Iron Heel by Jack London (Illustrated) (eBook)

Jack London (Autor)

Jack London (Herausgeber)

eBook Download: EPUB

2017
189 Seiten
Publishdrive (Verlag)
978-1-78656-176-3 (ISBN)

Infos

This eBook features the unabridged text of 'The Iron Heel' from the bestselling edition of 'The Complete Works of Jack London'.

Having established their name as the leading publisher of classic literature and art, Delphi Classics produce publications that are individually crafted with superior formatting, while introducing many rare texts for the first time in digital print. The Delphi Classics edition of London includes original annotations and illustrations relating to the life and works of the author, as well as individual tables of contents, allowing you to navigate eBooks quickly and easily.

eBook features:
* The complete unabridged text of 'The Iron Heel'
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* Individual contents table, allowing easy navigation around the eBook
* Excellent formatting of the text

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Textauszug

CHAPTER I

MY EAGLE

The soft summer wind stirs the redwoods, and Wild-Water ripples sweet cadences over its mossy stones. There are butterflies in the sunshine, and from everywhere arises the drowsy hum of bees. It is so quiet and peaceful, and I sit here, and ponder, and am restless. It is the quiet that makes me restless. It seems unreal. All the world is quiet, but it is the quiet before the storm. I strain my ears, and all my senses, for some betrayal of that impending storm. Oh, that it may not be premature! That it may not be premature!*

     * The Second Revolt was largely the work of Ernest Everhard,

     though he cooperated, of course, with the European leaders.

     The capture and secret execution of Everhard was the great

     event of the spring of 1932 A.D.  Yet so thoroughly had he

     prepared for the revolt, that his fellow-conspirators were

     able, with little confusion or delay, to carry out his

     plans.  It was after Everhard’s execution that his wife went

     to Wake Robin Lodge, a small bungalow in the Sonoma Hills of

     California.

Small wonder that I am restless. I think, and think, and I cannot cease from thinking. I have been in the thick of life so long that I am oppressed by the peace and quiet, and I cannot forbear from dwelling upon that mad maelstrom of death and destruction so soon to burst forth. In my ears are the cries of the stricken; and I can see, as I have seen in the past,* all the marring and mangling of the sweet, beautiful flesh, and the souls torn with violence from proud bodies and hurled to God. Thus do we poor humans attain our ends, striving through carnage and destruction to bring lasting peace and happiness upon the earth.

     * Without doubt she here refers to the Chicago Commune.

And then I am lonely. When I do not think of what is to come, I think of what has been and is no more — my Eagle, beating with tireless wings the void, soaring toward what was ever his sun, the flaming ideal of human freedom. I cannot sit idly by and wait the great event that is his making, though he is not here to see. He devoted all the years of his manhood to it, and for it he gave his life. It is his handiwork. He made it.*

     * With all respect to Avis Everhard, it must be pointed out

     that Everhard was but one of many able leaders who planned

     the Second Revolt.  And we to-day, looking back across the

     centuries, can safely say that even had he lived, the Second

     Revolt would not have been less calamitous in its outcome

     than it was.

And so it is, in this anxious time of waiting, that I shall write of my husband. There is much light that I alone of all persons living can throw upon his character, and so noble a character cannot be blazoned forth too brightly. His was a great soul, and, when my love grows unselfish, my chiefest regret is that he is not here to witness to-morrow’s dawn. We cannot fail. He has built too stoutly and too surely for that. Woe to the Iron Heel! Soon shall it be thrust back from off prostrate humanity. When the word goes forth, the labor hosts of all the world shall rise. There has been nothing like it in the history of the world. The solidarity of labor is assured, and for the first time will there be an international revolution wide as the world is wide.*

     * The Second Revolt was truly international.  It was a

     colossal plan — too colossal to be wrought by the genius of

     one man alone. Labor, in all the oligarchies of the world,

     was prepared to rise at the signal.  Germany, Italy, France,

     and all Australasia were labor countries — socialist states.

     They were ready to lend aid to the revolution.  Gallantly

     they did; and it was for this reason, when the Second Revolt

     was crushed, that they, too, were crushed by the united

     oligarchies of the world, their socialist governments being

     replaced by oligarchical governments.

