was a general all-round efficiency. He was efficient at
the law; he was efficient at college; he was efficient as a sailor; he
was efficient in the matter of pride, when that pride was no more than
the pride of a forecastle hand, at twelve dollars a month, in his
seaman's task well done, in the smart sailing of his captain, in the
clearness and trimness of his ship.

There is no sailor whose cockles of the heart will not warm to Dana's
description of the first time he sent down a royal yard. Once or twice
he had seen it done. He got an old hand in the crew to coach him. And
then, the first anchorage at Monterey, being pretty _thick_ with the
second mate, he got him to ask the mate to be sent up the first time the
royal yards were struck. "Fortunately," as Dana describes it, "I got
through without any word from the officer; and heard the 'well done' of
the mate, when the yard reached the deck, with as much satisfaction as I
ever felt at Cambridge on seeing a 'bene' at the foot of a Latin
exercise."

"This was the first time I had taken a weather ear-ring, and I felt not a
little proud to sit astride of the weather yard-arm, past the ear-ring,
and sing out 'Haul out to leeward!'" He had been over a year at sea
before he essayed this able seaman's task, but he did it, and he did it
with pride. And with pride, he went down a four-hundred foot cliff, on a
pair of top-gallant studding-sail halyards bent together, to dislodge
several dollars worth of stranded bullock hides, though all the acclaim
he got from his mates was: "What a d-d fool you were to risk your life
for half a dozen hides!"

In brief, it was just this efficiency in pride, as well as work, that
enabled Dana to set down, not merely the photograph detail of life before
the mast and hide-droghing on the coast of California, but of the
untarnished simple psychology and ethics of the forecastle hands who
droghed the hides, stood at the wheel, made and took in sail, tarred down
the rigging, holystoned the decks, turned in all-standing, grumbled as
they cut about the kid, criticised the seamanship of their officers, and
estimated the duration of their exile from the cubic space of the hide-
house.

JACK LONDON
Glen Ellen, California,
August 13, 1911.

A WICKED WOMAN
(Curtain Raiser)
BY JACK LONDON

Scene--California.

Time--Afternoon of a summer day.

CHARACTERS

LORETTA, A sweet, young thing. Frightfully innocent. About nineteen
years o