"Say, Joe," was his greeting to his old-time working-mate next
morning, "there's a Frenchman out on Twenty-eighth Street. He's
made a pot of money, and he's going back to France. It's a dandy,
well-appointed, small steam laundry. There's a start for you if
you want to settle down. Here, take this; buy some clothes with it
and be at this man's office by ten o'clock. He looked up the
laundry for me, and he'll take you out and show you around. If you
like it, and think it is worth the price - twelve thousand - let me
know and it is yours. Now run along. I'm busy. I'll see you
later."

"Now look here, Mart," the other said slowly, with kindling anger,
"I come here this mornin' to see you. Savve? I didn't come here
to get no laundry. I come a here for a talk for old friends' sake,
and you shove a laundry at me. I tell you, what you can do. You
can take that laundry an' go to hell."

He was out of the room when Martin caught him and whirled him
around.

"Now look here, Joe," he said; "if you act that way, I'll punch
your head. An for old friends' sake I'll punch it hard. Savve? -
you will, will you?"

Joe had clinched and attempted to throw him, and he was twisting
and writhing out of the advantage of the other's hold. They reeled
about the room, locked in each other's arms, and came down with a
crash across the splintered wreckage of a wicker chair. Joe was
underneath, with arms spread out and held and with Martin's knee on
his chest. He was panting and gasping for breath when Martin
released him.

"Now we'll talk a moment," Martin said. "You can't get fresh with
me. I want that laundry business finished first of all. Then you
can come back and we'll talk for old sake's sake. I told you I was
busy. Look at that."

A servant had just come in with the morning mail, a great mass of
letters and magazines.

"How can I wade through that and talk with you? You go and fix up
that laundry, and then we'll get together."

"All right," Joe admitted reluctantly. "I thought you was turnin'
me down, but I guess I was mistaken. But you can't lick me, Mart,
in a stand-up fight. I've got the reach on you."

"We'll put on the gloves sometime and see," Martin said with a
smile.

"Sure; as soon as I get that laundry going." Joe extended his arm.
"You see that reach? It'll make you go a few."

Martin heaved a sigh of relief when the door closed behind the
laundryman. He was becoming anti-social. Daily he found it a
severer strain to be decent with people. Their presence perturbed
him, and the effort of conversation irritated him. They made him
restless, and no sooner was he in contact with them than he was
casting about for excuses to get rid of them.

He did not proceed to attack his mail, and for a half hour he
lolled in his chair, doing nothing, while no more than vague, half-
formed thoughts occasionally filtered through his intelligence, or
rather, at wide intervals, themselves constituted the flickering of
his intelligence.

He roused himself and began glancing through his mail. There were
a dozen requests for autographs - he knew them at sight; there were
professional begging letters; and there were letters from cranks,
ranging from the man with a working model of perpetual motion, and
the man who demonstrated that the surface of the earth was the
inside of a hollow sphere, to the man seeking financial aid to
purchase the Peninsula of Lower California for the purpose of
communist colonization. There were letters from women seeking to
know him, and over one such he smiled, for enclosed was her receipt
for pew-rent, sent as evidence of her good faith and as proof of
her respectability.

Editors and publishers contributed to the daily heap of letters,
the former on their knees for his manuscripts, the latter on their
knees for his books - his poor disdained manuscripts that had kept
all he possessed in pawn for so many dreary months in order to find
them in postage. There were unexpected checks for English serial
rights and for advance payments on foreign translations. His
English agent announced the sale of German translation rights in
three of his books, and informed him that Swedish editions, from
which he could expect nothing because Sweden was not a party to the
Berne Convention, were already on the market. Then there was a
nominal request for his permission for a Russian translation, that
country being likewise outside the Berne Convention.

