White Fang
weakly in an attempt at a ferocious and intimidating snarl. Out of his
puniness and fright he challenged and menaced the whole wide world.
Nothing happened. He continued to gaze, and in his interest he forgot
to snarl. Also, he forgot to be afraid. For the time, fear had been
routed by growth, while growth had assumed the guise of curiosity. He
began to notice near objects—an open portion of the stream that flashed
in the sun, the blasted pine-tree that stood at the base of the slope,
and the slope itself, that ran right up to him and ceased two feet
beneath the lip of the cave on which he crouched.
Now the grey cub had lived all his days on a level floor. He had never
experienced the hurt of a fall. He did not know what a fall was. So he
stepped boldly out upon the air. His hind-legs still rested on the
cave-lip, so he fell forward head downward. The earth struck him a
harsh blow on the nose that made him yelp. Then he began rolling down
the slope, over and over. He was in a panic of terror. The unknown had
caught him at last. It had gripped savagely hold of him and was about
to wreak upon him some terrific hurt. Growth was now routed by fear,
and he ki-yi’d like any frightened puppy.
The unknown bore him on he knew not to what frightful hurt, and he
yelped and ki-yi’d unceasingly. This was a different proposition from
crouching in frozen fear while the unknown lurked just alongside. Now
the unknown had caught tight hold of him. Silence would do no good.
Besides, it was not fear, but terror, that convulsed him.
But the slope grew more gradual, and its base was grass-covered. Here
the cub lost momentum. When at last he came to a stop, he gave one last
agonised yell and then a long, whimpering wail. Also, and quite as a
matter of course, as though in his life he had already made a thousand
toilets, he proceeded to lick away the dry clay that soiled him.
After that he sat up and gazed about him, as might the first man of the
earth who landed upon Mars. The cub had broken through the wall of the
world, the unknown had let go its hold of him, and here he was without
hurt. But the first man on Mars would have experienced less
unfamiliarity than did he. Without any antecedent knowledge, without
any warning whatever that such existed, he found himself an explorer in
a totally new world.
Now that the terrible unknown had let go of him, he forgot that the
unknown had any terrors. He was aware only of curiosity in all the
things about him. He inspected the grass beneath him, the moss-berry
plant just beyond, and the dead trunk of the blasted pine that stood on
the edge of an open space among the trees. A squirrel, running around
the base of the trunk, came full upon him, and gave him a great fright.
He cowered down and snarled. But the squirrel was as badly scared. It
ran up the tree, and from a point of safety chattered back savagely.
This helped the cub’s courage, and though the woodpecker he next
encountered gave him a start, he proceeded confidently on his way. Such
was his confidence, that when a moose-bird impudently hopped up to him,
he reached out at it with a playful paw. The result was a sharp peck on
the end of his nose that made him cower down and ki-yi. The noise he
made was too much for the moose-bird, who sought safety in flight.
But the cub was learning. His misty little mind had already made an
unconscious classification. There were live things and things not
alive. Also, he must watch out for the live things. The things not
alive remained always in one place, but the live things moved about,
and there was no telling what they might do. The thing to expect of
them was the unexpected, and for this he must be prepared.
He travelled very clumsily. He ran into sticks and things. A twig that
he thought a long way off, would the next instant hit him on the nose
or rake along his ribs. There were inequalities of surface. Sometimes
he overstepped and stubbed his nose. Quite as often he understepped and
stubbed his feet. Then there were the pebbles and stones that turned
under him when he trod upon them; and from them he came to know that
the things not alive were not all in the same state of stable
equilibrium as was his cave—also, that small things not alive were more
liable than large things to fall down or turn over. But with every
mishap he was learning. The longer he walked, the better he walked. He
was adjusting himself. He was learning to calculate his own muscular
movements, to know his physical limitations, to measure distances
between objects, and between objects and himself.
His was the luck of the beginner. Born to be a hunter of meat (though
he did not know it), he blundered upon meat just outside his own
cave-door on his first foray into the world. It was by sheer blundering
that he chanced upon the shrewdly hidden ptarmigan nest. He fell into
it. He had essayed to walk along the trunk of a fallen pine. The rotten
bark gave way under his feet, and with a despairing yelp he pitched
down the rounded crescent, smashed through the leafage and stalks of a
small bush, and in the heart of the bush, on the ground, fetched up in
the midst of seven ptarmigan chicks.
They made noises, and at first he was frightened at them. Then he
perceived that they were very little, and he became bolder. They moved.
He placed his paw on one, and its movements were accelerated. This was
a source of enjoyment to him. He smelled it. He picked it up in his
mouth. It struggled and tickled his tongue. At the same time he was
made aware of a sensation of hunger. His jaws closed together. There
was a crunching of fragile bones, and warm blood ran in his mouth. The
taste of it was good. This was meat, the same as his mother gave him,
only it was alive between his teeth and therefore better. So he ate the
ptarmigan. Nor did he stop till he had devoured the whole brood. Then
he licked his chops in quite the same way his mother did, and began to
crawl out of the bush.
