The Call of the Wild(野性的呼唤)

by Jack London

CHAPTER I

Into the Primitive

"Old longings nomadic leap, Chafing at custom's chain;

Again from its brumal sleep Wakens the ferine strain."

Buck did not read the newspapers, or he would have known that

trouble was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tide- water dog,

strong of muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San

Diego. Because men, groping in the Arctic darkness, had found a

yellow metal, and because steamship and transportation companies were

booming the find, thousands of men were rushing into the Northland.

These men wanted dogs, and the dogs they wanted were heavy dogs,

with strong muscles by which to toil, and furry coats to protect them from the frost.

Buck lived at a big house in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley.

Judge Miller's place, it was called. It stood back from the road, half

hidden among the trees, through which glimpses could be caught of the

wide cool veranda that ran around its four sides. The house was

approached by gravelled driveways which wound about through wide-

spreading lawns and under the interlacing boughs of tall poplars. At

the rear things were on even a more spacious scale than at the front.

There were great stables, where a dozen grooms and boys held forth,

rows of vine-clad servants' cottages, an endless and orderly array of

outhouses, long grape arbors, green pastures, orchards, and berry patches.

Then there was the pumping plant for the artesian well, and the big

cement tank where Judge Miller's boys took their morning plunge and

kept cool in the hot afternoon.

And over this great demesne Buck ruled. Here he was born, and

here he had lived the four years of his life. It was true, there were other

dogs, There could not but be other dogs on so vast a place, but they did

not count. They came and went, resided in the populous kennels, or

lived obscurely in the recesses of the house after the fashion of Toots,

the Japanese pug, or Ysabel, the Mexican hairless,--strange creatures

that rarely put nose out of doors or set foot to ground. On the other hand,

there were the fox terriers, a score of them at least, who yelped fearful

promises at Toots and Ysabel looking out of the windows at them and

protected by a legion of housemaids armed with brooms and mops.

But Buck was neither house-dog nor kennel-dog. The whole realm

was his. He plunged into the swimming tank or went hunting with the

Judge's sons; he escorted Mollie and Alice, the Judge's daughters, on

long twilight or early morning rambles; on wintry nights he lay at the

Judge's feet before the roaring library fire; he carried the Judge's

grandsons on his back, or rolled them in the grass, and guarded their

footsteps through wild adventures down to the fountain in the stable yard,

and even beyond, where the paddocks were, and the berry patches.

Among the terriers he stalked imperiously, and Toots and Ysabel he

utterly ignored, for he was king,--king over all creeping, crawling, flying

things of Judge Miller's place, humans included.

His father, Elmo, a huge St. Bernard, had been the Judge's

inseparable companion, and Buck bid fair to follow in the way of his

father. He was not so large,--he weighed only one hundred and forty

pounds,--for his mother, Shep, had been a Scotch shepherd dog.

Nevertheless, one hundred and forty pounds, to which was added the

dignity that comes of good living and universal respect, enabled him to

carry himself in right royal fashion. During the four years since his

puppyhood he had lived the life of a sated aristocrat; he had a fine pride

in himself, was even a trifle egotistical, as country gentlemen sometimes

become because of their insular situation. But he had saved himself by

not becoming a mere pampered house-dog. Hunting and kindred

outdoor delights had kept down the fat and hardened his muscles; and to

him, as to the cold-tubbing races, the love of water had been a tonic and

a health preserver.

And this was the manner of dog Buck was in the fall of 1897, when

the Klondike strike dragged men from all the world into the frozen

North. But Buck did not read the newspapers, and he did not know that

Manuel, one of the gardener's helpers, was an undesirable acquaintance.

Manuel had one besetting sin. He loved to play Chinese lottery. Also,

in his gambling, he had one besetting weakness--faith in a system; and

this made his damnation certain. For to play a system requires money,

while the wages of a gardener's helper do not lap over the needs of a

wife and numerous progeny.

The Judge was at a meeting of the Raisin Growers' Association, and

the boys were busy organizing an athletic club, on the memorable night

of Manuel's treachery. No one saw him and Buck go off through the

orchard on what Buck imagined was merely a stroll. And with the

exception of a solitary man, no one saw them arrive at the little flag

station known as College Park. This man talked with Manuel, and

money chinked between them.

"You might wrap up the goods before you deliver 'm," the stranger

said gruffly, and Manuel doubled a piece of stout rope around Buck's

neck under the collar.

"Twist it, an' you'll choke 'm plentee," said Manuel, and the stranger

grunted a ready affirmative.

