THE CALL OF THE WILD
by Jack London 1903
荒野的呼唤
作者：（美）杰克.伦敦
CHAPTER ONE.
Into the Primitive.
Old longings nomadic leap,
Chafing at custom's chain;
Again from its brumal sleep
Wakens the ferine strain.
BUCK DID NOT READ THE newspapers, or he would have known that
trouble was brewing not alone for himself, but for every tide-water
dog, strong of muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to
San Diego. Because men, groping in the Arctic darkness, had found a
yellow metal, and because steamship and transportation companies
were booming the find, thousands of men were rushing into the
Northland. These men wanted dogs, and the dogs they wanted were
heavy dogs, with strong muscles by which to toil and furry coats to
protect them from the frost.
Buck lived at a big house in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley.
Judge Miller's place, it was called. It stood back from the road, half
hidden among the trees, through which glimpses could be caught of
the wide cool veranda that ran around its four sides. The house was
approached by gravelled driveways which wound about through
widespreading lawns and under the interlacing boughs of tall
poplars. At the rear things were on even a more spacious scale than at
the front. There were great stables, where a dozen grooms and boys
held forth, rows of vine-clad servants' cottages, an endless and
orderly array of out-houses, long grape arbours, green pastures,
orchards, and berry patches. Then there was the pumping plant for
the artesian well, and the big cement tank where Judge Miller's boys
took their morning plunge and kept cool in the hot afternoon.
And over this great demesne Buck ruled. Here he was born, and here
he had lived the four years of his life. It was true, there were other
dogs. There could not but be other dogs on so vast a place, but they
did not count. They came and went, resided in the populous kennels, or
lived obscurely in the recesses of the house after the fashion of
Toots, the Japanese pug, or Ysabel, the Mexican hairless- strange
creatures that rarely put nose out of doors or set foot to ground.
On the other hand, there were the fox terriers, a score of them at
least, who yelped fearful promises at Toots and Ysabel looking out
of the windows at them and protected by a legion of housemaids armed
with brooms and mops.
But Buck was neither house-dog nor kennel-dog. The whole realm was
his. He plunged into the swimming tank or went hunting with the
Judge's sons; he escorted Mollie and Alice, the Judge's daughters,
on long twilight or early morning rambles; on wintry nights he lay
at the Judge's feet before the roaring library fire; he carried the
Judge's grandsons on his back, or rolled them in the grass, and
guarded their footsteps through wild adventures down to the fountain
in the stable yard, and even beyond, where the paddocks were, and
the berry patches. Among the terriers he stalked imperiously, and
Toots and Ysabel he utterly ignored, for he was king- king over all
the creeping, crawling, flying things of Judge Miller's place,
humans included.
His father, Elmo, a huge St. Bernard, had been the Judge's
inseparable companion and Buck did fair to follow in the way of his
father. He was not so large- he weighed only one hundred and forty
pounds- for his mother, Shep, had been a Scotch shepherd dog.
Nevertheless, one hundred and forty pounds, to which was added the
dignity that comes of good living and universal respect, enabled him
to carry himself in right royal fashion. During the four years since
his puppyhood he had lived the life of a sated aristocrat; he had a
fine pride in himself, was ever a trifle egotistical, as country
gentlemen sometimes become because of their insular situation. But
he had saved himself by not becoming a mere pampered house-dog.
Hunting and kindred outdoor delights had kept down the fat and
hardened his muscles; and to him, as to the cold-tubbing races, the
love of water had been a tonic and a health preserver.
And this was the manner of dog Buck was in the fall of 1897, when
the Klondike strike dragged men from all the world into the frozen
North. But Buck did not read the newspapers, and he did not know
that Manuel, one of the gardener's helpers, was an undesirable
acquaintance. Manuel had one besetting sin. He loved to play Chinese
lottery. Also, in his gambling, he had one besetting weakness- faith
in a system; and this made his damnation certain. For to play a system
requires money, while the wages of a gardener's helper do not lap over
the needs of a wife and numerous progeny.
The Judge was at a meeting of the Raisin Growers' Association, and
the boys were busy organising an athletic club, on the memorable night
of Manuel's treachery. No one saw him and Buck go off through the
orchard on what Buck imagined was merely a stroll. And with the
exception of a solitary man, no one saw them arrive at the little flag
station known as College Park. This man talked with Manuel, and
money clinked between them.
'You might wrap up the goods before you deliver 'm,' the stranger
said gruffly, and Manuel doubled a piece of stout rope around Buck's
neck under the collar.
