A thousand deaths by Jack London

man; but the thought of going to feed the maw of that loathsome and

all but dead thing was repugnant to him. He was finicky. His mind

had begun to wander again, and to be perplexed by hallucinations,

while his lucid intervals grew rarer and shorter.

He was awakened once from a faint by a wheeze close in his ear.

The wolf leaped lamely back, losing its footing and falling in its

weakness. It was ludicrous, but he was not amused. Nor was he

even afraid. He was too far gone for that. But his mind was for

the moment clear, and he lay and considered. The ship was no more

than four miles away. He could see it quite distinctly when he

rubbed the mists out of his eyes, and he could see the white sail

of a small boat cutting the water of the shining sea. But he could

never crawl those four miles. He knew that, and was very calm in

the knowledge. He knew that he could not crawl half a mile. And

yet he wanted to live. It was unreasonable that he should die

after all he had undergone. Fate asked too much of him. And,

dying, he declined to die. It was stark madness, perhaps, but in

the very grip of Death he defied Death and refused to die.

He closed his eyes and composed himself with infinite precaution.

He steeled himself to keep above the suffocating languor that

lapped like a rising tide through all the wells of his being. It

was very like a sea, this deadly languor, that rose and rose and

drowned his consciousness bit by bit. Sometimes he was all but

submerged, swimming through oblivion with a faltering stroke; and

again, by some strange alchemy of soul, he would find another shred

of will and strike out more strongly.

Without movement he lay on his back, and he could hear, slowly

drawing near and nearer, the wheezing intake and output of the sick

wolf’s breath. It drew closer, ever closer, through an infinitude

of time, and he did not move. It was at his ear. The harsh dry

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15

tongue grated like sandpaper against his cheek. His hands shot out

– or at least he willed them to shoot out. The fingers were curved

like talons, but they closed on empty air. Swiftness and certitude

require strength, and the man had not this strength.

The patience of the wolf was terrible. The man’s patience was no

less terrible. For half a day he lay motionless, fighting off

unconsciousness and waiting for the thing that was to feed upon him

and upon which he wished to feed. Sometimes the languid sea rose

over him and he dreamed long dreams; but ever through it all,

waking and dreaming, he waited for the wheezing breath and the

harsh caress of the tongue.

He did not hear the breath, and he slipped slowly from some dream

to the feel of the tongue along his hand. He waited. The fangs

pressed softly; the pressure increased; the wolf was exerting its

last strength in an effort to sink teeth in the food for which it

had waited so long. But the man had waited long, and the lacerated

hand closed on the jaw. Slowly, while the wolf struggled feebly

and the hand clutched feebly, the other hand crept across to a

grip. Five minutes later the whole weight of the man’s body was on

top of the wolf. The hands had not sufficient strength to choke

the wolf, but the face of the man was pressed close to the throat

of the wolf and the mouth of the man was full of hair. At the end

of half an hour the man was aware of a warm trickle in his throat.

It was not pleasant. It was like molten lead being forced into his

stomach, and it was forced by his will alone. Later the man rolled

over on his back and slept.

There were some members of a scientific expedition on the whale-

ship BEDFORD. From the deck they remarked a strange object on the

shore. It was moving down the beach toward the water. They were

unable to classify it, and, being scientific men, they climbed into

the whale-boat alongside and went ashore to see. And they saw

something that was alive but which could hardly be called a man.

It was blind, unconscious. It squirmed along the ground like some

monstrous worm. Most of its efforts were ineffectual, but it was

persistent, and it writhed and twisted and went ahead perhaps a

score of feet an hour.

Three weeks afterward the man lay in a bunk on the whale-ship

BEDFORD, and with tears streaming down his wasted cheeks told who

he was and what he had undergone. He also babbled incoherently of

his mother, of sunny Southern California, and a home among the

orange groves and flowers.

The days were not many after that when he sat at table with the

scientific men and ship’s officers. He gloated over the spectacle

of so much food, watching it anxiously as it went into the mouths

of others. With the disappearance of each mouthful an expression

of deep regret came into his eyes. He was quite sane, yet he hated

those men at mealtime. He was haunted by a fear that the food

would not last. He inquired of the cook, the cabin-boy, the

captain, concerning the food stores. They reassured him countless

times; but he could not believe them, and pried cunningly about the

LOVE OF LIFE AND OTHER STORIES

16

lazarette to see with his own eyes.

It was noticed that the man was getting fat. He grew stouter with

each day. The scientific men shook their heads and theorized.

They limited the man at his meals, but still his girth increased

and he swelled prodigiously under his shirt.

The sailors grinned. They knew. And when the scientific men set a

watch on the man, they knew too. They saw him slouch for’ard after

breakfast, and, like a mendicant, with outstretched palm, accost a

sailor. The sailor grinned and passed him a fragment of sea

biscuit. He clutched it avariciously, looked at it as a miser

looks at gold, and thrust it into his shirt bosom. Similar were

the donations from other grinning sailors.

The scientific men were discreet. They let him alone. But they

privily examined his bunk. It was lined with hardtack; the

mattress was stuffed with hardtack; every nook and cranny was

filled with hardtack. Yet he was sane. He was taking precautions

against another possible famine – that was all. He would recover

from it, the scientific men said; and he did, ere the BEDFORD’S

anchor rumbled down in San Francisco Bay.

A DAY’S LODGING

It was the gosh-dangdest stampede I ever seen. A thousand dog-

teams hittin’ the ice. You couldn’t see ‘m fer smoke. Two white

men an’ a Swede froze to death that night, an’ there was a dozen

busted their lungs. But didn’t I see with my own eyes the bottom

of the water-hole? It was yellow with gold like a mustard-plaster.

That’s why I staked the Yukon for a minin’ claim. That’s what made

the stampede. An’ then there was nothin’ to it. That’s what I

said – NOTHIN’ to it. An’ I ain’t got over guessin’ yet. –

NARRATIVE OF SHORTY.

JOHN MESSNER clung with mittened hand to the bucking gee-pole and

held the sled in the trail. With the other mittened hand he rubbed

his cheeks and nose. He rubbed his cheeks and nose every little

while. In point of fact, he rarely ceased from rubbing them, and

sometimes, as their numbness increased, he rubbed fiercely. His

forehead was covered by the visor of his fur cap, the flaps of

which went over his ears. The rest of his face was protected by a

thick beard, golden-brown under its coating of frost.

Behind him churned a heavily loaded Yukon sled, and before him

toiled a string of five dogs. The rope by which they dragged the

sled rubbed against the side of Messner’s leg. When the dogs swung

on a bend in the trail, he stepped over the rope. There were many

bends, and he was compelled to step over it often. Sometimes he

tripped on the rope, or stumbled, and at all times he was awkward,

betraying a weariness so great that the sled now and again ran upon

his heels.

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17

When he came to a straight piece of trail, where the sled could get

along for a moment without guidance, he let go the gee-pole and

batted his right hand sharply upon the hard wood. He found it

difficult to keep up the circulation in that hand. But while he

pounded the one hand, he never ceased from rubbing his nose and

cheeks with the other.

“It’s too cold to travel, anyway,” he said. He spoke aloud, after