August 2, 2024 • 30 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Jack London’s most famous works include The Call of the Wild and White Fang, both set in the Klondike Gold Rush, and so is this story. Here to narrate the gripping finale of Jack London’s masterpiece, To Build a Fire, is Roger McGrath.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is our American stories, and we tell stories about
all kinds of things here on this show, and we
love spending time on music, arts, and literature. Jack London's
most famous works include The Call of the Wild and
White Fang, both set in the Klondike Gold Rush, as
well as his short story to Build a Fire. Here's
(00:34):
Greg Hengler with Moore on Jack London.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Jack London carved out his own hard scrabble life as
a teen. In his free time, he hunkered down at library,
soaking up novels and travel books. His life as a
writer essentially began in eighteen ninety three. That year, he
had weathered a treacherous voyage, one in which a typhoon
had nearly taken out London and his crew. His seventeen
(01:00):
year old adventurer, had made it home and regaled his
mother with his tales of what happened to him. When
she saw an announcement in one of the local newspapers
for a writing contest, she pushed her son to write
down and submit his story. Armed with just an eighth
grade education, London captured the twenty five dollars first prize,
(01:22):
beating out college students from Berkeley and Stanford. For London,
the contest was an eye opening experience, and he decided
to dedicate his life to writing short stories, but he
had trouble finding willing publishers. In fact, Jack London kept
all of his rejection letters from the first five years
(01:42):
of his writing career and impaled each one of them
on a spindle. The impaled letters, six hundred of them,
eventually reached a height of four feet. When White Fang
was first published in nineteen oh six, Jack London was
well on his way to becoming one of the most famous, popular,
and highly paid writers in the world. In fact, London
(02:06):
was the first author in the world to become a
millionaire from his writing. He died at his California ranch
a November twenty second, nineteen sixteen. He was forty years old.
To Build a Fire takes place in the snowy world
of the Yukon, where it's so cold you spit freezes
(02:27):
before it even hits the ground. After spending a very
influential part of his young life mining for gold in
the Arctic North, London returned to the States a changed man.
He was certain that civilization and its modern conveniences had
turned everyone and men in particular into a bunch of whimps,
(02:47):
and he felt that people needed to reconnect with their
natural instincts and common sense if they wished to remain
strong against the pampering forces of the modern world. Here
to narrate the gripping finale of Jack London's masterpiece, to
build a fire is Roger McGrath.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
When it is seventy five below zero, a man must
not fail in his first attempt to build a fire.
That is, if his feet are wet. If his feet
are dry, and he fails, he can run along the
trail for half a mile and restore his circulation. But
the circulation of wet and freezing feet cannot be restored
(03:53):
by running when it is seventy five below No matter
how fast he runs, the wet or freeze the harder.
All this. The man knew the old timer on Sulfur
Creek and told him about it the previous fall, And
now he was appreciating the advice. Already all sensation had
(04:16):
gone out of his feet to build the fire, he
had been forced to remove his mittens, and the fingers
had quickly gone dumb. His pace of four miles an
hour had kept his heart pumping blood to the surface
of his body and to all the extremities. But the
instant he stopped, the action of the pump eased down.
(04:40):
The cold of space smoked the unprotected tip of the planet,
and he, being on that unprotected tip, received the full
force of the blow. The blood of his body recoiled
before it. The blood was alive like the dog, and
like the dog, it wanted to hide away and cover
(05:01):
itself from the fearful cold. So long as he walked
four miles an hour, he pumped that blood willy nilly
to the surface. But now it ebbed away and sank
into the recesses of his body. The extremities were the
first to feel its absence. His wet feet froze the faster,
(05:22):
and his exposed fingers none the faster, though they had
not yet begun to freeze. Nose and cheeks were already freezing,
while the skin of all his body chilled as it
lost its blood. But he was safe toes and nose
and cheeks would only be touched by the frost, for
(05:43):
the fire was beginning to burn with strength. He was
feeding it with twigs the size of his finger. In
another minute he would be able to feed it with
branches the size of his wrist, and then he could
remove his wet foot gear, and while it dried, keep
his naked feet warm by the fire, rubbing them at first,
(06:04):
of course, with snow. The fire was a success. He
was safe. He remembered the advice of the old timer
on Silver Creek and smiled. The old timer had been
very serious in leaning down the law that no man
must travel alone in the Klondike after fifty below. Well,
(06:25):
here he was. He had had the accident. He was alone,
and he had saved himself. Those old timers were rather womanish,
some of them. He thought all a man had to
do was keep his head, and he was all right.