'Twist it, an' you'll choke 'm plentee,' said Manuel, and the
stranger grunted a ready affirmative.
Buck had accepted the rope with quiet dignity. To be sure, it was an
unwonted performance: but he had learned to trust in men he knew,
and to give them credit for a wisdom that outreached his own. But when
the ends of the rope were placed in the stranger's hands, he growled
menacingly. He had merely intimated his displeasure, in his pride
believing that to intimate was to command. But to his surprise the
rope tightened around his neck, shutting off his breath. In quick rage
he sprang at the man, who met him halfway, grappled him close by the
throat, and with a deft twist threw him over on his back. Then the
rope tightened mercilessly, while Buck struggled in a fury, his tongue
lolling out of his mouth and his great chest panting futilely. Never
in all his life had he been so vilely treated, and never in all his
life had he been so angry. But his strength ebbed, his eyes glazed,
and he knew nothing when the train was flagged and the two men threw
him into the baggage car.
The next he knew, he was dimly aware that his tongue was hurting and
that he was being jolted along in some kind of conveyance. The
hoarse shriek of a locomotive whistling a crossing told him where he
was. He had travelled too often with the Judge not to know the
sensation of riding in a baggage car. He opened his eyes, and into
them came the unbridled anger of a kidnapped king. The man sprang
for his throat, but Buck was too quick for him. His jaws closed on the
hand; nor did they relax till his senses were choked out of him once
more.
'Yep, has fits,' the man said, hiding his mangled hand from the
baggageman, who had been attracted by the sounds of struggle. 'I'm
takin' 'im up for the boss to 'Frisco. A crack dog-doctor there thinks
that he can cure 'im.'
Concerning that night's ride the man spoke most eloquently for
himself, in a little shed back of a saloon on the San Francisco
water front.
'All I get is fifty for it,' he grumbled; 'an' I wouldn't do it over
for a thousand, cold cash.'
His hand was wrapped in a bloody handkerchief, and the right trouser
leg was ripped from knee to ankle.
'How much did the other mug get?' the saloon-keeper demanded.
'A hundred,' was the reply. 'Wouldn't take a sou less, so help me.'
'That makes a hundred and fifty,' the saloon-keeper calculated, 'and
he's worth it, or I'm a squarehead.'
The kidnapper undid the bloody wrappings and looked at his lacerated
hand. 'If I don't get the hydrophoby-'
'It'll be because you were born to hang,' laughed the saloon-keeper.
'Here, lend me a hand before you pull your freight,' he added.
Dazed, suffering intolerable pain from throat and tongue, with the
life half throttled out of him, Buck attempted to face his tormentors.
But he was thrown down and choked repeatedly, till they succeeded in
filing the heavy brass collar from off his neck. Then the rope was
removed, and he was flung into a cage-like crate.
There he lay for the remainder of the weary night, nursing his wrath
and wounded pride. He could not understand what it all meant. What did
they want with him, these strange men? Why were they keeping him
pent up in this narrow crate? He did not know why, but he felt
oppressed by the vague sense of impending calamity. Several times
during the night he sprang to his feet when the shed door rattled
open, expecting to see the Judge, or the boys at least. But each
time it was the bulging face of the saloon-keeper that peered in at
him by the sickly light of a tallow candle. And each time the joyful
bark that trembled in Buck's throat was twisted into a savage growl.
But the saloon-keeper let him alone, and in the morning four men
entered and picked up the crate. More tormentors, Buck decided, for
they were evil-looking creatures, ragged and unkempt; and he stormed
and raged at them through the bars. They only laughed and poked sticks
at him, which he promptly assailed with his teeth till he realised
that that was what they wanted. Whereupon he lay down sullenly and
allowed the crate to be lifted into a waggon. Then he, and the crate
in which he was imprisoned, began a passage through many hands. Clerks
in the express office took charge of him; he was carted about in
another waggon; a truck carried him, with an assortment of boxes and
parcels, upon a ferry steamer; he was trucked off the steamer into a
great railway depot, and finally he was deposited in an express car.
For two days and nights this express car was dragged along at the
tail of shrieking locomotives; and for two days and nights Buck
neither ate nor drank. In his anger he had met the first advances of
the express messengers with growls, and they had retaliated by teasing
him. When he flung himself against the bars, quivering and frothing,
they laughed at him and taunted him. They growled and barked like
detestable dogs, mewed, and flapped their arms and crowed. It was
all very silly, he knew; but therefore the more outrage to his
dignity, and his anger waxed and waxed. He did not mind the hunger
so much, but the lack of water caused him severe suffering and
fanned his wrath to fever-pitch. For that matter, high-strung and
finely sensitive, the ill treatment had flung him into a fever,
which was fed by the inflammation of his parched and swollen throat
and tongue.
