The Red One

The Red One

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Red One, by Jack London (#6 in our series by Jack
London)
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Title: The Red One
Author: Jack London
Release Date: January, 1997 [EBook #788] [This file was first posted on January 25,
1997] [Most recently updated: September 17, 2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE RED ONE ***

Transcribed from the 1919 Mills and Boon edition by David Price, email
[email protected]

THE RED ONE

Contents:
The Red One The Hussy Like Argus of the Ancient Times The Princess

STORY: THE RED ONE

There it was! The abrupt liberation of sound! As he timed it with his watch, Bassett
likened it to the trump of an archangel. Walls of cities, he meditated, might well fall
down before so vast and compelling a summons. For the thousandth time vainly he tried
to analyse the tone-quality of that enormous peal that dominated the land far into the
strong-holds of the surrounding tribes. The mountain gorge which was its source rang to
the rising tide of it until it brimmed over and flooded earth and sky and air. With the
wantonness of a sick man's fancy, he likened it to the mighty cry of some Titan of the
Elder World vexed with misery or wrath. Higher and higher it arose, challenging and
demanding in such profounds of volume that it seemed intended for ears beyond the
narrow confines of the solar system. There was in it, too, the clamour of protest in that
there were no ears to hear and comprehend its utterance.
- Such the sick man's fancy. Still he strove to analyse the sound. Sonorous as thunder was
it, mellow as a golden bell, thin and sweet as a thrummed taut cord of silver--no; it was
none of these, nor a blend of these. There were no words nor semblances in his
vocabulary and experience with which to describe the totality of that sound.
Time passed. Minutes merged into quarters of hours, and quarters of hours into
half-hours, and still the sound persisted, ever changing from its initial vocal impulse yet
never receiving fresh impulse--fading, dimming, dying as enormously as it had sprung
into being. It became a confusion of troubled mutterings and babblings and colossal
whisperings. Slowly it withdrew, sob by sob, into whatever great bosom had birthed it,
until it whimpered deadly whispers of wrath and as equally seductive whispers of delight,
striving still to be heard, to convey some cosmic secret, some understanding of infinite
import and value. It dwindled to a ghost of sound that had lost its menace and promise,
and became a thing that pulsed on in the sick man's consciousness for minutes after it had
ceased. When he could hear it no longer, Bassett glanced at his watch. An hour had
elapsed ere that archangel's trump had subsided into tonal nothingness.
Was this, then, HIS dark tower?--Bassett pondered, remembering his Browning and
gazing at his skeleton-like and fever-wasted hands. And the fancy made him smile--of
Childe Roland bearing a slug-horn to his lips with an arm as feeble as his was. Was it
months, or years, he asked himself, since he first heard that mysterious call on the beach
at Ringmanu? To save himself he could not tell. The long sickness had been most long. In

conscious count of time he knew of months, many of them; but he had no way of
estimating the long intervals of delirium and stupor. And how fared Captain Bateman of
the blackbirder Nari? he wondered; and had Captain Bateman's drunken mate died of
delirium tremens yet?
From which vain speculations, Bassett turned idly to review all that had occurred since
that day on the beach of Ringmanu when he first heard the sound and plunged into the
jungle after it. Sagawa had protested. He could see him yet, his queer little monkeyish