Latest / The Bobbsey Twins at Cherry Corners / By The Turtles of Tasman-Jack London

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By The Turtles of Tasman-Jack London · The Bobbsey Twins at Cherry Corners

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  Speaker 1: Part one of by the Turtles of Tasman by Jack London.
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  Speaker 1: This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: visit LibriVox dot org. Reading by Matt Barrard, By the
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Turtles of Tasman by Jack London. One, law and order
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: and restraint had carved Frederick Travers's face. It was the strong,
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  Speaker 1: firm face of one used to power, and who had
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  Speaker 1: used power with wisdom and discretion. Clean living had made
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  Speaker 1: the healthy skin, and the lines graved in it were
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  Speaker 1: honest lines. Hard and devoted work had left its wholesome
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  Speaker 1: handiwork that was all. Every feature of the man told
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  Speaker 1: the same story, from the clear blue of the eyes
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  Speaker 1: to the full head of hair like brown touched with
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  Speaker 1: gray and smoothly parted and drawn straight across above the
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  Speaker 1: strong domed forehead. He was a seriously groaned man, and
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: the light summer business suit no more than befitted his
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  Speaker 1: alert years. While it did not shout aloud that its
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: possessor was likewise the possessor of numerous millions of dollars
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: and property. For Frederick Travers hated ostentation The machine that
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: waited outside for him under the Porte cochere was sober black.
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  Speaker 1: It was the most expensive machine in the county, yet
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  Speaker 1: he did not care to flaunt its price or a
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  Speaker 1: horse power. In a red flare across the landscape, which
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  Speaker 1: also was mostly his, from the sand dunes and the
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  Speaker 1: everlasting beat of the Pacific Breakers, across the fat bottom
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: lands and upland pastures to the far summits, clad with
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  Speaker 1: redwood forest and wreathed in fog and cloud. A rustle
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: of skirts caused him to look over his shoulder. Just
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: the faintest hint of irritation showed in his manner, not
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: that his daughter was the object, however, whatever it was,
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  Speaker 1: it seemed to lie on the desk before him. What
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: is that atlandish name? Again? She asked? I know, I
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: shall never remember it. Say I've brought a pad to
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  Speaker 1: write it down. Her voice was low and cool, and
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  Speaker 1: she was a tall, well formed, clear skinned young woman.
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  Speaker 1: In her voice and complacence, she too showed the drill
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: marks of order and restraint. Frederick Travers scanned the signature
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  Speaker 1: of one or two letters on the dusk, promised lava place,
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  Speaker 1: cow wheats, Kala Travers he read, then spelled the difficult
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  Speaker 1: first portion a letter by letter, while his daughter wrote
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  Speaker 1: it down. Now, Mary, he added, remember Tom was always
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: Harum Scarum, and you must make allowances for this daughter
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: of his. Her very name is disconcerting. I haven't seen
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  Speaker 1: him for years. And as for her, A shrug epitomized
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: his apprehension. He smiled with an effort at win, just
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: the same. There as much your family as mine. If
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: he is my brother, he is your uncle, and if
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: she's my niece, you're both cousins. Mary nodded, don't worry, father,
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: I'll be nice to her. Poor Then what nationality was
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: her mother to get such an awful name. I don't know,
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: Russian or Polish or Spanish or something. It was just
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: like Tom. She was an actress, Sir Sayer, I don't remember.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: They met in Buenos Aires. It was an elopement her husband.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: Then she was already married. Mary's dismay was unfeigned and spontaneous,
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: and her father's irritation grew more pronounced. He had not
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: meant that it had slept out. There was a divorce afterward,
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: of course, I never knew the details. Her mother died
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: out in China. No in Tasmania. It was in China
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: that Tom his lips shut with almost a snap. He
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: was not going to make any more slips. Mary waited,
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  Speaker 1: then turned to the door, where she paused. I've given
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: her the rooms over the rose court, she said, and
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: I'm going now to take a last look. Frederick Travers
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: turned back to the desk as if to put the
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: letters away, changed his mind, and slowly and ponderingly re
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: read them. Dear Fred, It's been a long time since
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: I was so near to the old home, and i'd
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  Speaker 1: like to take a run up. Unfortunately, I played ducks
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: and drakes with my Yucatan project. I think I wrote
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  Speaker 1: about it, and I'm broke as usual. Could you advance
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  Speaker 1: me funds for the run I'd like to arrive for
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  Speaker 1: his class. Polly is with me, you know. I wonder
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  Speaker 1: how you two will get along. Tom ps. If it
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  Speaker 1: doesn't bother you too much, send it along. Next mail,
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  Speaker 1: Dear uncle Fred. The other letter ran in what seemed
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: to him a strange, foreign, taught yet distinctly feminine hand.
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  Speaker 1: Dad doesn't know I am writing this. He told me
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  Speaker 1: what he said to you. It is not true. He
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: is coming home to die he doesn't know it, but
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: I've talked with the doctors and he'll have to come home,
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  Speaker 1: for we have no money. We're in a stuffy little
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  Speaker 1: boarding house and it is not the place Dad. He's
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: helped other persons all his life, and now is the
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  Speaker 1: time to help him. He didn't play ducks and drakes
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: in Yucatan. I was with him, and I know he
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: dropped all he had there and he was robbed. He
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: can't play the business game against New Yorkers. That explains
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: it all, and I am proud he can't. He always
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: laughs and says, I'll never be able to get along
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: with you. But I don't agree with him. Besides, I've
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: never seen a really truly led relative in my life.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: And there's your daughter. Think of it, a real life cousin.
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  Speaker 1: In anticipation, your niece, Bronislawa plaskogitz Kaya travers ps, you
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  Speaker 1: had better telegraph the money or you won't see Dad
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  Speaker 1: at all. He doesn't know how sick he is, and
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: if he meets any of his old friends, he'll be
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: off and away on some wild goose chays. He's beginning
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: to talk. Alaska says it will get the beaver out
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: of his bones. Please know that we must pay the
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  Speaker 1: boarding house, or else we'll arrive without luggage. B P. T.
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  Speaker 1: Frederick Travers opened the door of a large built in
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  Speaker 1: safe and methodically put the letters away and a compartment
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  Speaker 1: labeled Thomas Travers Poor Tom poor top. He sighed aloud
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  Speaker 1: end of part one, Part two of By the Turtles
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: of Tasman by Jack London. The sliver Box recording is
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: in the public domain reading by Matt Perart Part two.
