MICHAEL, BROTHER OF JERRY
FOREWORD
Very early in my life, possibly because of the insatiable
curiosity that was born in me, I came to dislike the performances
of trained animals. It was my curiosity that spoiled for me this
form of amusement, for I was led to seek behind the performance in
order to learn how the performance was achieved. And what I found
behind the brave show and glitter of performance was not nice. It
was a body of cruelty so horrible that I am confident no normal
person exists who, once aware of it, could ever enjoy looking on
at any trained-animal turn.
Now I am not a namby-pamby. By the book reviewers and the namby-
pambys I am esteemed a sort of primitive beast that delights in
the spilled blood of violence and horror. Without arguing this
matter of my general reputation, accepting it at its current face
value, let me add that I have indeed lived life in a very rough
school and have seen more than the average man's share of
inhumanity and cruelty, from the forecastle and the prison, the
slum and the desert, the execution-chamber and the lazar-house, to
the battlefield and the military hospital. I have seen horrible
deaths and mutilations. I have seen imbeciles hanged, because,
being imbeciles, they did not possess the hire of lawyers. I have
seen the hearts and stamina of strong men broken, and I have seen
other men, by ill-treatment, driven to permanent and howling
madness. I have witnessed the deaths of old and young, and even
infants, from sheer starvation. I have seen men and women beaten
by whips and clubs and fists, and I have seen the rhinoceros-hide
whips laid around the naked torsos of black boys so heartily that
each stroke stripped away the skin in full circle. And yet, let
me add finally, never have I been so appalled and shocked by the
world's cruelty as have I been appalled and shocked in the midst
of happy, laughing, and applauding audiences when trained-animal
turns were being performed on the stage.
One with a strong stomach and a hard head may be able to tolerate
much of the unconscious and undeliberate cruelty and torture of
the world that is perpetrated in hot blood and stupidity. I have
such a stomach and head. But what turns my head and makes my
gorge rise, is the cold-blooded, conscious, deliberate cruelty and
torment that is manifest behind ninety-nine of every hundred
trained-animal turns. Cruelty, as a fine art, has attained its
perfect flower in the trained-animal world.
Possessed myself of a strong stomach and a hard head, inured to
hardship, cruelty, and brutality, nevertheless I found, as I came
to manhood, that I unconsciously protected myself from the hurt of
the trained-animal turn by getting up and leaving the theatre
whenever such turns came on the stage. I say "unconsciously." By
this I mean it never entered my mind that this was a programme by
which the possible death-blow might be given to trained-animal
turns. I was merely protecting myself from the pain of witnessing
what it would hurt me to witness.
But of recent years my understanding of human nature has become
such that I realize that no normal healthy human would tolerate
such performances did he or she know the terrible cruelty that
lies behind them and makes them possible. So I am emboldened to
suggest, here and now, three things:
First, let all humans inform themselves of the inevitable and
eternal cruelty by the means of which only can animals be
compelled to perform before revenue-paying audiences. Second, I
suggest that all men and women, and boys and girls, who have so
acquainted themselves with the essentials of the fine art of
animal-training, should become members of, and ally themselves
with, the local and national organizations of humane societies and
societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals.
And the third suggestion I cannot state until I have made a
preamble. Like hundreds of thousands of others, I have worked in
other fields, striving to organize the mass of mankind into
movements for the purpose of ameliorating its own wretchedness and
misery. Difficult as this is to accomplish, it is still more
difficult to persuade the human into any organised effort to
alleviate the ill conditions of the lesser animals.
Practically all of us will weep red tears and sweat bloody sweats
as we come to knowledge of the unavoidable cruelty and brutality
on which the trained-animal world rests and has its being. But
not one-tenth of one per cent. of us will join any organization
for the prevention of cruelty to animals, and by our words and
acts and contributions work to prevent the perpetration of
cruelties on animals. This is a weakness of our own human nature.
We must recognize it as we recognize heat and cold, the opaqueness
of the non-transparent, and the everlasting down-pull of gravity.
