Martin Eden / Мартин Иден (в сокращении). Книга для чтения на английском языке

Chapter IV

Back from sea Martin Eden came, homing for California.

When his store of money was exhausted, he had shipped on a treasure-hunting schooner; and after eight months of failure to find treasure, the expedition had broken up.

The men had been paid off in Australia, and Martin had immediately returned to San Francisco. Not only had those eight months earned him enough money to stay on land for many weeks, but they had enabled him to do a great deal of studying and reading.

He went through the grammar he had taken again and again, until his brain had mastered it.

He noticed the bad grammar used by his shipmates. Now a double negative jarred him like a discord.

After he had mastered the grammar book, he took up the dictionary, and added twenty words a day to his vocabulary. He found that this was no light task, and at wheel or lookout he steadily went over and over his lengthening list of pronunciations and definitions.

The captain of the schooner had somehow fallen into possession of a complete Shakespeare, which he never read, and Martin had washed his clothes for him, and in return he had been permitted access to the precious volumes.

The eight months had been well spent, and, in addition to what he had learned of right speaking and high thinking, he had learned much of himself. Along with his humbleness, because he knew so little, there arose a conviction of power. He decided that he would describe many of the bits of South Sea beauty to Ruth. The creative spirit in him flamed up and then came the great idea.

He would write. He would be one of the eyes through which the world saw, one of the ears through which it heard, one of the hearts through which it felt. He would write – everything – poetry and prose, fiction and description, and plays like Shakespeare. There was career and the way to win Ruth. The men of literature were the world’s giants and he conceived them to be far finer than the Mr. Butlers who earned thirty thousand a year.

Once the idea had germinated, it mastered him, and the return voyage to San Francisco was like a dream. To write! The thought was fire in him. He would begin as soon as he got back. The first thing he would do would be to describe the voyage of the treasure-hunters. He would sell it to some San Francisco newspaper. He would not tell Ruth anything about it, and she would be surprised and pleased when she saw his name in print. While he wrote he could go on studying.