CHAPTER ONE
THE PELICAN
If it hadn’t been for the pelican, Jack London would have been murdered by the wolves.
Even lulled by the gentle motion of the ship, he had been unable to sleep or rest, though in truth that was all his body craved. His mind burned with memories of his adventures in the north, and each ache, pain, and wound recalled those experiences as surely as a smell or sound. Confined in a cramped ship’s cabin with his friend Merritt Sloper and three weary men whose eyes were flat with defeat, Jack felt his senses sing with yearning. It had been only days since they had departed Alaska. After so long in the wilderness—and with his own wild nature urging him to run, to climb, to live—he felt stifled by that room, and it was inevitable that the pressure would drive him up here, onto the deck.
And so it had been for the last three nights. The days were easier, filled with casual conversations and hours spent gazing into the hazy distance, wrapped against the cold and yet buffeted by the sun. But the nights were more difficult. It was as if the darkness called him into its embrace—not just the false shade of a room without light, but the darkness of infinity.
Jack breathed in the fresh air and held on to the railing, legs shifting slightly as the ship dipped and rose through the gentle Pacific swell. His hair was ruffled by the breeze, and it felt like the hand of a loved one soothing his brow. Perhaps I do need soothing, he thought, because the memory of all he had been through—the deadly Chilkoot Trail, his near death in the great white silence, Lesya, and the dreadful Wendigo—were enough to drive any ordinary person mad. But one thing Jack had learned during his months in the frozen north: he was far from ordinary.
“I’m Jack London,” he said, and the name was amazing to him. This was no self-aggrandizement, no hubris; he had begun to learn what a single human being might be capable of, and wanted to explore that potential to its fullest.
There was a light mist settled on the sea, and a heavier bank of it some distance to starboard. He could make out the waxing moon and the stars as vague smudges above and, turning around, he saw the captain and the best of his crew hunkered in the wheelhouse, doing their utmost to ensure that the Umatilla sailed true and safe. Two men sat in the crow’s nest thirty feet above, their vague shapes and gentle chatter lost to the mist and darkness. Jack walked forward toward the bow, where he knew it was dark and quiet.
He wondered what it would feel like to make a solitary journey across these seas. On his way to Alaska so many months before, he had appreciated the immensity of the ocean, its power, and the respect it required to master it. Now he saw its wildness.
There was movement at the bow. At first he thought it was a clump of impacted snow, or a tangle of material shivering in the breeze. But when he approached, he saw the heavy beak and beady eye, the wings folded in, and the pelican huddled there regarded him with neither trust nor fear.
“Hello, bird,” Jack said softly. He glanced back and up, but no one else seemed to have noticed the creature. Swirls of moisture played across the deck, and the rolling bank of mist to starboard seemed to have moved closer. No one else strolled the deck this late at night. He turned back to the bird, and it had raised its head and half spread its wings.
Jack went to his hands and knees, trying to present no threat to this magnificent creature. He looked it over for signs of injury but could see none. The bird had simply seen the ship as a place to rest, and perhaps it had done so many times before, recognizing the bow as one of the quietest places on board come nighttime.
“I’ll not harm you,” he said softly, and his throat seemed to throb with an unusual vibration. He realized that he had no real idea what sound these birds made, but it bobbed its head, flapped its mighty wings several times, and then hunkered down again. Jack grew still, and found himself staring into the bird’s eye. He was reflected in there. He wondered how it viewed him—threat, something interesting, or simply part of the scenery?
He watched the pelican as Lesya, the forest spirit, had taught him to watch, and before long he did not perceive this tableau as man and beast at all. It was simply observer and observed. Though in the end she had proved to be a mad thing, Lesya had given him a gift, opening his mind and senses so that if he focused he could touch the thoughts of other creatures. Reaching out to the pelican, he sensed the same feeling of foreboding that had only just started to settle over him.
In the distance, Jack heard several resounding thuds of waves striking a hull. He frowned. The Umatilla rode smooth as ever, and he had not felt even the smallest impact vibration. The pelican lifted and opened its heavy beak.
When he approached, he saw the heavy beak and beady eye, the wings folded in, and the pelican huddled there regarded him with neither trust nor fear.
Jack heard that sound again, the thud-wash, thud-wash of a hull cutting across the waves instead of going with them. Something was out there. He looked up at the two men in the crow’s nest, but they were vague shadows behind a gentle haze of mist, and he could not even tell which direction they were looking.
“What’s this, then?” he asked the pelican, and the bird spread its wings. But it remained behind the railing, turning on its big feet so that it could look directly back along the deck. I could call to the lookouts, Jack thought. But what would he say? Darkness and the mist stirred his senses, and that feeling of things slightly askew might be only in his mind.
He leaned on the railing and looked down, ghostly whitecaps breaking gently away from the ship. They were cutting through the water, not impacting against the waves, and the spray that reached him up here was carried on the gentlest of breezes.
A shadow moved far out across the waves. Jack held on to the railing and scanned the skeins of mist that played like curtains across the ocean’s surface. Something huge, he thought.
And then he saw the shadow again. A hardening of the mists, a solidifying of shapes that danced where no one normally watched, and a boat emerged. It was cutting a diagonal that would intercept the Umatilla within twenty seconds. Three masts, maybe a hundred feet long, the craft was dwarfed by the Umatilla. And yet there was something about the way it moved that seemed almost predatory.
The vessel’s masts sported dark sails that swallowed the weak moonlight, and it slipped through the water as if it were hardly there at all, a phantom ship. The only sign of its existence was the intermittent thump of waves against its hull, but that lessened as the ship came close to matching the Umatilla’s course.
Jack could see shadows busy in the rigging, and more on deck. The booms swung as the schooner drew down alongside the Umatilla. And Jack knew then that something was very wrong indeed.
From above, he heard the lookouts’ muttering rise in alarm. Then something whistled, the two men groaned, and their speaking ceased.
Behind him the white pelican grumbled like an old man. Jack ducked behind the solid railing and peered over the top. There was a flurry of activity on board the phantom schooner—rigging whispered, shadows moved, and he heard the soft impact of the vessel’s buffered hull striking the Umatilla.
It was only as the first of several muffled grappling hooks appeared over the railing, thirty feet back along the deck from where he hid, that Jack realized the truth. We’re being boarded!
He went to shout a warning, but no one would hear. If he moved, he might have time to get belowdecks before the first of the aggressors came on board … but he could already see the rope attached to the first grappling hook tensing as it was subjected to weight from below.
Instinct told him to duck down and stay where he was, and the pelican flapped its wings and lifted away from the deck, following its own instinct. It grumbled again as it flew, disappearing quickly across the port side and away into the thickening mist. For a fleeting instant Jack knew its freedom, but then he was back in his cumbersome and heavy flesh again, searching for shadows in which to conceal himself as the first head appeared above the railing.
The man slipped over onto the deck, and Jack felt a tingle of awe. He breathed out a gentle gasp. The man moved like a shadow himself, completely silent, and he stood crouched low while his head turned left and right. His arms were held out from his sides, and he seemed to be holding something in his right hand. There was so much threat in that shape—energy coiled like a wound spring, violence gathering like distant, silent storm clouds.