By Jack London (John Griffith Chaney, 1876-1916).
First appearance: The Pall Mall Magazine, April 1908.
Reprinted in Short Story Magazine (Australia) #38, 1947; Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, July 1955; and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (Australia), September 1955.
Short short short story (4 pages).
Online at SFFAudio (HERE) (PDF) and American Literature.com (HERE).
"I am going to charge you with murder, and I am going to see you hanged for it."Between the implacable tiger and the cowardly hyena, a man, especially an honest one, doesn't stand much of a chance . . .
Resources:
- Who hasn't heard of Jack London by now, one of the most successful American authors of all time? For plenty of biographical information about him, see Wikipedia (HERE) and the bio page on The Jack London State Historic Park website (HERE).
- "Rounding the Horn," according to Wikipedia (HERE), "is traditionally understood to involve sailing from 50 degrees South on one coast to 50 degrees South on the other coast, the two benchmark latitudes of a Horn run, a considerably more difficult and time-consuming endeavor having a minimum length of 930 miles (1,500 km)."
The bottom line: "Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea."
— John Updike
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