Jack London. To build a fire (fragment)
"He was quick and alert in the things of life, but
only in the things, and not in the significances."
----------------------
DAY HAD BROKEN cold and gray, exceedingly cold and gray, when the man
turned aside from the main Yukon trail and climbed the high earth-bank,
where a dim and little-travelled trail led eastward through the fat spruce
timberland. It was a steep bank, and he paused for breath at the top,
excusing the act to himself by looking at his watch. It was nine o'clock.
There was no sun nor hind of sun, though there was not a cloud in the sky.
It was a clear day, and yet there seemed an intangible pall over the face of
things, a subtle gloom that made the day dark, and that was due to the
absence of sun. This fact did not worry the man. He was used to the lack of
sun. It had been days since he had seen the sun, and he knew that a few more
days must pass before that cheerful orb, due south, would just peep above
the sky line and dip immediately from view.
The man flung a look back along the way he had come. The Yukon lay a
mile wide and hidden under three feet of ice. On top of this ice were as
many feet of snow. It was all pure white, rolling in gentle undulations
where the ice jams of the freeze-up had formed. North and south, as far as
his eye could see, it was unbroken white, save for a dark hairline that
curved and twisted from around the spruce-covered island to the south, and
that curved and twisted away into the north, where it disappeared behind
another spruce-covered island. This dark hairline was the trail---the main
trail--that led south five hundred miles to the Chilcoot Pass, Dyea, and
salt water; and that led north seventy miles to Dawson, and still on to the
north a thousand miles to Nulato, and finally to St. Michael, on Bearing
Sea, a thousand miles and half a thousand more.
But all this---the mysterious, far-reaching hairline trail, the absence
of sun from the sky, the tremendous cold, and the strangeness and weirdness
of it all--made no impression on the man. It was not because he was long
used to it. He was a newcomer in the land, a "chechaquo", and this was his
first winter. The trouble with him was that he was without imagination. He
was quick and alert in the things of life, but only in the things, and not
in the significances. Fifty degrees below zero meant eighty odd degrees of
frost. Such fact impressed him as being cold and uncomfortable, and that was
all. It did not lead him to meditate upon his frailty in general, able only
to live within certain narrow limits of heat and cold; and from there on it
did not lead him to the conjectural field of immortality and man's place in
the universe. Fifty degrees below zero stood for a bite of frost that hurt
and that must be guarded against by the use of mittens, ear flaps, warm
moccasins, and thick socks. Fifty degrees below zero was to him just
precisely fifty degrees below zero. That there should be anything more to it
than that was a thought that never entered his head.
As he turned to go, he spat speculatively. There was a sharp, explosive
crackle that startled him. He spat again. And again, in the air, before it
could fall to the snow, the spittle crackled. He knew that at fifty below
spittle crackled on the snow, but this spittle had crackled in the air.
Undoubtedly it was colder than fifty below--how much colder he did not know.
But the temperature did not matter. He was bound for the old claim on the
left fork of Henderson Creek, where the boys were already. They had come
over across the divide from the Indian Creek country, while he had come the
roundabout way to take a look at the possibility of getting out logs in the
spring from the islands in the Yukon. He would be in to camp by six o'clock;
a bit after dark, it ws true, but the boys would be there, a fire would be
going, and a hot supper would be ready. As for lunch, he pressed his hand
against the protruding bundle under his jacket. It was also under his shirt,
wrapped up in a handkerchief and lying against the naked skin. It was the
only way to keep the biscuits from freezing. He smiled agreeably to himself
as he thought of those biscuits, each cut open and sopped in bacon grease,
and each enclosing a generous slice of fried bacon.
He plunged in among the big spruce trees. The trail was faint. A foot
of snow had fallen since the last sled had passed over, and he was glad he
was without a sled, travelling light. In fact, he carried nothing but the
lunch wrapped in the handkerchief. He was surprised, however, at the cold.
It certainly was cold, he concluded, as he rubbed his numb nose and
cheekbones with his mittened hand. He was a warm-whiskered man, but the hair
on his face did not protect the high cheekbones and the eager nose that
thrust itself aggressively into the frosty air.
At the man's heels trotted a dog, a big native husky, the proper wolf
dog, gray-coated and without any visible or temperamental difference from
its brother, the wild wolf. The animal was depressed by the tremendous cold.
It knew that it was no time for travelling. Its instinct told it a truer
tale than was told to the man by the man's judgement. In reality, it was not
merely colder than fifty below zero; it was colder than sixty below, than
seventy below. It was seventy-five below zero. Since the freezing point is
thirty-two above zero, it meant that one hundred and seven degrees of frost
obtained. The dog did not know anything about thermometers. Possibly in its
brain there was no sharp consciousness of a condition of very cold such as
was in the man's brain. But the brute had its instinct. It experienced a
vague but menacing apprehension that subdued it and made it slink along at
the man's heels, and that made it question eagerly every unwonted movement
of the man as if expecting him to go into camp or to seek shelter somewhere
and build a fire. The dog had learned fire and it wanted fire, or else to
burrow under the snow and cuddle its warmth away from the air
The frozen moisture of its (i.e. the dog's) breathing had settled on
its fur in a fine powder of frost, and especially were its jowls, muzzle,
and eyelashes whitened by its crystalled breath. The man's red beard and
mustache were likewise frosted, but more solidly, the deposit taking the
form of ice and increasing with every warm, moist breath he exhaled. Also,
the man was chewing tobacco and the muzzle of ice held his lips so rigidly
that he was unable to clear his chin when he expelled the juice. The result
was that a crystal beard of the color and solidity of amber was increasing
its length on his chin. If he fell down it would shatter itself, like glass,
into brittle fragments. But he did not mind the appendage. It was the
penalty all tobacco chewers paid in that country, and he had been out before
in two cold snaps. they had not been so cold as this, he knew, but by the
spirit thermometer at Sixty Mile he knew they had registered at fifty below
and at fifty-five.
