Click Here to Download the Text
Jack London
Day had broken cold and grey,
exceedingly cold and grey, when the man turned aside from the main Yukon trail
and climbed the high earth-bank, where a dim and little-travelled trail led
eastward through the fat spruce timberland. It was a steep bank, and he paused
for breath at the top, excusing the act to himself by looking at his watch. It
was nine o'clock. There was no sun nor hint of sun, though there was not a
cloud in the sky. It was a clear day, and yet there seemed an intangible pall
over the face of things, a subtle gloom that made the day dark, and that was
due to the absence of sun. This fact did not worry the man. He was used to the
lack of sun. It had been days since he had seen the sun, and he knew that a few
more days must pass before that cheerful orb, due south, would just peep above
the sky-line and dip immediately from view.
The man flung a look back along the way
he had come. The Yukon lay a mile wide and hidden under three feet of ice. On
top of this ice were as many feet of snow. It was all pure white, rolling in
gentle undulations where the ice-jams of the freeze-up had formed. North and
south, as far as his eye could see, it was unbroken white, save for a dark
hair-line that curved and twisted from around the spruce-covered island to the
south, and that curved and twisted away into the north, where it disappeared
behind another spruce-covered island. This dark hair-line was the trail--the
main trail--that led south five hundred miles to the Chilcoot Pass, Dyea, and
salt water; and that led north seventy miles to Dawson, and still on to the
north a thousand miles to Nulato, and finally to St. Michael on Bering Sea, a
thousand miles and half a thousand more.
But all this--the mysterious,
far-reaching hairline trail, the absence of sun from the sky, the tremendous
cold, and the strangeness and weirdness of it all--made no impression on the
man. It was not because he was long used to it. He was a new-comer in the land,
a chechaquo, and this was his first winter. The trouble with him was that he
was without imagination. He was quick and alert in the things of life, but only
in the things, and not in the significances. Fifty degrees below zero meant
eighty odd degrees of frost. Such fact impressed him as being cold and
uncomfortable, and that was all. It did not lead him to meditate upon his
frailty as a creature of temperature, and upon man's frailty in general, able
only to live within certain narrow limits of heat and cold; and from there on
it did not lead him to the conjectural field of immortality and man's place in
the universe. Fifty degrees below zero stood for a bite of frost that hurt and
that must be guarded against by the use of mittens, ear-flaps, warm moccasins,
and thick socks. Fifty degrees below zero was to him just precisely fifty
degrees below zero. That there should be anything more to it than that was a
thought that never entered his head.
As he turned to go on, he spat
speculatively. There was a sharp, explosive crackle that startled him. He spat
again. And again, in the air, before it could fall to the snow, the spittle
crackled. He knew that at fifty below spittle crackled on the snow, but this
spittle had crackled in the air. Undoubtedly it was colder than fifty
below--how much colder he did not know. But the temperature did not matter. He
was bound for the old claim on the left fork of Henderson Creek, where the boys
were already. They had come over across the divide from the Indian Creek
country, while he had come the roundabout way to take a look at the
possibilities of getting out logs in the spring from the islands in the Yukon.
He would be in to camp by six o'clock; a bit after dark, it was true, but the
boys would be there, a fire would be going, and a hot supper would be ready. As
for lunch, he pressed his hand against the protruding bundle under his jacket.
It was also under his shirt, wrapped up in a handkerchief and lying against the
naked skin. It was the only way to keep the biscuits from freezing. He smiled
agreeably to himself as he thought of those biscuits, each cut open and sopped
in bacon grease, and each enclosing a generous slice of fried bacon.
He plunged in among the big spruce
trees. The trail was faint. A foot of snow had fallen since the last sled had
passed over, and he was glad he was without a sled, travelling light. In fact,
he carried nothing but the lunch wrapped in the handkerchief. He was surprised,
however, at the cold. It certainly was cold, he concluded, as he rubbed his
numbed nose and cheek-bones with his mittened hand. He was a warm-whiskered
man, but the hair on his face did not protect the high cheek-bones and the
eager nose that thrust itself aggressively into the frosty air.
