The Call of the Wild(野性的呼唤)
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2024-12-26
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The Call of the Wild
1
The Call of the Wild
by Jack London
The Call of the Wild
2
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
The Call of the Wild
3
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,
The Call of the Wild
4
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
The Call of the Wild
5
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 impending calamity. Several times
The Call of the Wild
6
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 finely sensitive, 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
The Call of the Wild
7
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,
high-walled back yard. A stout man, with a red sweater that sagged
generously at the neck, came out and signed the book for the driver.
That was the man, Buck divined, the next tormentor, and he hurled
himself savagely against the bars. The man smiled grimly, and brought
a hatchet and a club.
"You ain't going to take him out now?" the driver asked.
"Sure," the man replied, driving the hatchet into the crate for a pry.
There was an instantaneous scattering of the four men who had
carried it in, and from safe perches on top the wall they prepared to
watch the performance.
Buck rushed at the splintering wood, sinking his teeth into it, surging
and wrestling with it. Wherever the hatchet fell on the outside, he was
there on the inside, snarling and growling, as furiously anxious to get out
as the man in the red sweater was calmly intent on getting him out.
"Now, you red-eyed devil," he said, when he had made an opening
sufficient for the passage of Buck's body. At the same time he dropped
the hatchet and shifted the club to his right hand.
And Buck was truly a red-eyed devil, as he drew himself together for
the spring, hair bristling, mouth foaming, a mad glitter in his blood-shot
eyes. Straight at the man he launched his one hundred and forty
pounds of fury, surcharged with the pent passion of two days and nights.
In mid air, just as his jaws were about to close on the man, he received a
shock that checked his body and brought his teeth together with an
agonizing clip. He whirled over, fetching the ground on his back and
side. He had never been struck by a club in his life, and did not
understand. With a snarl that was part bark and more scream he was
again on his feet and launched into the air. And again the shock came
The Call of the Wild
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and he was brought crushingly to the ground. This time he was aware
that it was the club, but his madness knew no caution. A dozen times
he charged, and as often the club broke the charge and smashed him
down.
After a particularly fierce blow, he crawled to his feet, too dazed to
rush. He staggered limply about, the blood flowing from nose and
mouth and ears, his beautiful coat sprayed and flecked with bloody
slaver. Then the man advanced and deliberately dealt him a frightful
blow on the nose. All the pain he had endured was as nothing
compared with the exquisite agony of this. With a roar that was almost
lionlike in its ferocity, he again hurled himself at the man. But the man,
shifting the club from right to left, coolly caught him by the under jaw,
at the same time wrenching downward and backward. Buck described
a complete circle in the air, and half of another, then crashed to the
ground on his head and chest.
For the last time he rushed. The man struck the shrewd blow he
had purposely withheld for so long, and Buck crumpled up and went
down, knocked utterly senseless.
"He's no slouch at dog-breakin', that's wot I say," one of the men on
the wall cried enthusiastically.
"Druther break cayuses any day, and twice on Sundays," was the
reply of the driver, as he climbed on the wagon and started the horses.
Buck's senses came back to him, but not his strength. He lay where
he had fallen, and from there he watched the man in the red sweater.
" 'Answers to the name of Buck,' " the man soliloquized, quoting
from the saloon-keeper's letter which had announced the consignment of
the crate and contents. "Well, Buck, my boy," he went on in a genial
voice, "we've had our little ruction, and the best thing we can do is to let
it go at that. You've learned your place, and I know mine. Be a good
dog and all 'll go well and the goose hang high. Be a bad dog, and I'll
whale the stuffin' outa you. Understand?"
As he spoke he fearlessly patted the head he had so mercilessly
pounded, and though Buck's hair involuntarily bristled at touch of the
hand, he endured it without protest. When the man brought him water
The Call of the Wild
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he drank eagerly, and later bolted a generous meal of raw meat, chunk
by chunk, from the man's hand.