He was glad for one thing: the rope was off his neck. That had given
them an unfair advantage; but now that it was off, he would show them.
They would never get another rope around his neck. Upon that he was
resolved. For two days and nights he neither ate nor drank, and during
those two days and nights of torment, he accumulated a fund of wrath
that boded ill for whoever first fell foul of him. His eyes turned
bloodshot, and he was metamorphosed into a raging fiend. So changed
was he that the Judge himself would not have recognised him; and the
express messengers breathed with relief when they bundled him off
the train at Seattle.
Four men gingerly carried the crate from the waggon into a small,
high-walled backyard. A stout man, with a red sweater that sagged
generously at the neck, came out and signed the book for the driver.
That was the man, Buck divined, the next tormentor, and he hurled
himself savagely against the bars. The man smiled grimly, and
brought a hatchet and a club.
'You ain't going to take him out now?' the driver asked.
'Sure,' the man replied, driving the hatchet into the crate for a
pry.
There was an instantaneous scattering of the four men who had
carried it in, and from safe perches on top the wall they prepared
to watch the performance.
Buck rushed at the splintering wood, sinking his teeth into it,
surging and wrestling with it. Wherever the hatchet fell on the
outside, he was there on the inside, snarling and growling, as
furiously anxious to get out as the man in the red sweater was
calmly intent on getting him out.
'Now, you red-eyed devil,' he said, when he had made an opening
sufficient for the passage of Buck's body. At the same time he dropped
the hatchet and shifted the club to his right hand.
And Buck was truly a red-eyed devil, as he drew himself together for
the spring, hair bristling, mouth foaming, a mad glitter in his
bloodshot eyes. Straight at the man he launched his one hundred and
forty pounds of fury, surcharged with the pent passion of two days and
nights. In mid-air, just as his jaws were about to close on the man,
he received a shock that checked his body and brought his teeth
together with an agonising clip. He whirled over, fetching the
ground on his back and side. He had never been struck by a club in his
life, and did not understand. With a snarl that was part bark and more
scream he was again on his feet and launched into the air. And again
the shock came and he was brought crushingly to the ground. This
time he was aware that it was the club, but his madness knew no
caution. A dozen times he charged, and as often the club broke the
charge and smashed him down.
After a particularly fierce blow, he crawled to his feet, too
dazed to rush. He staggered limply about, the blood flowing from
nose and mouth and ears, his beautiful coat sprayed and flecked with
bloody slaver. Then the man advanced and deliberately dealt him a
frightful blow on the nose. All the pain he had endured was as nothing
compared with the exquisite agony of this. With a roar that was almost
lionlike in its ferocity, he again hurled himself at the man. But
the man, shifting the club from right to left, coolly caught him by
the under jaw, at the same time wrenching downward and backward.
Buck described a complete circle in the air, and half of another, then
crashed to the ground on his head and chest.
For the last time he rushed. The man struck the shrewd blow he had
purposely withheld for so long, and Buck crumpled up and went down,
knocked utterly senseless.
'He's no slouch at dog-breakin', that's wot I say,' one of the men
on the wall cried enthusiastically.
'Druther break cayuses any day, and twice on Sundays,' was the reply
of the driver, as he climbed on the waggon and started the horses.
Buck's senses came back to him, but not his strength. He lay where
he had fallen, and from there he watched the man in the red sweater.
'"Answers to the name of Buck,"' the man soliloquised, quoting
from the saloon-keeper's letter which had announced the consignment of
the crate and contents. 'Well, Buck, my boy,' he went on in a genial
voice, 'we've had our little ruction, and the best thing we can do
is to let it go at that. You've learned your place, and I know mine.
Be a good dog, and all 'll go well and the goose hang high. Be a bad
dog, and I'll whale the stuffin' outa you. Understand?'
As he spoke he fearlessly patted the head he had so mercilessly
pounded, and though Buck's hair involuntarily bristled at touch of the
hand, he endured it without protest. When the man brought water he
drank eagerly, and later bolted a generous meal of raw meat, chunk
by chunk, from the man's hand.
He was beaten (he knew that); but he was not broken. He saw, once
for all, that he stood no chance against a man with a club. He had
learned the lesson, and in all his afterlife he never forgot it.