Any man who was a man could travel alone. But
(06:46):
it was surprising the rapidity with which his cheeks and
nose were freezing. And he had not thought his fingers
could go lifeless in so short a time. Lifeless they were,
for he could scarcely make them move together to grip
a twig, and they seemed remote from his body and
(07:07):
from him. When he touched a twig, he had to
look and see whether or not he had hold of it.
The wires were pretty well down between him and his
finger ends, all of which counted for little. There was
the fire, snapping and crackling and promising life. With every
(07:28):
dancing flame. He started to untie his moccasins. They were
coated with ice. The thick German socks were like sheaths
of iron gaff way up to his knee, and the
moccasin strings were like rods of steel, all twisted and nodded,
as by some conflagration. For a moment he tugged his
(07:49):
numb fingers. Then, realizing the folly of it, he drew
his sheath knife. But before he could cut the strings,
it happened. It was his own fault, or rather his mistake.
He should not have built the fire under the spruce tree.
He should have built it in the open. But it
(08:09):
had been easier to pull the twigs from the brush
and drop them directly on the fire. Now, the tree
under which he had done this carried a weight of
snow on its boughs, no wind blown for weeks, and
each bough was fully freighted. Each time he pulled a twig,
it communicated a slight agitation to the tree, an imperceptible
(08:33):
agitation so far as he was concerned, but an agitation
sufficient to bring about the disaster. High up in the tree,
one bough capsized its load of snow. This fell on
the boughs beneath, captizing them. This process continued, spreading out
and involving the whole tree. It grew like an avalanche,
(08:57):
and it descended without warning upon the man and the fire.
And the fire was blotted out. Where it had burned
was a mantle afresh and disordered and snow. The man
was shocked. It was as though he had just heard
his own sentence of death. For a moment, he sat
(09:19):
and steered at the spot where the fire had been,
and he grew very calm. Perhaps the old timer on
Sulfur 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.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
And we're listening to Roger McGrath, are in house historian
on all Things Frontier, reading Jack London's remarkable To Build
a Fire. And when we come back, we're going to
hear more of this story here on our American Story.
(10:09):
And we continue here with our American stories and Roger
McGrath's reading of To Build a Fire. Let's pick up
when we last left off.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
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
(10:43):
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
(11:04):
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
(11:28):
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
(11:49):
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
(12:10):
it and kept calm. He pulled on his mittens with
his teeth and thrust 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 the tail curled warmly over its forefeet,
(12:33):
Its sharp wolf ears pricked forward intently as it watched
the man. And the man, as he beat and threshed
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
(12:53):
of the first far away signals of sensation in his
beaten fingers. The faint tingling grew stronger till it evolved
into a stinging inch that was excruciating, of which the
man hailed with satisfaction. He stripped the mitten from his
right hand and fetched forth the birch bark. The exposed
(13:13):
fingers were quickly going dumb again. Next he brought out
his bunch of sulfur 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
(13:34):
neither touch nor clutch. He was very careful. He drove
the thought of his freezing feet and noose 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 of the bunch, he closed them, that is,
(13:57):
he willed to close them, for the wires were down
and the fingers did not obey. He pulled the mitton
on his right hand and beat it fiercely against his knee.
Then with both mittened hands. He stooped the bunch of matches,
along with much snow, into his lap, Yet he was
(14:19):
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 eyes
crackled and snapped one. By a violent effort, he opened
his mouth, he drew the lower jaw in, curled the
(14:39):
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 away. He picked it up in his
teeth and hatched it on his leg. Twenty times he
(15:03):
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 into his lungs,
causing him to cough spasmodically. The match fell into the
snow and went out. The old timer on Sulfur Creek
(15:28):
was right. He fought in the moment of control of
the spear 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
(15:51):
being frozen, enabled him to press the hand heels tightly
against the matches. Then he scratched the bunch along his leg.
It flared in the flame seventy sulfur matches at once.