He held on through the level stretch of woods for several miles,
crossed a wide flat of nigger heads, and dropped down a bank to the frozen
bed of a small stream. This was Henderson Creek, and he knew he was ten
miles from the forks. He looked at his watch. It was ten o'clock. He was
making four miles an hour, and he calculated that he would arrive at the
forks at half-past twelve. He decided to celebrate that event by eating his
lunch there.
The dog dropped in again at his heels, with a tail drooping
discouragement, as the man sung along the creek bed. The furrow of the old
sled trail was plainly visible, but a dozen inches of snow covered the marks
of the last runners. In a month no man had come up or down that silent
creek. The man held steadily on. He was not much given to thinking, and just
then particularly he had nothing to think about save that he would eat lunch
at the forks and that at six o'clock he would be in camp with the boys.
There was nobody to talk to; and, had there been, speech would have been
impossible because of the ice muzzle on his mouth. so he continued
monotonously to chew tobacco and to increase the length of his amber beard.
Once in a while the thought reiterated itself that it was very cold and
that he had never experienced such cold. As he walked along he rubbed his
cheekbones and nose with the back of his mittened hand. He did this
automatically, now and again changing hands. But, rub as he would, the
instant he stopped his cheekbones went numb, and the following instant the
end of his nose went numb. He was sure to frost his cheeks; he knew that,
and experienced a pang of regret that he had not devised a nose strap of the
sort Bud wore in cold snaps. Such a strap passed across the cheeks, as well,
and saved them. But it didn't matter much, after all. What were frosted
cheeks? a bit painful, that was all; they were never serious.
Empty as the man's mind was of thoughts, he was keenly observant, and
he noticed the changes in the creek, the curves and bends and timber jams,
and always he sharply noted where he placed his feet. Once, coming around a
bend, he shied abruptly, like a startled horse, curved away from the place
where he had been walking, and retreated several paces back along the trail.
The creek he knew was frozen clear to the bottom---no creek could contain
water in that arctic winter--but he knew also that there were springs that
bubbled out from the hillsides and ran along under the snow and on top the
ice of the creek. He knew that the coldest snaps never froze these springs,
and he knew likewise their danger. They were traps. They hid pools of water
under the snow that might be three inches deep, or three feet. Sometimes a
skin of ice half an inch thick covered them, and in turn was covered by the
snow. Sometimes there were alternate layers of water and ice skin, so that
when one broke through he kept on breaking through for a while, sometimes
wetting himself to the waist.
That was why he had shied in such panic. He had felt the give under his
feet and heard the crackle of a snow-hidden ice skin. And to get his feet
wet in such a temperature meant trouble and danger. At the very least it
meant delay, for he would be forced to stop and build a fire, and under its
protection to bare his feet while he dried his socks and moccasins. He stood
and studied the creek bed and its banks, and decided that the flow of water
came from the right. He reflected awhile, rubbing his nose and cheeks, then
skirted to the left, stepping gingerly and testing the footing for each
step. Once clear of the danger, he took a fresh chew of tobacco and swung
along at his four-mile gait. Continuing with Jack London's "To Build A
Fire". the danger of falling through the ice has become a factor.
In the course of the next two hours he came upon several similar traps.
Usually the snow above the hidden pools had a sunken, candied appearance
that advertised the danger. Once again, however, he had a close call; and
once, suspecting danger, he compelled the dog to go on in front. The dog did
not want to go. It hung back until the man shoved it forward, and then it
went quickly across the white, unbroken surface. Suddenly it broke through,
floundered to one side, and got away to firmer footing. It had wet its
forefeet and legs, and almost immediately the water that clung to it turned
to ice. It made quick efforts to lick the ice off its legs, then dropped
down in the snow and began to bite out the ice that had formed between the
toes. This was a matter of instinct. To permit the ice to remain would mean
sore feet. It did not know this. It merely obeyed the mysterious prompting
that arose from the deep crypts of its being. But the man knew, having
achieved a judgement on the subject, and he removed the mitten from his
right hand and helped tear out the ice particles. He did not expose his
fingers more than a minute, and was astonished at the swift numbness that
smote them. It certainly was cold. He pulled on the mitten hastily, and beat
the hand savagely across his chest.
At twelve o'clock the day was at its brightest. Yet the sun was too far
south on its winter journey to clear the horizon. The bulge of the earth
intervened between it and Henderson Creek, where the man walked under a
clear sky at noon and cast no shadow. At half-past twelve, to the minute, he
arrived at the forks of the creek. He was pleased at the speed he had made.
If he kept it up, he would certainly be with the boys by six. He unbuttoned
his jacket and shirt and drew forth his lunch. The action consumed no more
than a quarter of a minute, yet in that brief moment the numbness laid hold
of his exposed fingers. He did not put the mitten on, but, instead, struck
the fingers a dozen sharp smashes against his leg. Then he sat down on a
snow- covered log to eat. The sting that followed upon the striking of his
fingers against his leg ceased so quickly that he was startled. He had had
no chance to take a bit of biscuit. He struck the fingers repeatedly and
returned them to the mitten, baring the other hand for the purpose of
eating. He tried to take a mouthful, but the ice muzzle prevented. He had
forgotten to build a fire and thaw out. He chuckled at his foolishness, and
as he chuckled he noted that the stinging which had first come to his toes
when he sat down was already passing away. He wondered whether the toes were
warm or numb. He moved them inside the moccasins and decided that they were
numb.
He pulled the mitten on hurriedly and stood up. He was a bit
frightened. He stamped up and down until the stinging returned to his feet.
