A thousand deaths by Jack London

go back to the memory of old times; but this seemed a strange form to take.

“‘Come!’ I cried, taking her strong by the hand. ‘The way is long and dark. Let us hurry!’

“‘Where?’ she asked, sitting up, and ceasing from her strange mirth.

“‘To Akatan,’ I answered, intent on the light to grow on her face at the thought. But it

became like his, with a sneer to the lips, and cold anger.

“‘Yes,’ she said; ‘we will go, hand in hand, to Akatan, you and I. And we will live in the

dirty

huts, and eat of the fish and oil, and bring forth a spawn,–a spawn to be proud of all the

days of our life. We will forget the world and be happy, very happy. It is good, most good.

Come! Let us hurry. Let us go back to Akatan.’

“And she ran her hand through his yellow hair, and smiled in a way which was not good.

And there was no promise in her eyes.

AN ODYSSEY OF THE NORTH

25

“I sat silent, and marveled at the strangeness of woman. went back to the night when he

dragged her from me, and she screamed and tore at his hair,–at his hair which now she

played with and would not leave. Then I remembered the price and the long years of

waiting; and gripped her close, and dragged her away as he had done. And she held back,

even as on that night, and fought like a she-cat for its whelp. And when the fire was

between us and the man, I loosed her, and she sat and listened. And I told her of all that lay

between, of all that had happened me on strange seas, of all that I had done in strange

lands; of my weary quest, and the hungry years, and the promise which had been mine

from

the first. Ay, I told all, even to what had passed that day between the man and me, and in

the days yet young. And as spoke I saw the promise grow in her eyes, full and large like

the break of dawn. And I read pity there, the tenderness of woman, the love, the heart and

the soul of Unga. And I was a stripling again, for the look was the look of Unga as she ran

up the beach, laughing, to the home of her mother. The stern unrest was gone, and the

hunger, and the weary waiting. The time was met. I felt the call of her breast, and it

seemed

there I must pillow my head and forget. She opened her arms to me, and I came against

her. Then, sudden, the hate flamed in her eye, her hand was at my hip. And once, twice,

she

passed the knife.

“‘Dog!’ she sneered, as she flung me into the snow. ‘Swine!’ And then she laughed till the

silence cracked, and went back to her dead.

“As I say, once she passed the knife, and twice; but she was weak with hunger, and it was

not meant that I should die. Yet was minded to stay in that place, and to close my eyes in

the last long sleep with those whose lives had crossed with mine and led my feet on

unknown trails. But there lay a debt upon me which would not let me rest.

“And the way was long, the cold bitter, and there was little grub. The Pellys had found no

moose, and had robbed my cache. And so had the three white men; but they lay thin and

dead in their cabin as passed. After that I do not remember, till I came here, and found

food

and fire,–much fire.”

As he finished, he crouched closely, even jealously, over the stove. For a long while the

slush-lamp shadows played tragedies upon the wall.

“But Unga!” cried Prince, the vision still strong upon him.

“Unga? She would not eat of the ptarmigan. She lay with her arms about his neck, her face

deep in his yellow hair. I drew the fire close, that she might not feel the frost; but she crept

to the other side. And I built a fire there; yet it was little good, for she would not eat. And

in

this manner they still lie up there in the snow.”

AN ODYSSEY OF THE NORTH

26

“And you?” asked Malemute Kid.

“I do not know; but Akatan is small, and I have little wish to go back and live on the edge

of the world. Yet is there small use in life. I can go to Constantine, and he will put irons

upon me, and one day they will tie a piece of rope, so, and I will sleep good. Yet–no; I do

not know.”

“But, Kid,” protested Prince, “this is murder!”

“Hush!” commanded Malemute Kid. “There be things greater than our wisdom, beyond

our justice. The right and the wrong of this we cannot say, and it is not for us to judge.”

Naass drew yet closer to the fire. There was a great silence, and in each man’s eyes many

pictures came and went.

THE GAME

1

THE GAME

By Jack London

THE GAME

2

CHAPTER I

Many patterns of carpet lay rolled out before them on the floor–two

of Brussels showed the beginning of their quest, and its ending in

that direction; while a score of ingrains lured their eyes and

prolonged the debate between desire pocket-book. The head of the

department did them the honor of waiting upon them himself–or did

Joe the honor, as she well knew, for she had noted the open-mouthed

awe of the elevator boy who brought them up. Nor had she been blind

to the marked respect shown Joe by the urchins and groups of young

fellows on corners, when she walked with him in their own

neighborhood down at the west end of the town.

But the head of the department was called away to the telephone, and

in her mind the splendid promise of the carpets and the irk of the

pocket-book were thrust aside by a greater doubt and anxiety.

“But I don’t see what you find to like in it, Joe,” she said softly,

the note of insistence in her words betraying recent and

unsatisfactory discussion.

For a fleeting moment a shadow darkened his boyish face, to be

replaced by the glow of tenderness. He was only a boy, as she was

only a girl–two young things on the threshold of life, house-

renting and buying carpets together.

“What’s the good of worrying?” he questioned. “It’s the last go,

the very last.”

He smiled at her, but she saw on his lips the unconscious and all

but breathed sigh of renunciation, and with the instinctive monopoly

of woman for her mate, she feared this thing she did not understand

and which gripped his life so strongly.

“You know the go with O’Neil cleared the last payment on mother’s

house,” he went on. “And that’s off my mind. Now this last with

Ponta will give me a hundred dollars in bank–an even hundred,

that’s the purse–for you and me to start on, a nest-egg.”

She disregarded the money appeal. “But you like it, this–this

‘game’ you call it. Why?”

He lacked speech-expression. He expressed himself with his hands,

at his work, and with his body and the play of his muscles in the

squared ring; but to tell with his own lips the charm of the squared

ring was beyond him. Yet he essayed, and haltingly at first, to

express what he felt and analyzed when playing the Game at the

supreme summit of existence.

“All I know, Genevieve, is that you feel good in the ring when

you’ve got the man where you want him, when he’s had a punch up both

sleeves waiting for you and you’ve never given him an opening to

THE GAME

3

land ’em, when you’ve landed your own little punch an’ he’s goin’

groggy, an’ holdin’ on, an’ the referee’s dragging him off so’s you

can go in an’ finish ‘m, an’ all the house is shouting an’ tearin’

itself loose, an’ you know you’re the best man, an’ that you played

m’ fair an’ won out because you’re the best man. I tell you–”

He ceased brokenly, alarmed by his own volubility and by Genevieve’s

look of alarm. As he talked she had watched his face while fear

dawned in her own. As he described the moment of moments to her, on

his inward vision were lined the tottering man, the lights, the

shouting house, and he swept out and away from her on this tide of

life that was beyond her comprehension, menacing, irresistible,

making her love pitiful and weak. The Joe she knew receded, faded,

became lost. The fresh boyish face was gone, the tenderness of the

eyes, the sweetness of the mouth with its curves and pictured

corners. It was a man’s face she saw, a face of steel, tense and