The Call of the Wild: Selected Short Stories by Jack London

Chapter 18: An Odyssey in the North (1)
The girl Enka was snatched away by a robber on her wedding day, and her husband embarked on a long journey to find her.After going through untold hardships, he finally found Enka, but at this time Enka seemed to have become another person...

(One)

The harness creaked and the bells on the lead dogs jingled and the sledges were singing a mournful song, and that would never change, but both man and dog were silent, they were all gone. tired.It was difficult to walk on this road, and the road was covered with fresh snow.They came from a faraway land, and in their sleds were many frozen deer as hard as flint.The road surface has not yet been compacted, and the skateboard is tightly attached to it, just like a stubborn person, constantly retreating.It was getting dark, but they couldn't pitch their tents tonight.There was silence all around, and tiny snow crystals gently fell from the sky.It's only ten degrees below zero today, so it's really warm, but everyone doesn't care about it.The ear muffs of Meyers and Betts have been lifted by them, Malmute?Gide took off his gloves directly.

The dogs had been exhausted in the afternoon, but by now they seemed to be energized again.A certain restlessness has emerged on the faces of dogs with more sensitive senses-their ears are pricked up, their noses are making a sound of inhaling, and the drag ropes that are tied to them seem to have made them feel deeply. Annoyed, they planned to speed up their pace, but couldn't make up their minds.Those companions whose senses are not as keen as theirs gradually irritate them, and in order to push these companions forward, they bite these companions' hind legs in various insidious and cunning ways.This bad practice is learned by the reproached dogs, who in turn teach the rest of their companions to do the same.At last the lead dog pulling the foremost sled let out a loud bark, filled with contented emotion.Then, it lowered its body, lay down on the snow, pulled the collar tightly with all its strength, and then rushed forward suddenly.The other dogs followed suit, and just like that, the tightened leash drove the towline, and the towline drove the whole sled straight ahead.In order to prevent being crushed by the skateboard, everyone can only hold on to the tiller and speed up their walking as much as possible.They let go of their voices, shouted and drank, and drove the group of dogs forward quickly.In this way, the tiredness that plagued them all day disappeared.In response to them, the pack of dogs also let out a merry bark.The night was getting darker and darker, and they ran quickly in it, with their feet clattering.

Everyone shouted, "Turn right! Turn right!" Suddenly the sledges were off the road, like little sloops galloping in the wind, with one side of the skis upside down. stand up.

They rushed a hundred yards away, and stopped under a parchment-pasted window from which the lights could be seen.From the cabin came the sound of a fire in the Yukon furnace, on which a teapot was steaming.Obviously, this is their home.However, some people have already occupied the magpie's nest.Sixty shaggy huskies were barking ferociously, barking and sprinting at the dogs pulling the first sled.A man in a red Northwest Police uniform opened the door and came outside.The snow under his feet had reached his knees.Holding the handle of the dog whip, he subdued the group of crazy animals calmly, objectively and impartially.Next, the two sides shook hands.This man whom he had never met brought Malmute?Gide entered the cabin, but the latter was the real owner of the cabin.

The man in charge of looking after the aforementioned Yukon stove and hot tea in the kettle is named Stanley?Prince.In fact, he should really meet Malmute?The man from Gide, but he is currently greeting guests and has no time to take care of other things.All of these guests served as law enforcement officers or postmen under the Queen of England, and there were almost twelve people in total.Still, they all look different, which is really unusual.These men of different origins have been polished into the same kind of people by the same life experience: they always walk on the snow-covered road, which makes their muscles very tight, their faces are darkened by the sun, There is no anxiety in their hearts, their eyes are bright and indifferent, and they have been staring ahead unscrupulously.That's the kind of people they are, lean and tenacious.They drove the Queen's dogs to intimidate her rivals, and frightened them to death.The queen gave them very little food, but they were very happy to eat it.They live like legends, they have knowledge and have done many great things, but they don't realize it themselves.

They feel like they are at home now.Two of them were lying around in Malmute?Gide's bed singing.The two were of French descent, and when these men went to the Northwest Territories to marry Indian women, they sang exactly the same songs as they do now.The same thing happened on Betts' bed. Three or four strong escorts were lying on it listening to someone tell them a story. They were covered with blankets, and they were rubbing their feet while listening to the story.The storyteller had served in General Wolseley's fleet during his attack on Khartoum.A cowboy talking about his days with Buffalo when this guy gets tired of telling stories?The royal palaces that Bill saw when he visited the capitals of various European countries, as well as those noble men and women.Among the guests were two half-breeds who had known each other for a long time and had lost battles together. Now they were mending the straps on the sled in the corner of the cabin, and chatting about Louis?Lille proclaimed himself king when the people in the northwest continued to launch uprisings.

