A thousand deaths by Jack London

gathered wood, then scraped the snow away and on the frozen surface

built a fire. When the fire had burned for an hour, several inches

of dirt had thawed. This they shovelled out, and then built a

fresh fire. Their descent into the earth progressed at the rate of

two or three inches an hour.

It was hard and bitter work. The flurrying snow did not permit the

fire to burn any too well, while the wind cut through their clothes

and chilled their bodies. They held but little conversation. The

wind interfered with speech. Beyond wondering at what could have

been Dennin’s motive, they remained silent, oppressed by the horror

of the tragedy. At one o’clock, looking toward the cabin, Hans

announced that he was hungry.

“No, not now, Hans,” Edith answered. “I couldn’t go back alone

into that cabin the way it is, and cook a meal.”

At two o’clock Hans volunteered to go with her; but she held him to

his work, and four o’clock found the two graves completed. They

were shallow, not more than two feet deep, but they would serve the

purpose. Night had fallen. Hans got the sled, and the two dead

men were dragged through the darkness and storm to their frozen

sepulchre. The funeral procession was anything but a pageant. The

sled sank deep into the drifted snow and pulled hard. The man and

the woman had eaten nothing since the previous day, and were weak

from hunger and exhaustion. They had not the strength to resist

the wind, and at times its buffets hurled them off their feet. On

several occasions the sled was overturned, and they were compelled

to reload it with its sombre freight. The last hundred feet to the

graves was up a steep slope, and this they took on all fours, like

sled-dogs, making legs of their arms and thrusting their hands into

the snow. Even so, they were twice dragged backward by the weight

of the sled, and slid and fell down the hill, the living and the

dead, the haul-ropes and the sled, in ghastly entanglement.

“To-morrow I will put up head-boards with their names,” Hans said,

when the graves were filled in.

Edith was sobbing. A few broken sentences had been all she was

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55

capable of in the way of a funeral service, and now her husband was

compelled to half-carry her back to the cabin.

Dennin was conscious. He had rolled over and over on the floor in

vain efforts to free himself. He watched Hans and Edith with

glittering eyes, but made no attempt to speak. Hans still refused

to touch the murderer, and sullenly watched Edith drag him across

the floor to the men’s bunk-room. But try as she would, she could

not lift him from the floor into his bunk.

“Better let me shoot him, and we’ll have no more trouble,” Hans

said in final appeal.

Edith shook her head and bent again to her task. To her surprise

the body rose easily, and she knew Hans had relented and was

helping her. Then came the cleansing of the kitchen. But the

floor still shrieked the tragedy, until Hans planed the surface of

the stained wood away and with the shavings made a fire in the

stove.

The days came and went. There was much of darkness and silence,

broken only by the storms and the thunder on the beach of the

freezing surf. Hans was obedient to Edith’s slightest order. All

his splendid initiative had vanished. She had elected to deal with

Dennin in her way, and so he left the whole matter in her hands.

The murderer was a constant menace. At all times there was the

chance that he might free himself from his bonds, and they were

compelled to guard him day and night. The man or the woman sat

always beside him, holding the loaded shot-gun. At first, Edith

tried eight-hour watches, but the continuous strain was too great,

and afterwards she and Hans relieved each other every four hours.

As they had to sleep, and as the watches extended through the

night, their whole waking time was expended in guarding Dennin.

They had barely time left over for the preparation of meals and the

getting of firewood.

Since Negook’s inopportune visit, the Indians had avoided the

cabin. Edith sent Hans to their cabins to get them to take Dennin

down the coast in a canoe to the nearest white settlement or

trading post, but the errand was fruitless. Then Edith went

herself and interviewed Negook. He was head man of the little

village, keenly aware of his responsibility, and he elucidated his

policy thoroughly in few words.

“It is white man’s trouble”, he said, “not Siwash trouble. My

people help you, then will it be Siwash trouble too. When white

man’s trouble and Siwash trouble come together and make a trouble,

it is a great trouble, beyond understanding and without end.

Trouble no good. My people do no wrong. What for they help you

and have trouble?”

So Edith Nelson went back to the terrible cabin with its endless

alternating four-hour watches. Sometimes, when it was her turn and

she sat by the prisoner, the loaded shot-gun in her lap, her eyes

would close and she would doze. Always she aroused with a start,

snatching up the gun and swiftly looking at him. These were

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56

distinct nervous shocks, and their effect was not good on her.

Such was her fear of the man, that even though she were wide awake,

if he moved under the bedclothes she could not repress the start

and the quick reach for the gun.

She was preparing herself for a nervous break-down, and she knew

it. First came a fluttering of the eyeballs, so that she was

compelled to close her eyes for relief. A little later the eyelids

were afflicted by a nervous twitching that she could not control.

To add to the strain, she could not forget the tragedy. She

remained as close to the horror as on the first morning when the

unexpected stalked into the cabin and took possession. In her

daily ministrations upon the prisoner she was forced to grit her

teeth and steel herself, body and spirit.

Hans was affected differently. He became obsessed by the idea that

it was his duty to kill Dennin; and whenever he waited upon the

bound man or watched by him, Edith was troubled by the fear that

Hans would add another red entry to the cabin’s record. Always he

cursed Dennin savagely and handled him roughly. Hans tried to

conceal his homicidal mania, and he would say to his wife: “By and

by you will want me to kill him, and then I will not kill him. It

would make me sick.” But more than once, stealing into the room,

when it was her watch off, she would catch the two men glaring

ferociously at each other, wild animals the pair of them, in Hans’s

face the lust to kill, in Dennin’s the fierceness and savagery of

the cornered rat. “Hans!” she would cry, “wake up!” and he would

come to a recollection of himself, startled and shamefaced and

unrepentant.

So Hans became another factor in the problem the unexpected had

given Edith Nelson to solve. At first it had been merely a

question of right conduct in dealing with Dennin, and right

conduct, as she conceived it, lay in keeping him a prisoner until

he could be turned over for trial before a proper tribunal. But

now entered Hans, and she saw that his sanity and his salvation

were involved. Nor was she long in discovering that her own

strength and endurance had become part of the problem. She was

breaking down under the strain. Her left arm had developed

involuntary jerkings and twitchings. She spilled her food from her

spoon, and could place no reliance in her afflicted arm. She

judged it to be a form of St. Vitus’s dance, and she feared the

extent to which its ravages might go. What if she broke down? And

the vision she had of the possible future, when the cabin might

contain only Dennin and Hans, was an added horror.

After the third day, Dennin had begun to talk. His first question

had been, “What are you going to do with me?” And this question he

repeated daily and many times a day. And always Edith replied that

he would assuredly be dealt with according to law. In turn, she

put a daily question to him, – “Why did you do it?” To this he

never replied. Also, he received the question with out-bursts of

anger, raging and straining at the rawhide that bound him and

threatening her with what he would do when he got loose, which he

said he was sure to do sooner or later. At such times she cocked