Home reading 2-3

THE ONE THOUSAND DOZEN

Jack London

Grammar: Future Tenses

David Rasmunsen was an energetic person, and a man of the one idea. That is why, when he heard of the North1, he started an ad­ venture in eggs and submitted all his energy to its achievement. He figured briefly and to the point2, and the adventure became splendid. That eggs would sell at Dawson for five dollars a dozen was a safe working thesis. Then it was sure that one thousand dozen would bring him five thousand dollars.

On the other hand, he was to consider some expenses, and he did it well, for he was a careful and practical man, with a hard head* and heart never warmed by imagination. At fifteen cents a dozen, the initial cost of his thousand dozen would be one hundred and fifty dol­ lars, a mere trifle compared with4 the enormous profit. And suppose that transportation for himself and eggs would run up eight hundred and fifty more; he would still have four thousand clear cash when the last egg was sold.

"You see, Alma", he figured it over with his wife in their cozy dining room, - "expences won't really begin till you reach Dyea - fif­ ty dollars will cover it. Now from Dyea to Lake Linderman. Indian pa­ ckers take your goods over for twelve cents a pound; twelve dollars a hundred, or one hundred and twenty dollars a thousand. Say I have fifteen hundred pounds, it'll cost one hundred and eighty dollars - call it two hundred to be safe5. I am credibly informed by a Klondiker that I can buy a boat for three hundred. But the same man says I'm sure to get a couple of passengers for one hundred and fifty each, which will give me the boat for nothing, and further, they can help me manage it. And that's all; I put my eggs ashore from the boat at Dawson. Now let me see how much is that?"

"Fifty dollars from San Francisco to Dyea, two hundred from і Іусн lo linderman, passengers pay for the boat - two hundred and 11 її . i l l ' , she summed up swiftly.

"And a hundred for my clothes and personal outfit", he went on h ippily; that leaves a margin of five hundred for emergencies. And

luil possible emergencies can arise?"

Alma shrugged her shoulders and raised her brows.

"Doubling the time because of chance delays, I should make the її Ip MI two months! Beats the worthless hundred a month I'm getting in .w We'll expand our cottage, have gas in every room, pay taxes, inii і, 11 ice and water, and leave something over. Now tell me, Alma, don't

HI ihink I'm very moderate?"

And Alma could hardly think otherwise.

David Rasmunsen's grocer was surprised when he found him weighing eggs in the scales at the end of the counter, and Rasmunsen Inn iscIf was more surprised when he found that a dozen eggs weighed

.1 pound and a half - fifteen hundred pounds for his thousand dozen. I here would be no weight left for his clothes, blankets and cooking Utensils, to say nothing of the grub he must necessarily consume by the « ay. Then he thought of the idea to get small eggs. "For whether they are large or small, a dozen eggs is a dozen eggs", he thought.

Rasmunsen mortgaged the little cottage for a thousand dollars, lenl his wife to stay with her own relatives, threw up his job, and star­ ted North.

In late summer he went ashore with his eggs on the Dyea beach. I ocal Indians demanded forty cents a pound for twenty-eight-mile portage6, and while he thought about it, the price went up to fifty. So, ні lifty cents he found people who, two days later, set his eggs down intact at Linderman. But fifty cents a pound is a thousand dollar a ton, and his fifteen hundred pounds had exhausted his emergency fund7.

There he found a chance to go as a passenger with his freight on a boat, but two hundred, hard cash, was required, and he had no money.

"I think you just wait a little while, and I'll make you a fine boat", said one Swedish boat builder.

With these words Rasmunsen found two press correspondents. "Yes", he said with importance. "I've a thousand dozen eggs at Lin­ derman, and my boat is nearly ready. I think I'm lucky to get it. Boats are at premium8, you know."

At these words the correspondents urged him to take them at three hundred apiece. Also they wanted him to take the money in ad­ vance. With their money in his pocket he hurried to Swede and with great difficulties hired a boat for six hundred dollars. He hoped that he would be floating down the swift river before navigation closed on the chain of lakes.