He turned to the huge bundle of clippings which had come in from
his press bureau, and read about himself and his vogue, which had
become a furore. All his creative output had been flung to the
public in one magnificent sweep. That seemed to account for it.
He had taken the public off its feet, the way Kipling had, that
time when he lay near to death and all the mob, animated by a mob-
mind thought, began suddenly to read him. Martin remembered how
that same world-mob, having read him and acclaimed him and not
understood him in the least, had, abruptly, a few months later,
flung itself upon him and torn him to pieces. Martin grinned at
the thought. Who was he that he should not be similarly treated in
a few more months? Well, he would fool the mob. He would be away,
in the South Seas, building his grass house, trading for pearls and
copra, jumping reefs in frail outriggers, catching sharks and
bonitas, hunting wild goats among the cliffs of the valley that lay
next to the valley of Taiohae.

In the moment of that thought the desperateness of his situation
dawned upon him. He saw, cleared eyed, that he was in the Valley
of the Shadow. All the life that was in him was fading, fainting,
making toward death.

He realized how much he slept, and how much he desired to sleep.
Of old, he had hated sleep. It had robbed him of precious moments
of living. Four hours of sleep in the twenty-four had meant being
robbed of four hours of life. How he had grudged sleep! Now it
was life he grudged. Life was not good; its taste in his mouth was
without tang, and bitter. This was his peril. Life that did not
yearn toward life was in fair way toward ceasing. Some remote
instinct for preservation stirred in him, and he knew he must get
away. He glanced about the room, and the thought of packing was
burdensome. Perhaps it would be better to leave that to the last.
In the meantime he might be getting an outfit.

He put on his hat and went out, stopping in at a gun-store, where
he spent the remainder of the morning buying automatic rifles,
ammunition, and fishing tackle. Fashions changed in trading, and
he knew he would have to wait till he reached Tahiti before
ordering his trade-goods. They could come up from Australia,
anyway. This solution was a source of pleasure. He had avoided
doing something, and the doing of anything just now was unpleasant.
He went back to the hotel gladly, with a feeling of satisfaction in
that the comfortable Morris chair was waiting for him; and he
groaned inwardly, on entering his room, at sight of Joe in the
Morris chair.

Joe was delighted with the laundry. Everything was settled, and he
would enter into possession next day. Martin lay on the bed, with
closed eyes, while the other talked on. Martin's thoughts were far
away - so far away that he was rarely aware that he was thinking.
It was only by an effort that he occasionally responded. And yet
this was Joe, whom he had always liked. But Joe was too keen with
life. The boisterous impact of it on Martin's jaded mind was a
hurt. It was an aching probe to his tired sensitiveness. When Joe
reminded him that sometime in the future they were going to put on
the gloves together, he could almost have screamed.

"Remember, Joe, you're to run the laundry according to those old
rules you used to lay down at Shelly Hot Springs," he said. "No
overworking. No working at night. And no children at the mangles.
No children anywhere. And a fair wage."

Joe nodded and pulled out a note-book.

"Look at here. I was workin' out them rules before breakfast this
A.M. What d'ye think of them?"

He read them aloud, and Martin approved, worrying at the same time
as to when Joe would take himself off.

It was late afternoon when he awoke. Slowly the fact of life came
back to him. He glanced about the room. Joe had evidently stolen
away after he had dozed off. That was considerate of Joe, he
thought. Then he closed his eyes and slept again.

In the days that followed Joe was too busy organizing and taking
hold of the laundry to bother him much; and it was not until the
day before sailing that the newspapers made the announcement that
he had taken passage on the Mariposa. Once, when the instinct of
preservation fluttered, he went to a doctor and underwent a
searching physical examination. Nothing could be found the matter
with him. His heart and lungs were pronounced magnificent. Every
organ, so far as the doctor could know, was normal and was working
normally.

"There is nothing the matter with you, Mr. Eden," he said,
"positively nothing the matter with you. You are in the pink of
condition. Candidly, I envy you your health. It is superb. Look
at that chest. There, and in your stomach, lies the secret of your
remarkable constitution. Physically, you are a man in a thousand -
in ten thousand. Barring accidents, you should live to be a
hundred."

