Lost Face

J >> Jack London >> Lost Face


The man was shocked. It was as though he had just heard his own sentence
of death. For a moment he sat and stared at the spot where the fire had
been. Then he grew very calm. Perhaps the old-timer on Sulphur Creek
was right. If he had only had a trail-mate he would have been in no
danger now. The trail-mate could have built the fire. Well, it was up
to him to build the fire over again, and this second time there must be
no failure. Even if he succeeded, he would most likely lose some toes.
His feet must be badly frozen by now, and there would be some time before
the second fire was ready.

Such were his thoughts, but he did not sit and think them. He was busy
all the time they were passing through his mind, he made a new foundation
for a fire, this time in the open; where no treacherous tree could blot
it out. Next, he gathered dry grasses and tiny twigs from the high-water
flotsam. He could not bring his fingers together to pull them out, but
he was able to gather them by the handful. In this way he got many
rotten twigs and bits of green moss that were undesirable, but it was the
best he could do. He worked methodically, even collecting an armful of
the larger branches to be used later when the fire gathered strength. And
all the while the dog sat and watched him, a certain yearning wistfulness
in its eyes, for it looked upon him as the fire-provider, and the fire
was slow in coming.

When all was ready, the man reached in his pocket for a second piece of
birch-bark. He knew the bark was there, and, though he could not feel it
with his fingers, he could hear its crisp rustling as he fumbled for it.
Try as he would, he could not clutch hold of it. And all the time, in
his consciousness, was the knowledge that each instant his feet were
freezing. This thought tended to put him in a panic, but he fought
against it and kept calm. He pulled on his mittens with his teeth, and
threshed his arms back and forth, beating his hands with all his might
against his sides. He did this sitting down, and he stood up to do it;
and all the while the dog sat in the snow, its wolf-brush of a tail
curled around warmly over its forefeet, its sharp wolf-ears pricked
forward intently as it watched the man. And the man as he beat and
threshed with his arms and hands, felt a great surge of envy as he
regarded the creature that was warm and secure in its natural covering.

After a time he was aware of the first far-away signals of sensation in
his beaten fingers. The faint tingling grew stronger till it evolved
into a stinging ache that was excruciating, but which the man hailed with
satisfaction. He stripped the mitten from his right hand and fetched
forth the birch-bark. The exposed fingers were quickly going numb again.
Next he brought out his bunch of sulphur matches. But the tremendous
cold had already driven the life out of his fingers. In his effort to
separate one match from the others, the whole bunch fell in the snow. He
tried to pick it out of the snow, but failed. The dead fingers could
neither touch nor clutch. He was very careful. He drove the thought of
his freezing feet; and nose, and cheeks, out of his mind, devoting his
whole soul to the matches. He watched, using the sense of vision in
place of that of touch, and when he saw his fingers on each side the
bunch, he closed them--that is, he willed to close them, for the wires
were drawn, and the fingers did not obey. He pulled the mitten on the
right hand, and beat it fiercely against his knee. Then, with both
mittened hands, he scooped the bunch of matches, along with much snow,
into his lap. Yet he was no better off.

After some manipulation he managed to get the bunch between the heels of
his mittened hands. In this fashion he carried it to his mouth. The ice
crackled and snapped when by a violent effort he opened his mouth. He
drew the lower jaw in, curled the upper lip out of the way, and scraped
the bunch with his upper teeth in order to separate a match. He
succeeded in getting one, which he dropped on his lap. He was no better
off. He could not pick it up. Then he devised a way. He picked it up
in his teeth and scratched it on his leg. Twenty times he scratched
before he succeeded in lighting it. As it flamed he held it with his
teeth to the birch-bark. But the burning brimstone went up his nostrils
and into his lungs, causing him to cough spasmodically. The match fell
into the snow and went out.

The old-timer on Sulphur Creek was right, he thought in the moment of
controlled despair that ensued: after fifty below, a man should travel
with a partner. He beat his hands, but failed in exciting any sensation.
Suddenly he bared both hands, removing the mittens with his teeth. He
caught the whole bunch between the heels of his hands. His arm-muscles
not being frozen enabled him to press the hand-heels tightly against the
matches. Then he scratched the bunch along his leg. It flared into
flame, seventy sulphur matches at once! There was no wind to blow them
out. He kept his head to one side to escape the strangling fumes, and
held the blazing bunch to the birch-bark. As he so held it, he became
aware of sensation in his hand. His flesh was burning. He could smell
it. Deep down below the surface he could feel it. The sensation
developed into pain that grew acute. And still he endured it, holding
the flame of the matches clumsily to the bark that would not light
readily because his own burning hands were in the way, absorbing most of
the flame.

