The White Silence

Jack London

'Carmen won't last more than a couple of days.' Mason spat out a chunk of ice and surveyed

the poor animal ruefully, then put her foot in his mouth and proceeded to bite out the ice

which clustered cruelly between the toes.

'I never saw a dog with a highfalutin' name that ever was worth a rap,' he said, as he

concluded his task and shoved her aside. 'They just fade away and die under the

responsibility. Did ye ever see one go wrong with a sensible name like Cassiar, Siwash, or

Husky? No, sir! Take a look at Shookum here, he's--' Snap! The lean brute flashed up, the

white teeth just missing Mason's throat.

glanced from Malemute Kid to her husband, then at the dogs, but vouchsafed no reply. It

was such a palpable truism that none was necessary. Two hundred miles of unbroken trail

in prospect, with a scant six days' grub for themselves and none for the dogs, could admit

no other alternative. The two men and the woman grouped about the fire and began their

meager meal. The dogs lay in their harnesses for it was a midday halt, and watched each

mouthful enviously.

'No more lunches after today,' said Malemute Kid. 'And we've got to keep a close eye on the

dogs--they're getting vicious. They'd just as soon pull a fellow down as not, if they get a

chance.' 'And I was president of an Epworth once, and taught in the Sunday school.' Having

irrelevantly delivered himself of this, Mason fell into a dreamy contemplation of his

beast of burden.

'Yes, Ruth,' continued her husband, having recourse to the macaronic jargon in which it was

alone possible for them to understand each other; 'wait till we clean up and pull for the

Outside. We'll take the White Man's canoe and go to the Salt Water. Yes, bad water, rough

water--great mountains dance up and down all the time. And so big, so far, so far away--you

travel ten sleep, twenty sleep, forty sleep'--he graphically enumerated the days on his

fingers--'all the time water, bad water. Then you come to great village, plenty people, just

the same mosquitoes next summer. Wigwams oh, so high--ten, twenty pines.

Hi-yu skookum!' He paused impotently, cast an appealing glance at Malemute Kid, then

laboriously placed the twenty pines, end on end, by sign language. Malemute Kid smiled

with cheery cynicism; but Ruth's eyes were wide with wonder, and with pleasure; for she

half believed he was joking, and such condescension pleased her poor woman's heart.

'And then you step into a--a box, and pouf! up you go.' He tossed his empty cup in the air by

way of illustration and, as he deftly caught it, cried: 'And biff! down you come. Oh, great

of the Outside, and by the time the snarling combatants were separated, she had lashed the

sleds and all was ready for the trail.-- 'Mush! Baldy! Hi! Mush on!' Mason worked his whip

smartly and, as the dogs whined low in the traces, broke out the sled with the gee pole. Ruth

followed with the second team, leaving Malemute Kid, who had helped her start, to bring

up the rear. Strong man, brute that he was, capable of felling an ox at a blow, he could not

bear to beat the poor animals, but humored them as a dog driver rarely does--nay, almost

wept with them in their misery.

'Come, mush on there, you poor sore-footed brutes!' he murmured, after several ineffectual

attempts to start the load. But his patience was at last rewarded, and though whimpering

with pain, they hastened to join their fellows.

cleared; then forward, down, and the other foot is raised perpendicularly for the matter of

half a yard. He who tries this for the first time, if haply he avoids bringing his shoes in

dangerous propinquity and measures not his length on the treacherous footing, will give up

exhausted at the end of a hundred yards; he who can keep out of the way of the dogs for a

whole day may well crawl into his sleeping bag with a clear conscience and a pride which

passeth all understanding; and he who travels twenty sleeps on the Long Trail is a man

whom the gods may envy.

The afternoon wore on, and with the awe, born of the White Silence, the voiceless travelers

bent to their work. Nature has many tricks wherewith she convinces man of his finity--the

ceaseless flow of the tides, the fury of the storm, the shock of the earthquake, the long roll

the slightest whisper seems sacrilege, and man becomes timid, affrighted at the sound of his

own voice. Sole speck of life journeying across the ghostly wastes of a dead world, he

trembles at his audacity, realizes that his is a maggot's life, nothing more.

Strange thoughts arise unsummoned, and the mystery of all things strives for utterance.

cutoff across the narrow neck of land. But the dogs balked at the high bank. Again and

again, though Ruth and Malemute Kid were shoving on the sled, they slipped back. Then

came the concerted effort. The miserable creatures, weak from hunger, exerted their last

strength. Up--up--the sled poised on the top of the bank; but the leader swung the string of

dogs behind him to the right, fouling Mason's snowshoes. The result was grievous.

Mason was whipped off his feet; one of the dogs fell in the traces; and the sled toppled

back, dragging everything to the bottom again.

Slash! the whip fell among the dogs savagely, especially upon the one which had fallen.

