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

Chapter 22: An Odyssey in the North (5)
"The little fishing boat has no rudder, and the only thing it can do is to inflate its sails in the direction of the wind. I drift around, just like this fishing boat. But my eyes are always watching to see, and my ears to listen. I know that those who have traveled all over the world must make an impression if they have met the two people I am looking for, so I often talk to them. That kind of people associate. After that, I met a man who had just come out from the mountains. He had several pieces of ore in his hand, which contained many gold particles, each of which was about the size of a bean. He once heard that Mentioned those two, and more than that, he'd met them, had known each other, told me they dug gold out of the ground, made a fortune, and lived there now.

"The deserted place was very far away. Finally I found the camp in the rolling mountains. There was no sun at all, so the people who lived there were working day and night. But that time has not yet come. I From the conversations of those people, I know that he has already set off for England—he, and Enka. The group said that they want to set up a company, so they went there to find some rich men to cooperate with. I saw The house they live in is like an ancient palace. I wanted to find out if he was good to her, so I climbed through the window and entered their house at night. I walked through each room in turn, and saw everything. It couldn't be better, I feel like the only people in the world who can live like this are kings and queens. He treats him like a queen, the gang said in unison. She is different from the women in Akatun , she has the blood of other races flowing in her body, so many people are curious about which race she belongs to. She is indeed a queen, but my family has been a chief for generations, and I am also a chief. I will give away priceless animal skins, The kayaks and jewels were donated, but only for her.

"But what is the purpose of me talking here and there? I know the route of their ship sailing at sea, because I am a crew member myself. I chased several countries such as the UK. I sometimes travel from I heard about them from other people or in the newspapers. But because they had a lot of money and moved very fast, and I was poor and poor, I never met them. However, they also left Bad luck. Their fortune disappeared one day like a puff of smoke. It took up a whole page in the papers when it happened, but it was never mentioned in the papers at all. Therefore, I understood that they must have returned to where they came from, and that they could dig more gold out of the ground there.

"People don't pay any attention to them now, because they have become paupers. I have walked through many camps, even the Kootenai area in the north, and there, I asked a little about them. , but the news is out of date. They were there once, but they were gone when I got there. There are plenty of people who say they're going this way and that way, and there are people who say they're Went to the Yukon side. I had to go back and forth in this direction and that direction, and at the end, I felt like I was starting to hate the world. Why did it seem to have no end? When I was walking in At one point I was traveling with an Indian from the Northwest on a rather poor road in Kootenai. The pain of hunger made him feel like he was dying. Finally, he reached the Yukon River region. At that time, knowing that his life was not long, he entrusted me with a map and a hidden place. He said that the place was indeed buried with a lot of gold. For this he also made a special oath to God.

"Everybody went up north during that time. I took a job as a hired hand and ran dogs because I didn't have any money with me. You know what happened next. When I got to Dawson, I finally met them both. Because I was so young, Enka didn't recognize me at all. Although I gave her so much, too much, she didn't have the time to see me again. Think of me, after all, she was too rich at that time.

"It's all thanks to you that I was able to get out of that hard job early, isn't it? I've been waiting for quite a while, and now he's in my hands anyway, just wait a little longer So what? So I went back and started doing it on my own terms. I recalled my whole life from beginning to end, everything my eyes had seen, everything my body had been through, how I Hunger and cold in the endless forest on the coast of Russia, all these things come to my mind, so I wish to do it as I said .I took him to the east—he, and Enka, you already know. Many went there, but very few came back. I will take them to the accursed A place where countless corpses and gold that no one can take away are piled up.

"It's a long, snow-covered road. It's too much for our sledges to carry everything we need before spring, because we have too many dogs. The food was too much. In order to lighten the sledge as much as possible, we hid food in many places on the road, because we must return before the ice in the river melts, the only way to ensure that we will not be in Starved to death on the way back. We met three residents in McQuisson, and we built a shed next to their house to store food. When we arrived in Mayu, we saw twelve Paley Men came over from the southern divide and camped there to hunt, and we built a hut there too. We saw no more men as we continued eastward. The river sleeps, the trees The stillness, the silence of the snow-covered fields of the Northlands, was all we could see along the way. It was a long, untrodden road, as I have just mentioned once. day, and only eight or ten miles were traveled. We slept at night as if we were dead. I came to avenge them, and I am Nass, chief of Akatum. The truth is that whether they How can not think of.

