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The Jacket (The Star-Rover)-Part9_JACK LONDON(1876-1916)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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Then there was a great farming section, extending north and south

for hundreds of miles in some part of the temperate regions, with a



climate and flora and fauna largely resembling those of California.

Not once, nor twice, but thousands of different times I journeyed



through this dream-region. The point I desire to call attention to

was that it was always the same region. No essential feature of it



ever differed in the different dreams. Thus it was always an eight-

hour drive behind mountain horses from the alfalfa meadows (where I



kept many Jersey cows) to the straggly village beside the big dry

creek, where I caught the little narrow-gauge train. Every land-



mark in that eight-hour drive in the mountain buckboard, every tree,

every mountain, every ford and bridge, every ridge and eroded



hillside was ever the same.

In this coherent, rational farm-region of my strait-jacket dreams



the minor details, according to season and to the labour of men, did

change. Thus on the upland pastures behind my alfalfa meadows I



developed a new farm with the aid of Angora goats. Here I marked

the changes with every dream-visit, and the changes were in



accordance with the time that elapsed between visits.

Oh, those brush-covered slopes! How I can see them now just as when



the goats were first introduced. And how I remembered the

consequent changes--the paths beginning to form as the goats



literally ate their way through the dense thickets; the

disappearance of the younger, smaller bushes that were not too tall



for total browsing; the vistas that formed in all directions through

the older, taller bushes, as the goats browsed as high as they could



stand and reach on their hind legs; the driftage of the pasture

grasses that followed in the wake of the clearing by the goats.



Yes, the continuity of such dreaming was its charm. Came the day

when the men with axes chopped down all the taller brush so as to



give the goats access to the leaves and buds and bark. Came the

day, in winter weather, when the dry denuded skeletons of all these



bushes were gathered into heaps and burned. Came the day when I

moved my goats on to other brush-impregnable hillsides, with



following in their wake my cattle, pasturing knee-deep in the

succulent grasses that grew where before had been only brush. And



came the day when I moved my cattle on, and my plough-men went back

and forth across the slopes' contour--ploughing the rich sod under



to rot to live and crawling humous in which to bed my seeds of crops

to be.



Yes, and in my dreams, often, I got off the little narrow-gauge

train where the straggly village stood beside the big dry creek, and



got into the buck-board behind my mountain horses, and drove hour by

hour past all the old familiar landmarks of my alfalfa meadows, and



on to my upland pastures where my rotated crops of corn and barley

and clover were ripe for harvesting and where I watched my men



engaged in the harvest, while beyond, ever climbing, my goats

browsed the higher slopes of brush into cleared, tilled fields.



But these were dreams, frank dreams, fancied adventures of my

deductive subconscious mind. Quite unlike them, as you shall see,



were my other adventures when I passed through the gates of the

living death and relived the reality of the other lives that had



been mine in other days.

In the long hours of waking in the jacket I found that I dwelt a



great deal on Cecil Winwood, the poet-forger who had wantonly put

all this torment on me, and who was even then at liberty out in the



free world again. No; I did not hate him. The word is too weak.

There is no word in the language strong enough to describe my



feelings. I can say only that I knew the gnawing of a desire for

vengeance on him that was a pain in itself and that exceeded all the



bounds of language. I shall not tell you of the hours I devoted to

plans of torture on him, nor of the diabolical means and devices of



torture that I invented for him. Just one example. I was enamoured

of the ancient trick whereby an iron basin, containing a rat, is



fastened to a man's body. The only way out for the rat is through

the man himself. As I say, I was enamoured of this until I realized



that such a death was too quick, whereupon I dwelt long and

favourably on the Moorish trick of--but no, I promised to relate no



further of this matter. Let it suffice that many of my pain-

maddening waking hours were devoted to dreams of vengeance on Cecil



Winwood.

CHAPTER IX



One thing of great value I learned in the long, pain-weary hours of

waking--namely, the mastery of the body by the mind. I learned to



suffer passively, as, undoubtedly, all men have learned who have

passed through the post-graduate courses of strait-jacketing. Oh,






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