It certainly was cold, was his thought. That man from Sulpher Creek had
spoken the truth when telling how cold it sometimes got in the country. And
he had laughed at him at the time! That showed one must not be too sure of
things. There was no mistake about it, it *was* cold. He strode up and down,
stamping his feet and threshing his arms, until reassured by the returning
warmth. Then he got out matches and proceeded to make a fire. >From the
undergrowth, where high water of the previous spring had lodged a supply of
seasoned twigs, he got his firewood. Working carefully from a small
beginning, he soon had a roaring fire, over which he thawed the ice from his
face and in the protection of which he ate his biscuits. For the moment the
cold of space was outwitted. The dog took satisfaction in the fire,
stretching out close enough for warmth and far enough away to escape being
singed.
When the man had finished, he filled his pipe and took his comfortable
time over a smoke. Then he pulled on his mittens, settled the ear flaps of
his cap firmly about his ears, and took the creek trail up the left fork.
The dog was disappointed and yearned back toward the fire. The man did not
know cold. Possibly all the generations of his ancestry had been ignorant of
cold, of real cold, of cold one hundred and seven degrees below freezing
point. But the dog knew; all its ancestry knew, and it had inherited the
knowledge. And it knew that it was not good to walk abroad in such fearful
cold. It was the time to lie snug in a hole in the snow and wait for a
curtain of cloud to be drawn across the face of outer space whence this cold
came. On the other hand, there was no keen intimacy between the dog and the
man. The one was the toil slave of the other, and the only caresses it had
ever received were the caresses of the whip lash and of harsh and menacing
throat sounds that threatened the whip lash. So the dog made no effort to
communicate its apprehension to the man. It was not concerned in the welfare
of the man; it was for its own sake that it yearned back toward the fire.
But the man whistled, and spoke to it with the sound of whip lashes, and the
dog swung in at the man's heels and followed after.
The man took a chew of tobacco and proceeded to start a new amber
beard. Also, his moist breath quickly powdered with white his mustache,
eyebrows, and lashes. There did not seem to be so many springs on the left
fork of the Henderson, and for half an hour the man saw no signs of any. And
then it happened. At a place where there were no signs, where the soft,
unbroken snow seemed to advertise solidity beneath, the man broke through.
It was not deep. He wet himself halfway to the knees before he floundered
out to the firm crust.
He was angry, and cursed his luck aloud. He had hoped to get into camp
with the boys at six o'clock, and this would delay him an hour, for he would
have to build a fire and dry out his footgear. This was imperative at that
low temperature--for he knew that much; and he turned aside to the bank,
which he climbed. On top, tangled in the underbrush about the trunks of
several small spruce trees, was a high water deposit of dry firewood--sticks
and twigs, principally, but also larger portions of seasoned branches and
fine, dry, last year's grasses. He threw down several large pieces on top of
the snow. This served for a foundation and prevented the young flame from
drowning itself in the snow it otherwise would melt. The flame he got by
touching a match to a small shred of birch bark that he took from his
pocket. This burned even more readily than paper. Placing it on the
foundation, he fed the young flame with wisps of dry grass and with the
tiniest dry twigs.
He worked slowly and carefully, keenly aware of his danger. Gradually,
as the flame grew stronger, he increased the size of the twigs with which he
fed it. He squatted in the snow, pulling the twigs out from their
entanglement in the brush and feeding directly to the flame. He knew there
must be no failure. When it is seventy-five below zero, a man must not fail
in his first attempt to build a fire---that is, if his feet are wet. If his
feet are dry, and he fails, he can run along the trail for half a mile and
restore his circulation. But the circulation of wet and freezing feet cannot
be restored by running when it is seventy- five below. No matter how fast he
runs, the wet feet will freeze the harder.
All this the man knew. The old-timer on Sulphur Creek had
told him about it the previous fall, and now he was appreciating the advice.
Already all sensation had gone out of his feet. To build the fire he had
been forced to remove his mittens, and the fingers had quickly gone numb.
His pace of four miles an hour had kept his heart pumping blood to the
surface of his body and to all the extremities. But the instant he stopped,
the action of the pump eased down. The cold of space smote the unprotected
tip of the planet, and he, being on that unprotected tip, received the full
force of the blow. the blood of his body recoiled before it. The blood was
alive, like the dog, and like the dog it wanted to hide away and cover
itself up from the fearful cold. So long as he walked four miles an hour, he
pumped that blood, willy- nilly, to the surface; but now it ebbed away and
sank down into the recesses of his body. The extremities were the first to
feel its absence. His wet feet froze the faster, and his exposed fingers
numbed the faster, though they had not yet begun to freeze. Nose and cheeks
were already freezing, while the skin of all his body chilled as it lost its
blood.
But he was safe. Toes and nose and cheeks would be only touched by the
frost, for the fire was beginning to burn with strength. He was feeding it
with twigs the size of his finger. In another minute he would be able to
feed it with branches the size of his wrist, and then he could remove his
wet footgear, and, while it dried, he could keep his naked feet warm by the
fire, rubbing them at first, of course, with snow. The fire was a success.
He was safe. He remembered the advice of the old-timer on Sulphur Creek, and
smiled. The old-timer had been very serious in laying down the law that no
man must travel alone in the Klondike after fifty below. Well, here he was;
he had had the accident; he was alone; and he had saved himself. Those old-
timers were rather womanish, some of them, he thought. All a man had to do
was to keep his head, and he was all right. Any man who was a man could
travel alone. But it was surprising, the rapidity with which his cheeks and
nose were freezing. And he had not thought his fingers could go lifeless in
so short a time. Lifeless they were, for he could scarcely make them move
together to grip a twig, and they seemed remote from his body and from him.
When he touched a twig, he had to look and see whether or not he had hold of
it. The wires were pretty well down between him and his finger ends.