And still for us, for the ninety-nine and nine-tenths per cent. of
us, under the easy circumstance of our own weakness, remains
another way most easily to express ourselves for the purpose of
eliminating from the world the cruelty that is practised by some
few of us, for the entertainment of the rest of us, on the trained
animals, who, after all, are only lesser animals than we on the
round world's surface. It is so easy. We will not have to think
of dues or corresponding secretaries. We will not have to think
of anything, save when, in any theatre or place of entertainment,
a trained-animal turn is presented before us. Then, without
premeditation, we may express our disapproval of such a turn by
getting up from our seats and leaving the theatre for a promenade
and a breath of fresh air outside, coming back, when the turn is
over, to enjoy the rest of the programme. All we have to do is
just that to eliminate the trained-animal turn from all public
places of entertainment. Show the management that such turns are
unpopular, and in a day, in an instant, the management will cease
catering such turns to its audiences.
JACK LONDON
GLEN ELLEN, SONOMA COUNTY, CALIFORNIA,
December 8, 1915
CHAPTER I
But Michael never sailed out of Tulagi, nigger-chaser on the
Eugenie. Once in five weeks the steamer Makambo made Tulagi its
port of call on the way from New Guinea and the Shortlands to
Australia. And on the night of her belated arrival Captain Kellar
forgot Michael on the beach. In itself, this was nothing, for, at
midnight, Captain Kellar was back on the beach, himself climbing
the high hill to the Commissioner's bungalow while the boat's crew
vainly rummaged the landscape and canoe houses.
In fact, an hour earlier, as the Makambo's anchor was heaving out
and while Captain Kellar was descending the port gangplank,
Michael was coming on board through a starboard port-hole. This
was because Michael was inexperienced in the world, because he was
expecting to meet Jerry on board this boat since the last he had
seen of him was on a boat, and because he had made a friend.
Dag Daughtry was a steward on the Makambo, who should have known
better and who would have known better and done better had he not
been fascinated by his own particular and peculiar reputation. By
luck of birth possessed of a genial but soft disposition and a
splendid constitution, his reputation was that for twenty years he
had never missed his day's work nor his six daily quarts of
bottled beer, even, as he bragged, when in the German islands,
where each bottle of beer carried ten grains of quinine in
solution as a specific against malaria.
The captain of the Makambo (and, before that, the captains of the
Moresby, the Masena, the Sir Edward Grace, and various others of
the queerly named Burns Philp Company steamers had done the same)
was used to pointing him out proudly to the passengers as a man-
thing novel and unique in the annals of the sea. And at such
times Dag Daughtry, below on the for'ard deck, feigning
unawareness as he went about his work, would steal side-glances up
at the bridge where the captain and his passengers stared down on
him, and his breast would swell pridefully, because he knew that
the captain was saying: "See him! that's Dag Daughtry, the human
tank. Never's been drunk or sober in twenty years, and has never
missed his six quarts of beer per diem. You wouldn't think it, to
look at him, but I assure you it's so. I can't understand. Gets
my admiration. Always does his time, his time-and-a-half and his
double-time over time. Why, a single glass of beer would give me
heartburn and spoil my next good meal. But he flourishes on it.
Look at him! Look at him!"
And so, knowing his captain's speech, swollen with pride in his
own prowess, Dag Daughtry would continue his ship-work with extra
vigour and punish a seventh quart for the day in advertisement of
his remarkable constitution. It was a queer sort of fame, as
queer as some men are; and Dag Daughtry found in it his
justification of existence.
Wherefore he devoted his energy and the soul of him to the
maintenance of his reputation as a six-quart man. That was why he
made, in odd moments of off-duty, turtle-shell combs and hair
ornaments for profit, and was prettily crooked in such a matter as
stealing another man's dog. Somebody had to pay for the six
quarts, which, multiplied by thirty, amounted to a tidy sum in the
course of the month; and, since that man was Dag Daughtry, he
found it necessary to pass Michael inboard on the Makambo through
a starboard port-hole.
On the beach, that night at Tulagi, vainly wondering what had
become of the whaleboat, Michael had met the squat, thick, hair-
grizzled ship's steward. The friendship between them was
established almost instantly, for Michael, from a merry puppy, had
matured into a merry dog. Far beyond Jerry, was he a sociable
good fellow, and this, despite the fact that he had known very few
white men. First, there had been Mister Haggin, Derby and Bob, of
Meringe; next, Captain Kellar and Captain Kellar's mate of the
Eugenie; and, finally, Harley Kennan and the officers of the
Ariel. Without exception, he had found them all different, and
delightfully different, from the hordes of blacks he had been
taught to despise and to lord it over.