At the man's heels trotted a dog, a big
native husky, the proper wolf-dog, grey-coated and without any visible or
temperamental difference from its brother, the wild wolf. The animal was
depressed by the tremendous cold. It knew that it was no time for travelling.
Its instinct told it a truer tale than was told to the man by the man's
judgment. In reality, it was not merely colder than fifty below zero; it was
colder than sixty below, than seventy below. It was seventy-five below zero.
Since the freezing-point is thirty-two above zero, it meant that one hundred
and seven degrees of frost obtained. The dog did not know anything about
thermometers. Possibly in its brain there was no sharp consciousness of a
condition of very cold such as was in the man's brain. But the brute had its
instinct. It experienced a vague but menacing apprehension that subdued it and
made it slink along at the man's heels, and that made it question eagerly every
unwonted movement of the man as if expecting him to go into camp or to seek
shelter somewhere and build a fire. The dog had learned fire, and it wanted
fire, or else to burrow under the snow and cuddle its warmth away from the air.
The frozen moisture of its breathing had
settled on its fur in a fine powder of frost, and especially were its jowls,
muzzle, and eyelashes whitened by its crystalled breath. The man's red beard
and moustache were likewise frosted, but more solidly, the deposit taking the
form of ice and increasing with every warm, moist breath he exhaled. Also, the
man was chewing tobacco, and the muzzle of ice held his lips so rigidly that he
was unable to clear his chin when he expelled the juice. The result was that a
crystal beard of the colour and solidity of amber was increasing its length on
his chin. If he fell down it would shatter itself, like glass, into brittle
fragments. But he did not mind the appendage. It was the penalty all
tobacco-chewers paid in that country, and he had been out before in two cold
snaps. They had not been so cold as this, he knew, but by the spirit
thermometer at Sixty Mile he knew they had been registered at fifty below and
at fifty-five.
He held on through the level stretch of
woods for several miles, crossed a wide flat of nigger-heads, and dropped down
a bank to the frozen bed of a small stream. This was Henderson Creek, and he
knew he was ten miles from the forks. He looked at his watch. It was ten
o'clock. He was making four miles an hour, and he calculated that he would
arrive at the forks at half-past twelve. He decided to celebrate that event by
eating his lunch there.
The dog dropped in again at his heels,
with a tail drooping discouragement, as the man swung along the creek-bed. The
furrow of the old sled-trail was plainly visible, but a dozen inches of snow
covered the marks of the last runners. In a month no man had come up or down
that silent creek. The man held steadily on. He was not much given to thinking,
and just then particularly he had nothing to think about save that he would eat
lunch at the forks and that at six o'clock he would be in camp with the boys.
There was nobody to talk to and, had there been, speech would have been
impossible because of the ice-muzzle on his mouth. So he continued monotonously
to chew tobacco and to increase the length of his amber beard.
Once in a while the thought reiterated
itself that it was very cold and that he had never experienced such cold. As he
walked along he rubbed his cheek-bones and nose with the back of his mittened
hand. He did this automatically, now and again changing hands. But rub as he
would, the instant he stopped his cheek-bones went numb, and the following
instant the end of his nose went numb. He was sure to frost his cheeks; he knew
that, and experienced a pang of regret that he had not devised a nose-strap of
the sort Bud wore in cold snaps. Such a strap passed across the cheeks, as
well, and saved them. But it didn't matter much, after all. What were frosted
cheeks? A bit painful, that was all; they were never serious.