'Don't,--Mason,' entreated Malemute Kid; 'the poor devil's on its last legs. Wait and we'll

put my team on.' Mason deliberately withheld the whip till the last word had fallen, then out

word was spoken. The teams were doublespanned and the difficulty overcome; the sleds

were under way again, the dying dog dragging herself along in the rear. As long as an

animal can travel, it is not shot, and this last chance is accorded it--the crawling into camp,

if it can, in the hope of a moose being killed.

Already penitent for his angry action, but too stubborn to make amends, Mason toiled on at

the head of the cavalcade, little dreaming that danger hovered in the air. The timber

clustered thick in the sheltered bottom, and through this they threaded their way. Fifty feet

or more from the trail towered a lofty pine. For generations it had stood there, and for

generations destiny had had this one end in view--perhaps the same had been decreed of

Mason.

actually hear it, but rather felt it, like the premonition of movement in a motionless void.

Then the great tree, burdened with its weight of years and snow, played its last part in the

tragedy of life. He heard the warning crash and attempted to spring up but, almost erect,

The sudden danger, the quick death--how often had Malemute Kid faced it! The pine

needles were still quivering as he gave his commands and sprang into action. Nor did the

Indian girl faint or raise her voice in idle wailing, as might many of her white sisters. At his

pressure and listening to her husband's groans, while Malemute Kid attacked the tree with

his ax. The steel rang merrily as it bit into the frozen trunk, each stroke being accompanied

by a forced, audible respiration, the 'Huh!' 'Huh!' of the woodsman.

cannot lie many minutes in the snow and live. So the sled lashings were cut, and the

sufferer, rolled in furs, laid on a couch of boughs. Before him roared a fire, built of the very

wood which wrought the mishap. Behind and partially over him was stretched the primitive

fly--a piece of canvas, which caught the radiating heat and threw it back and down upon

hima trick which men may know who study physics at the fount.

And men who have shared their bed with death know when the call is sounded. Mason was

terribly crushed. The most cursory examination revealed it.

His right arm, leg, and back were broken; his limbs were paralyzed from the hips; and the

likelihood of internal injuries was large. An occasional moan was his only sign of life.

No hope; nothing to be done. The pitiless night crept slowly by--Ruth's portion, the

despairing stoicism of her race, and Malemute Kid adding new lines to his face of bronze.

In fact, Mason suffered least of all, for he spent his time in eastern Tennessee, in the Great

'You remember when we foregathered on the Tanana, four years come next ice run? I didn't

care so much for her then. It was more like she was pretty, and there was a smack of

excitement about it, I think. But d'ye know, I've come to think a heap of her. She's been a

good wife to me, always at my shoulder in the pinch. And when it comes to trading, you

know there isn't her equal. D'ye recollect the time she shot the Moosehorn Rapids to pull

you and me off that rock, the bullets whipping the water like hailstones?- and the time of

the famine at Nuklukyeto?--when she raced the ice run to bring the news?

Yes, she's been a good wife to me, better'n that other one. Didn't know I'd been there?

Never told you, eh? Well, I tried it once, down in the States. That's why I'm here. Been

raised together, too. I came away to give her a chance for divorce. She got it.

'But that's got nothing to do with Ruth. I had thought of cleaning up and pulling for the

have tried our ways, to come to know they're better'n her people's, and then return to them.

Take care of her, Kidwhy don't you--but no, you always fought shy of them--and you never

'And the youngster--it's drawn us closer, Kid. I only hope it is a boy. Think of it!--flesh of

my flesh, Kid. He mustn't stop in this country. And if it's a girl, why, she can't. Sell my furs;

'Two days.'

wait till I'm dead. She might refuse to go with you if I didn't. Goodby, old man; good-by.

'Kid! I say--a--sink a hole above the pup, next to the slide. I panned out forty cents on my

shovel there.

'And, Kid!' He stooped lower to catch the last faint words, the dying man's surrender of his

had he faced so stiff a problem as this. In the abstract, it was a plain, mathematical

propositionthree possible lives as against one doomed one. But now he hesitated. For five

while Malemute Kid cut up the warm body of one of the dogs, the skull of which had been

Malemute Kid went about his work, listening to Mason, who was back in Tennessee,

delivering tangled discourses and wild exhortations to his brethren of other days.

everything but the furs which enveloped Mason. These he wrapped and lashed tightly about

him, fastening either end of the robes to the bent pines. A single stroke of his hunting knife

would release them and send the body high in the air.

Ruth had received her husband's last wishes and made no struggle. Poor girl, she had

learned the lesson of obedience well. From a child, she had bowed, and seen all women

bow, to the lords of creation, and it did not seem in the nature of things for woman to resist.

The Kid permitted her one outburst of grief, as she kissed her husband--her own people had

Blindly, instinctively, she took the gee pole and whip, and 'mushed' the dogs out on the

trail. Then he returned to Mason, who had fallen into a coma, and long after she was out of

sight crouched by the fire, waiting, hoping, praying for his comrade to die.