by Robert Reed
stance, when he smacked his lips and champed his gums while mut-
tering: “Mayonnaise! Just think—mayonnaise! And it’s sixty years
since the last was ever made! Two generations and never a smell of
it! Why, in those days it was served in every restaurant with crab .”
When he could eat no more, the old man sighed, wiped his hands
on his naked legs, and gazed out over the sea . With the content of a
full stomach, he waxed reminiscent .
“To think of it! I’ve seen this beach alive with men, women, and
children on a pleasant Sunday . And there weren’t any bears to eat
them up, either . And right up there on the cliff was a big restau-
rant where you could get anything you wanted to eat . Four million
people lived in San Francisco then . And now, in the whole city and
county there aren’t forty all told . And out there on the sea were ships
and ships always to be seen, going in for the Golden Gate or coming
out. And airships in the air—dirigibles and flying machines. They
could travel two hundred miles an hour . The mail contracts with
the New York and San Francisco Limited demanded that for the
minimum . There was a chap, a Frenchman, I forget his name, who
succeeded in making three hundred; but the thing was risky, too
risky for conservative persons . But he was on the right clew, and he
would have managed it if it hadn’t been for the Great Plague . When
I was a boy, there were men alive who remembered the coming of
the first aeroplanes, and now I have lived to see the last of them, and
that sixty years ago .”
THE SCARLET PLAGUE, by Jack London | 748
The old man babbled on, unheeded by the boys, who were long
accustomed to his garrulousness, and whose vocabularies, besides,
lacked the greater portion of the words he used . It was noticeable
that in these rambling soliloquies his English seemed to recrudesce
into better construction and phraseology . But when he talked di-
rectly with the boys it lapsed, largely, into their own uncouth and
simpler forms .
“But there weren’t many crabs in those days,” the old man wan-
dered on. “They were fished out, and they were great delicacies.
The open season was only a month long, too . And now crabs are
accessible the whole year around . Think of it—catching all the crabs
you want, any time you want, in the surf of the Cliff House beach!”
A sudden commotion among the goats brought the boys to their
feet. The dogs about the fire rushed to join their snarling fellow who
guarded the goats, while the goats themselves stampeded in the di-
rection of their human protectors . A half dozen forms, lean and gray,
glided about on the sand hillocks and faced the bristling dogs . Edwin
arched an arrow that fell short . But Hare-Lip, with a sling such as
David carried into battle against Goliath, hurled a stone through the
air that whistled from the speed of its flight. It fell squarely among
the wolves and caused them to slink away toward the dark depths of
the eucalyptus forest .
The boys laughed and lay down again in the sand, while Granser
sighed ponderously . He had eaten too much, and, with hands clasped
on his paunch, the fingers interlaced, he resumed his maunderings.
“‘The fleeting systems lapse like foam,’” he mumbled what was
evidently a quotation. “That’s it—foam, and fleeting. All man’s toil
upon the planet was just so much foam . He domesticated the ser-
viceable animals, destroyed the hostile ones, and cleared the land of
its wild vegetation. And then he passed, and the flood of primordial
life rolled back again, sweeping his handiwork away—the weeds
and the forest inundated his fields, the beasts of prey swept over
his flocks, and now there are wolves on the Cliff House beach.” He
was appalled by the thought . “Where four million people disported
themselves, the wild wolves roam to-day, and the savage progeny
THE SCARLET PLAGUE, by Jack London | 749
of our loins, with prehistoric weapons, defend themselves against
the fanged despoilers . Think of it! And all because of the Scarlet
Death—”
The adjective had caught Hare-Lip’s ear .
“He’s always saying that,” he said to Edwin . “What is scarlet?”
“‘The scarlet of the maples can shake me like the cry of bugles
going by,’” the old man quoted .
“It’s red,” Edwin answered the question . “And you don’t know it
because you come from the Chauffeur Tribe . They never did know
nothing, none of them . Scarlet is red—I know that .”
“Red is red, ain’t it?” Hare-Lip grumbled . “Then what’s the good
of gettin’ cocky and calling it scarlet?”
“Granser, what for do you always say so much what nobody
knows?” he asked . “Scarlet ain’t anything, but red is red . Why don’t
you say red, then?”
“Red is not the right word,” was the reply . “The plague was scar-
let . The whole face and body turned scarlet in an hour’s time . Don’t
I know? Didn’t I see enough of it? And I am telling you it was scarlet
because—well, because it was scarlet . There is no other word for it .”
“Red is good enough for me,” Hare-Lip muttered obstinately .
“My dad calls red red, and he ought to know . He says everybody
died of the Red Death .”