Empty as the man's mind was of thoughts,
he was keenly observant, and he noticed the changes in the creek, the curves
and bends and timber-jams, and always he sharply noted where he placed his
feet. Once, coming around a bend, he shied abruptly, like a startled horse,
curved away from the place where he had been walking, and retreated several
paces back along the trail. The creek he knew was frozen clear to the
bottom--no creek could contain water in that arctic winter--but he knew also
that there were springs that bubbled out from the hillsides and ran along under
the snow and on top the ice of the creek. He knew that the coldest snaps never
froze these springs, and he knew likewise their danger. They were traps. They
hid pools of water under the snow that might be three inches deep, or three
feet. Sometimes a skin of ice half an inch thick covered them, and in turn was
covered by the snow. Sometimes there were alternate layers of water and
ice-skin, so that when one broke through he kept on breaking through for a
while, sometimes wetting himself to the waist.
That was why he had shied in such panic.
He had felt the give under his feet and heard the crackle of a snow-hidden
ice-skin. And to get his feet wet in such a temperature meant trouble and
danger. At the very least it meant delay, for he would be forced to stop and
build a fire, and under its protection to bare his feet while he dried his
socks and moccasins. He stood and studied the creek-bed and its banks, and
decided that the flow of water came from the right. He reflected awhile,
rubbing his nose and cheeks, then skirted to the left, stepping gingerly and
testing the footing for each step. Once clear of the danger, he took a fresh
chew of tobacco and swung along at his four-mile gait.
In the course of the next two hours he
came upon several similar traps. Usually the snow above the hidden pools had a
sunken, candied appearance that advertised the danger. Once again, however, he
had a close call; and once, suspecting danger, he compelled the dog to go on in
front. The dog did not want to go. It hung back until the man shoved it
forward, and then it went quickly across the white, unbroken surface. Suddenly
it broke through, floundered to one side, and got away to firmer footing. It
had wet its forefeet and legs, and almost immediately the water that clung to
it turned to ice. It made quick efforts to lick the ice off its legs, then
dropped down in the snow and began to bite out the ice that had formed between
the toes. This was a matter of instinct. To permit the ice to remain would mean
sore feet. It did not know this. It merely obeyed the mysterious prompting that
arose from the deep crypts of its being. But the man knew, having achieved a
judgment on the subject, and he removed the mitten from his right hand and
helped tear out the ice-particles. He did not expose his fingers more than a minute,
and was astonished at the swift numbness that smote them. It certainly was
cold. He pulled on the mitten hastily, and beat the hand savagely across his
chest.
At twelve o'clock the day was at its
brightest. Yet the sun was too far south on its winter journey to clear the
horizon. The bulge of the earth intervened between it and Henderson Creek,
where the man walked under a clear sky at noon and cast no shadow. At half-past
twelve, to the minute, he arrived at the forks of the creek. He was pleased at the
speed he had made. If he kept it up, he would certainly be with the boys by
six. He unbuttoned his jacket and shirt and drew forth his lunch. The action
consumed no more than a quarter of a minute, yet in that brief moment the
numbness laid hold of the exposed fingers. He did not put the mitten on, but,
instead, struck the fingers a dozen sharp smashes against his leg. Then he sat
down on a snow-covered log to eat. The sting that followed upon the striking of
his fingers against his leg ceased so quickly that he was startled, he had had
no chance to take a bite of biscuit. He struck the fingers repeatedly and
returned them to the mitten, baring the other hand for the purpose of eating.
He tried to take a mouthful, but the ice-muzzle prevented. He had forgotten to
build a fire and thaw out. He chuckled at his foolishness, and as he chuckled
he noted the numbness creeping into the exposed fingers. Also, he noted that
the stinging which had first come to his toes when he sat down was already
passing away. He wondered whether the toes were warm or numbed. He moved them
inside the moccasins and decided that they were numbed.
He pulled the mitten on hurriedly and
stood up. He was a bit frightened. He stamped up and down until the stinging
returned into the feet. It certainly was cold, was his thought. That man from
Sulphur Creek had spoken the truth when telling how cold it sometimes got in
the country. And he had laughed at him at the time! That showed one must not be
too sure of things. There was no mistake about it, it was cold. He strode up
and down, stamping his feet and threshing his arms, until reassured by the
returning warmth. Then he got out matches and proceeded to make a fire. From
the undergrowth, where high water of the previous spring had lodged a supply of
seasoned twigs, he got his firewood. Working carefully from a small beginning,
he soon had a roaring fire, over which he thawed the ice from his face and in
the protection of which he ate his biscuits. For the moment the cold of space
was outwitted. The dog took satisfaction in the fire, stretching out close
enough for warmth and far enough away to escape being singed.