All of which counted for little. There was the fire, snapping and
crackling and promising life with every dancing flame. He started to untie
his moccasins. They were coated with ice; the thick German socks were like
sheaths of iron halfway to the knees; and the moccasin strings were like
rods of steel all twisted and knotted as by some conflagration. For a moment
he tugged with his numb fingers, then, realizing the folly of it, he drew
his sheath knife.
But before he could cut the strings, it happened. It was his own fault
or, rather, his mistake. He should not have built the fire under the spruce
tree. He should have built it in the open. But it had been easier to pull
the twigs from the brush and drop them directly on the fire. Now the tree
under which he had done this carried a weight of snow on its boughs. No wind
had blown for weeks, and each bough was fully freighted. Each time he had
pulled on a twig he had communicated a slight agitation to the tree--an
imperceptible agitation, so far as he was concerned, but an agitation
sufficient to bring about the disaster. High up in the tree one bough
capsized its load of snow. This fell on the boughs beneath, capsizing them.
This process continued, spreading out and involving the whole tree. It grew
like an avalanche, and it descended without warning upon the man and the
fire, and the fire was blotted out! Where it had burned was a mantle of
fresh and disordered snow.
The man was shocked. It was as though he had just heard his own
sentence of death. For a moment he sat and stared at the spot where the fire
had been. Then he grew very calm. Perhaps the old- timer on Sulphur Creek
was right. If he had only had a trail mate he would have been in no danger
now. The trail mate could have built the fire. Well, it was up to him to
build a fire over again, and this second time there must be no failure. Even
if he succeeded, he would most likely lose some toes. His feet must be badly
frozen by now, and there would be some time before the second fire was
ready.
Such were his thoughts, but he did not sit and think them. He was busy
all the time they were passing through his mind. He made a new foundation
for a fire, this time in the open, where no treacherous tree could blot it
out. Next he gathered dry grasses and tiny twigs from the high water
flotsam. He could not bring his fingers together to pull them out, but he
was able to gather them by the handful. In this way he got many rotten twigs
and bits of green moss that were undesirable, but it was the best he could
do. He worked methodically, even collecting an armful of the larger branches
to be used later when the fire gathered strength. And all the while the dog
sat and watched him, a certain yearning wistfulness in its eyes, for it
looked upon him as the fire provider, and the fire was slow in coming.
When all was ready, the man reached in his pocket for a second piece of
birch bark. He knew the bark was there, and, though he could not feel it
with his fingers, he could hear its crisp rustling as he fumbled for it. Try
as he would, he could not clutch hold of it. And all the time, in his
consciousness, was the knowledge that each instant his feet were freezing.
This thought tended to put him in a panic, but he fought against it and kept
calm. He pulled on his mittens with his teeth, and thrashed his arms back
and forth, beating his hands with all his might against his sides. He did
this sitting down, and he stood up to do it; and all the while the dog sat
in the snow, its wolf brush of a tail curled around warmly over its
forefeet, its sharp wolf ears pricked forward intently as it watched the
man. And the man, as he beat and threshed with his arms and hands, felt a
great surge of envy as he regarded the creature that was warm and secure in
its natural covering.
After a time he was aware of the first faraway signals of sensation in
his beaten fingers. The faint tingling grew stronger till it evolved into a
stinging ache that was excruciating, but which the man hailed with
satisfaction. He stripped the mitten from his right hand and fetched forth
the birch bark. The exposed fingers were quickly going numb again. Next he
brought out his bunch of sulphur matches. But the tremendous cold had
already driven the life out of his fingers. In his effort to separate one
match from the others, the whole bunch fell in the snow. He tried to pick it
out of the snow, but failed. The dead fingers could neither touch nor
clutch. He was very careful. He drove the thought of his freezing feet, and
nose, and cheeks, out of his mind, devoting his whole soul to the matches.
He watched, using the sense of vision in place of that of touch, and when he
saw his fingers on each side the bunch, he closed them--that is, he willed
to close them, for the wires were down, and the fingers did not obey. He
pulled the mitten on the right hand, and beat it fiercely against his knee.
Then, with both mittened hands, he scooped the bunch of matches, along with
much snow, into his lap. Yet he was no better off.
After some manipulation he managed to get the bunch between the heels
of his mittened hands. In this fashion he carried it to his mouth. The ice
crackled and snapped when by a violent effort he opened his mouth. He drew
the lower jaw in, curled the upper lip out of the way, and scraped the bunch
with his upper teeth in order to separate a match. He succeeded in getting
one, which he dropped on his lap. He was no better off. He could not pick it
up. Then he devised a way. He picked it up in his teeth and scratched it on
his leg. Twenty times he scratched before he succeeded in lighting it. As if
flamed he held it with his teeth to the birch bark. But the burning
brimstone went up his nostrils and into his lungs, causing him to cough
spasmodically. The match fell into the snow and went out.
The old-timer on Sulphur Creek was right, he thought in the moment of
controlled despair that ensued: after fifty below, a man should travel with
a partner. He beat his hands, but failed in exciting any sensation. Suddenly
he bared both hands, removing the mittens with his teeth. He caught the
whole bunch between the heels of his hands. His arm muscles not being frozen
enabled him to press the hand heels tightly against the matches. Then he
scratched the bunch along his leg. It flared into flame, seventy sulphur
matches at once! There was no wind to blow them out. He kept his head to one
side to escape the strangling fumes, and held the blazing bundle to the
birch bark. As he so held it, he became aware of sensation in his hand. His
flesh ws burning. He could smell it. Deep down below the surface he could
feel it. The sensation developed into pain that grew acute. And still he
endured it, holding the flame of the matches clumsily to the bark that would
not light readily because his own burning hands were in the way, absorbing
most of the flame.
At last, when he could endure no more, he jerked his hands apart. The
blazing matches fell sizzling into the snow, but the birch bark was alight.