“Your dad is a common fellow, descended from a common fel-
low,” Granser retorted heatedly . “Don’t I know the beginnings of the
Chauffeurs? Your grandsire was a chauffeur, a servant, and without
education . He worked for other persons . But your grandmother was
of good stock, only the children did not take after her . Don’t I re-
member when I first met them, catching fish at Lake Temescal?”
“What is education?” Edwin asked .
“Calling red scarlet,” Hare-Lip sneered, then returned to the at-
tack on Granser . “My dad told me, an’ he got it from his dad afore
he croaked, that your wife was a Santa Rosan, an’ that she was sure
no account . He said she was a hash-slinger before the Red Death,
though I don’t know what a hash-slinger is . You can tell me, Edwin .”
But Edwin shook his head in token of ignorance .
THE SCARLET PLAGUE, by Jack London | 750
“It is true, she was a waitress,” Granser acknowledged . “But she
was a good woman, and your mother was her daughter . Women
were very scarce in the days after the Plague . She was the only wife
I could find, even if she was a hash-slinger, as your father calls it.
But it is not nice to talk about our progenitors that way .”
“Dad says that the wife of the first Chauffeur was a lady—”
“What’s a lady?” Hoo-Hoo demanded .
“A lady’s a Chauffeur squaw,” was the quick reply of Hare-Lip .
“The first Chauffeur was Bill, a common fellow, as I said be-
fore,” the old man expounded; “but his wife was a lady, a great lady .
Before the Scarlet Death she was the wife of Van Worden . He was
President of the Board of Industrial Magnates, and was one of the
dozen men who ruled A
merica . He was worth one billion, eight hun-
dred millions of dollars—coins like you have there in your pouch,
Edwin . And then came the Scarlet Death, and his wife became the
wife of Bill, the first Chauffeur. He used to beat her, too. I have seen
it myself .”
Hoo-Hoo, lying on his stomach and idly digging his toes in the
sand, cried out and investigated, first, his toe-nail, and next, the small
hole he had dug . The other two boys joined him, excavating the sand
rapidly with their hands till there lay three skeletons exposed . Two
were of adults, the third being that of a part-grown child . The old
man hudged along on the ground and peered at the find.
“Plague victims,” he announced . “That’s the way they died ev-
erywhere in the last days . This must have been a family, running
away from the contagion and perishing here on the Cliff House
beach . They—what are you doing, Edwin?”
This question was asked in sudden dismay, as Edwin, using the
back of his hunting knife, began to knock out the teeth from the jaws
of one of the skulls .
“Going to string ’em,” was the response .
The three boys were now hard at it; and quite a knocking and
hammering arose, in which Granser babbled on unnoticed .
“You are true savages . Already has begun the custom of wear-
ing human teeth . In another generation you will be perforating your
THE SCARLET PLAGUE, by Jack London | 751
noses and ears and wearing ornaments of bone and shell . I know .
The human race is doomed to sink back farther and farther into the
primitive night ere again it begins its bloody climb upward to civili-
zation . When we increase and feel the lack of room, we will proceed
to kill one another . And then I suppose you will wear human scalp-
locks at your waist, as well—as you, Edwin, who are the gentlest of
my grandsons, have already begun with that vile pigtail . Throw it
away, Edwin, boy; throw it away .”
“What a gabble the old geezer makes,” Hare-Lip remarked, when,
the teeth all extracted, they began an attempt at equal division .
They were very quick and abrupt in their actions, and their
speech, in moments of hot discussion over the allotment of the
choicer teeth, was truly a gabble . They spoke in monosyllables and
short jerky sentences that was more a gibberish than a language .
And yet, through it ran hints of grammatical construction, and ap-
peared vestiges of the conjugation of some superior culture . Even
the speech of Granser was so corrupt that were it put down literally
it would be almost so much nonsense to the reader . This, however,
was when he talked with the boys .
When he got into the full swing of babbling to himself, it slowly
purged itself into pure English . The sentences grew longer and were
enunciated with a rhythm and ease that was reminiscent of the lec-
ture platform .
“Tell us about the Red Death, Granser,” Hare-Lip demanded,
when the teeth affair had been satisfactorily concluded .
“The Scarlet Death,” Edwin corrected .
“An’ don’t work all that funny lingo on us,” Hare-Lip went on .
“Talk sensible, Granser, like a Santa Rosan ought to talk . Other
Santa Rosans don’t talk like you .”
II
The old man showed pleasure in being thus called upon . He
cleared his throat and began .
THE SCARLET PLAGUE, by Jack London | 752
“Twenty or thirty years ago my story was in great demand . But in
these days nobody seems interested—”
“There you go!” Hare-Lip cried hotly . “Cut out the funny stuff
and talk sensible . What’s interested? You talk like a baby that don’t
know how .”