At last, when he could endure no more, he jerked his hands apart. The
blazing matches fell sizzling into the snow, but the birch-bark was
alight. He began laying dry grasses and the tiniest twigs on the flame.
He could not pick and choose, for he had to lift the fuel between the
heels of his hands. Small pieces of rotten wood and green moss clung to
the twigs, and he bit them off as well as he could with his teeth. He
cherished the flame carefully and awkwardly. It meant life, and it must
not perish. The withdrawal of blood from the surface of his body now
made him begin to shiver, and he grew more awkward. A large piece of
green moss fell squarely on the little fire. He tried to poke it out
with his fingers, but his shivering frame made him poke too far, and he
disrupted the nucleus of the little fire, the burning grasses and tiny
twigs separating and scattering. He tried to poke them together again,
but in spite of the tenseness of the effort, his shivering got away with
him, and the twigs were hopelessly scattered. Each twig gushed a puff of
smoke and went out. The fire-provider had failed. As he looked
apathetically about him, his eyes chanced on the dog, sitting across the
ruins of the fire from him, in the snow, making restless, hunching
movements, slightly lifting one forefoot and then the other, shifting its
weight back and forth on them with wistful eagerness.

The sight of the dog put a wild idea into his head. He remembered the
tale of the man, caught in a blizzard, who killed a steer and crawled
inside the carcass, and so was saved. He would kill the dog and bury his
hands in the warm body until the numbness went out of them. Then he
could build another fire. He spoke to the dog, calling it to him; but in
his voice was a strange note of fear that frightened the animal, who had
never known the man to speak in such way before. Something was the
matter, and its suspicious nature sensed danger,--it knew not what danger
but somewhere, somehow, in its brain arose an apprehension of the man. It
flattened its ears down at the sound of the man's voice, and its
restless, hunching movements and the liftings and shiftings of its
forefeet became more pronounced but it would not come to the man. He got
on his hands and knees and crawled toward the dog. This unusual posture
again excited suspicion, and the animal sidled mincingly away.

The man sat up in the snow for a moment and struggled for calmness. Then
he pulled on his mittens, by means of his teeth, and got upon his feet.
He glanced down at first in order to assure himself that he was really
standing up, for the absence of sensation in his feet left him unrelated
to the earth. His erect position in itself started to drive the webs of
suspicion from the dog's mind; and when he spoke peremptorily, with the
sound of whip-lashes in his voice, the dog rendered its customary
allegiance and came to him. As it came within reaching distance, the man
lost his control. His arms flashed out to the dog, and he experienced
genuine surprise when he discovered that his hands could not clutch, that
there was neither bend nor feeling in the lingers. He had forgotten for
the moment that they were frozen and that they were freezing more and
more. All this happened quickly, and before the animal could get away,
he encircled its body with his arms. He sat down in the snow, and in
this fashion held the dog, while it snarled and whined and struggled.

But it was all he could do, hold its body encircled in his arms and sit
there. He realized that he could not kill the dog. There was no way to
do it. With his helpless hands he could neither draw nor hold his sheath-
knife nor throttle the animal. He released it, and it plunged wildly
away, with tail between its legs, and still snarling. It halted forty
feet away and surveyed him curiously, with ears sharply pricked forward.
The man looked down at his hands in order to locate them, and found them
hanging on the ends of his arms. It struck him as curious that one
should have to use his eyes in order to find out where his hands were. He
began threshing his arms back and forth, beating the mittened hands
against his sides. He did this for five minutes, violently, and his
heart pumped enough blood up to the surface to put a stop to his
shivering. But no sensation was aroused in the hands. He had an
impression that they hung like weights on the ends of his arms, but when
he tried to run the impression down, he could not find it.

