And still for us, for the ninety-nine and nine-tenths per cent. of us,
under the easy circumstance of our own weakness, remains another way most
easily to express ourselves for the purpose of eliminating from the world
the cruelty that is practised by some few of us, for the entertainment of
the rest of us, on the trained animals, who, after all, are only lesser
animals than we on the round world's surface. It is so easy. We will
not have to think of dues or corresponding secretaries. We will not have
to think of anything, save when, in any theatre or place of
entertainment, a trained-animal turn is presented before us. Then,
without premeditation, we may express our disapproval of such a turn by
getting up from our seats and leaving the theatre for a promenade and a
breath of fresh air outside, coming back, when the turn is over, to enjoy
the rest of the programme. All we have to do is just that to eliminate
the trained-animal turn from all public places of entertainment. Show
the management that such turns are unpopular, and in a day, in an
instant, the management will cease catering such turns to its audiences.
JACK LONDON
GLEN ELLEN, SONOMA COUNTY, CALIFORNIA,
December 8, 1915
CHAPTER I
But Michael never sailed out of Tulagi, nigger-chaser on the _Eugenie_.
Once in five weeks the steamer _Makambo_ made Tulagi its port of call on
the way from New Guinea and the Shortlands to Australia. And on the
night of her belated arrival Captain Kellar forgot Michael on the beach.
In itself, this was nothing, for, at midnight, Captain Kellar was back on
the beach, himself climbing the high hill to the Commissioner's bungalow
while the boat's crew vainly rummaged the landscape and canoe houses.
In fact, an hour earlier, as the _Makambo's_ anchor was heaving out and
while Captain Kellar was descending the port gang-plank, Michael was
coming on board through a starboard port-hole. This was because Michael
was inexperienced in the world, because he was expecting to meet Jerry on
board this boat since the last he had seen of him was on a boat, and
because he had made a friend.
Dag Daughtry was a steward on the _Makambo_, who should have known better
and who would have known better and done better had he not been
fascinated by his own particular and peculiar reputation. By luck of
birth possessed of a genial but soft disposition and a splendid
constitution, his reputation was that for twenty years he had never
missed his day's work nor his six daily quarts of bottled beer, even, as
he bragged, when in the German islands, where each bottle of beer carried
ten grains of quinine in solution as a specific against malaria.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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