He was beaten (he knew that); but he was not broken. He saw, once
for all, that he stood no chance against a man with a club. He had
learned the lesson, and in all his after life he never forgot it. That club
was a revelation. It was his introduction to the reign of primitive law,
and he met the introduction halfway. The facts of life took on a fiercer
aspect; and while he faced that aspect uncowed, he faced it with all the
latent cunning of his nature aroused. As the days went by, other dogs
came, in crates and at the ends of ropes, some docilely, and some raging
and roaring as he had come; and, one and all, he watched them pass
under the dominion of the man in the red sweater. Again and again, as
he looked at each brutal performance, the lesson was driven home to
Buck: a man with a club was a lawgiver, a master to be obeyed, though
not necessarily conciliated. Of this last Buck was never guilty, though
he did see beaten dogs that fawned upon the man, and wagged their tails,
and licked his hand. Also he saw one dog, that would neither conciliate
nor obey, finally killed in the struggle for mastery.
Now and again men came, strangers, who talked excitedly,
wheedlingly, and in all kinds of fashions to the man in the red sweater.
And at such times that money passed between them the strangers took
one or more of the dogs away with them. Buck wondered where they
went, for they never came back; but the fear of the future was strong
upon him, and he was glad each time when he was not selected.
Yet his time came, in the end, in the form of a little weazened man
who spat broken English and many strange and uncouth exclamations
which Buck could not understand.
"Sacredam!" he cried, when his eyes lit upon Buck. "Dat one dam
bully dog! Eh? How moch?"
"Three hundred, and a present at that," was the prompt reply of the
man in the red sweater. "And seem' it's government money, you ain't
got no kick coming, eh, Perrault?"
Perrault grinned. Considering that the price of dogs had been
boomed skyward by the unwonted demand, it was not an unfair sum for
The Call of the Wild
10
so fine an animal. The Canadian Government would be no loser, nor
would its despatches travel the slower. Perrault knew dogs, and when
he looked at Buck he knew that he was one in a thousand-- "One in ten
t'ousand," he commented mentally.
Buck saw money pass between them, and was not surprised when
Curly, a good-natured Newfoundland, and he were led away by the little
weazened man. That was the last he saw of the man in the red sweater,
and as Curly and he looked at receding Seattle from the deck of the
Narwhal, it was the last he saw of the warm Southland. Curly and he
were taken below by Perrault and turned over to a black-faced giant
called Francois. Perrault was a French-Canadian, and swarthy; but
Francois was a French-Canadian half-breed, and twice as swarthy.
They were a new kind of men to Buck (of which he was destined to see
many more), and while he developed no affection for them, he none the
less grew honestly to respect them. He speedily learned that Perrault
and Francois were fair men, calm and impartial in administering justice,
and too wise in the way of dogs to be fooled by dogs.
In the 'tween-decks of the Narwhal, Buck and Curly joined two other
dogs. One of them was a big, snow-white fellow from Spitzbergen
who had been brought away by a whaling captain, and who had later
accompanied a Geological Survey into the Barrens. He was friendly, in
a treacherous sort of way, smiling into one's face the while he meditated
some underhand trick, as, for instance, when he stole from Buck's food
at the first meal. As Buck sprang to punish him, the lash of Francois's
whip sang through the air, reaching the culprit first; and nothing
remained to Buck but to recover the bone. That was fair of Francois, he
decided, and the half-breed began his rise in Buck's estimation.
The other dog made no advances, nor received any; also, he did not
attempt to steal from the newcomers. He was a gloomy, morose fellow,
and he showed Curly plainly that all he desired was to be left alone, and
further, that there would be trouble if he were not left alone. "Dave" he
was called, and he ate and slept, or yawned between times, and took
interest in nothing, not even when the Narwhal crossed Queen Charlotte
Sound and rolled and pitched and bucked like a thing possessed. When
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TheCalloftheWild1TheCalloftheWildbyJackLondonTheCalloftheWild2CHAPTERIIntothePrimitive"Oldlongingsnomadicleap,Chafingatcustom'schain;AgainfromitsbrumalsleepWakenstheferinestrain."Buckdidnotreadthenewspapers,orhewouldhaveknownthattroublewasbrewing,notaloneforhimself,butforeverytide-waterdog,strongofm...
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