₦airaland Forum

''They are after us, Bill'', said the man at the front.
His voice sounded hoarse and unreal, and he had spoken with apparent effort.
''Meat is scarce,'' answered his comrade. ''I ain't seen a rabbit sign for days.''
Thereafter they spoke no more, though their ears were keen for the hunting-cries that continued to rise behind them.
At the fall of darkness they swung the dogs into a cluster of spruce trees on the edge of the waterway and made a camp.. The coffin, at the side of the fire, served for seat and table. The wolf-dogs, clustered on the far side of the fire, snarled and bickered among themselves, but evinced no inclination to stray off into the darkness.
''Seems to me, Henry, they're staying remarkable close to camp camp,'' Bill commented.
Henry, squatting over the fire and settling the pot of coffee with a piece of ice, nodded. Nor did he speak till he had taken his seat on the coffin and begun to eat.
''They know where their hides is safe,''' he said. ''they'd sooner eat grub than be grub. They're pretty wise , them dogs''.''
Bill shook his head. ''Oh, I dont know.''
His comrade looked looked at him curiously. ''First time I ever heard you say anything about their not being wise.''
''Henry'', said the other, munching with deliberation the beans he was eating, ''did you happen to notice the way them dogs kicked up when I was a-feeding em?''
''They did cut up more'n usual,'' Henry acknowledge.
''How many dogs 've we got, Henry?'', ''Six''.
''Well, Henru ... '' Bill stopped for a moment, in order that his words might gain greater significance. ''As I was saying ,' Henry, we've got six dogs. I tool six fish out of the bag. I gaave one fish to each dog, and' Henry, I was one fish short.''
''You counted wrong.''
''We've got six dogs,'' the other reiterated dispassionately. '' I took out six fish. One Ear didn't get no fish. I came back to the bag afterward and got 'm his fish.''
''Henry,'' Bill went on. '' I won't say they was aall dogs, but there was seven of 'm that got fish.''
Henry stopped eating to glance across the fire and count the dogs. ''There's only six row,'' he said.
''I saw the other one run off across the snow,'' Bill announced with cool positiveness. ''I saw seven.''
Henry looked at him commiseratingly, and said, ''I'll be almighty glad when this trip's over.''
''What d'ye mean by that?'' Bill demanded.
''I mean that this load of ourn is getting on your nerves, and that you're beginnin' to see things.''
''I thought of that,'' Bill answered gravely.''And so , when I saw it run off across the snow, I looked in the snow and sas its tracks. Then I counted the dogs and there was still six of 'em. The tracks is there in the snow now. D'ye want to look at 'em? I'll show 'em to you.''
Henry did not reply, but minched on in silence, until, the meal finished, he topped it with a final cup of coffee. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and said:
''Then you're thinkin' as it was---''
A long wailing cry, fiercely sad, from somewhere in the darkness, had interrupted him. He stopped to listen to it, then he finished hissentence with a wave of his hand toward the sound of the cry,''---one of the?''
Bill nodded. ''I'd a blame sight sooner think that than anything else.
You noticed yourself the row the dogs made.''
Cry after cry, and answering cries, were turning the silence into a bedlam. From every side the cries arose, and the dogs betrayed their fear by huddling together and so close to the fire that their hair was scorched by the heat.


-------------------------------------------------------------

WHITE FANG by Jack London

Published: 1906
Categorie(s): Fiction, Action ; and Adventure

PART 1

Chapter 1:-- THE TRAIL OF THE MEAT---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

....... Dark spruce forest frowned on either side the frozen waterway. The trees had been stripped by a recent wind of their white covering of frost, and they seemed to lean towards each other, black and ominous, in the fading light. A vast silence reigned over the land. The land itself was mirthless as the smile of the sphinx, a laughter cold as the frost and partaking of the grimness of infallibility. It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life and the effort of life. It was the Wild, the savage, frozen-hearted Northland Wild.

....... But there was life, abroad in the land and defiant. Down the frozen waterway toiled a string of wolfish dogs. Their bristly fur was rimed with frost. Their breath froze in the air as it left their mouths, spouting forth in spumes of vapour that settled upon the hair of their bodies and formed into crystals of frost. Leather harness was on the dogs, and leather traces attached them to a sled which dragged along behind. The sled was withouth runners. It was made of stout birch-back, and its full surface rested on the snow. The front end of the sled was turned up, like a scroll, in order to force down and under the bore of soft snow that surged like a wave before it. On the sled, securely lashed, was a long and narrow oblong box. There were other things on the sled---blankets, an axe, and a coffee-pot and frying-pan; but prominent, occupying most of the space, was the long and narrow oblong box.

....... In advance of the dogs, on wide snowshoes, toiled a man. At the rear of the sled toiled a second man. On the sled, in the box, lay a third man whose toil was over,--- a man whom the Wild had conquered and beaten down until he would never move nor struggle again. It is not the way of the Wild to like movement. Life is an offence to it, for life is movement; and the Wild aims always to destroy movement. It freezes the water to prevent it running to the sea; it drives the sap out of the trees till they are frozen to their mighty hearts; and most ferociously and terribly of all does the Wild harry and crush into submission man---man who is the most restless of life, ever in revolt against the dictum that all movement must in the end come to the cessation of movement.


....... But at front and rear, unawed and indomitable, toiled the two men who were not yet dead. Their bodies were covered with fur and soft-tanned leather. Eyelashes and cheeks and lips were so coated with the crystals from their frozen breath that their faces were not discernible. This gave them the seeming of ghostly masques, undertakers in a spectral world at the funeral of some ghost. But under it all they were men , penetrating the land of desolation and mockery and silence , puny adventures bent on colossal adventure, pitting themselves against the might of a world as remote and alien and pulseless as the abysses of space.


....... They travelled on without speech, saving their breath for the work of their bodies. On every side was the silence, pressing upon them with a tangible presence. It affected their minds as the many atmospheres of deep water affect the body of the diver. It crushed them with the weight of unending vastness and unalterable decree. It crushed them into the remotest recesses of their own minds, pressing out of them, like juices from the grape, all the false ardours and exaltations and undue self-values of the human soul, until they perceived themselves finite and small, specks and motes, moving with weak cunning and little wisdom admist the play and inter-play of the great blind elements and forces.


....... And hour went by, and a second hour. The ple light of the short sunless day was beginning to fade, when a faint far cry arose on the still air. It soared upward with a swift rush, till it reached its topmost note, where it persisted, palpitant and tense, and then slowly died away. It might have been a lost soul wailing, had it not been invested with a certain saad fierceness and hungry eargerness. The front man turned his head until his eyes met the eyes of the man behind. And then, acrosss the narrow oblong box, each nodded to the other.


....... A second cry arose, piercing the silence with needle-like shrillness. Both men located the sound. It was to the rear, somewhere in the snow expanse they had just traversed. A third and answering cry arose, also to the rear and to the left of the second cry.

''They are after us, Bill,'' said the man at the front....