The Snark was forty-three feet on the water-line and fifty-five over
all, with fifteen feet beam (tumble-home sides) and seven feet eight
inches draught. She was ketch-rigged, carrying flying-jib, jib,
fore-staysail, main-sail, mizzen, and spinnaker. There were six
feet of head-room below, and she was crown-decked and flush-decked.
There were four alleged WATER-TIGHT compartments. A seventy-horse
power auxiliary gas-engine sporadically furnished locomotion at an
approximate cost of twenty dollars per mile. A five-horse power
engine ran the pumps when it was in order, and on two occasions
proved capable of furnishing juice for the search-light. The
storage batteries worked four or five times in the course of two
years. The fourteen-foot launch was rumoured to work at times, but
it invariably broke down whenever I stepped on board.
But the Snark sailed. It was the only way she could get anywhere.
She sailed for two years, and never touched rock, reef, nor shoal.
She had no inside ballast, her iron keel weighed five tons, but her
deep draught and high freeboard made her very stiff. Caught under
full sail in tropic squalls, she buried her rail and deck many
times, but stubbornly refused to turn turtle. She steered easily,
and she could run day and night, without steering, close-by, full-
and-by, and with the wind abeam. With the wind on her quarter and
the sails properly trimmed, she steered herself within two points,
and with the wind almost astern she required scarcely three points
for self-steering.
The Snark was partly built in San Francisco. The morning her iron
keel was to be cast was the morning of the great earthquake. Then
came anarchy. Six months overdue in the building, I sailed the
shell of her to Hawaii to be finished, the engine lashed to the
bottom, building materials lashed on deck. Had I remained in San
Francisco for completion, I'd still be there. As it was, partly
built, she cost four times what she ought to have cost.
The Snark was born unfortunately. She was libelled in San
Francisco, had her cheques protested as fraudulent in Hawaii, and
was fined for breach of quarantine in the Solomons. To save
themselves, the newspapers could not tell the truth about her. When
I discharged an incompetent captain, they said I had beaten him to a
pulp. When one young man returned home to continue at college, it
was reported that I was a regular Wolf Larsen, and that my whole
crew had deserted because I had beaten it to a pulp. In fact the
only blow struck on the Snark was when the cook was manhandled by a
captain who had shipped with me under false pretences, and whom I
discharged in Fiji. Also, Charmian and I boxed for exercise; but
neither of us was seriously maimed.
The voyage was our idea of a good time. I built the Snark and paid
for it, and for all expenses. I contracted to write thirty-five
thousand words descriptive of the trip for a magazine which was to
pay me the same rate I received for stories written at home.
Promptly the magazine advertised that it was sending me especially
around the world for itself. It was a wealthy magazine. And every
man who had business dealings with the Snark charged three prices
because forsooth the magazine could afford it. Down in the
uttermost South Sea isle this myth obtained, and I paid accordingly.
To this day everybody believes that the magazine paid for everything
and that I made a fortune out of the voyage. It is hard, after such
advertising, to hammer it into the human understanding that the
whole voyage was done for the fun of it.
I went to Australia to go into hospital, where I spent five weeks.
I spent five months miserably sick in hotels. The mysterious malady
that afflicted my hands was too much for the Australian specialists.
It was unknown in the literature of medicine. No case like it had
ever been reported. It extended from my hands to my feet so that at
times I was as helpless as a child. On occasion my hands were twice
their natural size, with seven dead and dying skins peeling off at
the same time. There were times when my toe-nails, in twenty-four
hours, grew as thick as they were long. After filing them off,
inside another twenty-four hours they were as thick as before.
The Australian specialists agreed that the malady was non-parasitic,
and that, therefore, it must be nervous. It did not mend, and it
was impossible for me to continue the voyage. The only way I could
have continued it would have been by being lashed in my bunk, for in
my helpless condition, unable to clutch with my hands, I could not
have moved about on a small rolling boat. Also, I said to myself
that while there were many boats and many voyages, I had but one
pair of hands and one set of toe-nails. Still further, I reasoned
that in my own climate of California I had always maintained a
stable nervous equilibrium. So back I came.
Since my return I have completely recovered. And I have found out
what was the matter with me. I encountered a book by Lieutenant-
Colonel Charles E. Woodruff of the United States Army entitled
"Effects of Tropical Light on White Men." Then I knew. Later, I
met Colonel Woodruff, and learned that he had been similarly
afflicted. Himself an Army surgeon, seventeen Army surgeons sat on
his case in the Philippines, and, like the Australian specialists,
confessed themselves beaten. In brief, I had a strong
predisposition toward the tissue-destructiveness of tropical light.
I was being torn to pieces by the ultra-violet rays just as many
experimenters with the X-ray have been torn to pieces.
