A Ship is Burning: Jack London’s ‘The Seed of McCoy’ (Tales of the Pacific, 1911), or Sailing Away from Pitcairn

A major writer never sails away alone, without any reference or book at hand. Even at the far end of the world, there is always a literary reminiscence, the trace of a volume, a library of sorts, in his cabin, guiding him on his way, like the wake of a ship. When sailing up the Congo River, André Gide had quite naturally Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899) in mind, and Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel The Master of Ballantrae in his luggage:1 his Voyage au Congo (1926–27) is dedicated to ‘the memory of Joseph Conrad’ and includes, on the same page, a quotation from John Keats: ‘Better be imprudent moveables than prudent fixtures’, which may serve as a motto for adventure. This was also the case with Jack London when he left San Francisco and the devastation caused by earthquake (18 April 1906), sailing away on board his ketch the Snark on 23 April 1907: he was embarking on a cruise ‘in the wake of ’ such famous literary predecessors as Herman Melville, Mark Twain and Robert