London was finally able to get passage on a small steamer to Pusan. The ship had no sleeping accommodations, so Jack spent a cold night huddled on an open snow- and sleet-covered deck. At Pusan he found room on another coastal steamer hoping that it would eventually get him to Chemulpo, but the boat was seized by Japanese military authorities at the port of Mokpo on the southwestern tip of the Korean Peninsula. The passengers were simply put ashore and told to make other travel arrangements. The action reflected the intensified Japanese preparation for war.

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Being an experienced sailor, London decided that he would sail the remainder of the way to Chemulpo on his own. He purchased a native junk and hired several fishermen to help him sail the small craft into the Yellow Sea and up the rugged Korean coastline. London’s journal vividly describes the ordeal:

Thursday, February 11, 1904: Wind howling over the Yellow Sea. Driving rain. Wind cutting like knife. One man at the tiller, a man at each sheet and another man too seasick to be scared.

Saturday, February 13, 1904: Driving snow squalls. Gale pounding the whole Yellow Sea upon us. So cold that it freezes salt water. O, this is a wild and bitter coast.

When London finally arrived at Chemulpo, his appearance stunned a British photographer who knew London and had arrived in Korea before the restrictions had been imposed. I did not recognize him, wrote the Britisher. He was a physical wreck. His fingers were frozen. His feet were frozen. He said he didn’t mind so long as he got to the front. He is one of the grittiest men it has been my good fortune to meet. He is just as heroic as any of the characters in his novels.

London was soon on the march with the Japanese First Army, which was moving north over treacherous, icy mountain passes toward Manchuria. Near the city of Pyongyang, he observed the first land clash of the Russo-Japanese War. Scribbling on rice paper, London reported the bold penetration of a Cossack cavalry unit 200 miles into enemy-occupied territory, probing Japanese troop strength.

Meanwhile, jealous correspondents back in Tokyo were registering vigorous complaints with the Japanese Foreign Ministry. The journalists were finally shipped off to Korea, and drastic steps were taken to limit London’s reporting freedom. He was arrested again and sent south to a military prison near Seoul.

London was released as other war correspondents began arriving on the Korean Peninsula, and once again he was soon marching north with Japanese field forces. The Japanese columns were moving on a broad front for a major advance across the Yalu River and an assault on Russian fortifications in Manchuria.

The Hearst papers were soon printing dispatches from London’s reports of skillfully executed division-level crossings of the Yalu River by the Japanese. His photographs were the first such pictures of the war to arrive in the United States.

London began to press Hearst to arrange for a transfer to the Russian army in order to report the war from their side. Before that could be negotiated, however, London’s pugnacious personality got him into the middle of an international incident. London punched a Japanese he caught stealing fodder from his horse, and for the third time in four months he was arrested by Japanese military authorities. This time, though, he would be facing a court-martial in which the death penalty could be imposed.

Again Richard Harding Davis came to the rescue. He quickly flashed off a cable to his personal friend, Theodore Roosevelt, who was also an avid reader of London’s Yukon adventure stories. Intervention by the president of the United States brought about a swift release, but there was one condition: Jack London was to depart Korea immediately, if not sooner. Several weeks later, London said goodbye to Davis on the Yokohama docks and boarded a ship for San Francisco.

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