Soon Rasmunsen and his two passengers were under the sail of the Alma. His thousand dollars were there in the boat before his eyes, safely secured under the correspondents' baggage, and somehow, before his eyes, were the little cottage and the mortgage for a thousand dollars.

It was very cold. The mad race with winter began. As the end of the lake came in sight, the waves began to leap aboard so often that the correspondents flung the water out with buckets. Even this was not enough, and after a shouted conference with Rasmunsen, they attack­ ed the baggage. Flour, bacon, beans, blankets, cooking stove, ropes, odds and ends', everything flew overboard. With the exception of their notes, films and cameras, the correspondents sacrificed their outfit. The boat responded to it at once, taking less water and rising more up.

Then, suddenly, the Alma had been caught by a great mass of water and whirled around, and one of the correspondents was carried overboat with a broken back. Mast and sail had gone over the side as well. Half an hour later a ten-ton barge took the other correspondent aboard.

"Come on", a red-whiskered man shouted at Rasmunsen from the barge.

"I've a thousand dozen eggs here", he shouted back. "G/ve me a tow . I'll pay you!"

But the barge sailed away.

Three hours later, unemotional, exhausted he went ashore on an ice-covered beach near Caribou Crossing. Two men saved his cargo and gave him shelter for the night. Next morning they departed, but he chose to stay by his eggs. After that the name and fame of the man with the thousand dozen eggs began to spread through the land. Gold seekers carried the news of his coming. His name called up dream memories" of chicken and green things in Forty Mile and Circle City, while Dawson - golden, omeletless Dawson - waited for every word of his arrival.

But Rasmunsen knew nothing of this. Half a thousand frozen miles stretched between him and Dawson, and the waterway was cloied. He built a cache for the eggs and went back up the lakes on foot. What he suffered on that lone trip, with nothing but a single blanket, in axe and a handful of beans, is not given to know.

It was a weak, unwashed man who went slowly across the shitling office floor to raise a second mortgage from the bank. His hands were in dirt and coal dust. He spoke unclearly of eggs and ice packs, winds and tides, but when they refused to give him more than a lecond thousand, he talked about the price of dogs and dog food, and luch things as snow shoes and moccasins and winter trails. Finally they ІЄІ him have fifteen hundred which was more than the cottage war- i.mted.

Two weeks later he returned to lake Marsh with three sleds of live dogs each. He drove one team, and the two Indians with him dro- \ e the others. When he froze his foot, the Indians thought he would lie up. But he sacrificed a blanket, and, with his foot encased in an enor­ mous moccasin, big as a bucket, continued to move forward.

He fought the men to stay with him, fought the dogs to keep them away from the eggs, fought the ice, the cold, and the pain of his loot. He was the man of the idea, and now that the idea had come, it mastered him13. In the foreground of his mind was Dawson, in the hackground his thousand dozen eggs, and midway between the two he

.ittempted to draw them together to a glittering golden point. This gol­ den point was the five thousand dollars; the completion of the idea and the point of departure for any new idea. For the rest he was a mere automation, unaware of other things.

At the Big Salmon camp he was told that Dawson was in the hitter clutch of famine14. He smiled and pulled out. At Selkirk grub was beyond price. Rasmunsen was offered to swop eggs for flour, at the rate of a cupful for each egg, but he shook his head. He managed to buy frozen horse skin for the dogs. Here at Selkirk, he met people, running from the hungry Dawson. ""No grub!" was the song they sang. Flour is a dollar and a half a pound, and there are no sellers.

"Eggs?" one of them answered. "Dollar apiece, but there are none." Rasmunsen made a quick calculation. "Twelve thousand dol­

lars", he said aloud.

five of his dogs were gone, and the remainders were falling in traces

He, also, was m the traces pulling with what little strength was leftTn hm He was making barely ten miles a day. His cheeks and nos frostbxtten agam and again, became bloody-black. The enormousTo'ccaS

26

nil incased his foot; and there were strange pains in the leg. At Sixty Mile, the last beans were finished, yet he firmly refused to touch the oggs. He felt it was illegitimate. At Ainslie's he felt repaid for it all when a man just from Dawson told him he could get a dollar and a quarter for every egg he possessed.