That club was a revelation. It was his introduction to the reign of
primitive law, and he met the introduction halfway. The facts of
life took on a fiercer aspect; and while he faced that aspect uncowed,
he faced it with all the latent cunning of his nature aroused. As
the days went by, other dogs came in crates and at the ends of
ropes, some docilely, and some raging and roaring as he had come; and,
one and all, he watched them pass under the dominion of the man in the
red sweater. Again and again, as he looked at each brutal performance,
the lesson was driven home to Buck: a man with a club was a
lawgiver, a master to be obeyed, though not necessarily conciliated.
Of this last Buck was never guilty, though he did see beaten dogs that
fawned upon the man, and wagged their tails, and licked his hand. Also
he saw one dog, that would neither conciliate nor obey, finally killed
in the struggle for mastery.
Now and again men came, strangers, who talked excitedly,
wheedlingly, and in all kinds of fashions to the man in the red
sweater. And at such times that money passed between them the
strangers took one or more of the dogs away with them. Buck wondered
where they went, for they never came back; but the fear of the
future was strong upon him, and he was glad each time when he was
not selected.
Yet his time came, in the end, in the form of a little weazened
man who spat broken English and many strange and uncouth
exclamations which Buck could not understand.
'Sacredam!' he cried, when his eyes lit upon Buck. 'Dat one dam
bully dog! Eh? How much?'
'Three hundred, and a present at that,' was the prompt reply of
the man in the red sweater. 'And seein' it's government money, you
ain't got no kick coming; eh, Perrault?'
Perrault grinned. Considering that the price of dogs had been boomed
skyward by the unwonted demand, it was not an unfair sum for so fine
an animal. The Canadian Government would be no loser, nor would its
despatches travel the slower. Perrault knew dogs, and when he looked
at Buck he knew that he was one in a thousand- 'One in ten
t'ousand,' he commented mentally.
Buck saw money pass between them, and was not surprised when
Curly, a good-natured Newfoundland, and he were led away by the little
weazened man. That was the last he saw of the man in the red
sweater, and as Curly and he looked at receding Seattle from the
deck of the Narwhal, it was the last he saw of the warm Southland.
Curly and he were taken below by Perrault and turned over to a
black-faced giant called Francois. Perrault was a French-Canadian, and
swarthy; but Francois was a French-Canadian half-breed, and twice as
swarthy. They were a new kind of men to Buck (of which he was destined
to see many more), and while he developed no affection for them, he
none the less grew honestly to respect them. He speedily learned
that Perrault and Francois were fair men, calm and impartial in
administering justice, and too wise in the way of dogs to be ever
fooled by dogs.
In the 'tween-decks of the Narwhal, Buck and Curly joined two
other dogs. One of them was a big, snow-white fellow from
Spitzbergen who had been brought away by a whaling captain, and who
had later accompanied a Geological Survey into the Barrens.
He was friendly, in a treacherous sort of way, smiling into one's
face the while he meditated some underhand trick, as, for instance,
when he stole from Buck's food at the first meal. As Buck sprang to
punish him, the lash of Francois whip sang through the air, reaching
the culprit first; and nothing remained to Buck but to recover the
bone. That was fair of Francois, he decided, and the half-breed
began to rise in Buck's estimation.
The other dog made no advance, nor received any; also, he did not
attempt to steal from the newcomers. He was a gloomy, morose fellow,
and he showed Curly plainly that all he desired was to be left
alone, and further, that there would be trouble if he were not left
alone. 'Dave' he was called, and he ate and slept, or yawned between
times, and took interest in nothing, not even when the Narwhal crossed
Queen Charlotte Sound and rolled and pitched and bucked like a thing
possessed. When Buck and Curly grew excited, half wild with fear, he
raised his head as though annoyed, favoured them with an incurious
glance, yawned, and went to sleep again.
Day and night the ship throbbed to the tireless pulse of the
propeller, and though one day was very like another, it was apparent
to Buck that the weather was steadily growing colder. At last, one
morning, the propeller was quiet, and the Narwhal was pervaded with an
atmosphere of excitement. He felt it, as did the other dogs, and
knew that a change was at hand. Francois leashed them and brought them
on deck. At the first step upon the cold surface, Buck's feet sank
into a white mushy something very like mud. He sprang back with a
snort. More of this white stuff was falling through the air. He
shook himself, but more of it fell upon him. He sniffed it
curiously, then licked some up on his tongue. It bit like fire, and
the next instant was gone. This puzzled him. He tried it again, with
the same result. The onlookers laughed uproariously, and he felt
ashamed, he knew not why, for it was his first snow.