He began laying dry grasses and the tiniest twigs on the flame. He could not
pick and choose, for he had to lift the fuel between the heels of his hands.
Small pieces of rotten wood and green moss clung to the twigs, and he bit
them off as well as he could with his teeth. He cherished the flame
carefully and awkwardly. It meant life , and it must not perish. The
withdrawal of blood from the surface of his body now made him begin to
shiver, and he grew more awkward. A large piece of green moss fell squarely
on the little fire. He tried to poke it with his fingers, but his shivering
frame made him poke too far, and he disrupted the nucleus of the little
fire, the burning grasses and tiny twigs separating and scattering. He tried
to poke them together again, but in spite of the tenseness of the effort,
his shivering got away with him, and the twigs were hopelessly scattered.
Each twig gushed a puff of smoke and went out. The fire provider had failed.
As he looked apathetically about him, his eyes chanced on the dog, sitting
across the ruins of the fire from him, in the snow, making restless,
hunching movements, slightly lifting one forefoot and then the other,
shifting its weight back and forth on them with wistful eagerness.
The sight of the dog put a wild idea into his head. He remembered the
tale of the man, caught in a blizzard, who killed a steer and crawled inside
the carcass, and so was saved. He would kill the dog and bury his hands in
the warm body until the numbness went out of them. Then he could build
another fire. He spoke to the dog, calling it to him; but in his voice was a
strange note of fear that frightened the animal, who had never known the man
to speak in such a way before. something was the matter, and its suspicious
nature sensed danger-it knew not what danger, but somewhere, somehow, in its
brain arose an apprehension of the man. It flattened its ears down at the
sound of the man's voice, and its restless, hunching movements and liftings
and shiftings of its forefeet became more pronounced; but it would not come
to the man. He got on his hands and knees and crawled toward the dog. This
unusual posture again excited suspicion, and the animal sidled mincingly
away.
The man sat up in the snow for a moment and struggled for calmness.
Then he pulled on his mittens, by means of his teeth, and got upon his feet.
He glanced down at first in order to assure himself that he was really
standing up, for the absence of sensation in his feet left him unrelated to
the earth. His erect position in itself started to drive the webs of
suspicion from the dog's mind; and when he spoke peremptorily, with the
sound of whip lashes in his voice, the dog rendered its customary allegiance
and came to him. As it came within reaching distance, the man lost his
control. His arms flashed out to the dog, and he experienced genuine
surprise when he discovered that his hands could not clutch, that there was
neither bend nor feeling in the fingers. He had forgotten for the moment
that they were frozen and that they were freezing more and more. All this
happened quickly, and before the animal could get away, he encircled its
body with his arms. He sat down in the snow, and in this fashion held the
dog, while it snarled and whined and struggled.
But it was all he could do, hold its body encircled in his arms and sit
there. He realized that he could not kill the dog. There was no way to do
it. With his helpless hands he could neither draw nor hold his sheath knife
nor throttle the animal. He released it, and it plunged wildly away, with
tail between its legs, and still snarling. It halted forty feet away
surveyed him curiously, with ears sharply pricked forward.
The man looked down at his hands in order to locate them, and found
them hanging on the ends of his arms. It struck him as curious that one
should have to use his eyes in order to find out where his hands were. He
began threshing his arms back and forth, beating the mittened hands against
his sides. He did this for five minutes, violently, and his heart pumped
enough blood up to the surface to put a stop to his shivering. But no
sensation was aroused in his hands. He had an impression that they hung like
weights on the ends of his arms, but when he tried to run the impression
down, he could not find it.
A certain fear of death, dull and oppressive, came to him. This fear
quickly became poignant as he realized that it was no longer a mere matter
of freezing his fingers and toes, or of losing his hands and feet, but that
it was a matter of life and death with the chances against him. This threw
him into a panic, and he turned and ran up the creek bed along the old, dim
trail. The dog joined in behind and kept up with him. He ran blindly,
without intention, in fear such as he had never known in his life.
Slowly, as he plowed and floundered through the snow, he began to see
things again--the banks of the creek, the old timber jams, the leafless
aspens, and the sky. the running made him feel better. He did not shiver.
Maybe, if he ran on, his feet would thaw out; and, anyway, if he ran far
enough, he would reach camp and the boys. Without doubt he would lose some
fingers and toes and some of his face; but the boys would take care of him,
and save the rest of him when he got there. And at the same time there was
another thought in his mind that said he would never get to the camp and the
boys; that it was too many miles away, that the freezing had too great a
start on him, and that he would soon be stiff and dead. This thought he kept
in the background and refused to consider. Sometimes it pushed itself
forward and demanded to be heard, but he thrust it back and strove to think
of other things.
It struck him as curious that he could run at all on feet so frozen
that he could not feel them when they struck the earth and took the weight
of his body. He seemed to himself to skim along above the surface, and to
have no connection with the earth. Somewhere he had once seen a winged
Mercury, and he wondered if Mercury felt as he felt when skimming over the
earth.
His theory of running until he reached camp and the boys had one flaw
in it; he lacked the endurance. Several times he stumbled, and finally he
tottered, crumpled up, and fell. When he tried to rise, he failed. He must
sit and rest, he decided, and next time he would merely walk and keep on
going. As he sat and regained his breath, he noted that he was feeling quite
warm and comfortable. He was not shivering, and it even seemed that a warm
glow had come to his chest and trunk. And yet, when he touched his nose or
cheeks, there was no sensation. Running would not thaw them out. Nor would
it thaw out his hands and feet. Then the thought came to him that the frozen
portions of his body must be extending. He tried to keep this thought down,
to forget it, to think of something else; he was aware of the panicky
feeling that it caused, and he was afraid of the panic. But the thought
asserted itself, and persisted, until it produced a vision of his body
totally frozen. This was too much, and he made another wild run along the
trail. Once he slowed down to a walk, but the thought of the freezing
extending itself made him run again.