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  Speaker 1: The big motor car waited at the station, and Frederick
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: Travers thrilled as he always thrilled, to the distant locomo
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: of whistle of the train plunging down the valley of
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  Speaker 1: Isaac Travers River. First of all westering white men had
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  Speaker 1: Isaac Travers gazed on that splendid valley, its salmon laden waters,
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  Speaker 1: its rich bottoms, and its virgin forest slopes. Having seen
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: he had grasped and never let go landpoor they had
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: called him in the mid settler period. But that had
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: been in the days when the placers petered out, when
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: there were no wagon roads nor tugs to draw in
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  Speaker 1: sailing vessels across the perilous bar, and when his lonely
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: gristmill had been run under armed guards to keep them
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: marauding klamaths off. While wheat was ground like father like son,
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: and what Isaac Travers had grasped Frederick Travers had held it,
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: it had been the same tenacity of hold. Both had
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: been far visioned. Both had foreseen the transform of the
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: utter West, the coming of the railroad, and the building
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  Speaker 1: of the new empire on the Pacific Shore. Frederick Travers
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  Speaker 1: thrilled too at the locomotive whistle, because more than any
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: man's it was his railroad. His father had died still
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: striving to bring the railroad in across the mountains that
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  Speaker 1: averaged one hundred thousand dollars to the mile. He Frederick
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: had brought it in. He had sat up nights over
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  Speaker 1: that railroad, bought newspapers, entered politics, and subsidized party machines,
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  Speaker 1: and he had made pilgrimages more than once at his
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  Speaker 1: own expense, to the railroad chiefs of the East. While
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: all the country knew how many miles of his land
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  Speaker 1: were crossed by the right of way, none of the
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  Speaker 1: county guest nor dreamed the number of his dollars which
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: had gone into guarantees and railroad bonds. He had done
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  Speaker 1: much for his county, and the railroad was his last
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  Speaker 1: and greatest achievement, the capstone of the Travers effort, the
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: momentous and marvelous then that had been brought about just yesterday.
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  Speaker 1: It had been running two years and highest proof of
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  Speaker 1: all of his judgment. Dividends were in sight, and farther
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: reaching reward was in sight. It was written in the
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  Speaker 1: books that the next governor of California was to be
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: spelled Frederick A. Travers. Twenty years had passed since he
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: had seen his elder brother, and then it had been
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: after a gap of ten years. He remembered that night well,
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: Tom was the only man who dared run the bar
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  Speaker 1: in the dark, and that last time, between nightfall and
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: the dawn, with a southeaster breezing up, he had sailed
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  Speaker 1: his schooner in and out again. There had been no
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  Speaker 1: warning of his coming, a clutter of hoofs at midnight,
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: a lathered horse in the stable, and Tom had appeared,
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  Speaker 1: the salt of the sea on his face, as his
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  Speaker 1: mother attested. An hour only he remained, and on a
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  Speaker 1: fresh horse was gone. While rain squalls rattled upon the
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  Speaker 1: windows and the rising wind moaned through the red woods.
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  Speaker 1: The memory of his visit a with sharp and strong
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: from the wild outer world. A week later, sea, hammered
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  Speaker 1: and bar bound for the time, had arrived the revenue
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  Speaker 1: cutter Bear, and there had been a column of conjecture
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  Speaker 1: in the local paper, hints of the heavy landing of
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  Speaker 1: Opium and of a vain quest for the mysterious schooner Halcion.
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  Speaker 1: Only Fred and his mother and the several house Indians
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  Speaker 1: knew of the stiffened horse in the barn, and of
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  Speaker 1: the devious way it was afterward smuggled back to the
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  Speaker 1: fishing village on the beach. This twenty years it was
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  Speaker 1: the same old Tom Travers that alighted from the pullman.
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  Speaker 1: To his brother's eyes, he did not look sick older
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  Speaker 1: he was, of course, the panama hat did not hide
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  Speaker 1: the gray hair, and though indefinably hinting at shrunkenness, the
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  Speaker 1: broad shoulders were still broad and erect. As for the
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  Speaker 1: young woman with him, Frederick Travers experienced an immediate shock
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  Speaker 1: of distaste. He felt it vitally yet vaguely. It was
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  Speaker 1: a challenge and a mock. Yet he could not name
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  Speaker 1: nor place the source of it. It might have been
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  Speaker 1: the dress of tailored lenon and foreign cut, the shirt
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  Speaker 1: waist with its daring stripe, the black wilfulness of the hair,
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: or the flaunt of poppies on the large straw hat.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: Or it might have been the flash and color of her,
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  Speaker 1: the black eyes and brows, the flame of rose in
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  Speaker 1: the cheeks, the white of the even teeth that showed
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  Speaker 1: too readily. A spoiled child was his thought, But he
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  Speaker 1: had no time to analyze, for his brother's hand was
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: in his, and he was making his niece's acquaintance. There
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  Speaker 1: it was again. She flashed and talked like her color,
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  Speaker 1: and she talked with her hands as well. He could
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  Speaker 1: not avoid noting the smallness of them. They were absurdly small,
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: and his eyes went to her feet to make the
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: same discovery. Quite oblivious of the curious crowd on the
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  Speaker 1: station platform, she had intercepted his attempt to lead to
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  Speaker 1: the motor car and had arranged the brother's side by side.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: Tom had been laughingly acquiescent, but his younger brother was
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  Speaker 1: ill at ease, too conscious of the many eyes of
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  Speaker 1: his townspeople. He knew only the old Puritan way. Family
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: displays were for the privacy of the family, not for
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  Speaker 1: the pub. It was glad she had not attempted to
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: kiss him. It was remarkable she had not already he
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: apprehended anything of her. She embraced them and penetrated them
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  Speaker 1: with sun warm eyes that seemed to see through them
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: and over them, and all about them. You're really brothers,
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: she cried, her hands flashing with her eyes. Anybody can
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: see it. And yet there is a difference. I don't know.
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  Speaker 1: I can't explain in truth. With a tact that exceeded
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: Frederick Travers's farthest disciplined forbearance, she did not dare explain.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: Her wide artist eyes had seen and sensed the whole
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: trenchant and essential difference. Alike, they looked of the unmistakable
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: same stalk, their features reminiscent of a common origin, and
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: their resemblance ceased. Tom was three inches taller and well
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: grade was the long Viking mustache. His was the same
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: eagle like nose as his brothers, save that it was
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: more eagle like. While the blue eyes were pronouncedly so,
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: the lines at the face were deeper, the cheek bones higher,
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: the hollows larger, the weather beat darker. It was a
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: volcanic face. There had been fire there, and the fire
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: still lingered. Around the corners of the eyes were more
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: laughter wrinkles, and in the eyes themselves a promise of
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: deadlier seriousness than the younger brother possessed. Frederick was bourgeois
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: in his carriage, but in Tom's was a certain careless
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: ease and distinction. It was the same pioneer blood of
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: Isaac Travers in both men, but it had been retorted
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: in widely different crucibles. Frederick represented the straight and expected
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: line of descent. His brother expressed a vast and intangible
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: something that was unknown in the traverse stock. It was
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: all this that the black eyed girl saw and knew
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: on the instant, all that had been inexplicable in the
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: two men, and their relationship cleared up in the moment
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: she saw them side by side. Wake me up. Tom
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: was saying, I can't believe I arrived on a train
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: and the population there were only four thousand thirty years ago.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: Sixty thousand now, was the other's answer, and increasing by
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: the leaps and bounds. Want has been around for a
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: look at the city. There is plenty of time. As
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: they sped along the broad well pid streets. Tom persisted
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: in his RiPP than winkle pose. The water front perplexed him.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: Where he had once anchored his sloop and a dozen
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: feet of water, he found solid land and railroad yards
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: with wharves and shippings. Still farther out, hold on stop,
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: he cried, a few blocks on, looking up at a
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: solid business block. Where is this, fred Forth and travers,
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: don't you remember? Tom stood up and gazed around, trying
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: to discern the anciently familiar configuration of the land under
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: its clutter of buildings. I I think, he began hesitantly. No,
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: by George, I'm sure of it. We used to hunt
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: cotton tails over that ground and shift blackbirds in the brush.
