The Cruise of the Snark
Jack London
(1876 - 1916)
Read by Bryan Ness, Todd Lennon, Pam Burton, Roger Melin, Jim Allman, Kayo
Run Time 8 Hours 5 Minutes in 8 Audio CDs
The Cruise of the Snark (1913) is a memoir of Jack and Charmian London's 1907-1909 voyage across the Pacific. His descriptions of "surf-riding", which he dubbed a "royal sport", helped introduce it to and popularize it with the mainland. London writes:
Through the white crest of a breaker suddenly appears a dark figure, erect, a man-fish or a sea-god, on the very forward face of the crest where the top falls over and down, driving in toward shore, buried to his loins in smoking spray, caught up by the sea and flung landward, bodily, a quarter of a mile. It is a Kanaka on a surf-board. And I know that when I have finished these lines I shall be out in that riot of colour and pounding surf, trying to bit those breakers even as he, and failing as he never failed, but living life as the best of us may live it.
Chapters:
Foreword
The Inconceivable And Monstrous
Adventure
Finding One's Way About
The First Landfall
A Royal Sport
The Lepers Of Molokai
The House Of The Sun
A Pacific Traverse
Typee
The Nature Man
The High Seat of Abundance
The Stonefishing of Bora Bora
The Amateur Navigator
Cruising in the Solomons
Beche de Mer English
The Amateur M.D.
Backword