In april 1896, Mark Twain wrote in his notebook, “All world-distances have shrunk to nothing. . . . The mysterious and the fabulous can get no fine effects without the help of remoteness; and there are no remotenesses any more.”1 There was, nevertheless, the little explored Antarctic region. And in writing “An Adventure in Remote Seas,” he evidently sought to exploit the romantic possibilities of that yet remaining faraway and fabulous sector of the globe. The working notes for the story are on the back sides of some discarded pages from the middle part of the manuscript of Following the Equator; probably they were made in the early part of 1897, when he was at work upon the travel book. However, the available evidence indicates that he probably did not write this fragmentary sea romance until late in the spring of 1898.
Fifteen years earlier, he had recorded an idea for a story situation similar to that of the marooned crew in “An Adventure in Remote Seas.” In the 1883 notebook there is this entry: “Life in the interior of an iceberg. . . . All found dead and frozen after 130 years. Iceberg drifts around in a vast circle, year after year, and every two or three years they come in distant sight of the remains of the ship.”2 He might very well have attempted to write stories of a voyage of disaster, one may suppose, even if he had not met with the personal disasters of the nineties.
This fragment contains a good deal of material about the free silver question, and the working notes contain much more. Mark Twain's tale [begin page 88] was in danger of turning into a tract, and he must soon have found that he had not made the right beginning.
No record has been discovered of a George Parker who might have told the story to Mark Twain in New Zealand in 1895, and the narrator mentioned in the introductory note is in all probability a fictitious character.
(This is the tale of George Parker, an American, substantially as he told it to me in New Zealand in 1895.—mark twain.)
I was born and reared in Ohio, and I have a common-school education. My father was the village blacksmith. I was his only child. He was killed in the war when I was a baby. My mother died when I was fifteen years old—worn out and starved out by hard work and poverty. There were no relatives. I was an apprentice blacksmith, and got my keep and clothes for pay. When I was seventeen I was free, and wanted to see the world. I put my belongings in a gunny sack and made my way west to San Francisco—partly I worked it, but mainly I tramped it. There I shipped before the mast and presently arrived in Australia—Sydney. This was in 1878; and at this point my story begins. I was eighteen years old.
One day a shipmate of mine, John Boyd, an Irishman, got a berth, and he came and wanted me to go with him. It was a voyage which promised both adventure and profit, and those things attracted him. He believed they would attract me, and he was right. It was a sealing voyage to the far south, and the crew would have a “lay”—that is, a share in the take. The common seaman's lay would be one-eightieth. This in addition to his wages. So I signed the articles. Then we bought heavy winter clothing of a second-hand dealer, and laid in a proper supply of nigger-head tobacco; then we were ready.
We sailed in midsummer, toward the end of December, in blistering hot weather, and made a long course due south till we were well below Auckland island, then squared around and moved [begin page 90] eastwardly two or three weeks through snow storms and biting cold. And now we ran into a snow-storm which lasted six days and nights without a break. Of course we lost our reckoning. We knew we were somewhere in that empty vast stretch of ocean which lies south-west of Cape Horn, but that was all. We could not come within five hundred miles of guessing our position.
The snow stopped falling, one morning, just in time to save us from shipwreck. We found ourselves in a rock-bound bay and driving straight for the shore. A cast of the lead gave twenty-five fathoms, and we let go a couple of anchors, they took a good grip and we were all right.
The skies soon cleared, and outside the bay we saw an archipelago of rocks well peopled with seals. We recognized that we were in fine luck. Although we did not know where we were, we were at least where we wanted to be. By the look of things we should all be comparatively rich when we struck homeward again.
Two days later the skies cleared and the weather quieted down, and Captain Hardy and a boat's crew of us went ashore to see if we could find a good place to make a camp. We were on an island. It was level, except in one place, and not very high; and as there were no trees, we could see the whole size of it. We judged it to be three miles long and about half as wide. There was a skin of soil, with here and there dead and frozen patches of what seemed to be some kind of a weed. This is description enough to show that it was a dreary and forbidding place. As far as the eye could reach, on all sides, the vacant ocean stretched to the horizon. The level of the island was broken in one place by a steep ridge of rocks seventy or eighty feet high and half a mile long. In this we found the opening to a cave, but we had no candles with us, and could not explore it. This was only about five hundred yards back from our landing.