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: And there where the bank building is was a pond.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: He turned to Polly. I built my first raft there
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: and got my first taste of the sea. Heaven knows
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: how many gallons of it, Frederick laughed, nodding to the chauffeur.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: They rolled joan a barrow. I remember, oh more, Polly cried,
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: clapping her hands. There's the part Frederick pointed out a
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: little later, indicating a mass aversion redwoods on the first
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: tip of the Bigger Hills. Father shot three grizzlies there
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: one afternoon. Was Tom's remark. I presented forty acres of
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: it to the city. Frederick went on. Father bought the
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: quarter section for a dollar an acre from Leroy. Tom nodded,
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: and the sparkle and flash in his eyes, like that
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: of his daughter, were unlike anything that ever appeared in
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: his brother's eyes. Yes, he affirmed, Leroy, the Negro squawman.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: I remember the time he carried you and me on
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: his back to Alliance. The night the Indians burned the ranch,
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: Father stayed behind and fought, but he couldn't say the gristmill.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: It was a serious setback to him. Just the same
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: he nailed four Indians. In Polly's eyes, now appeared the
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: flash and sparkle an Indian fighter. She cried, Tell me
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: about him. Tell her about Travers Ferry. Tom said, that's
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: a ferry on the Klamath River, on the way to
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: Orleans Bar and Siskiyou. There was great packings into the
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: diggings in those days, and among other things Father had
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: made a location there. There was a rich bench farming
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: land too. He built a suspension bridge, wove the cables
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: on the spot with sailors and materials freighted in from
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: the coast. It cost him twenty thousand dollars. The first
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: day it was open, eight hundred mules crossed at a
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: dollar ahead, to say nothing of the toll for foot
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: and horse. That night the river rose. The bridge was
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: one hundred and forty feet above low water mark, Yet
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: the freshet rose higher than that and swept the bridge away.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: He'd had made a fortune there. Otherwise, that wasn't it
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: at all, Tom blurted out impatiently. It was a traverse
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: ferry that father and old Jacob Vance were caught by
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: a war party of Mad River Indians. Old Jacob was
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: killed right outside the door of the log cabin. Father
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: dragged the body inside and stood the Indians off for
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: a week. Father was some shot. He buried Jacob under
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: the cabin floor. I still run the ferry, Frederick went on,
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: though there isn't so much travel as in the old days.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: I freight by wagon road to the reservation, and then
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: mule back on up the Klamath and clear into the
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: forks of the Little Salmon. I have twelve stores on
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: that chain, now, a stage line to the reservation, and
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: a hotel there quite a tourist trade is beginning to
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: pick up. And the girl with curious, brooding eyes looked
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: from brother to brother as they so differently voiced themselves
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: and life. Aye, it was some man, father was Tom murmured.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: There was a drowsy nut in his speech that drew
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: a quick glance of anxiety from her. The machine had
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: turned into the cemetery and now halted before a substantial
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: vault on the crest of the hill. I thought you'd
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: like to see it, Frederick was saying. I built that
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: mausoleum myself, most of it with my own hands. Mother
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: wanted it. The estate was dreadfully encumbered. The best bid
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: I could get out of the contractors was eleven thousand.
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: I did it myself for a little over eight. Must
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: have worked nights, Tom murmured, admiringly and more sleepily than
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: before I did. Tom, I did many a night by
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: the lantern light. I was so busy. I was reconstructing
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: the waterworks. Then the artesian wells had failed, and mother's
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: eyes were troubling her. You remember Cataract, I wrote you.
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: She was too weak to travel, and I brought the
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: specialists up from San Francisco, Oh, my hands were full.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: I was just winding up the disastrous affairs of the
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: steamer line father had established to San Francisco, and I
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: was keeping up the interest on mortgages to the tune
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: of one hundred and eighty thousand dollars. A soft stertoris
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: breathing interrupted him. Tom chin on chest was asleep. Polly,
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: with a significant look, caught her uncle's eye. Then her father,
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: after an uneasy, restless movement, lifted drowsy lids. Tis warm day,
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: he said, with a bright, apologetic laugh. I've been actually
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: asleep in your home. Frederick nodded to the chauffeur, and
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: the car rolled on. End of Part two, Part two
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: of By the Turtles of Tasman by Jack London. This LibriVox,
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: according is in the public domain Riata made Matt pirardin
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: part three. The house that Frederick Travers had built when
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: his prosperity came was large and costly, sober and comfortable,
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: and with no more pretense than was naturally attendant on
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: the finest country home in the county. Its atmosphere was
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: just the sort that he and his daughter would create.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: But in the days that followed his brother's homecoming, all
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: this was changed. Gone was a subdued and ordered repose.
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: Frederick was neither comfortable nor happy. There was unwonted flurry
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: of life and violation of sanctions and traditions. Meals were
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: irregular and protracted, and there were midnight shaping, dish suppers,
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: and bursts of laughter the most inappropriate hours. Frederick was abstemious.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: A glass of wine at dinner was his wildest excess.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: Three cigars a day he permitted himself. In these he
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: smoked either on the broad veranda or in the smoking room.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: What else was the smoking room for cigarettes? He detested,
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: Yet his brother was ever rolling thin brown paper cigarettes
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: and smoking them wherever he might happen to be a
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: litter of tobacco crumbs was always to be found in
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: the big easy chair he frequented it, and among the
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: cushions of the window seats. Then there were the cocktails
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: brought up under the stern totelage of Isaac and Eliza Travers.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: Frederick looked upon liquor in the house as an abomination.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: Ancient cities had been smitten by God's wrath for just
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: such practices. Before luncheon dinner, Tom aided and abetted by Polly,
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: mixed an endless variety of drinks, she being particularly adept
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: with strange swivel stick concoctions learned at the ends of
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: the earth. To Frederick, at such times, it seemed that
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: his butler's pantry and dining room had been turned into
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: bar rooms. When he suggested this under a facetious show,
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: Tom proclaimed that when he made his pile, he would
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: build a liquor cabinet in every living room of his house.
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: And there were more young men at the house than formerly,
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: and they helped in disposing of the cocktails. Frederick would
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: have liked to account in that manner for their presence,
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: but he knew better. His brother and his brother's daughter
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: did what he and Mary had failed to do. They
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: were the magnets youth, and joy and laughter drew to them.
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: The house was lively with young life ever day and night.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: The motor cars honked up and down the gravel drives.
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: There were pic necks and expeditions in the summer weather,
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: moonlight sails on the bay starts before dawn, or home
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: comings at midnight, and often of nights. The many bedrooms
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: were filled as they had never been before. Tom must
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: cover all his boyhood ramblings, catch trout again on Bull Creek,
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: shoot quail over Woolcott's prairie, get a deer on Round Mountain.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: That deer was a cause of pain and shame to Frederick.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: What if it was close season? Tom had triumphantly brought
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: home the buck and gleefully called it side Hill salmon.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: When it was served and eaten at Frederick's own table.
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: They had clambakes at the head of the bay and
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: mussel bakes down by the roaring serf, and Tom told
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: shamelessly of the halcion and of the run of contraband,
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: and asked Frederick before them all how he had managed
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: to smuggle the horse back to the fishermen without discovery.