A certain fear of death, dull and oppressive, came to him. This fear
quickly became poignant as he realized that it was no longer a mere
matter of freezing his fingers and toes, or of losing his hands and feet,
but that it was a matter of life and death with the chances against him.
This threw him into a panic, and he turned and ran up the creek-bed along
the old, dim trail. The dog joined in behind and kept up with him. He
ran blindly, without intention, in fear such as he had never known in his
life. Slowly, as he ploughed and floundered through the snow, he began
to see things again--the banks of the creek, the old timber-jams, the
leafless aspens, and the sky. The running made him feel better. He did
not shiver. Maybe, if he ran on, his feet would thaw out; and, anyway,
if he ran far enough, he would reach camp and the boys. Without doubt he
would lose some fingers and toes and some of his face; but the boys would
take care of him, and save the rest of him when he got there. And at the
same time there was another thought in his mind that said he would never
get to the camp and the boys; that it was too many miles away, that the
freezing had too great a start on him, and that he would soon be stiff
and dead. This thought he kept in the background and refused to
consider. Sometimes it pushed itself forward and demanded to be heard,
but he thrust it back and strove to think of other things.

It struck him as curious that he could run at all on feet so frozen that
he could not feel them when they struck the earth and took the weight of
his body. He seemed to himself to skim along above the surface and to
have no connection with the earth. Somewhere he had once seen a winged
Mercury, and he wondered if Mercury felt as he felt when skimming over
the earth.

His theory of running until he reached camp and the boys had one flaw in
it: he lacked the endurance. Several times he stumbled, and finally he
tottered, crumpled up, and fell. When he tried to rise, he failed. He
must sit and rest, he decided, and next time he would merely walk and
keep on going. As he sat and regained his breath, he noted that he was
feeling quite warm and comfortable. He was not shivering, and it even
seemed that a warm glow had come to his chest and trunk. And yet, when
he touched his nose or cheeks, there was no sensation. Running would not
thaw them out. Nor would it thaw out his hands and feet. Then the
thought came to him that the frozen portions of his body must be
extending. He tried to keep this thought down, to forget it, to think of
something else; he was aware of the panicky feeling that it caused, and
he was afraid of the panic. But the thought asserted itself, and
persisted, until it produced a vision of his body totally frozen. This
was too much, and he made another wild run along the trail. Once he
slowed down to a walk, but the thought of the freezing extending itself
made him run again.

And all the time the dog ran with him, at his heels. When he fell down a
second time, it curled its tail over its forefeet and sat in front of him
facing him curiously eager and intent. The warmth and security of the
animal angered him, and he cursed it till it flattened down its ears
appeasingly. This time the shivering came more quickly upon the man. He
was losing in his battle with the frost. It was creeping into his body
from all sides. The thought of it drove him on, but he ran no more than
a hundred feet, when he staggered and pitched headlong. It was his last
panic. When he had recovered his breath and control, he sat up and
entertained in his mind the conception of meeting death with dignity.
However, the conception did not come to him in such terms. His idea of
it was that he had been making a fool of himself, running around like a
chicken with its head cut off--such was the simile that occurred to him.
Well, he was bound to freeze anyway, and he might as well take it
decently. With this new-found peace of mind came the first glimmerings
of drowsiness. A good idea, he thought, to sleep off to death. It was
like taking an anaesthetic. Freezing was not so bad as people thought.
There were lots worse ways to die.

He pictured the boys finding his body next day. Suddenly he found
himself with them, coming along the trail and looking for himself. And,
still with them, he came around a turn in the trail and found himself
lying in the snow. He did not belong with himself any more, for even
then he was out of himself, standing with the boys and looking at himself
in the snow. It certainly was cold, was his thought. When he got back
to the States he could tell the folks what real cold was. He drifted on
from this to a vision of the old-timer on Sulphur Creek. He could see
him quite clearly, warm and comfortable, and smoking a pipe.

"You were right, old hoss; you were right," the man mumbled to the old-
timer of Sulphur Creek.

Then the man drowsed off into what seemed to him the most comfortable and
satisfying sleep he had ever known. The dog sat facing him and waiting.
The brief day drew to a close in a long, slow twilight. There were no
signs of a fire to be made, and, besides, never in the dog's experience
had it known a man to sit like that in the snow and make no fire. As the
twilight drew on, its eager yearning for the fire mastered it, and with a
great lifting and shifting of forefeet, it whined softly, then flattened
its ears down in anticipation of being chidden by the man. But the man
remained silent. Later, the dog whined loudly. And still later it crept
close to the man and caught the scent of death. This made the animal
bristle and back away. A little longer it delayed, howling under the
stars that leaped and danced and shone brightly in the cold sky. Then it
turned and trotted up the trail in the direction of the camp it knew,
where were the other food-providers and fire-providers.