Not far from the cave we came upon a surprise. This was a rude and weather-beaten house, made of rough planks and ship timbers—a building of great age, apparently. So we were not the discoverers of the island. People had been there before. Sealers? Yes, no doubt. We examined searchingly, but found not a scratch nor a sign to tell who they were. Captain Hardy said they had probably built the house as a temporary camp and had occupied it [begin page 91] only till they had finished their sealing season, then had abandoned it and sailed for home. But it was an excellent sealing place; why had they not come again? Had they lost their reckoning, too, like us? It might be so; the house had the look of not having been occupied for half a century.
We came the next day and patched it and put it in order. It was just the thing. It had rude bunks for eight men, and abundance of room for stores. And it had a large fireplace, and in it some half-burnt driftwood—wood of a species not familiar to us. During this day and the next we stocked the house liberally with supplies, bedded the bunks, gathered a quantity of driftwood, divided the crew—half to sleep in the house, the other half aboard ship.
This is the list of the ship's company:
Philip Hardy, English, captain, good enough man, not very bright.
Abel Jones, Welsh, mate.
Jorgensen, Dane, carpenter.
“Yaller-Jacket,” Maylay, cook.
John Boyd, Irish, able seaman.
George Parker, American, able seaman.
Charley Holmes, English,“ “
“Brush,” a Finn,“ “
Jan Dam, Dutch,“ “
“Melbourne,” Maori,“ “
Kalani, a Kanaka“ “
Sandy McPherson, Scot,“ “
Tom Hayes, English, ship's boy.
Thirteen. An unlucky number; the Finn had worried about it a good deal; the others laughed, but most of them not cordially. For the present, six of us were elected to be of the shore watch with the captain, the other five to stay with the mate in the ship. Then we began work on the seals—if you choose to call it work; it was only play, in fact. Plainly it was a generation that had never seen a man. They were not afraid of us. We could land on their islets and walk about among them freely, and attract no attention, unless you choose to call a lazy, friendly curiosity by that name. We could club a bull on the nose and bundle him into the boat and his wife [begin page 92] would lie there quiet and comfortable and think we were only giving him a pleasure trip or something like that. It was like murdering children, they were so gentle and trustful. We killed hundreds that first week, and skinned them on a flat piece of beach.
Then we had a day's holiday; next day we of the shore party were to take our turn aboard ship, and the ship-crew would have their chance ashore for a week. That night the captain was in great spirits, and so was everybody, for it was a wonderful week's take. Each of us common sailors was worth as much as a hundred dollars more than he was worth before we anchored in the bay. I had never cleared such a fortune in five months before—clear and clean, I mean. By the time the voyage was done I should be worth well on to a thousand dollars, no doubt. The captain's lay was a tenth, and he was feeling pretty rich.
After supper we had hot grog, and lit the pipes, and built up a rousing fire, and sat around it talking about what we would do with our riches when we got home; and the captain unbent as the grog warmed him up, and he let discipline go and joined in the talk pretty much like one of us. It was blowing up the beginnings of a storm outside and was very cold, but it was snug and comfortable inside, and quite sociable and friendly. The captain was chatting along, and said he wished seal skins were not of a fluctuating value, but had an intrinsic value, like gold. Sandy McPherson was born to argue things, and was always at it in the forecastle; and now that his liquor was a little in his head he was ready to take a chance at the captain. So he said—
“With all respect, what do you mean by intrinsic, sir—which is a foolish word, and hasn't any meaning at all.”
“Hasn't any meaning! I like that,” said the captain.
“Please state it, then, sir.”
“Intrinsic value is a value which is born in a thing, and remains the same, and cannot change.”
“It doesn't exist. There is no such thing in the earth, sir.”
“I never heard such wild talk. What do you say to gold?”
“That it is like silver,—has no intrinsic value; has only an artificial value, made by laws and customs.”
[begin page 93]“Nothing of the kind. A gold sovereign is worth its face all over the world; no more, and no less, and nothing can change it.”
“Laws and circumstances can. If the governments of the earth should pass a law saying it should no longer be a legal tender for debts it would become merely merchandise at-once, and its value would rise and fall according to the world's demand for watches and plate and such-like commodities.”
“That is a pure absurdity. Gold has an intrinsic value, and laws cannot affect it.”