When the man had finished, he filled his
pipe and took his comfortable time over a smoke. Then he pulled on his mittens,
settled the ear-flaps of his cap firmly about his ears, and took the creek
trail up the left fork. The dog was disappointed and yearned back toward the
fire. This man did not know cold. Possibly all the generations of his ancestry
had been ignorant of cold, of real cold, of cold one hundred and seven degrees
below freezing-point. But the dog knew; all its ancestry knew, and it had
inherited the knowledge. And it knew that it was not good to walk abroad in
such fearful cold. It was the time to lie snug in a hole in the snow and wait
for a curtain of cloud to be drawn across the face of outer space whence this
cold came. On the other hand, there was keen intimacy between the dog and the
man. The one was the toil-slave of the other, and the only caresses it had ever
received were the caresses of the whip-lash and of harsh and menacing
throat-sounds that threatened the whip-lash. So the dog made no effort to
communicate its apprehension to the man. It was not concerned in the welfare of
the man; it was for its own sake that it yearned back toward the fire. But the
man whistled, and spoke to it with the sound of whip-lashes, and the dog swung
in at the man's heels and followed after.
The man took a chew of tobacco and
proceeded to start a new amber beard. Also, his moist breath quickly powdered
with white his moustache, eyebrows, and lashes. There did not seem to be so
many springs on the left fork of the Henderson, and for half an hour the man
saw no signs of any. And then it happened. At a place where there were no
signs, where the soft, unbroken snow seemed to advertise solidity beneath, the
man broke through. It was not deep. He wetted himself half-way to the knees
before he floundered out to the firm crust.
He was angry, and cursed his luck aloud.
He had hoped to get into camp with the boys at six o'clock, and this would
delay him an hour, for he would have to build a fire and dry out his foot-gear.
This was imperative at that low temperature--he knew that much; and he turned
aside to the bank, which he climbed. On top, tangled in the underbrush about
the trunks of several small spruce trees, was a high-water deposit of dry
firewood--sticks and twigs principally, but also larger portions of seasoned
branches and fine, dry, last-year's grasses. He threw down several large pieces
on top of the snow. This served for a foundation and prevented the young flame
from drowning itself in the snow it otherwise would melt. The flame he got by
touching a match to a small shred of birch-bark that he took from his pocket.
This burned even more readily than paper. Placing it on the foundation, he fed
the young flame with wisps of dry grass and with the tiniest dry twigs.
He worked slowly and carefully, keenly
aware of his danger. Gradually, as the flame grew stronger, he increased the
size of the twigs with which he fed it. He squatted in the snow, pulling the
twigs out from their entanglement in the brush and feeding directly to the
flame. He knew there must be no failure. When it is seventy-five below zero, a
man must not fail in his first attempt to build a fire--that is, if his feet
are wet. If his feet are dry, and he fails, he can run along the trail for half
a mile and restore his circulation. But the circulation of wet and freezing
feet cannot be restored by running when it is seventy-five below. No matter how
fast he runs, the wet feet will freeze the harder.
All this the man knew. The old-timer on
Sulphur Creek had told him about it the previous fall, and now he was
appreciating the advice. Already all sensation had gone out of his feet. To
build the fire he had been forced to remove his mittens, and the fingers had
quickly gone numb. His pace of four miles an hour had kept his heart pumping
blood to the surface of his body and to all the extremities. But the instant he
stopped, the action of the pump eased down. The cold of space smote the
unprotected tip of the planet, and he, being on that unprotected tip, received
the full force of the blow. The blood of his body recoiled before it. The blood
was alive, like the dog, and like the dog it wanted to hide away and cover
itself up from the fearful cold. So long as he walked four miles an hour, he
pumped that blood, willy-nilly, to the surface; but now it ebbed away and sank
down into the recesses of his body. The extremities were the first to feel its
absence. His wet feet froze the faster, and his exposed fingers numbed the
faster, though they had not yet begun to freeze. Nose and cheeks were already
freezing, while the skin of all his body chilled as it lost its blood.