THAT SPOT


I don't think much of Stephen Mackaye any more, though I used to swear by
him. I know that in those days I loved him more than my own brother. If
ever I meet Stephen Mackaye again, I shall not be responsible for my
actions. It passes beyond me that a man with whom I shared food and
blanket, and with whom I mushed over the Chilcoot Trail, should turn out
the way he did. I always sized Steve up as a square man, a kindly
comrade, without an iota of anything vindictive or malicious in his
nature. I shall never trust my judgment in men again. Why, I nursed
that man through typhoid fever; we starved together on the headwaters of
the Stewart; and he saved my life on the Little Salmon. And now, after
the years we were together, all I can say of Stephen Mackaye is that he
is the meanest man I ever knew.

We started for the Klondike in the fall rush of 1897, and we started too
late to get over Chilcoot Pass before the freeze-up. We packed our
outfit on our backs part way over, when the snow began to fly, and then
we had to buy dogs in order to sled it the rest of the way. That was how
we came to get that Spot. Dogs were high, and we paid one hundred and
ten dollars for him. He looked worth it. I say _looked_, because he was
one of the finest-appearing dogs I ever saw. He weighed sixty pounds,
and he had all the lines of a good sled animal. We never could make out
his breed. He wasn't husky, nor Malemute, nor Hudson Bay; he looked like
all of them and he didn't look like any of them; and on top of it all he
had some of the white man's dog in him, for on one side, in the thick of
the mixed yellow-brown-red-and-dirty-white that was his prevailing
colour, there was a spot of coal-black as big as a water-bucket. That
was why we called him Spot.

He was a good looker all right. When he was in condition his muscles
stood out in bunches all over him. And he was the strongest-looking
brute I ever saw in Alaska, also the most intelligent-looking. To run
your eves over him, you'd think he could outpull three dogs of his own
weight. Maybe he could, but I never saw it. His intelligence didn't run
that way. He could steal and forage to perfection; he had an instinct
that was positively gruesome for divining when work was to be done and
for making a sneak accordingly; and for getting lost and not staying lost
he was nothing short of inspired. But when it came to work, the way that
intelligence dribbled out of him and left him a mere clot of wobbling,
stupid jelly would make your heart bleed.

There are times when I think it wasn't stupidity. Maybe, like some men I
know, he was too wise to work. I shouldn't wonder if he put it all over
us with that intelligence of his. Maybe he figured it all out and
decided that a licking now and again and no work was a whole lot better
than work all the time and no licking. He was intelligent enough for
such a computation. I tell you, I've sat and looked into that dog's eyes
till the shivers ran up and down my spine and the marrow crawled like
yeast, what of the intelligence I saw shining out. I can't express
myself about that intelligence. It is beyond mere words. I saw it,
that's all. At times it was like gazing into a human soul, to look into
his eyes; and what I saw there frightened me and started all sorts of
ideas in my own mind of reincarnation and all the rest. I tell you I
sensed something big in that brute's eyes; there was a message there, but
I wasn't big enough myself to catch it. Whatever it was (I know I'm
making a fool of myself)--whatever it was, it baffled me. I can't give
an inkling of what I saw in that brute's eyes; it wasn't light, it wasn't
colour; it was something that moved, away back, when the eyes themselves
weren't moving. And I guess I didn't see it move either; I only sensed
that it moved. It was an expression--that's what it was--and I got an
impression of it. No; it was different from a mere expression; it was
more than that. I don't know what it was, but it gave me a feeling of
kinship just the same. Oh, no, not sentimental kinship. It was, rather,
a kinship of equality. Those eyes never pleaded like a deer's eyes. They
challenged. No, it wasn't defiance. It was just a calm assumption of
equality. And I don't think it was deliberate. My belief is that it was
unconscious on his part. It was there because it was there, and it
couldn't help shining out. No, I don't mean shine. It didn't shine; it
_moved_. I know I'm talking rot, but if you'd looked into that animal's
eyes the way I have, you'd understand. Steve was affected the same way I
was. Why, I tried to kill that Spot once--he was no good for anything;
and I fell down on it. I led him out into the brush, and he came along
slow and unwilling. He knew what was going on. I stopped in a likely
place, put my foot on the rope, and pulled my big Colt's. And that dog
sat down and looked at me. I tell you he didn't plead. He just looked.
And I saw all kinds of incomprehensible things moving, yes, _moving_, in
those eyes of his. I didn't really see them move; I thought I saw them,
for, as I said before, I guess I only sensed them. And I want to tell
you right now that it got beyond me. It was like killing a man, a
conscious, brave man, who looked calmly into your gun as much as to say,
"Who's afraid?"