There was no wind to blow them out. He kept
his head to one side to escape the strangling fumes,
(16:13):
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. A
sensation developed in a pain that grew acute, and still
(16:35):
he endured it, holding the flame of 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,
(16:58):
but the birch bark was light. He began laying dry
grasses and the tiniest twigs on the flame. He could
not pick and shoes, 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
(17:19):
his teeth. He cheerished the flame carefully and awkwardly. It
meant life, and it must not perish. 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
(17:40):
tried to poke it out with his fingers, but his
shivering frame made him poke too far, and he disrupted
the little nucleus of the little fire. The burning grasses
and tiny twigs separated and scattering. He tried to poke
them together again, but in spite of the instance of
(18:01):
his 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
(18:23):
in the snow, making restless, hunching movements, slightly lifting one
fore foot 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 tail of a man caught in a blizzard
(18:44):
who killed the 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.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
Listening to Doctor Roger McGrath and telling the story of
to Bill the Fire, jack London's classic. And we like
to do this periodically because these stories, well, they must
live on, and they've been sort of almost eviscerated from
the curriculum of most schools. When we come back, we
continue with Jack London's to Bill a Fire, the final
(19:21):
installment here on our American Stories. And we continue with
our American Stories and the final installment of Jack London's
(19:43):
To Bill a Fire. Let's return to Doctor Roger McGrath.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
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,
(20:08):
but somewhere somehow in its brain arose in 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
(20:29):
in his hands and knees and crawled toward the dog.
This unusual posture again excited suspicion, and the animal sidled
nncingly 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
(20:51):
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
(21:11):
he spoke peremptorily, with the sound of whiplashes in his voice,
the dog rendered its customary allegiance and came to him.
As it came within reaching distance, the man lost control.
His arms flashed out to the dog, and he experienced
genuine surprise when he discovered that his hands could not clutch,
(21:32):
that there was neither bend nor feeling in his fingers.
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
(21:55):
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 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,
(22:16):
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
no one should have to use his eyes in order
(22:37):
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 to the surface to put
a stop to his shivering. But no sensation was aroused
(22:58):
in his hands. He had an impression that they were
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, still and oppressive,
came to him. The fear quickly became poignant as he
realized that it was no longer a mere manner of
(23:19):
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,
(23:40):
without intention, in fear such as he had never known
in his life. Slowly, as he plowed 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 batter, he
(24:00):
did not shiver it. Maybe if he ran on his
feet would fall 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
(24:24):
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
(24:44):
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, seemed to himself to skim above the
surface and to have no connection with the earth. Somewhere,
(25:05):
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 endurance. Several
times he stumbled, and finally he tottered, crumpled up, and fell.
(25:25):
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.
(25:47):
And yet when he touched his nose or cheeks, there
was no sensation. Running would not fall them out, nor
would it faw out his hands and feet. Then the
thought came to him, but the rosen portions of his
body must be extending. He tried to keep the thought down,
to forget it, to think of something else. He was
(26:09):
aware of the panicky feeling that it cost, 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 walk,
(26:29):
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
(26:50):
cursed it till it flattened down its ears appeasingly. This time,
the shivering came more quickly upon the man. He was
losing his backattle 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.
(27:14):
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 his head cut off. Such was
(27:34):
the simile that occurred to him. Well, he was bound
to freeze anyway, and he might as well take it decently.
With this newfound peace of mind came first glimmerings of drowsiness.
A good idea, he thought, to sleep off to death.
It was like taking an anesthetic. Freezing was not so
(27:55):
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
to turn in the trail and found himself lying in
the snow. He did not belong with himself anymore, for
(28:19):
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 Dimer on Sulfur Creek. He could see him quite clearly,
(28:43):
warm and comfortable and smoking a pipe. You were right,
old Oss you were right, the man mumbled to the
old timer of Sulfur Creek. Then the man trowsed off
into what seemed to him the most comfortable and satisfying
sleep he had ever known. The dog sat facing him
(29:05):
and waiting the brief day due 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. Later, the dog
whined loudly, and still later it crept close to the
(29:27):
man and caught the scent of death. Has 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
(29:49):
knew where were the other food providers and fire providers?