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: All the young men were in the conspiracy with Polly
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: to pamper Tom to his heart's desire. And Frederick heard
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: the true inwardness of the killing of the deer, of
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: its purchase from the overstalked Golden Gate park, of its
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: created carriage by train, horse team and mule back to
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: the fastnesses of Round Mountain, of Tom falling asleep beside
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: the deer run the first time it was driven by
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: of the pursuit by the young men, the jaded saddle horses,
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: the scrambles and the falls, and the roping of it
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: at burnt ranch clearing, and finally of the triumphant culmination
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: when it was driven past a second time and Tom
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: had dropped it at fifty yards. To Frederick, there was
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: a vague hurt in it all. When had such consideration
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: been shown him? There were days when Tom could not
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: go out postponements of the outdoor drawlings. When still the center,
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: he sat and drowsed in the big chair, waking at
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: times in that unexpected queer bright way of his, to
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: roll a cigarette and call for his yukulelee, a sort
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: of miniature guitar of Portuguese invention. Then, with strumming and
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: tum tumming the live cigarette laid aside to the imminent
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: peril of polished wood, his full baritone would roll out
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: in south Sea hulas and sprightly French and Spanish song.
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: One in particular had pleased Frederick at first, the favorite
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: song of a Tahitian king. Tom explained, the last of
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: the Pomers, who had himself composed it, and was wont
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: to lie on his mats by the hour singing it.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: It consisted of the repetition of a few syllables, a
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: mu ru rut, a val it ran, and that was
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: all of it, sung in a stately, endless, ever varying chant,
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: accompanied by solemn chords from the ukulele. Polly took great
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: joy in teaching it to her uncle, but went himself
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: questing for some of this genial flood of life that
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: bathed about his brother. Frederick essayed the song, he noted,
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: suppressed glee on the part of his listeners, which increased
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: through giggles and snickers, to a great outburst of laughter.
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: To his disgust and dismay, he he learned that the
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: simple phrase he had repeated and repeated was nothing else
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: than I am so drunk. He had been made a
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: fool love over and over, solemnly and gloriously he Frederick
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: Travers had announced how drunk he was. After that he
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: slipped quietly out of the room whenever it was sung.
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: Nor could Polly's later explanation that the last word was
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: happy and not drunk reconcile him, for she had been
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: compelled to admit that the old king was a toper,
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: and that he was always in his cups when he
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: struck up the chant. Frederick was constantly oppressed by the
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: feeling of being out of it all. He was a
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: social being, and he liked fun, even if it were
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: of a more wholesome and dignified brand than that to
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: which his brother was addicted. He could not understand why
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: in the past the young people had voted his house
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: a bore and come no more save on state and
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: formal occasions, until now when they flocked to it and
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: to his brother, but not to him. Nor could he
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: like the way the young women petted his brother and
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: called him Tom, while it was intolerable to see them
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: twist and pull his buccaneer mustache in mock punishment when he,
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: sometimes too jolly banter sank home to them. Such conduct
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: was a profanation to the memory of Isaac and Eliza Travers.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: There was too much an air of revelry in the house.
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: The long table was never shortened, while there was extra
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: help in the kitchen, Breakfast extended from four until eleven,
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: and the midnight suppers entailing raids on the pantry and
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: complaints from the servants were a vexation to Frederick. The
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: house had become a restaurant a hotel. He sneered bitterly
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: to himself, and there were times when he was sorely
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: tempted to put his foot down and reassert the old ways.
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: But somehow the ancient sorcery of his masterful brother was
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: too strong upon him, and at times he gazed upon
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: him with a sense almost of awe, groping to fathom
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: the alchemy of charm, Baffled by the strange lights and
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: fires in his brother's eyes, and by the wisdom of
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: far places and of wild nights and days written in
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: his face? What was it? What lordly vision? Had the
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: other glimpsed? He, the irresponsible and careless one. Frederick remembered
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: a line of an old song. Along the shining ways
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: he came. Why did his brother remind him of that line?
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: Had he, who in boyhood had known no law, who
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: in manhood had resulted himself above law in truth, found
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: the shining ways? There was an unfairness about it that
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: perplexed Frederick, until he found solace in dwelling upon the
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: failure Tom had made of life. Then it was in
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: quiet intervals that he got some comfort and stiffened his
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: own pride by showing Tom over the estate. You have
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: done well, fred Tom would say, you have done very well.
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: He said it often and often he drowsed in the big,
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: smooth running machine. Everything orderly and sanitary and spick and span.
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: Not a blade of grass out of place, was Polly's comment.
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: How do you ever manage it? I should not like
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: to be a blade of grass on your land. She concluded,
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: with a little shivery shudder. You have worked hard, Tom said, yes,
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: I have worked hard. Frederick affirmed it was worth it.
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: It was going to say more, but the strange flash
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: in the girl's eyes brought him to an uncomfortable pause.
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: He felt that she measured him, challenged him. For the
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: first time. His honorable career of building a county commonwealth
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: had been questioned, and by a chit of a girl,
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: the daughter of a wastetrel herself but a flighty fly
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: away foreign creature. Conflict between them was inevitable. He had
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: disliked her from the first moment of meeting. She did
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: not have to speak. Her mere presence made him uncomfortable.
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: He felt her unspoken disapproval. Though there were times when
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: she did not stop at that, nor did she mence language.
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: She spoke forthright like a man, and as no man
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: had ever dared to speak to him. I wonder if
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: you ever miss what you've missed, she told him. Do
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: you ever once in your life turn yourself loose and
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: rip things up by the roots? Did you ever once
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: get drunk or smoke yourself black in the face, or
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: dance a hoe down on the ten commandments? Or stand
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: up on your hind legs and wink like a good
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: fellow at God? Isn't she a rare one? Tom gurgled
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: her mother over again, outwardly smiling and calm. There was
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: a chill of horror at Frederick's heart. It was incredible.
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: I think it is the English, she continued, Who have
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: a saying that a man has not lived until he
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: has kissed his woman and struck his man. I wonder
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: confess up now if you ever struck a man? Have you?
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: He countered? She nodded, an angry reminiscent flash in her
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: eyes and waited. No, I have never had that pleasure,
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: he answered slowly. I early learned control. Later, irritated by
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: his self satisfied complaisance, and after listening to a recital
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: of how he had cornered the Klamath salmon packing, planted
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: the first oysters on the bay and established that lucrative monopoly.
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: And of how after exhausting litigation and a campaign of years,
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: he had captured the waterfront of Williamsport, and thereby one
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: to control of the lumber combine. She returned to the charge,
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: you seem to value life in terms of profit and loss.
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: She said, I wonder if you have ever known love.
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: The shaft went home. He had not kissed his woman.
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: His marriage had been one of policy. It had saved
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: the estate. In the days when he had been almost
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: beaten in the struggle to dis comber the vast holdings,
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: Isaac Travers's wide hands had grasped the girl was a witch.
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: She had probed an old wound and made it hurt again.
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: He had never had time to love. He had worked hard.
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: He had been president of the Chamber of Commerce, mayor
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: of the city, state senator. But he had missed love.