“Laws can affect it, and circumstances do affect it.”
“How can you prove that?”
“You have a gold piece in your pocket, sir?”
“I have.”
“What is it worth here in this island?”
“The same it is worth in London.”
“I will prove that circumstances can arise which would knock down its value in a commercial transaction—as compared with that slice of bread there—”
He did not get any further. A thundering gust of wind struck the house and shook down a tin pan from the wall, and the crash of it on the floor interrupted his argument. The captain said—
“We'll take a look at the vessel and see if she is all right,” and we muffled ourselves up and took the lanterns and went outside. We took refuge from the bitter wind in the cave door, and from there we looked out upon the harbor, and saw the vessel's lights and dropped our apprehensions. As we stood there shivering, the captain said, “We have wasted this holiday—we could have examined the cave. Take a look, some of you, and see what it is like.”
I stepped in with my lantern, and “Brush” the Finn with his. It was like a tunnel; we had to stoop a little, but it was wide enough for the two of us to walk abreast and have plenty of room. We walked about fifty steps, then there was a bend to the right, and after a few steps more we arrived in a wide place like a spacious room. I saw something glisten on the floor—a coin, I thought. Brush saw it at the same moment and plunged for it, but I set my foot upon it. He said he saw it first; that it was his, and he would have it. I said I saw [begin page 94] it as soon as he, and half of it was mine, at any rate. Lust for the money made him wolfish; I don't think I ever saw such a hungry light in a man's eye, or such a frenzied expression. He sprang upon me, and the next moment we were rolling on the floor and fighting. Soon I was getting the best of him; then he thought I was going to knife him there in the dark, and he began to shout for help. The others heard him and came running, and separated us. The captain required an explanation, and got it. Then we found the coin, and it was gold—Spanish; and the date of it was away back a couple of centuries. Then straightway there was a feverish hunting and scrambling around for more.
We found fifteen pieces. It was a very profitable hour's work. We had examined every inch of the floor of the room, as much as two or three times over. Were we satisfied? No—only whetted up. The captain said the money never came there by accident; there could be more; we must search the cave further. We struck into a passage which was a long and crooked one, and every now and then we found gold as we crept stooping along—altogether 39 pieces. Another profitable hour's work. Then we entered another room, and there—why, such a pile! Bushels and bushels and bushels of gold coin.
No one could find breath to speak for a moment or two, but all stood staring and gasping. Then the captain said—
“There is enough to make a thousand men wealthy—and it is all ours. Get to work and count it—count it, do you hear!”
We went about it eagerly. At first we handled it with a sort of awful reverence, for we were not used to that precious metal and it seemed like something holy; but that feeling wore off before long and we got to handling it with as little respect as if it were so much brass. We counted and counted until we ached all over from fatigue, and were getting drowsy, and actually growing tired of it—a thing which looks impossible, but it is true. Some of the men began to soldier, and the captain would break out on them just as he had been used to do when they were shirking their work on shipboard. At last Sandy McPherson came out frankly, though respectfully, and said it was not fair to require men to stand such an age-long watch as this without grog or a change; and he said, [begin page 95] “We've been counting for hours, sir, and you see, yourself, that we haven't made any real impression on the pile. It will take days and days to count it all, sir; there's millions of it, and we are tired to the bone.”
The captain saw the reasonableness of it; and as we all looked pretty beseeching and humble and fagged out, he gave the word, and most thankfully grateful we were to knock off and stretch ourselves. Then we came out, and my, what a storm was raging! There was a driving fog of snow, and the wind was roaring and booming and screaming. We could not see the ship, of course, and that made us uncomfortable for a moment; but as there was nothing to be done, we started a big fire in the house, and had something to eat and drink, and then turned in and let the storm sing us to sleep while we planned out what we would do with the money when we got home. And after we were asleep we went on counting it the rest of the night, and so we might almost as well have staid in the cave and gone on with the business.
The captain was the last to turn in; and the last thing he said was that we must be up at dawn and ready for a busy day; for we would load the money into the ship and be homeward-bound by noon. That sounded good. Sandy McPherson said it would take longer than that to get the seal skins aboard. The captain only said, in an indifferent way—
“I reckon we can leave them, can't we? What's to hinder?”
I had never thought of that.