And all the time the dog ran with him, at his heels. When he fell down
a second time, it curled its tail over its forefeet and sat in front of him,
facing him, curiously eager and intent. The warmth and security of the
animal angered him, and he cursed it till it flattened down its ears
appeasingly. This time the shivering came more quickly upon the man. He was
losing his battle with the frost. It was creeping into his body from all
sides. The thought of it drove him on, but he ran no more than a hundred
feet, when he staggered and pitched headlong. It was his last panic. When he
had recovered his breath and control, he sat up and entertained in his mind
the conception of meeting death with dignity. However, the conception did
not come to him in such terms. His idea of it was that he had been making a
fool of himself, running around like a chicken with its head cut off-- such
was the simile that occurred to him. Well, he was bound to freeze anyway,
and he might as well take it decently. With this new-found peace of mind
came the first glimmerings of drowsiness. A good idea, he thought, to sleep
off to death. It was like taking an anesthetic. Freezing was not so bad a
people thought. There were lots worse ways to die.
He pictured the boys finding his body next day. Suddenly he found
himself with them, coming along the trail and looking for himself. And,
still with them, he came around a turn in the trail and found himself lying
in the snow. He did not belong with himself any more, for even then he was
out of himself, standing with the boys and looking at himself in the snow.
It certainly was cold, was his thought. When he got back to the States he
could tel l the folks what real cold was. He drifted on from this to a
vision of the old-timer on Sulphur Creek. He could see him quite clearly,
warm and comfortable, and smoking a pipe.
Then the man drowsed off into what seemed to him the most comfortable
and satisfying sleep he had ever known. The dog sat facing and waiting. The
brief day drew to a close in a long, slow twilight. There were no signs of a
fire to be made, and, besides, never in the dog's experience had it known a
man to sit like that in the snow and make no fire. As the twilight drew on,
its eager yearning for the fire mastered it, and with a great lifting and
shifting of forefeet, it whined softly, then flattened out its ears down in
anticipation of being chidden by the man. But the man remained silent. Later
the dog whined loudly. And still later it crept close to the man and caught
the scent of death. This made the animal bristle and back away. A little
longer it delayed, howling under the stars that leaped and danced and shone
brightly in the cold sky. Then it turned and trotted up the trail in the
direction of the camp it knew, where were the other food providers and fire
providers.
THE END is body. The extremities were the first to feel its absence.
His wet feet froze the faster, and his exposed fingers numbed the faster,
though they had not yet begun to freeze. Nose and cheeks were already
freezing, while the skin of all his body chilled as it lost its blood.
But he was safe. Toes and nose and cheeks would be only touched by the
frost, for the fire was beginning to burn with strength. He was feeding it
with twigs the size of his finger. In another minute he would be able to
feed it with branches the size of his wrist, and then he could remove his
wet footgear, and, while it dried, he could keep his naked feet warm by the
fire, rubbing them at first, of course, with snow. The fire was a success.
He was safe. He remembered the advice of the old-timer on Sulphur Creek, and
smiled. The old-timer had been very serious in laying down the law that no
man must travel alone in the Klondike after fifty below. Well, here he was;
he had had the accident; he was alone; and he had saved himself. Those old-
timers were rather womanish, some of them, he thought. All a man had to do
was to keep his head, and he was all right. Any man who was a man could
travel alone. But it was surprising, the rapidity with which his cheeks and
nose were freezing. And he had not thought his fingers could go lifeless in
so short a time. Lifeless they were, for he could scarcely make them move
together to grip a twig, and they seemed remote from his body and from him.
When he touched a twig, he had to look and see whether or not he had hold of
it. The wires were pretty well down between him and his finger ends.
All of which counted for little. There was the fire, snapping and
crackling and promising life with every dancing flame. He started to untie
his moccasins. They were coated with ice; the thick German socks were like
sheaths of iron halfway to the knees; and the moccasin strings were like
rods of steel all twisted and knotted as by some conflagration. For a moment
he tugged with his numb fingers, then, realizing the folly of it, he drew
his sheath knife.
But before he could cut the strings, it happened. It was his own fault
or, rather, his mistake. He should not have built the fire under the spruce
tree. He should have built it in the open. But it had been easier to pull
the twigs from the brush and drop them directly on the fire. Now the tree
under which he had done this carried a weight of snow on its boughs. No wind
had blown for weeks, and each bough was fully freighted. Each time he had
pulled on a twig he had communicated a slight agitation to the tree--an
imperceptible agitation, so far as he was concerned, but an agitation
sufficient to bring about the disaster. High up in the tree one bough
capsized its load of snow. This fell on the boughs beneath, capsizing them.
This process continued, spreading out and involving the whole tree. It grew
like an avalanche, and it descended without warning upon the man and the
fire, and the fire was blotted out! Where it had burned was a mantle of
fresh and disordered snow.
The man was shocked. It was as though he had just heard his own
sentence of death. For a moment he sat and stared at the spot where the fire
had been. Then he grew very calm. Perhaps the old- timer on Sulphur Creek
was right. If he had only had a trail mate he would have been in no danger
now. The trail mate could have built the fire. Well, it was up to him to
build a fire over again, and this second time there must be no failure. Even
if he succeeded, he would most likely lose some toes. His feet must be badly
frozen by now, and there would be some time before the second fire was
ready.
Such were his thoughts, but he did not sit and think them. He was busy
all the time they were passing through his mind. He made a new foundation
for a fire, this time in the open, where no treacherous tree could blot it
out. Next he gathered dry grasses and tiny twigs from the high water
flotsam. He could not bring his fingers together to pull them out, but he
was able to gather them by the handful. In this way he got many rotten twigs
and bits of green moss that were undesirable, but it was the best he could
do. He worked methodically, even collecting an armful of the larger branches
to be used later when the fire gathered strength. And all the while the dog
sat and watched him, a certain yearning wistfulness in its eyes, for it
looked upon him as the fire provider, and the fire was slow in coming.