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: At chance moments he had come upon Polly openly and
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: shamelessly in her father's arms, and he had noted the
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: warmth and tenderness in their eyes. Again, he knew that
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: he had missed love. Wanton as was the display. Not
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: even in private did he and Mary so behave normal,
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: formal and colorless She was what was to be expected
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: of a loveless marriage, even puzzled to decide whether the
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: feeling he felt for her was love, was he himself
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: loveless as well? In the moment following Polly's remark, he
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: was aware of a great emptiness. It seemed that his
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: hands had grasped ashes, until glancing into the other room
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: he saw Tom asleep in the big chair, very gray
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: and aged and tired. He remembered all that he had done,
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: all that he possessed. Well, what did Tom possess? What
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: had Tom done? Say? Played ducks and drakes with life
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: and wear it out until all that remained was that
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: dimly flickering spark in a dying body. What bothered Frederick
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: and Polly was that she attracted him as well as
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: repelled him. His own daughter had never interested him in
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: that way. Mary moved along frictionless grooves, and to forecast
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: her actions was so effortless that it was automatic. But Polly,
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: many hued, protean natured, he never knew what she was
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: going to do next. Keeps ye guessin' eh, Tom, chuckled.
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: She was irresistible. She had her way with Frederick in
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: ways that in marry would have been impossible. She took
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: liberties with him, cozened him or hurt him, and compelled
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: always in him a sharp awareness of her existence. Once,
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: after one of their clashes, she doubled him at the piano,
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: playing a mad damned thing that stirred and irritated him,
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: and set his post pounding wild and undisciplined fancies in
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: the ordered chamber of his brain. The worst of it was,
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: she saw and knew just what she was doing. She
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: was aware before he was, and she made him aware.
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: Her face turned to look at him, on her lips,
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: a mocking, contemplative smile that was almost a superior sneer.
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: It was this that she him into consciousness of the
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: orgy his imagination had been playing him. From the wall
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: above her, the stiff portraits of Isaac and Eliza Travers
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: looked down like reproachful specters. Infuriated, he left the room.
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: He had never dreamed such potencies resided in music, and
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: he remembered it with shame. He had stolen back outside
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: to listen, and she had known, And once more she
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: had doubled him. When Mary asked him what he thought
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: of Polly's playing, an unbidden contrast leaped to his mind.
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: Mary's music reminded him of church. It was cold and
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: bare as a Methodist meeting house, but Polly's was like
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: the mad and lawless ceremonial of some heathen temple, where
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: incense arose and notch. Girls writhed, she plays like a foreigner,
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: he answered, pleased with the success and oppositeness of his evasion.
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: She is an artist, Mary affirmed solemnly. She is a genius.
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: When does she ever practice? When did she ever practice?
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: You know how I have My best is like a
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: five finger exercise compared with the foolishest thing she ripples off.
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: Her music tells me things, oh, things wonderful and unutterable.
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: Mine tells me one too three, one tooth three. Oh,
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: it is maddening. I work and work and get nowhere.
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: It is unfair. Why should she be born that way
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: and not I love? Was Frederick's immediate and secret thought.
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: But before he could dwell upon the conclusion, the unprecedented
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: had happened, and Mary was sobbing in a breakdown of tears.
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: He would have liked to take her in his arms
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: after Tom's fashion, but he did not know how. He tried,
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: and found Mary as unschooled as himself. It resulted only
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: in an embarrassed awkwardness for both of them. The contrasting
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: of the two girls was inevitable. Like father, like daughter.
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: Mary was no more than a pale camp follower of
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: a gorgeous, conquering general. Frederick's threat had been sorely educated
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: in the matter of clothes. He knew just how expensive
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: Mary's clothes were, yet he could not blind himself to
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: the fact that Polly's vagabond makeshifts cheap and apparently half
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: hazard were always all right and far more successful. Her
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: taste was unerring. Her ways with a shawl were inevitable.
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: With a scarf, she performed miracles. She just throws things together.
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: Mary complained, she doesn't even try. She can dress in
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: fifteen minutes, and when she goes swimming she beats the
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: boys out of the dressing rooms. Mary was honest and
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: incredulous in her admiration. I can't see how she does it.
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: No one could dare those colors, but they looked just
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: right on her. She's always threatened that when I'd become
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: finely flat broke. She'd set up dressmaking and take care
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: of both of us, Tom contributed. Frederick, looking over the
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: top of a newspaper, was witnessed to an illuminating scene. Mary,
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: to his certain knowledge, had been premping for an hour.
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: Ere she appeared. Oh, how lovely was Polly's ready appreciation.
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: Her eyes and face glowed with honest pleasure, and her
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: hands wowed their delight in the air. But why not
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: wear that bow? So? And thus her hands flashed to
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: the task, and in a moment, the miracle of taste
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: and difference achieved by her touch was apparent even to Frederick.
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: Polly was, like her father, generous to the point of absurdity.
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: With her meager possessions. Mary admired a Spanish man a
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: Mexican treasure that had come down from one of the
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: grand ladies of the court of the Emperor Maximilian. Polly's
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: delight flamed like wildfire. Mary found herself the immediate owner
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: of the fan, almost laboring under the fictitious impression that
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: she had conferred an obligation by accepting it. Only a
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: foreign woman could do such things, and Polly was guilty
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: of similar gifts. To all the young women. It was
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: her way. It might be a lace, handkerchief, a pink
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: pomton pearl, or a comb of hawksbill turtle. It was
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: all the same. Whatever their eyes rested on in joy
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: was theirs. To women as to men. She was irresistible.
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: I don't dare admire anything more, was Mary's plaint. If
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: I do, she always gives it to me. Frederick had
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: never dreamed such a creature could exist. The women of
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: his own race and place had never adumbrated such a possibility.
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: He knew that whatever she did, her quick generosities, her
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: hot enthusiasms or angers, her birdlike caressing ways was unbelievably sincere.
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: Her extravagant moods at the same time shocked and fascinated him.
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: Her voice was as mercurial as her feelings. There were
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: no even tones, and she talked with her hands. Yet
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: in her mouth. English was a new and beautiful language,
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: softly limpid, with an audacity of phrase and tellingness of
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: expression that conveyed subtleties and nuances as unambiguous and direct
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: as they were expected from one of such childlikeness and simplicity.
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: He woke up of nights and on his darkened eyelids
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: saw bright memory pictures of the backward turn of her
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: vivid laughing face. End of Part three, Part four of
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: By the Turtles of Tasmo by Jack London. This LibriVox
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: recording is in the public domain reading by Maperard, Part four.
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: Like daughter, like father, Tom too had been irresistible. All
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: the world still called to him, and strange men came
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: from time to time with its messages. Never had there
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: been such visitors to the travels home. Some came with
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: the reminiscent roll of the sea in their gait. Others
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: were black browed ruffians. Still others were fever burnt and sallow,
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: and about all of them was something bizarre and outlandish.
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: Their talk was likewise bizarre and outlandish of things to Frederick,
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: unguessed and undreamed, though he recognized the men for what
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: they were, soldiers of fortune, adventurers, freelances of the world.