But he was safe. Toes and nose and
cheeks would be only touched by the frost, for the fire was beginning to burn
with strength. He was feeding it with twigs the size of his finger. In another
minute he would be able to feed it with branches the size of his wrist, and
then he could remove his wet foot-gear, and, while it dried, he could keep his
naked feet warm by the fire, rubbing them at first, of course, with snow. The
fire was a success. He was safe. He remembered the advice of the old-timer on Sulphur
Creek, and smiled. The old-timer had been very serious in laying down the law
that no man must travel alone in the Klondike after fifty below. Well, here he
was; he had had the accident; he was alone; and he had saved himself. Those
old-timers were rather womanish, some of them, he thought. All a man had to do
was to keep his head, and he was all right. Any man who was a man could travel
alone. But it was surprising, the rapidity with which his cheeks and nose were
freezing. And he had not thought his fingers could go lifeless in so short a
time. Lifeless they were, for he could scarcely make them move together to grip
a twig, and they seemed remote from his body and from him. When he touched a
twig, he had to look and see whether or not he had hold of it. The wires were
pretty well down between him and his finger-ends.
All of which counted for little. There
was the fire, snapping and crackling and promising life with every dancing
flame. He started to untie his moccasins. They were coated with ice; the thick
German socks were like sheaths of iron half-way to the knees; and the mocassin
strings were like rods of steel all twisted and knotted as by some
conflagration. For a moment he tugged with his numbed fingers, then, realizing
the folly of it, he drew his sheath-knife.
But before he could cut the strings, it
happened. It was his own fault or, rather, his mistake. He should not have
built the fire under the spruce tree. He should have built it in the open. But
it had been easier to pull the twigs from the brush and drop them directly on
the fire. Now the tree under which he had done this carried a weight of snow on
its boughs. No wind had blown for weeks, and each bough was fully freighted.
Each time he had pulled a twig he had communicated a slight agitation to the tree--an
imperceptible agitation, so far as he was concerned, but an agitation
sufficient to bring about the disaster. High up in the tree one bough capsized
its load of snow. This fell on the boughs beneath, capsizing them. This process
continued, spreading out and involving the whole tree. It grew like an
avalanche, and it descended without warning upon the man and the fire, and the
fire was blotted out! Where it had burned was a mantle of fresh and disordered
snow.
The man was shocked. It was as though he
had just heard his own sentence of death. For a moment he sat and stared at the
spot where the fire had been. Then he grew very calm. Perhaps the old-timer on
Sulphur Creek was right. If he had only had a trail-mate he would have been in
no danger now. The trail-mate could have built the fire. Well, it was up to him
to build the fire over again, and this second time there must be no failure.
Even if he succeeded, he would most likely lose some toes. His feet must be
badly frozen by now, and there would be some time before the second fire was
ready.
Such were his thoughts, but he did not
sit and think them. He was busy all the time they were passing through his
mind, he made a new foundation for a fire, this time in the open; where no
treacherous tree could blot it out. Next, he gathered dry grasses and tiny
twigs from the high-water flotsam. He could not bring his fingers together to
pull them out, but he was able to gather them by the handful. In this way he
got many rotten twigs and bits of green moss that were undesirable, but it was
the best he could do. He worked methodically, even collecting an armful of the
larger branches to be used later when the fire gathered strength. And all the
while the dog sat and watched him, a certain yearning wistfulness in its eyes,
for it looked upon him as the fire-provider, and the fire was slow in coming.