And Martin knew that Lizzie's diagnosis had been correct.
Physically he was all right. It was his "think-machine" that had
gone wrong, and there was no cure for that except to get away to
the South Seas. The trouble was that now, on the verge of
departure, he had no desire to go. The South Seas charmed him no
more than did bourgeois civilization. There was no zest in the
thought of departure, while the act of departure appalled him as a
weariness of the flesh. He would have felt better if he were
already on board and gone.

The last day was a sore trial. Having read of his sailing in the
morning papers, Bernard Higginbotham, Gertrude, and all the family
came to say good-by, as did Hermann von Schmidt and Marian. Then
there was business to be transacted, bills to be paid, and
everlasting reporters to be endured. He said good-by to Lizzie
Connolly, abruptly, at the entrance to night school, and hurried
away. At the hotel he found Joe, too busy all day with the laundry
to have come to him earlier. It was the last straw, but Martin
gripped the arms of his chair and talked and listened for half an
hour.

"You know, Joe," he said, "that you are not tied down to that
laundry. There are no strings on it. You can sell it any time and
blow the money. Any time you get sick of it and want to hit the
road, just pull out. Do what will make you the happiest."

Joe shook his head.

"No more road in mine, thank you kindly. Hoboin's all right,
exceptin' for one thing - the girls. I can't help it, but I'm a
ladies' man. I can't get along without 'em, and you've got to get
along without 'em when you're hoboin'. The times I've passed by
houses where dances an' parties was goin' on, an' heard the women
laugh, an' saw their white dresses and smiling faces through the
windows - Gee! I tell you them moments was plain hell. I like
dancin' an' picnics, an' walking in the moonlight, an' all the rest
too well. Me for the laundry, and a good front, with big iron
dollars clinkin' in my jeans. I seen a girl already, just
yesterday, and, d'ye know, I'm feelin' already I'd just as soon
marry her as not. I've ben whistlin' all day at the thought of it.
She's a beaut, with the kindest eyes and softest voice you ever
heard. Me for her, you can stack on that. Say, why don't you get
married with all this money to burn? You could get the finest girl
in the land."

Martin shook his head with a smile, but in his secret heart he was
wondering why any man wanted to marry. It seemed an amazing and
incomprehensible thing.

From the deck of the Mariposa, at the sailing hour, he saw Lizzie
Connolly hiding in the skirts of the crowd on the wharf. Take her
with you, came the thought. It is easy to be kind. She will be
supremely happy. It was almost a temptation one moment, and the
succeeding moment it became a terror. He was in a panic at the
thought of it. His tired soul cried out in protest. He turned
away from the rail with a groan, muttering, "Man, you are too sick,
you are too sick."

He fled to his stateroom, where he lurked until the steamer was
clear of the dock. In the dining saloon, at luncheon, he found
himself in the place of honor, at the captain's right; and he was
not long in discovering that he was the great man on board. But no
more unsatisfactory great man ever sailed on a ship. He spent the
afternoon in a deck-chair, with closed eyes, dozing brokenly most
of the time, and in the evening went early to bed.

After the second day, recovered from seasickness, the full
passenger list was in evidence, and the more he saw of the
passengers the more he disliked them. Yet he knew that he did them
injustice. They were good and kindly people, he forced himself to
acknowledge, and in the moment of acknowledgment he qualified -
good and kindly like all the bourgeoisie, with all the
psychological cramp and intellectual futility of their kind, they
bored him when they talked with him, their little superficial minds
were so filled with emptiness; while the boisterous high spirits
and the excessive energy of the younger people shocked him. They
were never quiet, ceaselessly playing deck-quoits, tossing rings,
promenading, or rushing to the rail with loud cries to watch the
leaping porpoises and the first schools of flying fish.

He slept much. After breakfast he sought his deck-chair with a
magazine he never finished. The printed pages tired him. He
puzzled that men found so much to write about, and, puzzling, dozed
in his chair. When the gong awoke him for luncheon, he was
irritated that he must awaken. There was no satisfaction in being
awake.