You see, I am full of what is impending. I have lived it day and night utterly and for so long that it is ever present in my mind. For that matter, I cannot think of my husband without thinking of it. He was the soul of it, and how can I possibly separate the two in thought?

As I have said, there is much light that I alone can throw upon his character. It is well known that he toiled hard for liberty and suffered sore. How hard he toiled and how greatly he suffered, I well know; for I have been with him during these twenty anxious years and I know his patience, his untiring effort, his infinite devotion to the Cause for which, only two months gone, he laid down his life.

I shall try to write simply and to tell here how Ernest Everhard entered my life — how I first met him, how he grew until I became a part of him, and the tremendous changes he wrought in my life. In this way may you look at him through my eyes and learn him as I learned him — in all save the things too secret and sweet for me to tell.

It was in February, 1912, that I first met him, when, as a guest of my father’s* at dinner, he came to our house in Berkeley. I cannot say that my very first impression of him was favorable. He was one of many at dinner, and in the drawing-room where we gathered and waited for all to arrive, he made a rather incongruous appearance. It was “preacher’s night,” as my father privately called it, and Ernest was certainly out of place in the midst of the churchmen.

     * John Cunningham, Avis Everhard’s father, was a professor

     at the State University at Berkeley, California.  His chosen

     field was physics, and in addition he did much original

     research and was greatly distinguished as a scientist.  His

     chief contribution to science was his studies of the

     electron and his monumental work on the “Identification of

     Matter and Energy,” wherein he established, beyond cavil and

     for all time, that the ultimate unit of matter and the

     ultimate unit of force were identical.  This idea had been

     earlier advanced, but not demonstrated, by Sir Oliver Lodge

     and other students in the new field of radio-activity.

In the first place, his clothes did not fit him. He wore a ready-made suit of dark cloth that was ill adjusted to his body. In fact, no ready-made suit of clothes ever could fit his body. And on this night, as always, the cloth bulged with his muscles, while the coat between the shoulders, what of the heavy shoulder-development, was a maze of wrinkles. His neck was the neck of a prize-fighter,* thick and strong. So this was the social philosopher and ex-horseshoer my father had discovered, was my thought. And he certainly looked it with those bulging muscles and that bull-throat. Immediately I classified him — a sort of prodigy, I thought, a Blind Tom* * of the working class.

     * In that day it was the custom of men to compete for purses

     of money.  They fought with their hands.  When one was

     beaten into insensibility or killed, the survivor took the

     money.

 

     * * This obscure reference applies to a blind negro musician

     who took the world by storm in the latter half of the

     nineteenth century of the Christian Era.

And then, when he shook hands with me! His handshake was firm and strong, but he looked at me boldly with his black eyes — too boldly, I thought. You see, I was a creature of environment, and at that time had strong class instincts. Such boldness on the part of a man of my own class would have been almost unforgivable. I know that I could not avoid dropping my eyes, and I was quite relieved when I passed him on and turned to greet Bishop Morehouse — a favorite of mine, a sweet and serious man of middle age, Christ-like in appearance and goodness, and a scholar as well.

But this boldness that I took to be presumption was a vital clew to the nature of Ernest Everhard. He was simple, direct, afraid of nothing, and he refused to waste time on conventional mannerisms. “You pleased me,” he explained long afterward; “and why should I not fill my eyes with that which pleases me?” I have said that he was afraid of nothing. He was a natural aristocrat — and this in spite of the fact that he was in the camp of the non-aristocrats. He was a superman, a blond beast such as Nietzsche* has described, and...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 17.7.2017
• Reihe/Serie: Delphi Parts Edition (Jack London)
• Reihe/Serie: Delphi Parts Edition (Jack London)
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Anthologien
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Klassiker / Moderne Klassiker
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• Schlagworte: burning • Call • Cruise • Fang • Novels • Sea • Stories • Twain
• ISBN-10: 1-78656-176-X / 178656176X
• ISBN-13: 978-1-78656-176-3 / 9781786561763