Speaker 1 (29:57):
What storytelling and what writing? And we think doctor Roger
mc grath for reading To Build a Fire by Jack London.
Here on our American Stories
This is our American stories, and we tell stories about
all kinds of things here on this show, and we
love spending time on music, arts, and literature. Jack London's
most famous works include The Call of the Wild and
White Fang, both set in the Klondike Gold Rush, as
well as his short story to Build a Fire. Here's
(00:34):
Greg Hengler with Moore on Jack London.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Jack London carved out his own hard scrabble life as
a teen. In his free time, he hunkered down at library,
soaking up novels and travel books. His life as a
writer essentially began in eighteen ninety three. That year, he
had weathered a treacherous voyage, one in which a typhoon
had nearly taken out London and his crew. His seventeen
(01:00):
year old adventurer, had made it home and regaled his
mother with his tales of what happened to him. When
she saw an announcement in one of the local newspapers
for a writing contest, she pushed her son to write
down and submit his story. Armed with just an eighth
grade education, London captured the twenty five dollars first prize,
(01:22):
beating out college students from Berkeley and Stanford. For London,
the contest was an eye opening experience, and he decided
to dedicate his life to writing short stories, but he
had trouble finding willing publishers. In fact, Jack London kept
all of his rejection letters from the first five years
(01:42):
of his writing career and impaled each one of them
on a spindle. The impaled letters, six hundred of them,
eventually reached a height of four feet. When White Fang
was first published in nineteen oh six, Jack London was
well on his way to becoming one of the most famous, popular,
and highly paid writers in the world. In fact, London
(02:06):
was the first author in the world to become a
millionaire from his writing. He died at his California ranch
a November twenty second, nineteen sixteen. He was forty years old.
To Build a Fire takes place in the snowy world
of the Yukon, where it's so cold you spit freezes
(02:27):
before it even hits the ground. After spending a very
influential part of his young life mining for gold in
the Arctic North, London returned to the States a changed man.
He was certain that civilization and its modern conveniences had
turned everyone and men in particular into a bunch of whimps,
(02:47):
and he felt that people needed to reconnect with their
natural instincts and common sense if they wished to remain
strong against the pampering forces of the modern world. Here
to narrate the gripping finale of Jack London's masterpiece, to
build a fire is Roger McGrath.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
When it is seventy five below zero, a man must
not fail in his first attempt to build a fire.
That is, if his feet are wet. If his feet
are dry, and he fails, he can run along the
trail for half a mile and restore his circulation. But
the circulation of wet and freezing feet cannot be restored
(03:53):
by running when it is seventy five below No matter
how fast he runs, the wet or freeze the harder.
All this. The man knew the old timer on Sulfur
Creek and told him about it the previous fall, And
now he was appreciating the advice. Already all sensation had
(04:16):
gone out of his feet to build the fire, he
had been forced to remove his mittens, and the fingers
had quickly gone dumb. His pace of four miles an
hour had kept his heart pumping blood to the surface
of his body and to all the extremities. But the
instant he stopped, the action of the pump eased down.
(04:40):
The cold of space smoked the unprotected tip of the planet,
and he, being on that unprotected tip, received the full
force of the blow. The blood of his body recoiled
before it. The blood was alive like the dog, and
like the dog, it wanted to hide away and cover
(05:01):
itself from the fearful cold. So long as he walked
four miles an hour, he pumped that blood willy nilly
to the surface. But now it ebbed away and sank
into the recesses of his body. The extremities were the
first to feel its absence. His wet feet froze the faster,
(05:22):
and his exposed fingers none the faster, though they had
not yet begun to freeze. Nose and cheeks were already freezing,
while the skin of all his body chilled as it
lost its blood. But he was safe toes and nose
and cheeks would only be touched by the frost, for
(05:43):
the fire was beginning to burn with strength. He was
feeding it with twigs the size of his finger. In
another minute he would be able to feed it with
branches the size of his wrist, and then he could
remove his wet foot gear, and while it dried, keep
his naked feet warm by the fire, rubbing them at first,
(06:04):
of course, with snow. The fire was a success. He
was safe. He remembered the advice of the old timer
on Silver Creek and smiled. The old timer had been
very serious in leaning down the law that no man
must travel alone in the Klondike after fifty below. Well,
(06:25):
here he was. He had had the accident. He was alone,
and he had saved himself. Those old timers were rather womanish,
some of them. He thought all a man had to
do was keep his head, and he was all right.