The sound of laughter and jokes kept ringing in the room. The content of the former could already be called vulgar, but the latter was even worse.They chatted lightly about the most dangerous things by water and land, as if they only remembered them because of something funny about them.Prince is fascinated by the conversations between these unsung heroes, witnesses to the course of history, but who enjoy talking about the quaint and the big as they happen to be the everyday.Prince generously distributed his own tobacco to them. You know, these tobaccos are Prince's treasure.Their chain of memory had already been corroded, but at this moment, because Prince wanted to repay his generosity, it spread out one by one again.Those long-forgotten stories that closely resembled the legends of the Odyssey are now resurfacing in their memories.

These guests were quiet for a while, packed the last bag of cigarettes, and then opened the leather blankets that were tightly bound.Taking advantage of this time, Prince turned his head to find Gide, hoping to learn more about these guests from this old friend.

Malmute?Gide, who was unlacing his moccasin shoes, said: "Well, you already know the origin of the cowboy. You can easily guess that the man who lay in the same bed with him There was a touch of British blood in them. Except for the two of them, the blood of the others was all mixed up. They were all year-round homeless people who wandered in the big forest. Pure French, they were the first French immigrants to hunt in the Canadian bush. The little one, the one with the wool scarf around his neck - you can guess that his mother's smoky tent was once killed by a Scot The man visited, and he was still crying and wiping his tears. If you don’t believe me, just take a serious look at the little eyebrows and jaw. There is also a handsome young man over there, with his long coat resting on his head He's half a Frenchman—he said he didn't even have a liking for those two Indians sleeping next to him, did you hear that? Lille led them French The uprising did not get the support of pure Indians, and the two sides have disliked each other since then, do you understand this matter?"

"There's a sad looking man sitting by the fire, who is he? He hasn't spoken a word all night and I'm sure he doesn't speak English."

"You're not right. His English is very good. I noticed the way he looked in the eyes when he listened to others. I don't know if you noticed. But the rest of the people are not related to him at all. You can see that he I can't understand their dialect at all. What the hell is he coming from, I honestly don't know. Why don't we go find out."

Malmute stared intently at the man whose identity he didn't know, and said loudly, "Add two sticks of firewood to the stove!"

He immediately added two logs of firewood.

Prince said in a low voice, "He must have been trained somewhere."

Malmute?Gide nodded, and took off his socks at the same time, carefully walked through the crowd lying on the ground, and finally came to the stove and hung up the wet socks. There were already more than 20 pairs of the same socks hanging there.

He tried to ask, "When do you think you will arrive in Dawson?"

The other party examined him carefully, and then began to answer his question: "About two days later. Is it 75 miles from Dawson? I heard that from others."

He spoke without pausing or thinking about which words to choose, but his accent was slightly odd.

"Have you ever been here before?"

"I haven't been here."

"Then have you ever been to the northwest border?"

"been."

"Is that where you were born?"

"Do not."

Malmute?Gide waved at the dog chasers, and he didn't even leave the two policemen lying on Prince's bed.He said, "Hey, you don't have half the resemblance to the rest. Where the hell did you come from? Where did you come from? I've seen a lot of faces like you in the past , but I have no memory of where I saw it. "

The other party answered inappropriately and asked, "I know who you are." Did you transfer Malmute all of a sudden?Gide's topic.

"You met me? Where was it?"

"I've seen your pastor friend, that happened in Pastilik, and it's been a long time. I haven't seen you, though. Malmute? Gide, he asked me if I had seen You. I was only there a short time, and he sent me a little food. Did he ever mention me to you?"

"Yeah! You're the one who traded sea otter pelts for dogs?"

The other party nodded while knocking out the ash from the pipe.In order to show that he had no intention of continuing the conversation, he lifted the leather blanket and wrapped it around himself.Malmute?Gide extinguished the oil lamp made of tin cans, and then covered himself in a blanket, and Prince was with him.

"Hey, what does that guy do?"

