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.
in passing, i may mention that among the other afflictions that jointly compelled the abandonment of the voyage, was one that is variously called the healthy man’s disease, european leprosy, and biblical leprosy. unlike true leprosy, nothing is known of this mysterious malady. no doctor has ever claimed a cure for a case of it, though spontaneous cures are recorded. it comes, they know not how. it is, they know not what. it goes, they know not why. without the use of drugs, merely by living in the wholesome california climate, my silvery skin vanished. the only hope the doctors had held out to me was a spontaneous cure, and such a cure was mine.
a last word: the test of the voyage. it is easy enough for me or any man to say that it was enjoyable. but there is a better witness, the one woman who made it from beginning to end. in hospital when i broke the news to charmian that i must go back to california, the tears welled into her eyes. for two days she was wrecked and broken by the knowledge that the happy, happy voyage was abandoned.
glen ellen, california,
april 7, 1911.