Buck had accepted the rope with quiet dignity. To be sure, it was

an unwonted performance: but he had learned to trust in men he knew,

and to give them credit for a wisdom that outreached his own. But

when the ends of the rope were placed in the stranger's hands, he

growled menacingly. He had merely intimated his displeasure, in his

pride believing that to intimate was to command. But to his surprise

the rope tightened around his neck, shutting off his breath. In quick

rage he sprang at the man, who met him halfway, grappled him close by

the throat, and with a deft twist threw him over on his back. Then the

rope tightened mercilessly, while Buck struggled in a fury, his tongue

lolling out of his mouth and his great chest panting futilely. Never in

all his life had he been so vilely treated, and never in all his life had he

been so angry. But his strength ebbed, his eyes glazed, and he knew

nothing when the train was flagged and the two men threw him into the baggage car.

The next he knew, he was dimly aware that his tongue was hurting

and that he was being jolted along in some kind of a conveyance. The

hoarse shriek of a locomotive whistling a crossing told him where he

was. He had travelled too often with the Judge not to know the

sensation of riding in a baggage car. He opened his eyes, and into them

came the unbridled anger of a kidnapped king. The man sprang for his

throat, but Buck was too quick for him. His jaws closed on the hand,

nor did they relax till his senses were choked out of him once more.

"Yep, has fits," the man said, hiding his mangled hand from the

baggageman, who had been attracted by the sounds of struggle. "I'm

takin' 'm up for the boss to 'Frisco. A crack dog-doctor there thinks that

he can cure 'm."

Concerning that night's ride, the man spoke most eloquently for

himself, in a little shed back of a saloon on the San Francisco water front.

"All I get is fifty for it," he grumbled; "an' I wouldn't do it over for a

thousand, cold cash."

His hand was wrapped in a bloody handkerchief, and the right

trouser leg was ripped from knee to ankle.

"How much did the other mug get?" the saloon-keeper demanded.

"A hundred," was the reply. "Wouldn't take a sou less, so help me."

"That makes a hundred and fifty," the saloon-keeper calculated; "and

he's worth it, or I'm a squarehead."

The kidnapper undid the bloody wrappings and looked at his

lacerated hand. "If I don't get the hydrophoby--"

"It'll be because you was born to hang," laughed the saloon- keeper.

"Here, lend me a hand before you pull your freight," he added.

Dazed, suffering intolerable pain from throat and tongue, with the

life half throttled out of him, Buck attempted to face his tormentors.

But he was thrown down and choked repeatedly, till they succeeded in

filing the heavy brass collar from off his neck. Then the rope was

removed, and he was flung into a cagelike crate.

There he lay for the remainder of the weary night, nursing his wrath

and wounded pride. He could not understand what it all meant. What

did they want with him, these strange men? Why were they keeping

him pent up in this narrow crate? He did not know why, but he felt

oppressed by the vague sense of impendingcalamity. Several times

during the night he sprang to his feet when the shed door rattled open,

expecting to see the Judge, or the boys at least. But each time it was

the bulging face of the saloon-keeper that peered in at him by the sickly

light of a tallow candle. And each time the joyful bark that trembled in

Buck's throat was twisted into a savage growl.

But the saloon-keeper let him alone, and in the morning four men

entered and picked up the crate. More tormentors, Buck decided, for

they were evil-looking creatures, ragged and unkempt; and he stormed

and raged at them through the bars. They only laughed and poked

sticks at him, which he promptly assailed with his teeth till he realized

that that was what they wanted. Whereupon he lay down sullenly and

allowed the crate to be lifted into a wagon. Then he, and the crate in

which he was imprisoned, began a passage through many hands.

Clerks in the express office took charge of him; he was carted about in

another wagon; a truck carried him, with an assortment of boxes and

parcels, upon a ferry steamer; he was trucked off the steamer into a great

railway depot, and finally he was deposited in an express car.

For two days and nights this express car was dragged along at the

tail of shrieking locomotives; and for two days and nights Buck neither

ate nor drank. In his anger he had met the first advances of the express

messengers with growls, and they had retaliated by teasing him. When

he flung himself against the bars, quivering and frothing, they laughed at

him and taunted him. They growled and barked like detestable dogs,

mewed, and flapped their arms and crowed. It was all very silly, he

knew; but therefore the more outrage to his dignity, and his anger waxed

and waxed. He did not mind the hunger so much, but the lack of water

caused him severe suffering and fanned his wrath to fever-pitch. For

that matter, high-strung and finelysensitive, the ill treatment had flung

him into a fever, which was fed by the inflammation of his parched and

swollen throat and tongue.

He was glad for one thing: the rope was off his neck. That had

given them an unfair advantage; but now that it was off, he would show

them. They would never get another rope around his neck. Upon that

he was resolved. For two days and nights he neither ate nor drank, and

during those two days and nights of torment, he accumulated a fund of

wrath that boded ill for whoever first fell foul of him. His eyes turned

blood-shot, and he was metamorphosed into a raging fiend. So

changed was he that the Judge himself would not have recognized him;

and the express messengers breathed with relief when they bundled him

off the train at Seattle.

Four men gingerly carried the crate from the wagon into a small,