South Sea Tales

South Sea Tales Synopsis

South Sea Tales (1911) is a collection of short stories written by Jack London. Most stories are set in island communities, like those of Hawaii, or are set aboard a ship. These are darker Pacific tales, including "e;Mauki"e; and "e;The Terrible Solomans."e;MAUKI (excerpt)He weighed one hundred and ten pounds. His hairwas kinky and negroid, and he was black. He was peculiarly black. Hewas neither blue-black nor purple-black, but plum-black. His name wasMauki, and he was the son of a chief. He had three tambos. Tambo isMelanesian for taboo, and is first cousin to that Polynesian word.Mauki's three tambos were as follows: First, he must never shakehands with a woman, nor have a woman's hand touch him or any of hispersonal belongings; secondly, he must never eat clams nor any foodfrom a fire in which clams had been cooked; thirdly, he must nevertouch a crocodile, nor travel in a canoe that carried any part of acrocodile even if as large as a tooth.Of a different black were his teeeth, which weredeep black, or, perhaps better, LAMP-black. They had been made so ina single night, by his mother, who had compressed about them apowdered mineral which was dug from the landslide back of Port Adams.Port Adams is a salt-water village on Malaita, and Malaita is themost savage island in the Solomons--so savage that no traders orplanters have yet gained a foothold on it; while, from the time ofthe earliest bache-de-mer fishers and sandalwood traders down to thelatest labor recruiters equipped with automatic rifles and gasoleneengines, scores of white adventurers have been passed out bytomahawks and soft-nosed Snider bullets. So Malaita remains today, inthe twentieth century, the stamping ground of the labor recruiters,who farm its coasts for laborers who engage and contract themselvesto toil on the plantations of the neighboring and more civilizedislands for a wage of thirty dollars a year. The natives of thoseneighboring and more civilized islands have themselves become toocivilized to work on plantations.Mauki's ears were pierced, not in one place, nortwo places, but in a couple of dozen places. In one of the smallerholes he carried a clay pipe. The larger holes were too large forsuch use. The bowl of the pipe would have fallen through. In fact, inthe largest hole in each ear he habitually wore round wooden plugsthat were an even four inches in diameter. Roughly speaking, thecircumference of said holes was twelve and one-half inches. Mauki wascatholic in his tastes. In the various smaller holes he carried suchthings as empty rifle cartridges, horseshoe nails, copper screws,pieces of string, braids of sennit, strips of green leaf, and, in thecool of the day, scarlet hibiscus flowers...About Jack London:Jack London (1876-1916), was an American author and a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction. He was one of the first Americans to make a lucrative career exclusively from writing. London was self-educated. He taught himself in the public library, mainly just by reading books. In 1898, he began struggling seriously to break into print, a struggle memorably described in his novel, Martin Eden (1909). Jack London was fortunate in the timing of his writing career. He started just as new printing technologies enabled lower-cost production of magazines. This resulted in a boom in popular magazines aimed at a wide public, and a strong market for short fiction. In 1900, he made $2,500 in writing, the equivalent of about $75,000 today. His career was well under way. Among his famous works are: Children of the Frost (1902), The Call of the Wild (1903), The Sea Wolf (1904), The Game (1905), White Fang (1906), The Road (1907), Before Adam (1907), Adventure (1911), and The Scarlet Plague (1912).

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