When we were called at dawn my mind came wandering up out of a most solid and stupefying sleep, and began to settle itself and get its bearings; and then all of a sudden a thought came which made me sick and weak with disappointment: “It was all a dream, that gold.” I would not like to feel that feeling again, I think I would rather suffer any other misery. Life had been a triumph and [begin page 96] a proud possession, and now it was a shabby poor thing and a degradation. I was up, by this time; and I put my hand in my pocket, and my heart stood still!—plenty of gold there. I wish I could feel that feeling again. Why, it makes a person just reel! There is no joy in all your life that is like it. And you can't ever have it again—not in the same force. You can wake up next morning and pretend; but it's not the same thing. You get only the joy, you can't get back the surprise. I was not the only one that thought it was a dream, they all thought it.
While Yaller-Jacket was rationing out the breakfast we stepped outside and took a look. The sky was as dull as lead, and there was a heavy sea on, but no flash to the white-caps; they looked like a wide desert of crawly dim-white worms. The ship was gone. The captain was pleased. He said it meant that the wind had gone about in the night and threatened to blow on shore, and the mate had gone to sea to keep out of trouble.
At breakfast he said it had occurred to him to weigh the money; it would be quicker than to count it, and just as satisfactory. So we took a rice-shovel and the butcher's balances to the cave and went to work, the captain and I, the others looking on. The shovel held about ten pounds of gold. The captain weighed out 50 pounds of it and put it in a pile. He said the value of a pound of gold was $250, about £50 sterling. He said we would now separate the treasure into fifty-pound piles, and then we should know just how much of a find we had struck. It was easier said than done. The shoveling of the yellow riches was charming pastime at first, but by and by it made one's wrist ache, and you can see that by that time it had degenerated into work; and so, one by one we took a turn at it and made out to get pretty tired of it. But it had to be done, and so of course we kept at it. Changing the shovel to the left hand every now and then modified the labor; changing the shoveler with some frequency modified it further; altogether we got along well enough.
We weighed about a hundred piles an hour. When we knocked off for the day we had stocked a long strip of one side of the great cavern with piles—twelve rows, with a hundred piles in each. It [begin page 97] represented thirty tons of gold, and was worth $15,000,000. We had made a considerable hole in the main mass.
One or another of us had been sent out about once an hour, all day, to look for the ship, but she had not returned, and the sky was still heavy with clouds. But she was but little on our minds; we were so dizzy with our good fortune that it was like being drunk; we could not think straight, we thought in a whirl.
We sat up late and the can went round, but there was no jollity. The captain walked the floor a good deal, and he did a good deal of ciphering on a log-slate, too, but he was not talkative. Once or twice Sandy or another tried to draw him out on the subject of the division and the proportion of shares, but it seemed to irritate him and interrupt his cipherings; nothing was got out of him. The Finn was touchy, too; he only snarled when he was spoken to; he mumbled to himself at times, and acted like a person who was a little off his balance. It was not a comfortable evening—very different from the splendid time we had the night before.
We weighed coin all next day, and all the two following days, and then we were done. Nights the captain ciphered and the Finn mumbled to himself and played with gold coins and kissed them and fondled them. There was no talk, no cheerfulness. The ship was still away; but everybody was absorbed in thought and indifferent about it.
We had more than a hundred and twenty tons of gold coin—more than sixty millions of dollars. And nothing to do, and the ship not in. The hours began to drag on our hands. So at last we began to take an interest in the ship. The weather was clear, now, and we took to watching and guessing and wondering. Even the captain stopped ciphering at last, and woke up and came to himself. He said he was a little troubled, but not much. Sandy McPherson said—
“With all deference, sir, I am a good deal troubled, myself.”
“Why?”
“Because when we came here we hadn't had an observation for days and days, and hadn't any but a guesswork idea of where we were. Maybe twelve or fifteen hundred miles south-west-by-west [begin page 98] from Cape Horn, but no telling—no sort of telling. A man might paddle around for two years on a guess like that and not find this little patch of rock. We got no observation here, the weather has been thick ever since. The mate hasn't any idea where this island is. He will get tired guessing around, presently, and give it up and strike for some of the old sealing-grounds and get what skins he can and go home.”
That made me sick, it looked so true, but the others did not seem to realize the size of it, and the captain said it wasn't time yet to begin to worry about it. He seemed like a man infatuated; and pretty soon he was ciphering away again, just as usual.