He came up the steep bank by the Dawson barracks with fluttering heart and shaking knees. The first man he met there came in a

• і cat bearskin coat.

"What you've got?" he asked. "Eggs", Rasmunsen answered. "You don't say - all of them?" " A l l of them."

"Say, you must be the Egg Man."

He walked around and looked at Rasmunsen from the other si­ de. "What do you expect to get for them?" he asked cautiously.

Rasmunsen became fearless. "Dollar and a half," he said. "Done!" the man answered promptly. "Give me a dozen."

"I - I mean dollar and a half a piece", Rasmunsen hesitatingly explained.

"Sure. I heard you. Make it two dozen. Here's the dust."

The man pulled out a healthy gold sack the size of a small sau­ sage. Rasmunsen felt a strange trembling in his stomach, and a great desire to sit down and cry. But a curious wide-eyed crowd was begin­ ning to collect, and man after man was beginning calling out for eggs.

He was without scales, but the man in bearskin coat got a pair and friendly weighed in the dust while Rasmunsen passed out the goods. Everybody wanted to buy and to be served first. As the ex­ citement grew, he cooled down. This would never do'\ There must be something behind their buying so eagerly. It would be wiser if he rested first and sized up the market. Perhaps eggs were worth two dollars apiece. "Stop!" he cried, when a couple of hundreds had been sold. "No more now. I'm tired. I must get a cabin, and then you can come and see me."

The crowd groaned, but the man with the bearskin coat appro­ ved. Twenty four of the frozen eggs were in his pocket and he didn't care whether the rest of the town ate or not. Besides, he could see Ras­ munsen was on his last legs16.

"There's a cabin right around the second corner," he told him. "It isn't mine, but I've got charge of it' \ Rents for ten a day and it is cheap. You move in, and I'll see you later."

On his way to the cabin Rasmunsen recollected that he was hungry and bought a small supply of provision at the store - a beefsteak for himself and dried salmon for the dogs. He found the cabin without difficulty, started the fire and put the coffee on it.

"A dollar and a half apiece - one thousand dozen - eighteen thousand dollars!" he was whispering to himself.

At that moment the door opened. He turned. It was the man with the bearskin coat.

"I say - now I say..." he began, then stopped. Rasmunsen wondered if he wanted the rent.

"I say, damn it, you know, those eggs are bad."

Rasmunsen staggered. He felt as if someone had struck him a crushing blow between his eyes. He put his hand on the stove to steady himself18. The sharp pain and the smell of burning flesh brought him back to himself.

"I see", he said slowly. "You want your money back."

"It isn't the money", the man said, "but haven't you got any eggs - good?"

Rasmunsen shook his head. "You'd better take the money." But the man refused. "I'll come back", he said, "when you've

taken stock, and change them for good eggs."

Rasmunsen carried in the eggs. He did it very calmly. He took up the hand-axe, and one by one, chopped the eggs in half. These halves he examined carefully and let fall to the floor. At first he sampled from the different cases, then deliberately emptied one case at a time. The heap on the floor grew larger. The coffee boiled over and the smoke of the burning beefsteak filled the cabin. He chopped and chopped till the last case was finished.

Somebody knocked at the door, knocked again, and entered. "What a mess!" he said, as he paused and watched the scene. The spoiled eggs were beginning to thaw in the heat of the stove

and bad smell was growing stronger.

"It happened on the steamer, I think", he said. Rasmunsen looked at him blankly.

II. Give English equivalents of the following words.

Застрахувати(ся); споживати, поглинати, бути охопленим; спорядження; закладати (під заставу); охороняти, гарантувати, за­ безпечувати; схованка; блищати; непередбачений випадок, край­ ня необхідність; здійснити бартерний обмін; ваги (інструмент для зважування); похитнутися; ремінь (батога); страхова премія, стра­ хування; притулок.

