Jerry of the Islands

by Jack London
FOREWORD

It is a misfortune to some fiction-writers that fiction and
unveracity in the average person's mind mean one and the same thing.

Several years ago I published a South Sea novel. The action was
placed in the Solomon Islands. The action was praised by the

critics and reviewers as a highly creditable effort of the
imagination. As regards reality--they said there wasn't any. Of

course, as every one knew, kinky-haired cannibals no longer obtained
on the earth's surface, much less ran around with nothing on,

chopping off one another's heads, and, on occasion, a white man's
head as well.

Now listen. I am writing these lines in Honolulu, Hawaii.
Yesterday, on the beach at Waikiki, a stranger spoke to me. He

mentioned a mutual friend, Captain Kellar. When I was wrecked in
the Solomons on the blackbirder, the Minota, it was Captain Kellar,

master of the blackbirder, the Eugenie, who rescued me. The blacks
had taken Captain Kellar's head, the stranger told me. He knew. He

had represented Captain Kellar's mother in settling up the estate.
Listen. I received a letter the other day from Mr. C. M. Woodford,

Resident Commissioner of the British Solomons. He was back at his
post, after a long furlough to England, where he had entered his son

into Oxford. A search of the shelves of almost any public library
will bring to light a book entitled, "A Naturalist Among the Head

Hunters." Mr. C. M. Woodford is the naturalist. He wrote the book.
To return to his letter. In the course of the day's work he

casually and briefly mentioned a particular job he had just got off
his hands. His absence in England had been the cause of delay. The

job had been to make a punitive expedition to a neighbouring island,
and, incidentally, to recover the heads of some mutual friends of

ours--a white-trader, his white wife and children, and his white
clerk. The expedition was successful, and Mr. Woodford concluded

his account of the episode with a statement to the effect: "What
especially struck me was the absence of pain and terror in their

faces, which seemed to express, rather, serenity and repose"--this,
mind you, of men and women of his own race whom he knew well and who

had sat at dinner with him in his own house.
Other friends, with whom I have sat at dinner in the brave,

rollicking days in the Solomons have since passed out--by the same
way. My goodness! I sailed in the teak-built ketch, the Minota, on

a blackbirding cruise to Malaita, and I took my wife along. The
hatchet-marks were still raw on the door of our tiny stateroom

advertising an event of a few months before. The event was the
taking of Captain Mackenzie's head, Captain Mackenzie, at that time,

being master of the Minota. As we sailed in to Langa-Langa, the
British cruiser, the Cambrian, steamed out from the shelling of a

village.
It is not expedient to burden this preliminary to my story with

further details, which I do make asseveration I possess a-plenty. I
hope I have given some assurance that the adventures of my dog hero

in this novel are real adventures in a very real cannibal world.
Bless you!--when I took my wife along on the cruise of the Minota,

we found on board a nigger-chasing, adorable Irish terrier puppy,
who was smooth-coated like Jerry, and whose name was Peggy. Had it

not been for Peggy, this book would never have been written. She
was the chattel of the Minota's splendid skipper. So much did Mrs.

London and I come to love her, that Mrs. London, after the wreck of
the Minota, deliberately and shamelessly stole her from the Minota's

skipper. I do further admit that I did, deliberately and
shamelessly, compound my wife's felony. We loved Peggy so! Dear

royal, glorious little dog, buried at sea off the east coast of
Australia!

I must add that Peggy, like Jerry, was born at Meringe Lagoon, on
Meringe Plantation, which is of the Island of Ysabel, said Ysabel

Island lying next north of Florida Island, where is the seat of
government and where dwells the Resident Commissioner, Mr. C. M.

Woodford. Still further and finally, I knew Peggy's mother and
father well, and have often known the warm surge in the heart of me

at the sight of that faithful couple running side by side along the
beach. Terrence was his real name. Her name was Biddy.

JACK LONDON
WAIKIKI BEACH,

HONOLULU, OAHU, T.H.
June 5, 1915

CHAPTER I
Not until Mister Haggin abruptly picked him up under one arm and

stepped into the sternsheets of the waiting whaleboat, did Jerry
dream that anything untoward was to happen to him. Mister Haggin

was Jerry's beloved master, and had been his beloved master for the
six months of Jerry's life. Jerry did not know Mister Haggin as

"master," for "master" had no place in Jerry's vocabulary, Jerry
being a smooth-coated, golden-sorrel Irish terrier.

But in Jerry's vocabulary, "Mister Haggin" possessed all the
definiteness of sound and meaning that the word "master" possesses

in the vocabularies of humans in relation to their dogs. "Mister
Haggin" was the sound Jerry had always heard uttered by Bob, the

clerk, and by Derby, the foreman on the plantation, when they
addressed his master. Also, Jerry had always heard the rare

visiting two-legged man-creatures such as came on the Arangi,
address his master as Mister Haggin.

But dogs being dogs, in their dim, inarticulate, brilliant, and
heroic-worshipping ways misappraising humans, dogs think of their

masters, and love their masters, more than the facts warrant.
"Master" means to them, as "Mister" Haggin meant to Jerry, a deal

more, and a great deal more, than it means to humans. The human
considers himself as "master" to his dog, but the dog considers his

master "God."
Now "God" was no word in Jerry's vocabulary, despite the fact that

he already possessed a definite and fairly large vocabulary.
"Mister Haggin" was the sound that meant "God." In Jerry's heart

and head, in the mysterious centre of all his activities that is
called consciousness, the sound, "Mister Haggin," occupied the same

place that "God" occupies in human consciousness. By word and
sound, to Jerry, "Mister Haggin" had the same connotation that "God"

has to God-worshipping humans. In short, Mister Haggin was Jerry's
God.

And so, when Mister Haggin, or God, or call it what one will with
the limitations of language, picked Jerry up with imperative

abruptness, tucked him under his arm, and stepped into the
whaleboat, whose black crew immediately bent to the oars, Jerry was

instantly and nervously aware that the unusual had begun to happen.
Never before had he gone out on board the Arangi, which he could see

growing larger and closer to each lip-hissing stroke of the oars of
the blacks.

Only an hour before, Jerry had come down from the plantation house
to the beach to see the Arangi depart. Twice before, in his half-

year of life, had he had this delectable experience. Delectable it
truly was, running up and down the white beach of sand-pounded

coral, and, under the wise guidance of Biddy and Terrence, taking
part in the excitement of the beach and even adding to it.

There was the nigger-chasing. Jerry had been born to hate niggers.
His first experiences in the world as a puling puppy, had taught him

that Biddy, his mother, and his father Terrence, hated niggers. A
nigger was something to be snarled at. A nigger, unless he were a

house-boy, was something to be attacked and bitten and torn if he