And action! I have written some novels of adventure in my time, but never, in all of the many of them, have I perpetrated a totality of action equal to what is contained in "Hearts of Three."

But I know, now, why moving pictures are popular. I know, now, why Messrs. "Barnes of New York" and "Potter of Texas" sold by the millions of copies. I know, now, why one stump speech of high-falutin' is a more efficient vote-getter than a finest and highest act or thought of statesmanship. It has been an interesting experience, this novelization by me of Mr. Goddard's scenario; and it has been instructive. It has given me high lights, foundation lines, cross-bearings, and illumination on my anciently founded sociological generalizations. I have come, by this adventure in writing, to understand the mass mind of the people more thoroughly than I thought I had understood it before, and to realize, more fully than ever, the graphic entertainment delivered by the demagogue who wins the vote of the mass out of his mastery of its mind. I should be surprised if this book does not have a large sale. ("Register surprise," Mr. Goddard would say; or "Register large sale").

If this adventure of "Hearts of Three "be collaboration, I am transported by it. But alack! I fear me Mr. Goddard must then be the one collaborator in a million. We have never had a word, an argument, nor a discussion. But then, I must be a jewel of a collaborator myself. Have I not, without whisper or whimper of complaint, let him "register" through fifteen episodes of scenario, through thirteen hundred scenes and thirty-one thousand feet of film, through one hundred and eleven thousand words of novelization? Just the same, having completed the task, I wish I'd never written it for the reason that I'd like to read it myself to see if it reads along. I am curious to know. I am curious to know.

JACK LONDON.

Waikiki, Hawaii,

March 23, 1916.

Back to Back Against the Mainmast Do ye seek for fun and fortune? Listen, rovers, now to me! Look ye for them on the ocean: Ye shall find them on the sea.

CHORUS:

Roaring wind and deep blue water! We're the jolly devils who, Back to back against the mainmast, Held at bay the entire crew. Bring the dagger, bring the pistols! We will have our own to-day! Let the cannon smash the bulwarks! Let the cutlass clear the way!

CHORUS:

Bearing wind and deep blue water! We're the jolly devils who, Back to back against the mainmast, Held at bay the entire crew. Here's to rum and here's to plunder! Here's to all the gales that blow! Let the seamen cry for mercy! Let the blood of captains flow!

CHORUS:

Roaring wind and deep blue water! We're the jolly devils who, Back to back against the mainmast, Held at bay the entire crew. Here's to ships that we have taken! They have seen which men were best. We have lifted maids and cargo, And the sharks have had the rest.

CHORUS:

Roaring wind and deep blue water! We're the jolly devils who, Back to back against the mainmast, Held at bay the entire crew.

— George Sterling

CHAPTER I

EVENTS happened very rapidly with Francis Morgan that late spring morning. If ever a man leaped across time into the raw, red drama and tragedy of the primitive and the medieval melodrama of sentiment and passion of the New World Latin, Francis Morgan was destined to be that man, and Destiny was very immediate upon him.

Yet he was lazily unaware that aught in the world was stirring, and was scarcely astir himself. A late night at bridge had necessitated a late rising. A late breakfast of fruit and cereal had occurred along the route to the library the austerely elegant room from which his father, toward the last, had directed vast and manifold affairs.

"Parker," he said to the valet who had been his father's before him, "did you ever notice any signs of fat on E.H.M. in his last days?"

"'Oh, no, sir," was the answer, uttered with all the due humility of the trained servant, but accompanied by an involuntarily measuring glance that scanned the young man's splendid proportions. "Your father, sir, never lost his leanness. His figure was always the same, broad-shouldered, deep in the chest, big-boned, but lean, always lean, sir, in the middle. When he was laid out, sir, and bathed, his body would have shamed most of the young men about town. He always took good care of himself; it was those exercises in bed, sir. Half an hour every morning. Nothing prevented. He called it religion."

"Yes, he was a fine figure of a man," the young man responded idly, glancing to the stock-ticker and the several telephones his father had installed.

"He was that," Parker agreed eagerly. "He was lean and aristocratic in spite of his shoulders and bone and chest. And you've inherited it, sir, only on more generous lines."

Young Francis Morgan, inheritor of many millions as well as brawn, lolled back luxuriously in a huge leather chair, stretched his legs after the manner of a full-vigored menagerie lion that is over-spilling with vigor, and glanced at a headline of the morning paper which informed him of a fresh slide in the Culebra Cut at Panama.

"If I didn't know we Morgans didn't run that way," he yawned, "I'd be fat already from this existence… Eh, Parker?"

The elderly valet, who Had neglected prompt reply, startled at the abrupt interrogative interruption of the pause.

"Oh, yes, sir," he said hastily. "I mean, no, sir. You are in the pink of condition."

"Not on your life," the young man assured him. "I may not be getting fat, but I am certainly growing soft… Eh, Parker?"

"Yes, sir. No, sir; no, I mean no, sir. You're just the same as when you came home from college three years ago."

"And took up loafing as a vocation," Francis laughed. "Parker!"

Parker was alert attention. His master debated with himself ponderously, as if the problem were of profound importance, rubbing the while the bristly thatch of the small toothbrush moustache he had recently begun to sport on his upper lip.

"Parker, I'm going fishing."

"Yes, sir!"

"I ordered some rods sent up. Please joint them and let me give them the once over. The idea drifts through my mind that two weeks in the woods is what I need. If I don't, I'll surely start laying on flesh and disgrace the whole family tree. You remember Sir Henry? the old original Sir Henry, the buccaneer old swashbuckler?" "Yes, sir; I've read of him, sir."

Parker had paused in the doorway until such time as the ebbing of his young master's volubility would permit him to depart on the errand.

"Nothing to be proud of, the old pirate."

"Oh, no, sir," Parker protested. "He was Governor of Jamaica. He died respected."

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