Once, he tried to arouse himself from his lethargy, and went
forward into the forecastle with the sailors. But the breed of
sailors seemed to have changed since the days he had lived in the
forecastle. He could find no kinship with these stolid-faced, ox-
minded bestial creatures. He was in despair. Up above nobody had
wanted Martin Eden for his own sake, and he could not go back to
those of his own class who had wanted him in the past. He did not
want them. He could not stand them any more than he could stand
the stupid first-cabin passengers and the riotous young people.

Life was to him like strong, white light that hurts the tired eyes
of a sick person. During every conscious moment life blazed in a
raw glare around him and upon him. It hurt. It hurt intolerably.
It was the first time in his life that Martin had travelled first
class. On ships at sea he had always been in the forecastle, the
steerage, or in the black depths of the coal-hold, passing coal.
In those days, climbing up the iron ladders out the pit of stifling
heat, he had often caught glimpses of the passengers, in cool
white, doing nothing but enjoy themselves, under awnings spread to
keep the sun and wind away from them, with subservient stewards
taking care of their every want and whim, and it had seemed to him
that the realm in which they moved and had their being was nothing
else than paradise. Well, here he was, the great man on board, in
the midmost centre of it, sitting at the captain's right hand, and
yet vainly harking back to forecastle and stoke-hole in quest of
the Paradise he had lost. He had found no new one, and now he
could not find the old one.

He strove to stir himself and find something to interest him. He
ventured the petty officers' mess, and was glad to get away. He
talked with a quartermaster off duty, an intelligent man who
promptly prodded him with the socialist propaganda and forced into
his hands a bunch of leaflets and pamphlets. He listened to the
man expounding the slave-morality, and as he listened, he thought
languidly of his own Nietzsche philosophy. But what was it worth,
after all? He remembered one of Nietzsche's mad utterances wherein
that madman had doubted truth. And who was to say? Perhaps
Nietzsche had been right. Perhaps there was no truth in anything,
no truth in truth - no such thing as truth. But his mind wearied
quickly, and he was content to go back to his chair and doze.

Miserable as he was on the steamer, a new misery came upon him.
What when the steamer reached Tahiti? He would have to go ashore.
He would have to order his trade-goods, to find a passage on a
schooner to the Marquesas, to do a thousand and one things that
were awful to contemplate. Whenever he steeled himself
deliberately to think, he could see the desperate peril in which he
stood. In all truth, he was in the Valley of the Shadow, and his
danger lay in that he was not afraid. If he were only afraid, he
would make toward life. Being unafraid, he was drifting deeper
into the shadow. He found no delight in the old familiar things of
life. The Mariposa was now in the northeast trades, and this wine
of wind, surging against him, irritated him. He had his chair
moved to escape the embrace of this lusty comrade of old days and
nights.

The day the Mariposa entered the doldrums, Martin was more
miserable than ever. He could no longer sleep. He was soaked with
sleep, and perforce he must now stay awake and endure the white
glare of life. He moved about restlessly. The air was sticky and
humid, and the rain-squalls were unrefreshing. He ached with life.
He walked around the deck until that hurt too much, then sat in his
chair until he was compelled to walk again. He forced himself at
last to finish the magazine, and from the steamer library he culled
several volumes of poetry. But they could not hold him, and once
more he took to walking.

He stayed late on deck, after dinner, but that did not help him,
for when he went below, he could not sleep. This surcease from
life had failed him. It was too much. He turned on the electric
light and tried to read. One of the volumes was a Swinburne. He
lay in bed, glancing through its pages, until suddenly he became
aware that he was reading with interest. He finished the stanza,
attempted to read on, then came back to it. He rested the book
face downward on his breast and fell to thinking. That was it.
The very thing. Strange that it had never come to him before.
That was the meaning of it all; he had been drifting that way all
the time, and now Swinburne showed him that it was the happy way
out. He wanted rest, and here was rest awaiting him. He glanced
at the open port-hole. Yes, it was large enough. For the first
time in weeks he felt happy. At last he had discovered the cure of
his ill. He picked up the book and read the stanza slowly aloud:-


"'From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives forever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.'"