III. Study the commentary to the text.

VI. There are 15 synonyms of the word 'splendid' below. Which is the odd word in this group? How many of these words are in your active vocabulary?

splendid, adj brilliant, magnificent, grand, gorgeous, luxurious, glorious, superb, outstanding, usual, admirable, fine, excellent, marvelous, wonderful, supreme, super

VII. Translate the sentences guessing the meaning of the underlined words or phrases from the context.

1. When Rasmunsen heard of the North, he started an adventure in eggs and submitted all his energy to its achievement. 2. The correspondents urged him to take them at three hundred apiece. 3. There would be no weight left for his clothes, blankets and cooking utensils, to say nothing of the grub he must necessarily consume by the way. 4. Then, suddenly, the Alma had been caught by a great mass of water and whirled around, and one of the correspondents was carried overboat with a broken back. 5. But he sacrificed a blanket, and, with his foot encased in an enormous moccasin, big as a bucket, continued to move forward. 6. What he suffered on that lone trip, with nothing but a single blanket, an axe and a handful of beans, is not given to know. 7. In the foreground of his mind was Dawson, in the background his thousand dozen eggs, and midway between the two he attempted to draw them together to a glittering golden point. 8. This golden point was the five thousand dollars; the completion of the idea and the point of departure for any new idea. For the rest he was a mere automation, unaware of other things. 9. At Selkirk grub was beyond price. Rasmunsen was offered to swop eggs for flour, at the rate of a cupful for each egg, but he shook his head. 10. He came up the steep bank by the Dawson barracks with fluttering heart and shaking knees. 11. Rasmunsen chopped the eggs in half. These halves he examined carefully and let fall to the floor. 12. At first he sampled from the different cases, then deliberately emptied one case at a time. 13. He stood on the bunk and climbed upon the stool. He made a noose in the end of the lashing and put his head through.

17//. Fill in the blanks with the prepositions. Some of them may be used several times.

on, at, of with, for, about, up, to, in, to. over, out, through, from

cabin Rasmunsen recollected that he was hungry and bought a small

Grammar

/'/// the Infinitives in brackets into the correct tense form.

// Fill in the blanks with the proper words from the table below.

a) mortgaged, b) whirled, c) waterway, d) scales, e) thaw, f) dust, g) credibly, h) departure, i) insurance, j) carried, k) cupful, I) incased, m) chopped, n) growing, o) relatives, p) race, q) ima­ gination, r) completion, s) stretched, t) swap

David Rasmunsen was a careful and practical man, with a hard head and heart never warmed by '. I am 2 informed by a

l. loiidiker that I can buy boat for three hundred. We'll expand our cot-

gan. Then, suddenly, the Alma had been caught by a great mass of wa­

munsen passed out the goods. He took up the hand-axe, and one by

Speaking

Discuss the following items supplying your answers with the facts from the text or using your own judgement and imagination to describe this situation.

•What sort of a person was Rasmunsen?

• What was the working thesis of the adventure in egg?

•Perform the calculations concerning this adventure.

•Why did the adventure fail?

•Describe the situation drawn in the picture on page 25.

Writing

Write an essay on one of the following topics using the active vocabulary of the lesson.

•Is being adventurous a positive feature? Give all the pros and cons.

•The fundamental components of success.

•The man of the idea of the story.

Cross-cultural study

/.Do you know that:

•Dowson is a town in the northwest mountainous part of Canada, famous for being one of the Klondike gold rush centres.

•Klondike is an area near the river Klondike in northwest Canada, in the Yukon, where in the 1890s gold was discovered, and this caused a gold rush.

•Gold rush is a rush to a place where gold has been discovered, by people hoping to collect large amounts of it easily.

•The first famous gold rush period was in California in 1849.

//.The word pound is used to denote two different things

•1 pound (symbol lb) is a unit of weight equal to 0.454 kilograms.

•1 pound (symbol £) sterling is the standard unit of money in Britain.

•£1 is divided into 100 pence.