When all was ready, the man reached in
his pocket for a second piece of birch-bark. He knew the bark was there, and,
though he could not feel it with his fingers, he could hear its crisp rustling
as he fumbled for it. Try as he would, he could not clutch hold of it. And all
the time, in his consciousness, was the knowledge that each instant his feet
were freezing. This thought tended to put him in a panic, but he fought against
it and kept calm. He pulled on his mittens with his teeth, and threshed his
arms back and forth, beating his hands with all his might against his sides. He
did this sitting down, and he stood up to do it; and all the while the dog sat
in the snow, its wolf-brush of a tail curled around warmly over its forefeet,
its sharp wolf-ears pricked forward intently as it watched the man. And the man
as he beat and threshed with his arms and hands, felt a great surge of envy as
he regarded the creature that was warm and secure in its natural covering.
After a time he was aware of the first
far-away signals of sensation in his beaten fingers. The faint tingling grew
stronger till it evolved into a stinging ache that was excruciating, but which
the man hailed with satisfaction. He stripped the mitten from his right hand
and fetched forth the birch-bark. The exposed fingers were quickly going numb
again. Next he brought out his bunch of sulphur matches. But the tremendous
cold had already driven the life out of his fingers. In his effort to separate
one match from the others, the whole bunch fell in the snow. He tried to pick
it out of the snow, but failed. The dead fingers could neither touch nor
clutch. He was very careful. He drove the thought of his freezing feet; and
nose, and cheeks, out of his mind, devoting his whole soul to the matches. He
watched, using the sense of vision in place of that of touch, and when he saw
his fingers on each side the bunch, he closed them--that is, he willed to close
them, for the wires were drawn, and the fingers did not obey. He pulled the
mitten on the right hand, and beat it fiercely against his knee. Then, with
both mittened hands, he scooped the bunch of matches, along with much snow,
into his lap. Yet he was no better off.
After some manipulation he managed to
get the bunch between the heels of his mittened hands. In this fashion he
carried it to his mouth. The ice crackled and snapped when by a violent effort
he opened his mouth. He drew the lower jaw in, curled the upper lip out of the
way, and scraped the bunch with his upper teeth in order to separate a match.
He succeeded in getting one, which he dropped on his lap. He was no better off.
He could not pick it up. Then he devised a way. He picked it up in his teeth
and scratched it on his leg. Twenty times he scratched before he succeeded in lighting
it. As it flamed he held it with his teeth to the birch-bark. But the burning
brimstone went up his nostrils and into his lungs, causing him to cough
spasmodically. The match fell into the snow and went out.
The old-timer on Sulphur Creek was
right, he thought in the moment of controlled despair that ensued: after fifty
below, a man should travel with a partner. He beat his hands, but failed in
exciting any sensation. Suddenly he bared both hands, removing the mittens with
his teeth. He caught the whole bunch between the heels of his hands. His
arm-muscles not being frozen enabled him to press the hand-heels tightly
against the matches. Then he scratched the bunch along his leg. It flared into
flame, seventy sulphur matches at once! There was no wind to blow them out. He
kept his head to one side to escape the strangling fumes, and held the blazing
bunch to the birch-bark. As he so held it, he became aware of sensation in his
hand. His flesh was burning. He could smell it. Deep down below the surface he
could feel it. The sensation developed into pain that grew acute. And still he
endured it, holding the flame of the matches clumsily to the bark that would
not light readily because his own burning hands were in the way, absorbing most
of the flame.