Any man who was a man could travel alone. But
(06:46):
it was surprising the rapidity with which his cheeks and
nose were freezing. And he had not thought his fingers
could go lifeless in so short a time. Lifeless they were,
for he could scarcely make them move together to grip
a twig, and they seemed remote from his body and
(07:07):
from him. When he touched a twig, he had to
look and see whether or not he had hold of it.
The wires were pretty well down between him and his
finger ends, all of which counted for little. There was
the fire, snapping and crackling and promising life. With every
(07:28):
dancing flame. He started to untie his moccasins. They were
coated with ice. The thick German socks were like sheaths
of iron gaff way up to his knee, and the
moccasin strings were like rods of steel, all twisted and nodded,
as by some conflagration. For a moment he tugged his
(07:49):
numb fingers. Then, realizing the folly of it, he drew
his sheath knife. But before he could cut the strings,
it happened. It was his own fault, or rather his mistake.
He should not have built the fire under the spruce tree.
He should have built it in the open. But it
(08:09):
had been easier to pull the twigs from the brush
and drop them directly on the fire. Now, the tree
under which he had done this carried a weight of
snow on its boughs, no wind blown for weeks, and
each bough was fully freighted. Each time he pulled a twig,
it communicated a slight agitation to the tree, an imperceptible
(08:33):
agitation so far as he was concerned, but an agitation
sufficient to bring about the disaster. High up in the tree,
one bough capsized its load of snow. This fell on
the boughs beneath, captizing them. This process continued, spreading out
and involving the whole tree. It grew like an avalanche,
(08:57):
and it descended without warning upon the man and the fire.
And the fire was blotted out. Where it had burned
was a mantle afresh and disordered and snow. The man
was shocked. It was as though he had just heard
his own sentence of death. For a moment, he sat
(09:19):
and steered at the spot where the fire had been,
and he grew very calm. Perhaps the old timer on
Sulfur 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.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
And we're listening to Roger McGrath, are in house historian
on all Things Frontier, reading Jack London's remarkable To Build
a Fire. And when we come back, we're going to
hear more of this story here on our American Story.
(10:09):
And we continue here with our American stories and Roger
McGrath's reading of To Build a Fire. Let's pick up
when we last left off.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
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
(10:43):
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
(11:04):
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
(11:28):
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
(11:49):
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
(12:10):
it and kept calm. He pulled on his mittens with
his teeth and thrust 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 the tail curled warmly over its forefeet,
(12:33):
Its sharp wolf ears pricked forward intently as it watched
the man. And the man, as he beat and threshed
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
(12:53):
of the first far away signals of sensation in his
beaten fingers. The faint tingling grew stronger till it evolved
into a stinging inch that was excruciating, of which the
man hailed with satisfaction. He stripped the mitten from his
right hand and fetched forth the birch bark. The exposed
(13:13):
fingers were quickly going dumb again. Next he brought out
his bunch of sulfur 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
(13:34):
neither touch nor clutch. He was very careful. He drove
the thought of his freezing feet and noose 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 of the bunch, he closed them, that is,
(13:57):
he willed to close them, for the wires were down
and the fingers did not obey. He pulled the mitton
on his right hand and beat it fiercely against his knee.
Then with both mittened hands. He stooped the bunch of matches,
along with much snow, into his lap, Yet he was
(14:19):
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 eyes
crackled and snapped one. By a violent effort, he opened
his mouth, he drew the lower jaw in, curled the
(14:39):
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 away. He picked it up in his
teeth and hatched it on his leg. Twenty times he
(15:03):
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 into his lungs,
causing him to cough spasmodically. The match fell into the
snow and went out. The old timer on Sulfur Creek
(15:28):
was right. He fought in the moment of control of
the spear 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
(15:51):
being frozen, enabled him to press the hand heels tightly
against the matches. Then he scratched the bunch along his leg.
It flared in the flame seventy sulfur matches at once.