•pound is the standard unit of money in other countries, such as Egypt and the Sudan.

•the pound used to be in the form of paper money called a pound note, but in 1985 this was replaced by a coin (called a pound coin).

///Nowadays people often use the word 'klondike' in a figurative Meaning. What connotations has it in everyday speech? Think of the possible examples.

THE SPHINX WITHOUT A SECRET

Oscar Wilde

Grammar: The Perfect Tenses

One afternoon I was sitting outside the Cafu de la Paix, watc­ hing splendour and shabbiness of Parisian life and wondering over my vermouth at the strange panorama of pride and poverty that was pas­ sing before me. Then 1 heard someone call my name, turned and saw Lord Murchison. We had not met since we had been at college to­ gether, nearly ten years before, so I was delighted to come across him' again, and we shook hands warmly. At Oxford we had been friends. I found him a good deal changed. He looked anxious and puzzled, and seemed to be in doubt about something. 1 felt it could not be modern skepticism and concluded that it was a woman, and asked him if he was married yet.

"I don't understand women well enough", he answered.

"My dear Gerald", I said, "Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood2

"I cannot love where I cannot trust", he replied.

"I believe you have a mystery in your life, Gerald, "I exclai­ med; "tell me about it."

"Let us go for a drive", he answered, "it is too crowded here. No, not a yellow carriage, any other colour - there, that dark green one will do"; and in a few moments we were trotting down the boulevard.

"Where shall we go?" I asked. *

"Oh, anywhere you like!" he answered - "to the restaurant in the Bois, we will dine there, and you shall tell me all about yourself."

"I want to hear about you first", I said. "Tell me your mystery." He took from his pocket a little silver case, and handed it to me.

I opened it. Inside there was the photograph of a woman. She was tall and slight, and strangely picturesque with her large vague eyes and loo­ sened hair, and she was wrapped in rich furs.

"What do you think of that face", he said, "is it truthful?"

38

I examined it' carefully. It seemed to me the face of someone , ho had a secret, but whether that secret was good or evil I could not I) lis beauty was a beauty mounded out of many mysteries - the і її .miy, in fact, which is psychological, not plastic - and the faint smi- |i ili.il just played across the lips was far too subtle to be really sweet.

"Well", he cried impatiently, "What do you say?"

"She is the Gioconda in sables", I answered. "Let me know all llkuit her."

"Not now, he said, "after dinner, and began to talk of other ilungs.

When the waiter brought us our coffee and cigarettes I remin- i .1 (ierald of his promise. He rose from his seat, walked two or three n i n e s up and down the room, and, sinking into an armchair, told me i i i . lb I lowing story:

One evening I was walking down Bond Street about five o'clock, і here was a terrific crush of carriages, and the traffic was almost stop­ p e d . Close to the pavement was standing a little yellow brougham, w hich, for some reason or other, attracted my attention. As I passed by i i u т е looked out from it the face I showed to you this afternoon. It i.i .cinated me immediately. About a week afterwards I was dining \ 1111 Madame de Rastail. Dinner was for eight o'clock; but at half past

. it-lit we were still waiting in the drawing-room.

Finally the servant opened the door, and announced Lady Alroy. її was the woman I had seen and had been looking for all the time ince that meeting. She came very slowly, looking like a moonbeam in riсу lace, and, to my intense delight, I was asked to take her in to , Imner3. After we had sat down, I remarked quite innocently, "I think I caught sight of you in Bond Street some time ago, Lady Alroy." She grew very pale, and said to me in a low voice, "Pray do not talk so loud; \ ou may be overhead."

I felt very miserable at having made such a bad beginning, and

I •lunged recklessly into the subject4 of the French plays. She spoke veiy little, always in the same low musical voice, and seemed as if she was afraid of someone listening. I fell passionately, stupidly in love, ;md the indefinable atmosphere of mystery that surrounded her excited my most ardent curiosity. When she was going away, which she did very soon after dinner, I asked her if I might call and see her. She he­ sitated for a moment, glanced round to see if anyone was near us, and

39