At last, when he could endure no more,
he jerked his hands apart. The blazing matches fell sizzling into the snow, but
the birch-bark was alight. He began laying dry grasses and the tiniest twigs on
the flame. He could not pick and choose, for he had to lift the fuel between
the heels of his hands. Small pieces of rotten wood and green moss clung to the
twigs, and he bit them off as well as he could with his teeth. He cherished the
flame carefully and awkwardly. It meant life, and it must not perish. The
withdrawal of blood from the surface of his body now made him begin to shiver,
and he grew more awkward. A large piece of green moss fell squarely on the
little fire. He tried to poke it out with his fingers, but his shivering frame
made him poke too far, and he disrupted the nucleus of the little fire, the
burning grasses and tiny twigs separating and scattering. He tried to poke them
together again, but in spite of the tenseness of the effort, his shivering got
away with him, and the twigs were hopelessly scattered. Each twig gushed a puff
of smoke and went out. The fire-provider had failed. As he looked apathetically
about him, his eyes chanced on the dog, sitting across the ruins of the fire
from him, in the snow, making restless, hunching movements, slightly lifting
one forefoot and then the other, shifting its weight back and forth on them
with wistful eagerness.
The sight of the dog put a wild idea
into his head. He remembered the tale of the man, caught in a blizzard, who
killed a steer and crawled inside the carcass, and so was saved. He would kill
the dog and bury his hands in the warm body until the numbness went out of
them. Then he could build another fire. He spoke to the dog, calling it to him;
but in his voice was a strange note of fear that frightened the animal, who had
never known the man to speak in such way before. Something was the matter, and
its suspicious nature sensed danger,--it knew not what danger but somewhere,
somehow, in its brain arose an apprehension of the man. It flattened its ears
down at the sound of the man's voice, and its restless, hunching movements and
the liftings and shiftings of its forefeet became more pronounced but it would
not come to the man. He got on his hands and knees and crawled toward the dog.
This unusual posture again excited suspicion, and the animal sidled mincingly
away.
The man sat up in the snow for a moment
and struggled for calmness. Then he pulled on his mittens, by means of his
teeth, and got upon his feet. He glanced down at first in order to assure
himself that he was really standing up, for the absence of sensation in his
feet left him unrelated to the earth. His erect position in itself started to
drive the webs of suspicion from the dog's mind; and when he spoke
peremptorily, with the sound of whip-lashes in his voice, the dog rendered its
customary allegiance and came to him. As it came within reaching distance, the
man lost his control. His arms flashed out to the dog, and he experienced
genuine surprise when he discovered that his hands could not clutch, that there
was neither bend nor feeling in the lingers. He had forgotten for the moment
that they were frozen and that they were freezing more and more. All this
happened quickly, and before the animal could get away, he encircled its body
with his arms. He sat down in the snow, and in this fashion held the dog, while
it snarled and whined and struggled.
But it was all he could do, hold its
body encircled in his arms and sit there. He realized that he could not kill
the dog. There was no way to do it. With his helpless hands he could neither
draw nor hold his sheath-knife nor throttle the animal. He released it, and it
plunged wildly away, with tail between its legs, and still snarling. It halted
forty feet away and surveyed him curiously, with ears sharply pricked forward.
The man looked down at his hands in order to locate them, and found them
hanging on the ends of his arms. It struck him as curious that one should have
to use his eyes in order to find out where his hands were. He began threshing
his arms back and forth, beating the mittened hands against his sides. He did
this for five minutes, violently, and his heart pumped enough blood up to the
surface to put a stop to his shivering. But no sensation was aroused in the
hands. He had an impression that they hung like weights on the ends of his
arms, but when he tried to run the impression down, he could not find it.
A certain fear of death, dull and
oppressive, came to him. This fear quickly became poignant as he realized that
it was no longer a mere matter of freezing his fingers and toes, or of losing
his hands and feet, but that it was a matter of life and death with the chances
against him. This threw him into a panic, and he turned and ran up the
creek-bed along the old, dim trail. The dog joined in behind and kept up with
him. He ran blindly, without intention, in fear such as he had never known in
his life. Slowly, as he ploughed and floundered through the snow, he began to
see things again--the banks of the creek, the old timber-jams, the leafless
aspens, and the sky. The running made him feel better. He did not shiver.