"I don't know either—he changed the subject, clammed about it, and don't know why. You'd be interested in him, though. I've heard his name mentioned before. Eight years ago nobody on the coast would have thought he was a weirdo. He was a bit elusive indeed. He had come here thousands of miles north in the dead of winter. He was like a dog on his heels. Ghost, tell him to walk along the Bering coast without stopping. Where did he come from, no one can tell, everyone only knows that the place must be very far away from here. The Swedish priest asked how to go south, and got a little food from the priest. He was exhausted. We only heard about these things after the fact. Straight line. The road always encounters blizzards and other terrible weather. Others would have died a thousand times earlier, but he persisted until the end. He landed at Pastilique, and he missed the stop at St. Michael. He almost starved himself to death, and came ashore with nothing but his two dogs.

"Because he saw that he was anxious to get on the road quickly, Father Loeb sent him some food. However, the priest was going to go out when I got there, so the priest could not give him the dog, even if Not even one. There is no way to set off without a dog. In this regard, our Ulysses Ulysses, that is, Odyssey, is a character in Greek mythology who has been wandering for a long time. The experience was very similar, so Malmute Gide used this as his title. The sir couldn't understand it. He was anxious about it for the next few days. There was a bundle of sea otter skins on his sled, It has been tanned very well. Sea otter skin is as precious as gold, you know that. At that time, there was a Russian businessman staying in Pastilik, and the old Sherlock Sherlock was A very mean businessman in Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice". He had a few dogs on his hands, ready to kill and eat them. They quickly negotiated the business. Next, this strange guy let a group of people run The terribly fast dog pulled his own sled and continued down south. Some of his sea otter skins have fallen into the hands of Mr. Sherlock. Those sea otter skins are simply beautiful. I have seen them with my own eyes. We calculated for Mr. Sherlock , every dog ​​he sold was more than $500 in profit. This strange fellow may not know how valuable sea otter skins are. Although he is an Indian, he did deal with white people. From his It can be seen in a few words.

"He also went to Nunivak Island to collect food. This was rumored from the local population after the ice on the sea melted. Then he disappeared. I haven't heard anyone mention him for eight years. But where did he come from now? What did he do when he was in other places? Why did he leave those places? As an Indian, he was trained to go to those mysterious places. There are few Indians like him. It is up to you, Prince, to find out the riddle of the North."

Prince replied: "Thank you, but there are many things that I need to deal with urgently."

At this time, Malmute?Gide was already snoring.But the young mining engineer was staring up in the dark with his eyes open, his emotions running high, which made him feel weird and nervous, and he waited for his emotions to calm down.When he really fell asleep, his thinking activities still did not stop.At this moment, in the snow that no one knows, he wanders, and he follows the dogs on the endless road.In his dream, everyone was busy living their lives, and in the end he died in the same way as a real man.

The next morning the postmen and policemen set off for Dawson before dawn was hours away.These postmen were forced by the government to have no time to rest. Who told the government to be the spokesperson for the Queen's interests, and who told them that the fate of ordinary people like them is in the hands of the government.The postmen arrived on the banks of the Stewart River a week later, and a heavy batch of letters needed to be escorted all the way to Salt Lake.They got a new set of dogs, but the same people.

Originally, they hoped to stay here for a few days. After all, Klondike is a city that has just risen in the northern region. Take a break.But now they were baking socks and smoking pipes, not much different from the last time they were here.But one or two daring ones have begun to think of slipping away. They wonder if it is feasible to take such a route: through the deserted Rocky Mountains, then go east to the valley of Mackenzie Mountain, and finally reach the place where they used to wander. Chippa script.There are two or three others who have made up their minds to take that route together when they come home from work.They hoped they could actually complete the expedition, and they planned ahead for it.It is as if a man has always lived in the city, so he wishes to spend a day in the forest during his holidays.

Although the man who traded the sea otter fur for the dog paid no attention to their conversation, he looked distraught.At the end, he pulled Malmute?Gide hid in a corner and chatted for a while, but his voice was very low.Prince looked at them both curiously.Then, they even put on their hats and gloves and went outside, and the situation became even more unpredictable.When they return, Malmute?Gide had on the table a scale for weighing gold.He weighed out some gold dust, weighing a total of about sixty ounces, and put it in the strange man's bag.The private conversation between them was then joined by a man who commanded the dogs.He also did some business with the weird guy.The next day, the group of people will follow the river bank to head upstream.Meanwhile the guy who had bartered the otter skins for the dogs returned to Dawson with some food on him, weighing a few pounds.

Prince asked Malmute?Gide, received the answer:
(End of this chapter)