He encountered a feathered whirlwind. He was confused and blinded by
the rush of it and the beat of angry wings. He hid his head between his
paws and yelped. The blows increased. The mother ptarmigan was in a
fury. Then he became angry. He rose up, snarling, striking out with his
paws. He sank his tiny teeth into one of the wings and pulled and
tugged sturdily. The ptarmigan struggled against him, showering blows
upon him with her free wing. It was his first battle. He was elated. He
forgot all about the unknown. He no longer was afraid of anything. He
was fighting, tearing at a live thing that was striking at him. Also,
this live thing was meat. The lust to kill was on him. He had just
destroyed little live things. He would now destroy a big live thing. He
was too busy and happy to know that he was happy. He was thrilling and
exulting in ways new to him and greater to him than any he had known
before.
He held on to the wing and growled between his tight-clenched teeth.
The ptarmigan dragged him out of the bush. When she turned and tried to
drag him back into the bush’s shelter, he pulled her away from it and
on into the open. And all the time she was making outcry and striking
with her free wing, while feathers were flying like a snow-fall. The
pitch to which he was aroused was tremendous. All the fighting blood of
his breed was up in him and surging through him. This was living,
though he did not know it. He was realising his own meaning in the
world; he was doing that for which he was made—killing meat and
battling to kill it. He was justifying his existence, than which life
can do no greater; for life achieves its summit when it does to the
uttermost that which it was equipped to do.
After a time, the ptarmigan ceased her struggling. He still held her by
the wing, and they lay on the ground and looked at each other. He tried
to growl threateningly, ferociously. She pecked on his nose, which by
now, what of previous adventures was sore. He winced but held on. She
pecked him again and again. From wincing he went to whimpering. He
tried to back away from her, oblivious to the fact that by his hold on
her he dragged her after him. A rain of pecks fell on his ill-used
nose. The flood of fight ebbed down in him, and, releasing his prey, he
turned tail and scampered on across the open in inglorious retreat.
He lay down to rest on the other side of the open, near the edge of the
bushes, his tongue lolling out, his chest heaving and panting, his nose
still hurting him and causing him to continue his whimper. But as he
lay there, suddenly there came to him a feeling as of something
terrible impending. The unknown with all its terrors rushed upon him,
and he shrank back instinctively into the shelter of the bush. As he
did so, a draught of air fanned him, and a large, winged body swept
ominously and silently past. A hawk, driving down out of the blue, had
barely missed him.
While he lay in the bush, recovering from his fright and peering
fearfully out, the mother-ptarmigan on the other side of the open space
fluttered out of the ravaged nest. It was because of her loss that she
paid no attention to the winged bolt of the sky. But the cub saw, and
it was a warning and a lesson to him—the swift downward swoop of the
hawk, the short skim of its body just above the ground, the strike of
its talons in the body of the ptarmigan, the ptarmigan’s squawk of
agony and fright, and the hawk’s rush upward into the blue, carrying
the ptarmigan away with it.
It was a long time before the cub left its shelter. He had learned
much. Live things were meat. They were good to eat. Also, live things
when they were large enough, could give hurt. It was better to eat
small live things like ptarmigan chicks, and to let alone large live
things like ptarmigan hens. Nevertheless he felt a little prick of
ambition, a sneaking desire to have another battle with that ptarmigan
hen—only the hawk had carried her away. May be there were other
ptarmigan hens. He would go and see.
He came down a shelving bank to the stream. He had never seen water
before. The footing looked good. There were no inequalities of surface.
He stepped boldly out on it; and went down, crying with fear, into the
embrace of the unknown. It was cold, and he gasped, breathing quickly.
The water rushed into his lungs instead of the air that had always
accompanied his act of breathing. The suffocation he experienced was
like the pang of death. To him it signified death. He had no conscious
knowledge of death, but like every animal of the Wild, he possessed the
instinct of death. To him it stood as the greatest of hurts. It was the
very essence of the unknown; it was the sum of the terrors of the
unknown, the one culminating and unthinkable catastrophe that could
happen to him, about which he knew nothing and about which he feared
everything.
He came to the surface, and the sweet air rushed into his open mouth.
He did not go down again. Quite as though it had been a
long-established custom of his he struck out with all his legs and
began to swim. The near bank was a yard away; but he had come up with
his back to it, and the first thing his eyes rested upon was the
opposite bank, toward which he immediately began to swim. The stream
was a small one, but in the pool it widened out to a score of feet.
Midway in the passage, the current picked up the cub and swept him
downstream. He was caught in the miniature rapid at the bottom of the
pool. Here was little chance for swimming. The quiet water had become
suddenly angry. Sometimes he was under, sometimes on top. At all times
he was in violent motion, now being turned over or around, and again,
being smashed against a rock. And with every rock he struck, he yelped.
His progress was a series of yelps, from which might have been adduced