There was no wind to blow them out. He kept
his head to one side to escape the strangling fumes,
(16:13):
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. A
sensation developed in a pain that grew acute, and still
(16:35):
he endured it, holding the flame of 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,
(16:58):
but the birch bark was light. He began laying dry
grasses and the tiniest twigs on the flame. He could
not pick and shoes, 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
(17:19):
his teeth. He cheerished the flame carefully and awkwardly. It
meant life, and it must not perish. 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
(17:40):
tried to poke it out with his fingers, but his
shivering frame made him poke too far, and he disrupted
the little nucleus of the little fire. The burning grasses
and tiny twigs separated and scattering. He tried to poke
them together again, but in spite of the instance of
(18:01):
his 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
(18:23):
in the snow, making restless, hunching movements, slightly lifting one
fore foot 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 tail of a man caught in a blizzard
(18:44):
who killed the 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.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
Listening to Doctor Roger McGrath and telling the story of
to Bill the Fire, jack London's classic. And we like
to do this periodically because these stories, well, they must
live on, and they've been sort of almost eviscerated from
the curriculum of most schools. When we come back, we
continue with Jack London's to Bill a Fire, the final
(19:21):
installment here on our American Stories. And we continue with
our American Stories and the final installment of Jack London's
(19:43):
To Bill a Fire. Let's return to Doctor Roger McGrath.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
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,
(20:08):
but somewhere somehow in its brain arose in 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
(20:29):
in his hands and knees and crawled toward the dog.
This unusual posture again excited suspicion, and the animal sidled
nncingly 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
(20:51):
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
(21:11):
he spoke peremptorily, with the sound of whiplashes in his voice,
the dog rendered its customary allegiance and came to him.
As it came within reaching distance, the man lost control.
His arms flashed out to the dog, and he experienced
genuine surprise when he discovered that his hands could not clutch,
(21:32):
that there was neither bend nor feeling in his fingers.
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
(21:55):
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 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,
(22:16):
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
no one should have to use his eyes in order
(22:37):
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 to the surface to put
a stop to his shivering. But no sensation was aroused
(22:58):
in his hands. He had an impression that they were
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, still and oppressive,
came to him. The fear quickly became poignant as he
realized that it was no longer a mere manner of
(23:19):
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,
(23:40):
without intention, in fear such as he had never known
in his life. Slowly, as he plowed 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 batter, he
(24:00):
did not shiver it. Maybe if he ran on his
feet would fall 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
(24:24):
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
(24:44):
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, seemed to himself to skim above the
surface and to have no connection with the earth. Somewhere,
(25:05):
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 endurance. Several
times he stumbled, and finally he tottered, crumpled up, and fell.
(25:25):
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.
(25:47):
And yet when he touched his nose or cheeks, there
was no sensation. Running would not fall them out, nor
would it faw out his hands and feet. Then the
thought came to him, but the rosen portions of his
body must be extending. He tried to keep the thought down,
to forget it, to think of something else. He was
(26:09):
aware of the panicky feeling that it cost, 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 walk,
(26:29):
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
(26:50):
cursed it till it flattened down its ears appeasingly. This time,
the shivering came more quickly upon the man. He was
losing his backattle 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.
(27:14):
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 his head cut off. Such was
(27:34):
the simile that occurred to him. Well, he was bound
to freeze anyway, and he might as well take it decently.
With this newfound peace of mind came first glimmerings of drowsiness.
A good idea, he thought, to sleep off to death.
It was like taking an anesthetic. Freezing was not so
(27:55):
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
to turn in the trail and found himself lying in
the snow. He did not belong with himself anymore, for
(28:19):
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 Dimer on Sulfur Creek. He could see him quite clearly,
(28:43):
warm and comfortable and smoking a pipe. You were right,
old Oss you were right, the man mumbled to the
old timer of Sulfur Creek. Then the man trowsed off
into what seemed to him the most comfortable and satisfying
sleep he had ever known. The dog sat facing him
(29:05):
and waiting the brief day due 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. Later, the dog
whined loudly, and still later it crept close to the
(29:27):
man and caught the scent of death. Has 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
(29:49):
knew where were the other food providers and fire providers?
Speaker 1 (29:57):
What storytelling and what writing? And we think doctor Roger
mc grath for reading To Build a Fire by Jack London.
Here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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