When all was ready, the man reached in his pocket for a second piece of
birch bark. He knew the bark was there, and, though he could not feel it
with his fingers, he could hear its crisp rustling as he fumbled for it. Try
as he would, he could not clutch hold of it. And all the time, in his
consciousness, was the knowledge that each instant his feet were freezing.
This thought tended to put him in a panic, but he fought against it and kept
calm. He pulled on his mittens with his teeth, and thrashed his arms back
and forth, beating his hands with all his might against his sides. He did
this sitting down, and he stood up to do it; and all the while the dog sat
in the snow, its wolf brush of a tail curled around warmly over its
forefeet, its sharp wolf ears pricked forward intently as it watched the
man. And the man, as he beat and threshed with his arms and hands, felt a
great surge of envy as he regarded the creature that was warm and secure in
its natural covering.
After a time he was aware of the first faraway signals of sensation in
his beaten fingers. The faint tingling grew stronger till it evolved into a
stinging ache that was excruciating, but which the man hailed with
satisfaction. He stripped the mitten from his right hand and fetched forth
the birch bark. The exposed fingers were quickly going numb again. Next he
brought out his bunch of sulphur matches. But the tremendous cold had
already driven the life out of his fingers. In his effort to separate one
match from the others, the whole bunch fell in the snow. He tried to pick it
out of the snow, but failed. The dead fingers could neither touch nor
clutch. He was very careful. He drove the thought of his freezing feet, and
nose, and cheeks, out of his mind, devoting his whole soul to the matches.
He watched, using the sense of vision in place of that of touch, and when he
saw his fingers on each side the bunch, he closed them--that is, he willed
to close them, for the wires were down, and the fingers did not obey. He
pulled the mitten on the right hand, and beat it fiercely against his knee.
Then, with both mittened hands, he scooped the bunch of matches, along with
much snow, into his lap. Yet he was no better off.
After some manipulation he managed to get the bunch between the heels
of his mittened hands. In this fashion he carried it to his mouth. The ice
crackled and snapped when by a violent effort he opened his mouth. He drew
the lower jaw in, curled the upper lip out of the way, and scraped the bunch
with his upper teeth in order to separate a match. He succeeded in getting
one, which he dropped on his lap. He was no better off. He could not pick it
up. Then he devised a way. He picked it up in his teeth and scratched it on
his leg. Twenty times he scratched before he succeeded in lighting it. As if
flamed he held it with his teeth to the birch bark. But the burning
brimstone went up his nostrils and into his lungs, causing him to cough
spasmodically. The match fell into the snow and went out.
The old-timer on Sulphur Creek was right, he thought in the moment of
controlled despair that ensued: after fifty below, a man should travel with
a partner. He beat his hands, but failed in exciting any sensation. Suddenly
he bared both hands, removing the mittens with his teeth. He caught the
whole bunch between the heels of his hands. His arm muscles not being frozen
enabled him to press the hand heels tightly against the matches. Then he
scratched the bunch along his leg. It flared into flame, seventy sulphur
matches at once! There was no wind to blow them out. He kept his head to one
side to escape the strangling fumes, and held the blazing bundle to the
birch bark. As he so held it, he became aware of sensation in his hand. His
flesh ws burning. He could smell it. Deep down below the surface he could
feel it. The sensation developed into pain that grew acute. And still he
endured it, holding the flame of the matches clumsily to the bark that would
not light readily because his own burning hands were in the way, absorbing
most of the flame.
At last, when he could endure no more, he jerked his hands apart. The
blazing matches fell sizzling into the snow, but the birch bark was alight.
He began laying dry grasses and the tiniest twigs on the flame. He could not
pick and choose, for he had to lift the fuel between the heels of his hands.
Small pieces of rotten wood and green moss clung to the twigs, and he bit
them off as well as he could with his teeth. He cherished the flame
carefully and awkwardly. It meant life , and it must not perish. The
withdrawal of blood from the surface of his body now made him begin to
shiver, and he grew more awkward. A large piece of green moss fell squarely
on the little fire. He tried to poke it with his fingers, but his shivering
frame made him poke too far, and he disrupted the nucleus of the little
fire, the burning grasses and tiny twigs separating and scattering. He tried
to poke them together again, but in spite of the tenseness of the effort,
his shivering got away with him, and the twigs were hopelessly scattered.
Each twig gushed a puff of smoke and went out. The fire provider had failed.
As he looked apathetically about him, his eyes chanced on the dog, sitting
across the ruins of the fire from him, in the snow, making restless,
hunching movements, slightly lifting one forefoot and then the other,
shifting its weight back and forth on them with wistful eagerness.
The sight of the dog put a wild idea into his head. He remembered the
tale of the man, caught in a blizzard, who killed a steer and crawled inside
the carcass, and so was saved. He would kill the dog and bury his hands in
the warm body until the numbness went out of them. Then he could build
another fire. He spoke to the dog, calling it to him; but in his voice was a
strange note of fear that frightened the animal, who had never known the man
to speak in such a way before. something was the matter, and its suspicious
nature sensed danger-it knew not what danger, but somewhere, somehow, in its
brain arose an apprehension of the man. It flattened its ears down at the
sound of the man's voice, and its restless, hunching movements and liftings
and shiftings of its forefeet became more pronounced; but it would not come
to the man. He got on his hands and knees and crawled toward the dog. This
unusual posture again excited suspicion, and the animal sidled mincingly
away.
The man sat up in the snow for a moment and struggled for calmness.
Then he pulled on his mittens, by means of his teeth, and got upon his feet.
