The Project Gutenberg eBook, Jerry of the Islands, by Jack London

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Title: Jerry of the Islands

Author: Jack London

Release Date: January 19, 2005 [eBook #1161]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JERRY OF THE ISLANDS***

Transcribed from the 1917 Mills & Boon edition by David Price, email
ccx074@coventry.ac.uk

JERRY OF THE ISLANDS

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, inciden