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: But the big patent thing was the love and loyalty
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: they bore their leader. They named him variously Black Tom, Blondine, Husky, travers,
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: malamute Tom, swift water Tom, but most of all he
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: was Captain Tom. Their projects and propositions were equally various,
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: from the south Sea trader with the discovery of a
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: new Guano island, and the Latin American with the nascent
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: revolution on his hands on through Siberian gold chaises and
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: the prospecting of the placer benches of the upper Cuscaquim,
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: two darker things that were mentioned only in whispers. And
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: Captain Tom regretted the temporary indisposition that prevented immediate departure
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: with them, and continued to sit and rouse more and
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: more in the big chair. It was Polly, with a
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: camaraderie distasteful to her uncle, who got these men aside
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: and broke the news that Captain Tom would never go
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: out on the Shining Ways again. But not all of
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: them came with projects. Many made love calls on their
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: leader of old and unforgettable days. And Frederick sometimes was
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: a witness to their meeting, and he marveled anew at
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: the mysterious charm in his brother that drew all men
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: to him. By the turtles of Tasman, cried one, when
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: I heard you was in California, Captain Tom, I just
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: had to come and shake hands. I reckon, you ain't
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: forgot Tasman eh Nor the scrap at Thursday Island. Say
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: old Tasman was killed by his niggers only last year
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: up German New Guineaway. Remember his coat boy, Nana Nigany,
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: he was the ringleader. Tasman swore by him, but Niganny
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: Nagany hatcheted him just the same. Shake hands with Captain
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: Carlson fred was Tom's introduction of his brother to another visitor.
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: He pulled me out of a tight place on the
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: West coast once. I'd have cashed in Carlson if you
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: hadn't happened along. Captain Carlson was a giant hulk of
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: a man, with gimlet eyes of palest blue, a slash
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: scarred mouth that a blazing red beard could not quite hide,
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: a grip in his hand that made Frederick swarm. A
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: few minutes later, Tom had his brother aside, say fred
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: do you think it will bother to advance me a thousand?
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: Of course, Frederick answered splendidly. You know half of that
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: I have is yours Tom. And when Captain Carlson deported,
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: Frederick was morally certain that the thousand dollars deported with him.
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: Small wonder Tom had made a failure of life and
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: come home to die. Frederick sat at his own orderly desk,
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: taking stock of the difference between him and his brother. Yes,
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: and if it hadn't been for him, there would have
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: been no home for Tom to die in. Frederick cast
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: back for Solis. Through their joint history, it was he
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: who had always been the mainstay, the dependable one. Tom
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: had laughed and rolicked, played hooky from school, disobeyed Isaac's
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: commands to the mountains or the sea or in hot water.
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: With the neighbors and the town authorities. It was all
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: the same. He was everywhere save were the dull plot
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: of work obtained, And work was work in those backwoods days,
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: and he, Frederick had done the work early and late,
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: and all days he had been at it. He remembered
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: the season when Isaac's wide plans had taken one of
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: their smashes, when food had been scarce on the table
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: of a man who owned a hundred thousand acres, when
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: there had been no money to hire harvesters for the hay,
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: and when Isaac would not let go his grip on
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: a single one of his acres. He Frederick had pitched
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: the hay while Isaac mowed and raked. Tom had lain
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: in bed and run up a doctor bill with a
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: broken leg gained by falling off the ridgepole of the barn,
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: which place was the last in the world to which
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: anyone would expect him to go to pitch Hay about
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: The only work Tom had ever done, it seemed to him,
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: was to fetch hi venison and bar ol, to break colts,
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: and to raise a din in the valley pastures and
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: wooded canyons with his bare hounds. Tom was the elder.
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: Yet when Isaac died, the estate, with all its vast possibilities,
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: would have gone to ruin had not he Frederick buckled
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: down to it and put the burden on his back work.
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: He remembered the enlargement of the town water system, how
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: he had maneuvered and financed, persuaded small loans at ruinous interest,
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: and laid pipe and made joints by lantern light while
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: the workmen slept, and then bent up ahead of them,
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: and to outline and direct and rack his brains over
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: the raising of the next weekend wages. For he had
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: carried on Old Isaac's policy. He would not let go.
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: The future would vindigate and Tom, with a bigger pack
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: of bear dogs, ranging the mountains and sleeping out a
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: week at a time. Frederick remembered the final conference in
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: the kitchen Tom and he and Eliza Travers, who still
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: cooked and baked in washed dishes on an estate that
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: carried a hundred and eighty thousand dollars in mortgages. Don't divide.
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: Eliza Travers had pleaded, resting her soap flecked parboiled arms.
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: Isaac was right, it will be worth millions. The country
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: is opening up. We must all pull together. I don't
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: want the estate, Tom cried, Let Frederick have it what
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: I want. He never completed the sentence, but all the
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: vision of the world burnt in his eyes. I can't wait,
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: he went on. You can have the millions when they come.
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: In the meantime, let me have ten thousand. I'll sign off,
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: quit claim to everything, and give me the old schooner,
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: and someday I'll be back with a pot of money
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: to help you out. Frederick could see himself in that
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: far past day, throwing up his arms in horror and
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: crying ten thousand. When I'm strained to the breaking point
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: to raise this quarter's interest, there's a block of land
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: next to the courthouse. Tom had urged, I know the
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: bank has a standing offer for ten thousand, but it
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: will be worth one hundred thousand and ten years. Frederick
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: had objected, call it so, say I quit claim everything
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: for one hundred thousand, sell it for ten and let
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: me have it. It's all I want, and I want
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: it now. Can have the rest, and Tom had had
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: his will. As usual, the block had been mortgaged instead
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: of sold, and sailed away in the old schooner, the
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: benediction of the town upon his head, for he had
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: carried away in his crew half the riff raff of
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: the beach. The bones of the schooner had been left
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: on the coast of Java. That had been when Eliza
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: Travers was being operated on for her eyes, and Frederick
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: had kept it from her until indubitable proof came that
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: Tom was still alive. Frederick went over to his files
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: and drew out a drawed labeled Thomas Travers. In it
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: were packets methodically arranged. He went over the letters. They
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: were from everywhere, China, Rangoon, Australia, South Africa, the Gold Coast, Patagonia, Armenia, Alaska,
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: briefly and infrequently written, they epitomized the wanderer's life. Frederick
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: ran over in his mind a few of the glimpsed
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: highlights of Tom's career. He had fought in some sort
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: of foreign troubles in Armenia. He had been an officer
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: in the Chinese Army, and it was a certainty that
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: the trade he later drove in the China Seas was illicit.
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: He had been caught running arms and a cuba. It
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: seemed he had always been running something somewhere that it
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: ought not to have been run, and he had never
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: outgrown it. One letter on crinkly tissue paper showed that
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: as late as the Japanese Russian War he had been
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: caught running coal into Port Arthur and been taken to
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: the prize court at Saspo, where his steamer was confiscated,
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: and he remained a prisoner until the end of the war.
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: Frederick smiled as he read a paragraph, how do you
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: prosper Let me know any time A few thousands will
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: help you. He looked at the date April eighteenth, eighteen
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: eighty three, and opened another packet. May fifth, eighteen eighty
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: three was the dated sheet. He drew out five thousand
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: will put me on my feet again if you can
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: and love me, send it along pronto that Spanish for rush.
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: He glanced again at the two dates. It was evident
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: that somewhere between April eighteenth and May fifth, Tom had
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: come a cropper with a smile half better. Frederick skimmed
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: on through the correspondence, there's a wreck on Midway Island,
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: a fortune in it. Salvage you know, auction in two days,
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: cable me four thousand. The last he examined, ran a
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: deal I can swing with a little cash. It's big,
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: I tell you, it's so big. I don't dare tell you.