He glanced down at first in order to assure himself that he was really
standing up, for the absence of sensation in his feet left him unrelated to
the earth. His erect position in itself started to drive the webs of
suspicion from the dog's mind; and when he spoke peremptorily, with the
sound of whip lashes in his voice, the dog rendered its customary allegiance
and came to him. As it came within reaching distance, the man lost his
control. His arms flashed out to the dog, and he experienced genuine
surprise when he discovered that his hands could not clutch, that there was
neither bend nor feeling in the fingers. He had forgotten for the moment
that they were frozen and that they were freezing more and more. All this
happened quickly, and before the animal could get away, he encircled its
body with his arms. He sat down in the snow, and in this fashion held the
dog, while it snarled and whined and struggled.
But it was all he could do, hold its body encircled in his arms and sit
there. He realized that he could not kill the dog. There was no way to do
it. With his helpless hands he could neither draw nor hold his sheath knife
nor throttle the animal. He released it, and it plunged wildly away, with
tail between its legs, and still snarling. It halted forty feet away
surveyed him curiously, with ears sharply pricked forward.
The man looked down at his hands in order to locate them, and found
them hanging on the ends of his arms. It struck him as curious that one
should have to use his eyes in order to find out where his hands were. He
began threshing his arms back and forth, beating the mittened hands against
his sides. He did this for five minutes, violently, and his heart pumped
enough blood up to the surface to put a stop to his shivering. But no
sensation was aroused in his hands. He had an impression that they hung like
weights on the ends of his arms, but when he tried to run the impression
down, he could not find it.
A certain fear of death, dull and oppressive, came to him. This fear
quickly became poignant as he realized that it was no longer a mere matter
of freezing his fingers and toes, or of losing his hands and feet, but that
it was a matter of life and death with the chances against him. This threw
him into a panic, and he turned and ran up the creek bed along the old, dim
trail. The dog joined in behind and kept up with him. He ran blindly,
without intention, in fear such as he had never known in his life.
Slowly, as he plowed and floundered through the snow, he began to see
things again--the banks of the creek, the old timber jams, the leafless
aspens, and the sky. the running made him feel better. He did not shiver.
Maybe, if he ran on, his feet would thaw out; and, anyway, if he ran far
enough, he would reach camp and the boys. Without doubt he would lose some
fingers and toes and some of his face; but the boys would take care of him,
and save the rest of him when he got there. And at the same time there was
another thought in his mind that said he would never get to the camp and the
boys; that it was too many miles away, that the freezing had too great a
start on him, and that he would soon be stiff and dead. This thought he kept
in the background and refused to consider. Sometimes it pushed itself
forward and demanded to be heard, but he thrust it back and strove to think
of other things.
It struck him as curious that he could run at all on feet so frozen
that he could not feel them when they struck the earth and took the weight
of his body. He seemed to himself to skim along above the surface, and to
have no connection with the earth. Somewhere he had once seen a winged
Mercury, and he wondered if Mercury felt as he felt when skimming over the
earth.
His theory of running until he reached camp and the boys had one flaw
in it; he lacked the endurance. Several times he stumbled, and finally he
tottered, crumpled up, and fell. When he tried to rise, he failed. He must
sit and rest, he decided, and next time he would merely walk and keep on
going. As he sat and regained his breath, he noted that he was feeling quite
warm and comfortable. He was not shivering, and it even seemed that a warm
glow had come to his chest and trunk. And yet, when he touched his nose or
cheeks, there was no sensation. Running would not thaw them out. Nor would
it thaw out his hands and feet. Then the thought came to him that the frozen
portions of his body must be extending. He tried to keep this thought down,
to forget it, to think of something else; he was aware of the panicky
feeling that it caused, and he was afraid of the panic. But the thought
asserted itself, and persisted, until it produced a vision of his body
totally frozen. This was too much, and he made another wild run along the
trail. Once he slowed down to a walk, but the thought of the freezing
extending itself made him run again.
And all the time the dog ran with him, at his heels. When he fell down
a second time, it curled its tail over its forefeet and sat in front of him,
facing him, curiously eager and intent. The warmth and security of the
animal angered him, and he cursed it till it flattened down its ears
appeasingly. This time the shivering came more quickly upon the man. He was
losing his battle with the frost. It was creeping into his body from all
sides. The thought of it drove him on, but he ran no more than a hundred
feet, when he staggered and pitched headlong. It was his last panic. When he
had recovered his breath and control, he sat up and entertained in his mind
the conception of meeting death with dignity. However, the conception did
not come to him in such terms. His idea of it was that he had been making a
fool of himself, running around like a chicken with its head cut off-- such
was the simile that occurred to him. Well, he was bound to freeze anyway,
and he might as well take it decently. With this new-found peace of mind
came the first glimmerings of drowsiness. A good idea, he thought, to sleep
off to death. It was like taking an anesthetic. Freezing was not so bad a
people thought. There were lots worse ways to die.
He pictured the boys finding his body next day. Suddenly he found
himself with them, coming along the trail and looking for himself. And,
still w ith them, he came around a turn in the trail and found himself lying
in the snow. He did not belong with himself any more, for even then he was
out of himself, standing with the boys and looking at himself in the snow.
It certainly was cold, was his thought. When he got back to the States he
could tell the folks what real cold was. He drifted on from this to a vision
of the old-timer on Sulphur Creek. He could see him quite clearly, warm and
comfortable, and smoking a pipe.
Then the man drowsed off into what seemed to him the most comfortable
and satisfying sleep he had ever known. The dog sat facing and waiting. The
brief day drew to a close in a long, slow twilight. There were no signs of a
fire to be made, and, besides, never in the dog's experience had it known a
man to sit like that in the snow and make no fire. As the twilight drew on,
its eager yearning for the fire mastered it, and with
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