Then, too, the message seemed so near that, instead of pulling the
trigger quick, I stopped to see if I could catch the message. There it
was, right before me, glimmering all around in those eyes of his. And
then it was too late. I got scared. I was trembly all over, and my
stomach generated a nervous palpitation that made me seasick. I just sat
down and looked at the dog, and he looked at me, till I thought I was
going crazy. Do you want to know what I did? I threw down the gun and
ran back to camp with the fear of God in my heart. Steve laughed at me.
But I notice that Steve led Spot into the woods, a week later, for the
same purpose, and that Steve came back alone, and a little later Spot
drifted back, too.

At any rate, Spot wouldn't work. We paid a hundred and ten dollars for
him from the bottom of our sack, and he wouldn't work. He wouldn't even
tighten the traces. Steve spoke to him the first time we put him in
harness, and he sort of shivered, that was all. Not an ounce on the
traces. He just stood still and wobbled, like so much jelly. Steve
touched him with the whip. He yelped, but not an ounce. Steve touched
him again, a bit harder, and he howled--the regular long wolf howl. Then
Steve got mad and gave him half a dozen, and I came on the run from the
tent.

I told Steve he was brutal with the animal, and we had some words--the
first we'd ever had. He threw the whip down in the snow and walked away
mad. I picked it up and went to it. That Spot trembled and wobbled and
cowered before ever I swung the lash, and with the first bite of it he
howled like a lost soul. Next he lay down in the snow. I started the
rest of the dogs, and they dragged him along while I threw the whip into
him. He rolled over on his back and bumped along, his four legs waving
in the air, himself howling as though he was going through a sausage
machine. Steve came back and laughed at me, and I apologized for what
I'd said.

There was no getting any work out of that Spot; and to make up for it, he
was the biggest pig-glutton of a dog I ever saw. On top of that, he was
the cleverest thief. There was no circumventing him. Many a breakfast
we went without our bacon because Spot had been there first. And it was
because of him that we nearly starved to death up the Stewart. He
figured out the way to break into our meat-cache, and what he didn't eat,
the rest of the team did. But he was impartial. He stole from
everybody. He was a restless dog, always very busy snooping around or
going somewhere. And there was never a camp within five miles that he
didn't raid. The worst of it was that they always came back on us to pay
his board bill, which was just, being the law of the land; but it was
mighty hard on us, especially that first winter on the Chilcoot, when we
were busted, paying for whole hams and sides of bacon that we never ate.
He could fight, too, that Spot. He could do everything but work. He
never pulled a pound, but he was the boss of the whole team. The way he
made those dogs stand around was an education. He bullied them, and
there was always one or more of them fresh-marked with his fangs. But he
was more than a bully. He wasn't afraid of anything that walked on four
legs; and I've seen him march, single-handed into a strange team, without
any provocation whatever, and put the _kibosh_ on the whole outfit. Did
I say he could eat? I caught him eating the whip once. That's straight.
He started in at the lash, and when I caught him he was down to the
handle, and still going.

But he was a good looker. At the end of the first week we sold him for
seventy-five dollars to the Mounted Police. They had experienced dog-
drivers, and we knew that by the time he'd covered the six hundred miles
to Dawson he'd be a good sled-dog. I say we _knew_, for we were just
getting acquainted with that Spot. A little later we were not brash
enough to know anything where he was concerned. A week later we woke up
in the morning to the dangdest dog-fight we'd ever heard. It was that
Spot come back and knocking the team into shape. We ate a pretty
depressing breakfast, I can tell you; but cheered up two hours afterward
when we sold him to an official courier, bound in to Dawson with
government despatches. That Spot was only three days in coming back,
and, as usual, celebrated his arrival with a rough house.