He looked again at the open port. Swinburne had furnished the key.
Life was ill, or, rather, it had become ill - an unbearable thing.
"That dead men rise up never!" That line stirred him with a
profound feeling of gratitude. It was the one beneficent thing in
the universe. When life became an aching weariness, death was
ready to soothe away to everlasting sleep. But what was he waiting
for? It was time to go.

He arose and thrust his head out the port-hole, looking down into
the milky wash. The Mariposa was deeply loaded, and, hanging by
his hands, his feet would be in the water. He could slip in
noiselessly. No one would hear. A smother of spray dashed up,
wetting his face. It tasted salt on his lips, and the taste was
good. He wondered if he ought to write a swan-song, but laughed
the thought away. There was no time. He was too impatient to be
gone.

Turning off the light in his room so that it might not betray him,
he went out the port-hole feet first. His shoulders stuck, and he
forced himself back so as to try it with one arm down by his side.
A roll of the steamer aided him, and he was through, hanging by his
hands. When his feet touched the sea, he let go. He was in a
milky froth of water. The side of the Mariposa rushed past him
like a dark wall, broken here and there by lighted ports. She was
certainly making time. Almost before he knew it, he was astern,
swimming gently on the foam-crackling surface.

A bonita struck at his white body, and he laughed aloud. It had
taken a piece out, and the sting of it reminded him of why he was
there. In the work to do he had forgotten the purpose of it. The
lights of the Mariposa were growing dim in the distance, and there
he was, swimming confidently, as though it were his intention to
make for the nearest land a thousand miles or so away.

It was the automatic instinct to live. He ceased swimming, but the
moment he felt the water rising above his mouth the hands struck
out sharply with a lifting movement. The will to live, was his
thought, and the thought was accompanied by a sneer. Well, he had
will, - ay, will strong enough that with one last exertion it could
destroy itself and cease to be.

He changed his position to a vertical one. He glanced up at the
quiet stars, at the same time emptying his lungs of air. With
swift, vigorous propulsion of hands and feet, he lifted his
shoulders and half his chest out of water. This was to gain
impetus for the descent. Then he let himself go and sank without
movement, a white statue, into the sea. He breathed in the water
deeply, deliberately, after the manner of a man taking an
anaesthetic. When he strangled, quite involuntarily his arms and
legs clawed the water and drove him up to the surface and into the
clear sight of the stars.

The will to live, he thought disdainfully, vainly endeavoring not
to breathe the air into his bursting lungs. Well, he would have to
try a new way. He filled his lungs with air, filled them full.
This supply would take him far down. He turned over and went down
head first, swimming with all his strength and all his will.
Deeper and deeper he went. His eyes were open, and he watched the
ghostly, phosphorescent trails of the darting bonita. As he swam,
he hoped that they would not strike at him, for it might snap the
tension of his will. But they did not strike, and he found time to
be grateful for this last kindness of life.

Down, down, he swam till his arms and leg grew tired and hardly
moved. He knew that he was deep. The pressure on his ear-drums
was a pain, and there was a buzzing in his head. His endurance was
faltering, but he compelled his arms and legs to drive him deeper
until his will snapped and the air drove from his lungs in a great
explosive rush. The bubbles rubbed and bounded like tiny balloons
against his cheeks and eyes as they took their upward flight. Then
came pain and strangulation. This hurt was not death, was the
thought that oscillated through his reeling consciousness. Death
did not hurt. It was life, the pangs of life, this awful,
suffocating feeling; it was the last blow life could deal him.

His wilful hands and feet began to beat and churn about,
spasmodically and feebly. But he had fooled them and the will to
live that made them beat and churn. He was too deep down. They
could never bring him to the surface. He seemed floating languidly
in a sea of dreamy vision. Colors and radiances surrounded him and
bathed him and pervaded him. What was that? It seemed a
lighthouse; but it was inside his brain - a flashing, bright white
light. It flashed swifter and swifter. There was a long rumble of
sound, and it seemed to him that he was falling down a vast and
interminable stairway. And somewhere at the bottom he fell into
darkness. That much he knew. He had fallen into darkness. And at
the instant he knew, he ceased to know.