Contains a number of lesser-known South Pacific tales.
A SON
OF THE SUN (excerpt)
The Willi-Waw lay in the passage between
the shore-reef and the outer-reef. From the latter came the low
murmur of a lazy surf, but the sheltered stretch of water, not more
than a hundred yards across to the white beach of pounded coral sand,
was of glass-like smoothness. Narrow as was the passage, and anchored
as she was in the shoalest place that gave room to swing, the
Willi-Waw's chain rode up-and-down a clean hundred feet. Its
course could be traced over the bottom of living coral. Like some
monstrous snake, the rusty chain's slack wandered over the ocean
floor, crossing and recrossing itself several times and fetching up
finally at the idle anchor. Big rock-cod, dun and mottled, played
warily in and out of the coral. Other fish, grotesque of form and
colour, were brazenly indifferent, even when a big fish-shark drifted
sluggishly along and sent the rock-cod scuttling for their favourite
crevices.
On deck, for'ard, a dozen blacks pottered clumsily
at scraping the teak rail. They were as inexpert at their work as so
many monkeys. In fact they looked very much like monkeys of some
enlarged and prehistoric type. Their eyes had in them the querulous
plaintiveness of the monkey, their faces were even less symmetrical
than the monkey's, and, hairless of body, they were far more
ungarmented than any monkey, for clothes they had none. Decorated
they were as no monkey ever was. In holes in their ears they carried
short clay pipes, rings of turtle shell, huge plugs of wood, rusty
wire nails, and empty rifle cartridges. The calibre of a Winchester
rifle was the smallest hole an ear bore; some of the largest holes
were inches in diameter, and any single ear averaged from three to
half a dozen holes. Spikes and bodkins of polished bone or petrified
shell were thrust through their noses...
About Jack London:
Jack London (1876-1916), was an American author and a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction. He was one of the first Americans to make a lucrative career exclusively from writing. London was self-educated. He taught himself in the public library, mainly just by reading books. In 1898, he began struggling seriously to break into print, a struggle memorably described in his novel, Martin Eden (1909). Jack London was fortunate in the timing of his writing career. He started just as new printing technologies enabled lower-cost production of magazines. This resulted in a boom in popular magazines aimed at a wide public, and a strong market for short fiction. In 1900, he made $2,500 in writing, the equivalent of about $75,000 today. His career was well under way. Among his famous works are: Children of the Frost (1902), The Call of the Wild (1903), The Sea Wolf (1904), The Game (1905), White Fang (1906), The Road (1907), Before Adam (1907), Adventure (1911), and The Scarlet Plague (1912).