And Dag Daughtry had proved no exception from his first greeting
of "Hello, you white man's dog, what 'r' you doin' herein nigger
country?" Michael had responded coyly with an assumption of
dignified aloofness that was given the lie by the eager tilt of
his ears and the good-humour that shone in his eyes. Nothing of
this was missed by Dag Daughtry, who knew a dog when he saw one,
as he studied Michael in the light of the lanterns held by black
boys where the whaleboats were landing cargo.
Two estimates the steward quickly made of Michael: he was a
likable dog, genial-natured on the face of it, and he was a
valuable dog. Because of those estimates Dag Daughtry glanced
about him quickly. No one was observing. For the moment, only
blacks stood about, and their eyes were turned seaward where the
sound of oars out of the darkness warned them to stand ready to
receive the next cargo-laden boat. Off to the right, under
another lantern, he could make out the Resident Commissioner's
clerk and the Makambo's super-cargo heatedly discussing some error
in the bill of lading.
The steward flung another quick glance over Michael and made up
his mind. He turned away casually and strolled along the beach
out of the circle of lantern light. A hundred yards away he sat
down in the sand and waited.
"Worth twenty pounds if a penny," he muttered to himself. "If I
couldn't get ten pounds for him, just like that, with a thank-you-
ma'am, I'm a sucker that don't know a terrier from a greyhound.--
Sure, ten pounds, in any pub on Sydney beach."
And ten pounds, metamorphosed into quart bottles of beer, reared
an immense and radiant vision, very like a brewery, inside his
head.
A scurry of feet in the sand, and low sniffings, stiffened him to
alertness. It was as he had hoped. The dog had liked him from
the start, and had followed him.
For Dag Daughtry had a way with him, as Michael was quickly to
learn, when the man's hand reached out and clutched him, half by
the jowl, half by the slack of the neck under the ear. There was
no threat in that reach, nothing tentative nor timorous. It was
hearty, all-confident, and it produced confidence in Michael. It
was roughness without hurt, assertion without threat, surety
without seduction. To him it was the most natural thing in the
world thus to be familiarly seized and shaken about by a total
stranger, while a jovial voice muttered: "That's right, dog.
Stick around, stick around, and you'll wear diamonds, maybe."
Certainly, Michael had never met a man so immediately likable.
Dag Daughtry knew, instinctively to be sure, how to get on with
dogs. By nature there was no cruelty in him. He never exceeded
in peremptoriness, nor in petting. He did not overbid for
Michael's friendliness. He did bid, but in a manner that conveyed
no sense of bidding. Scarcely had he given Michael that
introductory jowl-shake, when he released him and apparently
forgot all about him.
He proceeded to light his pipe, using several matches as if the
wind blew them out. But while they burned close up to his
fingers, and while he made a simulation of prodigious puffing, his
keen little blue eyes, under shaggy, grizzled brows, intently
studied Michael. And Michael, ears cocked and eyes intent, gazed
at this stranger who seemed never to have been a stranger at all.
If anything, it was disappointment Michael experienced, in that
this delightful, two-legged god took no further notice of him. He
even challenged him to closer acquaintance with an invitation to
play, with an abrupt movement lifting his paws from the ground and
striking them down, stretched out well before, his body bent down
from the rump in such a curve that almost his chest touched the
sand, his stump of a tail waving signals of good nature while he
uttered a sharp, inviting bark. And the man was uninterested,
pulling stolidly away at his pipe, in the darkness following upon
the third match.
Never was there a more consummate love-making, with all the base
intent of betrayal, than this cavalier seduction of Michael by the
elderly, six-quart ship's steward. When Michael, not entirely
unwitting of the snub of the man's lack of interest, stirred
restlessly with a threat to depart, he had flung at him gruffly:
"Stick around, dog, stick around."
Dag Daughtry chuckled to himself, as Michael, advancing, sniffed
his trousers' legs long and earnestly. And the man took advantage
of his nearness to study him some more, lighting his pipe and
running over the dog's excellent lines.
"Some dog, some points," he said aloud approvingly. "Say, dog,
you could pull down ribbons like a candy-kid in any bench show
anywheres. Only thing against you is that ear, and I could almost
iron it out myself. A vet. could do it."
