The Project Gutenberg eBook, Adventure, by Jack London

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Title: Adventure

Author: Jack London

Release Date: April 25, 2005 [eBook #1163]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ADVENTURE***

Transcribed from the 1911 Thomas Nelson and Sons edition by David Price,
email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk

ADVENTURE

"We are those fools who could not rest
In the dull earth we left behind,
But burned with passion for the West,
And drank strange frenzy from its wind.
The world where wise men live at ease
Fades from our unregretful eyes,
And blind across uncharted seas
We stagger on our enterprise."

"THE SHIP OF FOOLS."

CHAPTER I--SOMETHING TO BE DONE

He was a very sick white man. He rode pick-a-back on a woolly-headed,
black-skinned savage, the lobes of whose ears had been pierced and
stretched until one had torn out, while the other carried a circular
block of carved wood three inches in diameter. The torn ear had been
pierced again, but this time not so ambitiously, for the hole
accommodated no more than a short clay pipe. The man-horse was greasy
and dirty, and naked save for an exceedingly narrow and dirty loin-cloth;
but the white man clung to him closely and desperately. At times, from
weakness, his head drooped and rested on the woolly pate. At other times
he lifted his head and stared with swimming eyes at the cocoanut palms
that reeled and swung in the shimmering heat. He was clad in a thin
undershirt and a strip of cotton cloth, that wrapped about his waist and
descended to his knees. On his head was a battered Stetson, known to the
trade as a Baden-Powell. About his middle was strapped a belt, which
carried a large-calibred automatic pistol and several spare clips, loaded
and ready for quick work.

The rear was brought up by a black boy of fourteen or fifteen, who
carried medicine bottles, a pail of hot water, and various other hospital
appurtenances. They passed out of the compound through a small wicker
gate, and went on under the blazing sun, winding about among new-planted
cocoanuts that threw no sh