yes, sir, he said to me.
Levitation is not impossible, And think of the glory of it,
(23:03):
lifting one's self from the ground by an act of will.
Think of it. The astronomers tell us that our whole
solar system is dying, that barring accidents, it will all
be so cold that no life can live upon it.
Very well, in that day all men will be accomplished levitationists,
and they will leave this perishing planet and seek more
hospitable worlds. How can levitation be accomplished by progressive fasts? Yes,
(23:28):
I have tried them, and toward the end I could
feel myself actually getting lighter. The man is a maniac,
I thought, of course, he added, these are only theories
of mine. I like to speculate upon the glorious future
of man. Levitation may not be possible, but I like
to think of it as possible. One evening, when he yawned,
I asked him how much sleep he allowed himself. Seven
(23:51):
hours was the answer. But in ten years I'll be
sleeping only six hours, and in twenty years only five hours.
You see, I shall cut off an hour's sleep every
ten years. Then when you are a hundred, you won't
be sleeping at all. I interjected, just that exactly, that
when I'm a hundred, I shall not require sleep. Also,
I shall be living on air. There are plants that
(24:13):
live on air, you know. But has any man ever
succeeded in doing it? He shook his head. I never
heard of him if he did. But it is only
a theory of mine, this living on air. It would
be fine, wouldn't it. Of course, it may be impossible,
most likely it is. You see, I'm not unpractical. I
never forget the present when I soar ahead into the future.
(24:35):
I always leave a string by which to find my
way back again. I fear me. The nature man is
a joker. At any rate. He lives the simple life.
His laundry bill cannot be large up on his plantation.
He lives on fruit, the labor cost of which in
cash he estimates at five cents a day at present,
because of his obstructed road, and because he is head
(24:56):
over heels in the propaganda of socialism, is living in
town where his expenses, including rent, are twenty five cents
a day. In order to pay those expenses, he is
running a night school for Chinese. The nature man is
not bigoted when there is nothing better to eat than meat.
He eats meat, as for instance, when in jail or
(25:17):
on shipboard, and the nuts and fruits give out. Nor
does he seem to crystallize into anything except sunburn, drop
anchor anywhere, and the anchor will drag. That is, if
your soul is a limitless, fathomless sea and not dog pound.
He quoted to me, then added, you see my anchor
as always dragging. I live for human health and progress,
(25:38):
and I strive to drag my anchor always in that direction.
To me, the two are identical. Dragging anchor is what
has saved me. My anchor did not hold me to
my deathbed. I dragged anchor into the brush and fooled
the doctor's. When I recovered health and strength, I started
by preaching and by example to teach the people to
become nature men and nature women. But they had deaf ears.
(26:02):
Then on the steamer coming to Tahiti, a quarter master
expounded socialism to me. He showed me that an economic
square deal was necessary before men and women could live naturally.
So I dragged anchor once more, and now I am
working for the co Operative Commonwealth. When that arrives, it
will be easy to bring about nature living. I had
(26:23):
a dream last night, he went on thoughtfully, his face
slowly breaking into a glow. It seemed that twenty five
nature men and nature women had just arrived on the
steamer from California, and that I was starting to go
with them up the wild pig trail to the plantation.
Ah me, ernest darling, sun worshiper, and nature man. There
are times when I am compelled to envy you and
(26:44):
your care free existence. I see you now dancing up
the steps and cutting antics on the Verandah, your hair
dripping from a plunge in the salt sea, your eyes sparkling,
your sun gilded body flashing, your chest resounding to the
devil's own tattoo as you chant. The gorilla in the
African jungle pounds his chest until the noise of it
(27:04):
can be heard half a mile away. And I shall
see you always as I saw you that last day
when the snark poked her nose once more through the
passage in the smoking reef outward bound, And I wave
good bye to those on shore, not least in good
will and affection. Was the wave I gave to the
golden sun God in the scarlet loincloth, standing upright in
(27:26):
his tiny outrigger canoe. End of Chapter eleven, recorded by
Brian Ness. This recording is in the public domain.
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