Carelessly he dropped a hand to Michael's ear, and, with tips of
fingers instinct with sensuous sympathy, began to manipulate the
base of the ear where its roots bedded in the tightness of skin-
stretch over the skull. And Michael liked it. Never had a man's
hand been so intimate with his ear without hurting it. But these
fingers were provocative only of physical pleasure so keen that he
twisted and writhed his whole body in acknowledgment.
Next came a long, steady, upward pull of the ear, the ear slipping
slowly through the fingers to the very tip of it while it tingled
exquisitely down to its roots. Now to one ear, now to the other,
this happened, and all the while the man uttered low words that
Michael did not understand but which he accepted as addressed to
him.
"Head all right, good 'n' flat," Dag Daughtry murmured, first
sliding his fingers over it, and then lighting a match. "An' no
wrinkles, 'n' some jaw, good 'n' punishing, an' not a shade too
full in the cheek or too empty."
He ran his fingers inside Michael's mouth and noted the strength
and evenness of the teeth, measured the breadth of shoulders and
depth of chest, and picked up a foot. In the light of another
match he examined all four feet.
"Black, all black, every nail of them," said Daughtry, "an' as
clean feet as ever a dog walked on, straight-out toes with the
proper arch 'n' small 'n' not too small. I bet your daddy and
your mother cantered away with the ribbons in their day."
Michael was for growing restless at such searching examination,
but Daughtry, in the midst of feeling out the lines and build of
the thighs and hocks, paused and took Michael's tail in his magic
fingers, exploring the muscles among which it rooted, pressing and
prodding the adjacent spinal column from which it sprang, and
twisting it about in a most daringly intimate way. And Michael
was in an ecstasy, bracing his hindquarters to one side or the
other against the caressing fingers. With open hands laid along
his sides and partly under him, the man suddenly lifted him from
the ground. But before he could feel alarm he was back on the
ground again.
"Twenty-six or -seven--you're over twenty-five right now, I'll bet
you on it, shillings to ha'pennies, and you'll make thirty when
you get your full weight," Dag Daughtry told him. "But what of
it? Lots of the judges fancy the thirty-mark. An' you could
always train off a few ounces. You're all dog n' all correct
conformation. You've got the racing build and the fighting
weight, an' there ain't no feathers on your legs."
"No, sir, Mr. Dog, your weight's to the good, and that ear can be
ironed out by any respectable dog--doctor. I bet there's a
hundred men in Sydney right now that would fork over twenty quid
for the right of calling you his."
And then, just that Michael should not make the mistake of
thinking he was being much made over, Daughtry leaned back,
relighted his pipe, and apparently forgot his existence. Instead
of bidding for good will, he was bent on making Michael do the
bidding.
And Michael did, bumping his flanks against Daughtry's knee;
nudging his head against Daughtry's hand, in solicitation for more
of the blissful ear-rubbing and tail-twisting. Daughtry caught
him by the jowl instead and slowly moved his head back and forth
as he addressed him:
"What man's dog are you? Maybe you're a nigger's dog, an' that
ain't right. Maybe some nigger's stole you, an' that'd be awful.
Think of the cruel fates that sometimes happens to dogs. It's a
damn shame. No white man's stand for a nigger ownin' the likes of
you, an' here's one white man that ain't goin' to stand for it.
The idea! A nigger ownin' you an' not knowin' how to train you.
Of course a nigger stole you. If I laid eyes on him right now I'd
up and knock seven bells and the Saint Paul chimes out of 'm. '
Sure thing I would. Just show 'm to me, that's all, an' see what
I'd do to him. The idea of you takin' orders from a nigger an'
fetchin' 'n' carryin' for him! No, sir, dog, you ain't goin' to
do it any more. You're comin' along of me, an' I reckon I won't
have to urge you."
Dag Daughtry stood up and turned carelessly along the beach.
Michael looked after him, but did not follow. He was eager to,
but had received no invitation. At last Daughtry made a low
kissing sound with his lips. So low was it that he scarcely heard
it himself and almost took it on faith, or on the testimony of his
lips rather than of his ears, that he had made it. No human being
could have heard it across the distance to Michael; but Michael
heard it, and sprang away after in a great delighted rush.
