A thousand deaths by Jack London

its fibers were tough. It was composed of stringy filaments

saturated with water, like the berries, and devoid of nourishment.

He threw off his pack and went into the rush-grass on hands and

knees, crunching and munching, like some bovine creature.

He was very weary and often wished to rest – to lie down and sleep;

but he was continually driven on – not so much by his desire to

gain the land of little sticks as by his hunger. He searched

little ponds for frogs and dug up the earth with his nails for

worms, though he knew in spite that neither frogs nor worms existed

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so far north.

He looked into every pool of water vainly, until, as the long

twilight came on, he discovered a solitary fish, the size of a

minnow, in such a pool. He plunged his arm in up to the shoulder,

but it eluded him. He reached for it with both hands and stirred

up the milky mud at the bottom. In his excitement he fell in,

wetting himself to the waist. Then the water was too muddy to

admit of his seeing the fish, and he was compelled to wait until

the sediment had settled.

The pursuit was renewed, till the water was again muddied. But he

could not wait. He unstrapped the tin bucket and began to bale the

pool. He baled wildly at first, splashing himself and flinging the

water so short a distance that it ran back into the pool. He

worked more carefully, striving to be cool, though his heart was

pounding against his chest and his hands were trembling. At the

end of half an hour the pool was nearly dry. Not a cupful of water

remained. And there was no fish. He found a hidden crevice among

the stones through which it had escaped to the adjoining and larger

pool – a pool which he could not empty in a night and a day. Had

he known of the crevice, he could have closed it with a rock at the

beginning and the fish would have been his.

Thus he thought, and crumpled up and sank down upon the wet earth.

At first he cried softly to himself, then he cried loudly to the

pitiless desolation that ringed him around; and for a long time

after he was shaken by great dry sobs.

He built a fire and warmed himself by drinking quarts of hot water,

and made camp on a rocky ledge in the same fashion he had the night

before. The last thing he did was to see that his matches were dry

and to wind his watch. The blankets were wet and clammy. His

ankle pulsed with pain. But he knew only that he was hungry, and

through his restless sleep he dreamed of feasts and banquets and of

food served and spread in all imaginable ways.

He awoke chilled and sick. There was no sun. The gray of earth

and sky had become deeper, more profound. A raw wind was blowing,

and the first flurries of snow were whitening the hilltops. The

air about him thickened and grew white while he made a fire and

boiled more water. It was wet snow, half rain, and the flakes were

large and soggy. At first they melted as soon as they came in

contact with the earth, but ever more fell, covering the ground,

putting out the fire, spoiling his supply of moss-fuel.

This was a signal for him to strap on his pack and stumble onward,

he knew not where. He was not concerned with the land of little

sticks, nor with Bill and the cache under the upturned canoe by the

river Dease. He was mastered by the verb “to eat.” He was hunger-

mad. He took no heed of the course he pursued, so long as that

course led him through the swale bottoms. He felt his way through

the wet snow to the watery muskeg berries, and went by feel as he

pulled up the rush-grass by the roots. But it was tasteless stuff

and did not satisfy. He found a weed that tasted sour and he ate

all he could find of it, which was not much, for it was a creeping

growth, easily hidden under the several inches of snow.

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8

He had no fire that night, nor hot water, and crawled under his

blanket to sleep the broken hunger-sleep. The snow turned into a

cold rain. He awakened many times to feel it falling on his

upturned face. Day came – a gray day and no sun. It had ceased

raining. The keenness of his hunger had departed. Sensibility, as

far as concerned the yearning for food, had been exhausted. There

was a dull, heavy ache in his stomach, but it did not bother him so

much. He was more rational, and once more he was chiefly

interested in the land of little sticks and the cache by the river

Dease.

He ripped the remnant of one of his blankets into strips and bound

his bleeding feet. Also, he recinched the injured ankle and

prepared himself for a day of travel. When he came to his pack, he

paused long over the squat moose-hide sack, but in the end it went

with him.

The snow had melted under the rain, and only the hilltops showed

white. The sun came out, and he succeeded in locating the points

of the compass, though he knew now that he was lost. Perhaps, in

his previous days’ wanderings, he had edged away too far to the

left. He now bore off to the right to counteract the possible

deviation from his true course.

Though the hunger pangs were no longer so exquisite, he realized

that he was weak. He was compelled to pause for frequent rests,

when he attacked the muskeg berries and rush-grass patches. His

tongue felt dry and large, as though covered with a fine hairy

growth, and it tasted bitter in his mouth. His heart gave him a

great deal of trouble. When he had travelled a few minutes it

would begin a remorseless thump, thump, thump, and then leap up and

away in a painful flutter of beats that choked him and made him go

faint and dizzy.

In the middle of the day he found two minnows in a large pool. It

was impossible to bale it, but he was calmer now and managed to

catch them in his tin bucket. They were no longer than his little

finger, but he was not particularly hungry. The dull ache in his

stomach had been growing duller and fainter. It seemed almost that

his stomach was dozing. He ate the fish raw, masticating with

painstaking care, for the eating was an act of pure reason. While

he had no desire to eat, he knew that he must eat to live.

In the evening he caught three more minnows, eating two and saving

the third for breakfast. The sun had dried stray shreds of moss,

and he was able to warm himself with hot water. He had not covered

more than ten miles that day; and the next day, travelling whenever

his heart permitted him, he covered no more than five miles. But

his stomach did not give him the slightest uneasiness. It had gone

to sleep. He was in a strange country, too, and the caribou were

growing more plentiful, also the wolves. Often their yelps drifted

across the desolation, and once he saw three of them slinking away

before his path.

Another night; and in the morning, being more rational, he untied

the leather string that fastened the squat moose-hide sack. From

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its open mouth poured a yellow stream of coarse gold-dust and

nuggets. He roughly divided the gold in halves, caching one half

on a prominent ledge, wrapped in a piece of blanket, and returning

the other half to the sack. He also began to use strips of the one

remaining blanket for his feet. He still clung to his gun, for

there were cartridges in that cache by the river Dease.

This was a day of fog, and this day hunger awoke in him again. He

was very weak and was afflicted with a giddiness which at times

blinded him. It was no uncommon thing now for him to stumble and

fall; and stumbling once, he fell squarely into a ptarmigan nest.

There were four newly hatched chicks, a day old – little specks of

pulsating life no more than a mouthful; and he ate them ravenously,

thrusting them alive into his mouth and crunching them like egg-

shells between his teeth. The mother ptarmigan beat about him with

great outcry. He used his gun as a club with which to knock her

over, but she dodged out of reach. He threw stones at her and with