“Let him alone,” Edwin urged, “or he’ll get mad and won’t talk
at all . Skip the funny places . We’ll catch on to some of what he tells
us .”“Let her go, Granser,” Hoo-Hoo encouraged; for the old man was
already maundering about the disrespect for elders and the rever-
sion to cruelty of all humans that fell from high culture to primitive
conditions .
The tale began .
“There were very many people in the world in those days . San
Francisco alone held four millions—”
“What is millions?” Edwin interrupted .
Granser looked at him kindly .
“I know you cannot count beyond ten, so I will tell you . Hold up
your two hands. On both of them you have altogether ten fingers
and thumbs . Very well . I now take this grain of sand—you hold it,
Hoo-Hoo .” He dropped the grain of sand into the lad’s palm and
went on. “Now that grain of sand stands for the ten fingers of Edwin.
I add another grain. That’s ten more fingers. And I add another, and
another, and another, until I have added as many grains as Edwin has
fingers and thumbs. That makes what I call one hundred. Remember
that word—one hundred . Now I put this pebble in Hare-Lip’s hand .
It stands for ten grains of sand, or ten tens of fingers, or one hundred
fingers. I put in ten pebbles. They stand for a thousand fingers. I take
a mussel-shell, and it stands for ten pebbles, or one hundred grains
of sand, or one thousand fingers.…” And so on, laboriously, and
with much reiteration, he strove to build up in their minds a crude
conception of numbers . As the quantities increased, he had the boys
holding different magnitudes in each of their hands . For still higher
sums, he laid the symbols on the log of driftwood; and for symbols
he was hard put, being compelled to use the teeth from the skulls for
THE SCARLET PLAGUE, by Jack London | 753
millions, and the crab-shells for billions . It was here that he stopped,
for the boys were showing signs of becoming tired .
“There were four million people in San Francisco—four teeth .”
The boys’ eyes ranged along from the teeth and from hand to
hand, down through the pebbles and sand-grains to Edwin’s fingers.
And back again they ranged along the ascending series in the effort
to grasp such inconceivable numbers .
“That was a lot of folks, Granser,” Edwin at last hazarded .
“Like sand on the beach here, like sand on the beach, each grain
of sand a man, or woman, or child . Yes, my boy, all those people
lived right here in San Francisco . And at one time or another all
those people came out on this very beach—more people than there
are grains of sand . More—more—more . And San Francisco was a
noble city . And across the bay—where we camped last year, even
more people lived, clear from Point Richmond, on the level ground
and on the hills, all the way around to San Leandro—one great city
of seven million people .—Seven teeth…there, that’s it, seven mil-
lions .”
Again the boys’ eyes ranged up and down from Edwin’s fingers
to the teeth on the log .
“The world was full of people . The census of 2010 gave eight
billions for the whole world—eight crab-shells, yes, eight billions . It
was not like to-day . Mankind knew a great deal more
about getting
food . And the more food there was, the more people there were . In
the year 1800, there were one hundred and seventy millions in Eu-
rope alone . One hundred years later—a grain of sand, Hoo-Hoo—
one hundred years later, at 1900, there were five hundred millions
in Europe—five grains of sand, Hoo-Hoo, and this one tooth. This
shows how easy was the getting of food, and how men increased .
And in the year 2000 there were fifteen hundred millions in Europe.
And it was the same all over the rest of the world . Eight crab-shells
there, yes, eight billion people were alive on the earth when the
Scarlet Death began .
“I was a young man when the Plague came—twenty-seven years
old; and I lived on the other side of San Francisco Bay, in Berkeley .
THE SCARLET PLAGUE, by Jack London | 754
You remember those great stone houses, Edwin, when we came
down the hills from Contra Costa? That was where I lived, in those
stone houses . I was a professor of English literature .”
Much of this was over the heads of the boys, but they strove to
comprehend dimly this tale of the past .
“What was them stone houses for?” Hare-Lip queried .
“You remember when your dad taught you to swim?” The boy
nodded . “Well, in the University of California—that is the name we
had for the houses—we taught young men and women how to think,
just as I have taught you now, by sand and pebbles and shells, to
know how many people lived in those days . There was very much to
teach . The young men and women we taught were called students .
We had large rooms in which we taught . I talked to them, forty or
fifty at a time, just as I am talking to you now. I told them about the
books other men had written before their time, and even, sometimes,
in their time—”
“Was that all you did?—just talk, talk, talk?” Hoo-Hoo demand-
ed . “Who hunted your meat for you? and milked the goats? and
caught the fish?”
“A sensible question, Hoo-Hoo, a sensible question . As I have
told you, in those days food-getting was easy . We were very wise . A
few men got the food for many men . The other men did other things .
As you say, I talked . I talked all the time, and for this food was
given me—much food, fine food, beautiful food, food that I have not
tasted in sixty years and shall never taste again . I sometimes think