The heathen - Jack London

The narrator, a pearl buyer named Charley, is a cabin passenger on a schooner, the Petite Jeanne, sailing from Rangiroa to Tahiti. The boat, having eighty-five deck passengers, is overloaded. Several passengers die of smallpox; Charley and the other cabin passengers drink whisky, until it runs out, in the belief that it will kill the smallpox germs.

The boat is in the direct path of a hurricane and destroyed in the hurricane, and Charley survives by clinging to a hatch cover from the boat, sharing it with a Kanaka named Otoo. Eventually Charley loses consciousness, and comes to on the beach of an atoll; Otoo has saved his life by pulling him from the water. They are the only survivors from the Petite Jeanne.

They exchange names. In the South Seas such a ceremony binds two men closer together than blood-brothership. They part inPapeete and Otoo goes home to Bora Bora; but he returns, because his wife has died. He accompanies Charley for the next seventeen years, ensuring that he does not come to harm.

Otoo advises Charley to become a captain of a schooner, in order to save enough to own a plantation. He does so; he marries and has children. Otoo helps to bring up the children on the plantation.

The relationship ends when Otoo is killed saving Charley from sharks on the coast of Savu.

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Ajit Kaliya

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