The Heathen
| "The Heathen" | |
|---|---|
| Author | Jack London |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Short story |
| Published in | Everybody's Magazine |
| Publication type | Magazine |
| Publication date | 1910 |
"The Heathen" is a short story by the American writer Jack London. It was first published in Everybody's Magazine in August 1910, and later included in the collection of stories by London, The Strength of the Strong, published by Macmillan in 1914.
In the story, two people, from different cultural and racial backgrounds, are the only survivors of a ship that encounters a hurricane in the Pacific, and they remain together.
In 1907 London began a voyage across the Pacific Ocean in his ketch the Snark, and visited islands in the south Pacific, concluding the voyage in Sydney, Australia. He wrote about the adventure in his book The Cruise of the Snark. "The Heathen" is set among islands that London visited during that period.
The narrator, a pearl buyer named Charley, is a cabin passenger on a schooner, the Petite Jeanne, sailing from Rangiroa to Tahiti with a Kanaka crew, at the end of the pearling season in the Paumotas. The boat, having eighty-five deck passengers, is overloaded. Several passengers die of smallpox; Charley and the other cabin passengers drink whisky, until it runs out, in the belief that it will kill the smallpox germs.
The boat is in the direct path of a hurricane. "The second sea filled the Petite Jeanne's decks flush with the rails, and, as her stern sank down and her bow tossed skyward, all the miserable dunnage of life and luggage poured aft. It was a human torrent.... Out of all my experiences I could not have believed it possible for the wind to blow as it did.... It was a monstrous thing, and the most monstrous thing about it was that it increased and continued to increase."
The Petite Jeanne is destroyed in the hurricane, and Charley survives by clinging to a hatch cover from the boat, sharing it with a Kanaka named Otoo. Eventually Charley loses consciousness, and comes to on the beach of an atoll; Otoo has saved his life by pulling him from the water. They are the only survivors from the Petite Jeanne.
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