"The food sheds we built during this period were smaller than before. I would return to the shed at night from the road I had already traveled to move the food elsewhere, and I could easily It is easy to create the illusion that the food has been stolen by black badgers. Also, there are places in the river where the ice is only on the surface, and the fast currents are always eroding the ice below. When I come to a place like this, I The sledge that was being driven fell into the river, and the dogs that were pulling the sledge were not spared either. This was the only time this happened, but it was obviously not a good thing for him and Enka. The man who was pulling the sledge The dog was the strongest, and the sled carried a great deal of food. But he laughed heartily, because his energy was so great. From this time on, he could only provide very little food to the remaining dogs. .Then, we cut off the reins on them directly, and let them become food for our companions one by one. He said, it will be much easier for us on the way back, and the dogs and sleds are not necessary for us, and we can eat one by one along the way. Food stored in those sheds. We really don't have much food anymore, and we don't really need dogs and sleds. Our last dog died in the bridle at night, when we just reached the place, where the piled With gold and corpses, cursed by the dying.

"On the map, that place is depicted in the middle of a mountain range, and it is. We need to build steps up the steep face of a watershed blocked by ice and snow, and only then can we get there. We originally sent It was hoped that on the shady side of the divide there would be a slope leading straight down to the valley, but it was as flat as a vast plain at harvest time, covered with snow. We were surrounded by tall mountains after mountains, the tops of which were covered with snow. The snow, stretching straight down among the stars in the sky. Those weird plains, where the valleys would have been, and the terrain and the snow in it were settling down, and finally settled in the center of the land, and that's how they felt. The sight would make those who have never worked as a crew dizzy, but we are not. We stand on this dizzying mountain, trying to find a way to get down. We found a sloping wall, and none of the other walls have that shape. But this one is extremely steep, like a deck lifted by a strong wind. This is what the wall looks like, But I don't know why it became like this. He said: 'Let's go down from here, this is connected to hell.' And so we went down.

"A small wooden hut is situated in the valley. It is possible that some people threw some logs from the mountain in the past, and the people in the valley built this wooden hut. The previous groups who arrived here all died alone in the wooden hut. in which they engraved their last words and curses on several pieces of birch bark, which we found in the ground, from which we believe that the log house has been built for many years. One of them died of scurvy; A man died of running out of ammunition, for what little food and bullets he had left was taken away by his companions; a man died of being badly wounded by a grizzly bear with white spots on its face ;and one man died of starvation, though he had tried to feed himself by hunting... and the rest died of similar causes. In short, their ways of dying were different, but there was one It's the same, that they wouldn't walk away from the gold anyway, and they had to die by the gold. The gold they dug up was of no use at all, and it was scattered all over the floor of the cabin, A piece of golden yellow, it looks like a dream.

"But the man who came here with me after a long journey was very calm and sober. He said: 'We have eaten all the food, and the only thing we can do now is to find out the source and quantity of this gold. In order not to be completely confused by them, we must get out of here immediately. This way, we can return here with more food and claim all the gold for ourselves.' We observed that the huge vein of minerals passed through the The entire mountain wall is like the veins that run through the whole body. We measured it, and then described its range from top to bottom. In order to show that we are its owners, we also knocked on it. Many stakes were cast, and words were carved in the trees. At last we climbed the great, steep face, and set out on the way back, for while we were there we were starving to death. His knees were trembling, his stomach was pounding, his heart was beating so fast that a heart was about to pop out of his chest.

"Enka needed the two of us to hold her up the last stretch of the way. We made it to the shed where the food was stored, though we kept falling all the way. See, nothing at all. I couldn't find any food. Even he thought it was the black badgers who stole the food. It seemed that I did a good job. He started cursing the black badgers and God. Enka showed She smiled and put her hand in his. She was really fearless. The only thing I could do at the time was to turn my head and force myself not to act rashly. She said: 'Let's leave tomorrow morning, now we will go first Rest by the fire. To give us some strength, let's eat the moccasins.' We boiled the shafts of the moccasins, and before that we cut them into strips We cooked for half the night to chew and swallow. The next morning, we communicated about our situation. We couldn't walk to the next food shed because it took us five days to walk there. .We have to go hunting.

(End of this chapter)