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: He remembered that deal a Latin American revolution. He had
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: sent the cash, and Tom had swung it and himself
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: as well, into a prison cell and a death sentence.
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: Tom meant well, there was no denying that, and he
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: had always religiously forwarded his ile euse. Frederick musingly weighed
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: the packet of them in his hand, as though to
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: determine if any relation existed between the weight of paper
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: and the sums of money represented on it. He put
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: the drawer back in the cabinet and passed out, glancing
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: in at the big chair he saw Polly just tiptoeing
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: from the room. Tom's head lay back and his breathing
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: was softly heavy, the sickness pronouncedly apparent on his relaxed face.
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: End of Part four, Part five of By the Turtles
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: of Tasman by Jack London. This LibriVox recording is in
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: the public domain. Reading by my Perarde, Part five. I
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: have worked hard, Frederick explained to Polly that evening on
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: the Verandah, unaware that when a man explains, it is
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: a sign his situation is growing. Parlous, I have done
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: what came to my hand, how creditably it is for
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: others to say, and I have been paid for it.
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: I have taken care of others and taken care of myself.
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: The doctors say they have never seen such a constitution.
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: And a man of my years, why almost half my
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: life is yet before me and we traverse our long
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: lived stock. I took care of myself, you see, and
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: I have myself to show for it. I was not
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: a waster. I conserve my heart and my arteries. And
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: yet there are few men who can boast having done
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: as much work as I have done. Look at that hand, steady, eh,
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: it will be as steady twenty years from now. There
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: is nothing in playing fast and loose with oneself. And
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: all the while, Polly had been following the invidious comparison
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: that lurked behind his words. You can write honorable before
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: your name, she flashed up proudly. But my father has
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: been a king, he has lived. Have you lived? What
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: have you got to show for it? Stocks and bonds,
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: and houses and servants, poof heart and arteries and a
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: steady hand? Is that all? Have you lived? Merely to live?
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: Were you afraid to die? I'd rather sing one wild
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: song and burst my heart with it than live a
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: thousand years watching my digestion and being afraid of the wet.
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: When you are dust, my father will be ashes. That
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: is the difference. But my dear child, he began, what
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: have you got to show for it? She flamed on. Listen.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: From within, through the open window came the tinkling of
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: Tom's ukulele and the rollicking lilt of his voice in
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: an Hawaiian hula. It ended in a throbbing primitive love
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: call from the sensuous tropic night that no one could mistake.
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: There was a burst of young voices and a clamor
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: for more, Frederick did not speak, he had sent something
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: vague and significant. Turning, he glanced through the window at Tom,
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: flushed and royal, surrounded by the young men and women
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: under his biking mustache, lighting a cigarette from a match
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: held to him by one of the girls. It abruptly
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: struck Frederick that never had he lighted a cigar at
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: a match held in a woman's hand. Doctor Tyler says
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: he ought to smoke. It only aggravates, he said, and
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: it was all he could say. As the fall of
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: the year came on, a new type of men began
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: to frequent the house. They probably called themselves sour doughs,
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: and they were arriving in San Francisco on the winter's
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: furlough from the gold diggings of Alaska. More and more
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: of them came, and they pre empted a large portion
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: of one of the downtown hotels. Captain Tom was fading
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: with the season and almost lived in the big chair.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: He drowsed oftener and longer, but whenever he awoke he
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: was surrounded by his court of young people, or there
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: was some comrade waiting to sit and yarn about the
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: good old gold days and play and for the new
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: cold days. For Tom, Husky travers the Yukonners named him,
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: never thought that the end approached. A temporary illness. He
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: called it the natural enfeeblement. Following upon a prolonged bout
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: with Yucatan fever. In the spring, he would be right
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: and fit again. Cold weather was what he needed. His
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: blood had been cooked in the meantime. It was a
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: case of take it easy and make the most of
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: the rest. And no one undeceived him, not even the Yukonners,
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: who smoked pipes and black cigars and chewed tobacco on
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: Frederick's brought verandahs until he felt like an intruder in
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: his own house. There was no touch with them. They
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: regarded him as a stranger to be tolerated. They came
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: to see Tom, and their manner of seeing him was
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: provocad of innocent envy pangs to Frederick. Day after day
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: he watched them. He would see the Yukonners meet, perhaps
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: one just leaving the sick room and one just going in.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: They would clasp hands solemnly and silently outside the door.
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: The newcomer would question with his eyes, and the other
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: would shake his head, and more than once Frederick noted
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: the moisture in their eyes. Then the newcomer would enter
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: and draw his chair up to Tom's, and with jovial voice,
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: proceeded to plan the outfitting for the exploration of the
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: upper Kuskokin, for it was there Tom was bound. In
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: the spring. Dogs could be had at the Larabies, a
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: clean breed too, with no taint of the soft softland strains.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: It was rough country, it was reported, but if sour
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: doughs couldn't make the travers from Larabies in forty days,
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: they'd like to see Chechako do it in sixty. And
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: so it went until Frederick wondered, when he came to die,
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: if there was one man in the county, much less
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: in the adjoining county who would come to him at
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: his bedside. Seated at his desk, through the open windows
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: would drift whiffs of strong tobacco and rumbling voices, and
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: he could not help catching snatches of what the yukonners talked,
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: Do ye recollect that koyakuk rush? In the early nineties,
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: he would hear one say, well, him and me was partners,
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: then Tradin and such we add a dinky little steamboat
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: the bladder pat He named her that, and it stuck.
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: It was a caution, well, sir, as I was saying.
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: M and me loaded the little bladder bat to the
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: guards and started up the koyukuk, Me firing and engineering
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: and him steering, and both of us deck handed. Once
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: in a while we tied to the bank and cut firewood.
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: It was the fall and mush ice was coming down,
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: and everything getting ready for the freezer. You see. We
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: was north of the Arctic Circle then and still heading north.
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: But they was two hundred miners in their kneading grub.
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: If they wintered, and we had the grub, well, sir,
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: pretty soon they begun to pass us, drifting down the
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: river in canoes and rafts. They was pulling out. We
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: kept track of them. When one hundred and ninety four
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: had passed, we didn't see no reason for keeping on,
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: so we turned tail and started down. A colt snap
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: had come and the water was falling fast, and dang me,
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: if we didn't round on a far upstreamside, the bladder
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: pad hung up solid could budget. It's ashamed to waste
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: all that grip, says I, just as we was pullin
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: out in a canoe let's stay and aid it, says
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: he an dangy If we didn't, we wintered right there
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: on the bladder beat, hunting and trading with the Indians,
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: and when the river broke next year we brung down
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: eight thousand dollars worth of skins. Now a whole winter,
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: just two of us is going some but never a
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: cross word out of him, best tempered partner I ever seen.
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: But fight, huh, came the other voice. I remember the
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: winter oily, Jones allowed, he'd clean out forty mile. Only
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: he didn't. For about the second gap he let off,
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: he ran a foul of husky travers. It was in
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: the white cariboot. I'm a wolf, gaps Jones. You know
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: his style, the gun and his belt, fringes on his moccasins,
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: and long hair down his back. I'm a wolf, he yaps.