Maybe, if he ran on, his feet would thaw out; and, anyway, if he ran far
enough, he would reach camp and the boys. Without doubt he would lose some
fingers and toes and some of his face; but the boys would take care of him, and
save the rest of him when he got there. And at the same time there was another
thought in his mind that said he would never get to the camp and the boys; that
it was too many miles away, that the freezing had too great a start on him, and
that he would soon be stiff and dead. This thought he kept in the background
and refused to consider. Sometimes it pushed itself forward and demanded to be
heard, but he thrust it back and strove to think of other things.
It struck him as curious that he could
run at all on feet so frozen that he could not feel them when they struck the
earth and took the weight of his body. He seemed to himself to skim along above
the surface and to have no connection with the earth. Somewhere he had once
seen a winged Mercury, and he wondered if Mercury felt as he felt when skimming
over the earth.
His theory of running until he reached
camp and the boys had one flaw in it: he lacked the endurance. Several times he
stumbled, and finally he tottered, crumpled up, and fell. When he tried to
rise, he failed. He must sit and rest, he decided, and next time he would
merely walk and keep on going. As he sat and regained his breath, he noted that
he was feeling quite warm and comfortable. He was not shivering, and it even
seemed that a warm glow had come to his chest and trunk. And yet, when he
touched his nose or cheeks, there was no sensation. Running would not thaw them
out. Nor would it thaw out his hands and feet. Then the thought came to him
that the frozen portions of his body must be extending. He tried to keep this
thought down, to forget it, to think of something else; he was aware of the
panicky feeling that it caused, and he was afraid of the panic. But the thought
asserted itself, and persisted, until it produced a vision of his body totally
frozen. This was too much, and he made another wild run along the trail. Once
he slowed down to a walk, but the thought of the freezing extending itself made
him run again.
And all the time the dog ran with him,
at his heels. When he fell down a second time, it curled its tail over its
forefeet and sat in front of him facing him curiously eager and intent. The
warmth and security of the animal angered him, and he cursed it till it
flattened down its ears appeasingly. This time the shivering came more quickly
upon the man. He was losing in his battle with the frost. It was creeping into
his body from all sides. The thought of it drove him on, but he ran no more
than a hundred feet, when he staggered and pitched headlong. It was his last
panic. When he had recovered his breath and control, he sat up and entertained
in his mind the conception of meeting death with dignity. However, the
conception did not come to him in such terms. His idea of it was that he had
been making a fool of himself, running around like a chicken with its head cut
off--such was the simile that occurred to him. Well, he was bound to freeze
anyway, and he might as well take it decently. With this new-found peace of
mind came the first glimmerings of drowsiness. A good idea, he thought, to
sleep off to death. It was like taking an anaesthetic. Freezing was not so bad
as people thought. There were lots worse ways to die.
He pictured the boys finding his body
next day. Suddenly he found himself with them, coming along the trail and
looking for himself. And, still with them, he came around a turn in the trail
and found himself lying in the snow. He did not belong with himself any more,
for even then he was out of himself, standing with the boys and looking at
himself in the snow. It certainly was cold, was his thought. When he got back
to the States he could tell the folks what real cold was. He drifted on from
this to a vision of the old-timer on Sulphur Creek. He could see him quite
clearly, warm and comfortable, and smoking a pipe.
"You were right, old hoss; you were
right," the man mumbled to the old-timer of Sulphur Creek.
Then the man drowsed off into what seemed to him the most comfortable and satisfying sleep he had ever known. The dog sat facing him and waiting. The brief day drew to a close in a long, slow twilight. There were no signs of a fire to be made, and, besides, never in the dog's experience had it known a man to sit like that in the snow and make no fire. As the twilight drew on, its eager yearning for the fire mastered it, and with a great lifting and shifting of forefeet, it whined softly, then flattened its ears down in anticipation of being chidden by the man. But the man remained silent. Later, the dog whined loudly. And still later it crept close to the man and caught the scent of death. This made the animal bristle and back away. A little longer it delayed, howling under the stars that leaped and danced and shone brightly in the cold sky. Then it turned and trotted up the trail in the direction of the camp it knew, where were the other food-providers and fire-providers.
~x~
No comments:
Post a Comment