"Jack London - The Inevitable White Man" - читать интересную книгу автора (London Jack)

time has he got left to understand niggers anyway?"

"Just so," said Roberts. "And somehow it doesn't seem necessary, after all, to
understand the niggers. In direct proportion to the white man's stupidity is
his success in farming the world--"

"And putting the fear of God into the nigger's heart," Captain Woodward
blurted out. "Perhaps you're right, Roberts. Perhaps it's his stupidity that
makes him succeed, and surely one phase of his stupidity is his inability to
understand the niggers. But there's one thing sure, the white has to run the
niggers whether he understands them or not. It's inevitable. It's fate."

"And of course the white man is inevitable--it's the niggers' fate," Roberts
broke in. "Tell the white man there's pearl shell in some lagoon infested by
ten-thousand howling cannibals, and he'll head there all by his lonely, with
half a dozen kanaka divers and a tin alarm clock for chronometer, all packed
like sardines on a commodious, five-ton ketch. Whisper that there's a gold
strike at the North Pole, and that same inevitable white-skinned creature will
set out at once, armed with pick and shovel, a side of bacon, and the latest
patent rocker--and what's more, he'll get there. Tip it off to him that
there's diamonds on the red-hot ramparts of hell, and Mr. White Man will storm
the ramparts and set old Satan himself to pick-and-shovel work. That's what
comes of being stupid and inevitable."

"But I wonder what the black man must think of the--the inevitableness," I
said.

Captain Woodward broke into quiet laughter. His eyes had a reminiscent gleam.

"I'm just wondering what the niggers of Malu thought and still must be
thinking of the one inevitable white man we had on board when we visited them
in the DUCHESS," he explained.

Roberts mixed three more Abu Hameds.

"That was twenty years ago. Saxtorph was his name. He was certainly the most
stupid man I ever saw, but he was as inevitable as death. There was only one
thing that chap could do, and that was shoot. I remember the first time I ran
into him--right here in Apia, twenty years ago. That was before your time,
Roberts. I was sleeping at Dutch Henry's hotel, down where the market is now.
Ever heard of him? He made a tidy stake smuggling arms in to the rebels, sold
out his hotel, and was killed in Sydney just six weeks afterward in a saloon
row.

"But Saxtorph. One night I'd just got to sleep, when a couple of cats began to
sing in the courtyard. It was out of bed and up window, water jug in hand. But
just then I heard the window of the next room go up. Two shots were fired, and
the window was closed. I fail to impress you with the celerity of the
transaction. Ten seconds at the outside. Up went the window, bang bang went
the revolver, and down went the window. Whoever it was, he had never stopped