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: An this is my night to how hear me? You
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: long lean makeshift of a human critter? An this the
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: husky travers? Well, the other voice queried, after a pause.
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: In about a second and a half, oiler Jones was
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: on the floor and husky on top. Askin somebody kindly
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: to pass him a butcher knife. What's he do? But
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: plumb hack off all of Oiler Jones's long hair. Now,
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: how damn you, how says Husky gittin up. He was
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: a cool one for a wild one. The first voice
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: took up. I seen him. Buck Roulette in the Little
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: Wolverine dropped nine thousand in two hours, borrow some more,
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: went aback in fifteen minutes by the drinks and cash
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: in dang me all in fifteen minutes. One evening, Tom
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: was unusually brightly awake, and Frederick, joining the rapt young circle,
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: sat and listened to his brother's serio comic narrative of
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: the night of wreck on the island of Blang, of
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: the swim through the sharks, where half the crew was lost,
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: Of the great pearl which Dessay brought ashore with him,
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: Of the head decorated palisade that surrounded the Grass Palace,
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: wherein dwelt the Malay Queen with her royal consort, a
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: shipwrecked Chinese Eurasian. Of the intrigue for the pearl of Dessay,
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: Of mad feasts and dances in the barbaric night, and
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: quick dangers and sudden deaths of the queen's love making.
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: To des say, of Dessay's love making to the Queen's daughter,
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: And of Dessay every jo crushed, still alive, staked out
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: on the reef at low tide, to be eaten by
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: the sharks. Of the coming of the plague, of the
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: beating of tom toms, and the exercising of the devil
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: devil doctors. Of the flight over the man trapped wild
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: pig runs of the mountain bushmen, and of the final
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: rescue by Tasman, he who was hatcheted only last year,
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: and whose head repose in some Melanesian stronghold, and all
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: breathing of the warmth and abandoned and savagery of the
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: burning islands of the sun. And despite himself, Frederick sat entranced,
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: And when all the tale was told, he was aware
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: of a queer emptiness. He remembered back to his boyhood,
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: when he had poured over the illustrations in the old
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: fashioned geography. He too of amazing adventures in far places,
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: and desired to go out on the shining ways, And
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: he had planned to go, yet he had known only
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: work and duty. Perhaps that was the difference. Perhaps that
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: was the secret of the strange wisdom in his brother's eyes.
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: For the moment, faint and far vicariously, he glimpsed the
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: lordly vision his brother had seen. He remembered a sharp
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: saying of Polly's, you have missed romance. It traded it
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: for dividends. She was right and yet not fair. He
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: had wanted romance, but the work had been placed ready
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: to his hand. He had toiled and moiled day and night,
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: and been faithful to his trust. Yet he had missed
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: love and the world living. That was forever a whisper
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: in his brother. And what had Tom done to deserve it?
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: A wastrel and an idle singer of songs. His place
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: was high. He was going to be the next governor
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: of California. But what man would come to him and
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: lie to him out of love? The thought of all
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: his property seemed to put a dry and gritty taste
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: in his mouth. Property, now that he looked at it,
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: one thousand dollars was like any other thousand dollars, and
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: one day of his days was like any other day.
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: He had never made the pictures in the geography come true.
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: He had not struck his man, nor lighted his cigar
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: at a match held in a woman's hand, a man
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: could sleep in only one bed at a time. Tom
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: had said that he shuddered as he strove to estimate
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: how many beds he owned, how many blankets he had bought,
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: And all the beds and blankets would not buy one
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: man to come from the end of the earth and
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: grip his hand and cry, by the Turtles of Tasman
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: something of all this? He told Polly, an undercurrent of
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: complaint at the unfairness of things in his tale, And
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: she had answered, it couldn't have been otherwise. Father bought it.
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: He never drove bargains. It was a royal thing, and
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: he paid for it royally. You grudged the price, don't
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: you see? You save your arteries and your money, and
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: kept your feet dry. End of Part five, Part six
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: of By the Turtles of Tasman by Jack London. This
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: LibriVox recording is in the Puppet Domain, reading by my Perrard.
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: Part six. On an afternoon in the late fall, all
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: were gathered about the big chair, and Captain Tom, though
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: he did not know it, he had drowsed the whole
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: day through, and only just awakened to call for his
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: ukulele and light a cigarette. At Polly's hand, but the
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: ukulele lay idle on his arm, and though the pine
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: logs crackled in the huge fireplace, he shivered and took
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: note of the cold. It's a good sign, he said,
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: unaware that the faintness of his voice drew the heads
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: of his listeners closer. The cold weather will be a tonic.
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: It's a hard job to work the tropics out of
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: one's blood. But I'm beginning to shape up now for
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: the Kuska king in the spring, Polly, we start with
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: the dogs and you'll see the midnight sun. How your
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: mother would have liked the trip. She was a game
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: one forty sleeps with the dogs and will be shaken
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: out yellow nuggets from the moss roots. Larabie has some
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: fine animals. I know the breed. They're timberwolves, that's what
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: they are, big, great timberwolves, though they sport brown. About
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: one in a litter, isn't that right, Bennington? One in
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: a litter, that's just about the average Bennington, the Yukonner
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: replied promptly, but in a voice coarsely recognizable. And you
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: must never travel alone with them. Captain Tom went on,
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: for if you fool down, they'll jump you Larabie's brutes
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: only respect a man when he stands upright on his legs.
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: When he goes down, he's meat. I remember coming over
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: the divide from Tanana to Circle City. That was before
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: the Klondyke striped. It was ninety four no ninety five,
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: and the bottom had dropped out of the thermometer. There
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: was a young Canadian with the outfit. His aim was
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: it was a peculiar one. Wait a minute, it will
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: come to me. His voice ceased utterly, though his lips
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: still moved. A look of unbelief in vast surprise dawned
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: on his face. Followed a sharp, convulsive shudder, and in
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: that moment, without warning, he saw death. He looked clear
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: eyed and steady, as if pondering, then turned to Polly.
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: His hand moved impotently as if to reach hers, and
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: when he found it, his fingers could not close. He
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: gazed at her with a great smile that slowly faded.
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: The eyes drooped as the life went out, and remained
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: a face of quietude and repose. The ukulele clattered to
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: the floor. One by one. They went softly from the room,
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: leaving Polly alone From the veranda. Frederick watched a man
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: coming up the driveway. By the roll of the sea
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: in his walk, Frederick could guess for whom the stranger came.
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: The face was swarthy with sun and wrinkled with age.
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: That was given the lie by the briskness of his
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: movements and the alertness in the keen black eyes. In
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: the lobe of each ear was a tiny circlet of gold.
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: How do ye do, sir, the man said, And it
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: was patent that English was not the tongue he had
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: learned at his mother's knee. How's Captain Tom? They told
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: me in the town that he was sick. My brother
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: is dead, Frederick answered. The stranger turned his head and
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: gazed out over the park like grounds and up to
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: the distant redwood peaks, and Frederick noted that he swallowed
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: with an effort. By the turtles of Tassman, he was
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: a man, he said, in a deep changed voice. By
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: the turtles of Tasman, he was a man, Frederick repeated,
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: Nor did he stumble over the unaccustomed oath end of
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: Part six. End of By the Turtles of Tasma by
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: Jack London