'Love of Life,' by Jack London, Part Three

01Love of Life by Jack London Part 3 The man had brought his gun half the distance to his shoulder before he realized what he was doing.

02He lowered it and drew his hunting knife from its cover.

03Before him was meat and life.

04He ran his finger along the edge of the knife.

05It was sharp.

06The point was sharp.

07He would throw himself on the bear and kill it.

08But his heart began its pounding.

09Then came its wild leap and he began to feel faint.

10His wild courage was replaced by a great fear.

11In his weakness, what if the animal attacked him?

12He drew himself up tall, grasping the knife and staring hard at the bear.

13The bear advanced a couple of steps and stood up.

14If the man ran, the bear would run after him.

15But the man did not run.

16He was alive now with the courage of fear.

17The bear moved away to one side with a threatening noise.

18He himself was fearful of this strange creature that appeared unafraid.

19But the man did not move.

20He stood still until the danger was past.

21Then he yielded to a fit of trembling and sank to his knees on the wet grass.

22He regained control of himself and then started to move forward, afraid now in a new manner.

23It was not the fear that he would die from lack of food.

24He was afraid that he would be destroyed by forces other than starving.

25There were the wolves.

26Across the wasteland their howls could be heard, making the air itself a threat most real to him.

27Now and again the wolves in groups of two and three crossed his path.

28But they stayed away from him.

29They were not in sufficient numbers to attack, and besides, they were hunting caribou.

30Caribou did not battle, while this strange creature that walked on two legs might bite.

31In the afternoon he came upon scattered bones where the wolves had made a kill.

32What remained had been a young caribou an hour before.

33He studied the bones, cleaned of any flesh.

34They were still pink with the life in them, which had not yet died.

35Might he look like that before the day was done?

36Was this life a fleeting thing without meaning?

37It was only life that pained.

38There was no hurt in death.

39To die was to sleep.

40It meant rest.

41Then why was he not content to die?

42But he did not think about these things for very long.

43He was soon seated in the grass, a bone in his mouth, biting at the bit of life that made it yet pink.

44The sweet, meaty taste drove him mad.

45He closed his teeth firmly on the bones.

46Sometimes it was the bone that broke.

47Sometimes his teeth.

48Then he crushed the bones between the rocks.

49He pounded them into tiny pieces and ate them.

50He was in such a hurry that he pounded his fingers, too.

51He felt surprised at the fact that his fingers did not hurt much when they were caught under the rock.

52Then came frightful days of snow and rain.

53He did not know when he made camp and when he broke camp.

54He traveled in the night as much as in the day.

55He rested whenever he fell, moving ahead whenever the dying life in him started up again.

56He, as a man, no longer struggled.

57It was the life in him, unwilling to die, that drove him on.

58He did not suffer nor feel pain, but his mind was filled with hallucinations and wild dreams.

59But he still ate the crushed bones of the young caribou, which he had gathered and carried with him.

60He crossed no more hills, but followed a large stream which flowed through a wide valley.

61He did not see this stream nor this valley.

62He saw nothing except hallucinations.

63One morning he awakened with his mind clear, lying on his back on a rocky surface.

64The sun was shining bright and warm.

65Far away he heard the noises made by the young caribou.

66He remembered rain and wind and snow.

67But whether he had been beaten by the storm for two days or two weeks, he did not know.

68For some time he lay without movement.

69The friendly sun poured down upon him and filled his body with its warmth.

70A fine day, he thought.

71Perhaps he could succeed in locating himself.

72By a painful effort, he rolled on his side.

73Below him flowed a wide river.

74Its unfamiliarity puzzled him.

75Slowly he followed it with his eyes as it curved among the bare hills.

76They were more bare and lower than any hills he had yet seen.

77Slowly, without excitement, he followed the course of the strange stream toward the skyline.

78And saw that it emptied into a bright and shining sea.

79He was still unexcited.

80Most unusual, he thought.

81It was probably a trick of his mind.

82He was certain of this when he also saw a ship floating in the shining sea.

83He closed his eyes for a while.

84Then opened them.

85It was strange how the sight continued.

86Yet it was not strange.

87He knew there were no seas or ships in the middle of this land, as he had known there was no cartridge in the empty gun.

88He heard a noise behind him.

89It seemed like the dry sound that comes from the throat when air is forced out in a cough.

90Very slowly, because of his weakness and stiffness, he rolled to his other side.

91He could see nothing near, but he waited patiently.

92Again came the cough.

93And there, between two rocks, he saw the grey head of a wolf.

94The sharp ears did not stand up as straight as he had seen them on other wolves.

95The eyes were dull, and the head seemed to hang.

96The animal opened and shut its eyes frequently in the sunshine.

97It seemed sick.

98As he looked, it coughed again.

99This was real, he thought.

100He turned on the other side to see the reality of the world which had been hidden from him before by his hallucination.

101But the sea still shone, and the ship was still there.

102Was it reality?

103He closed his eyes for a long while and thought.

104Then he remembered.

105He had been traveling north by east, away from the Dees Divide and into the Copper Mine Valley.

106This wide river was the Copper Mine.

107That shining sea was the Arctic Ocean.

108That ship was a fishing boat which had wandered east from the mouth of the Mackenzie River.

109Now it was lying in Coronation Gulf.

110He remembered the map that he had seen long ago, and it was all clear and reasonable to him.

111He sat up and turned his attention to immediate affairs.

112He had worn holes through the blanket wrappings, and his feet were like shapeless pieces of meat.

113His last blanket was gone.

114His gun and knife were both lost.

115He had also lost his hat somewhere, with the matches and the band.

116The matches against his chest were safe and dry inside the paper.

117He looked at his watch.

118It marked eleven o'clock and was still going.

119This proved that he had kept it wound.

120He was calm.

121Although very weak, he had no feeling of pain.

122He was not hungry.

123The thought of food was not even pleasant to him.

124Whatever he did was done entirely by reasoning.

125He tore off the legs of his trousers to the knees and bound them about his feet.

126Somehow he had succeeded in keeping the tin container.

127He would have some hot water before he began what he knew was to be an awful journey to the ship.

128His movements were slow.

129He shook as if with a disease.

130When he started to gather dried grass as he found, he could not rise to his feet.

131He tried again and again.

132Then he contented himself with moving about on his hands and knees.

133Once, he went near the sick wolf.

134The animal dragged itself out of the way, licking its face with a tongue which seemed hardly to have the strength to curl.

135The man noticed that the tongue was not the customary healthy red, but was a yellowish brown and covered with a half-dried coating.

136After he drank some hot water, the man found he was able to stand.

137He could even walk as well as a dying man might be supposed to walk.

138But every minute or two he was forced to rest.

139His steps were unsteady as were the steps of the wolf behind him.

140That night, when the shining sea was hidden in the blackness, he knew he was nearer to it by no more than four miles.

141Through the night he heard the cough of the sick wolf.

142Now and then the noises of the young caribou.

143There was life all around him.

144But it was strong life.

145Very much alive and well.

146He knew the sick wolf was following the sick man's steps in the hope that the man would die first.

147In the morning, when he opened his eyes, he saw it looking at him with a hungry stare.

148It stood with its tail between its legs like an unhappy dog.

149The sun rose brightly and all morning the man headed toward the ship on the shining sea.

150The weather was perfect.

151It was the brief return of summer which was usual in that country.

152It might continue for a week.

153Or tomorrow or the next day, it might be gone.