Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Part two, Chapter three of White Fang, presented by Dream
Audio Books. White Fang by Jack London, Part two, Chapter three.
The Gray Cub. He was different from his brothers and sisters.
Their hair already betrayed the reddish hue inherited from their mother,
(00:21):
the she wolf, while he alone, in this particular, took
after his father. He was the one little gray cub
of the litter. He had bred true to the straight
wolf stock. In fact, he had bred true to old
one eye himself physically, with but a single exception, and
that was he had two eyes to his father's one.
(00:41):
The gray Cub's eyes had not been opened long yet,
already he could see with steady clearness, And while his
eyes were still closed, he had felt, tasted and smelled.
He knew his two brothers and his two sisters very well.
He had begun to romp with them in a feeble,
awkward way, and even to wobble, his little throat vibrating
(01:02):
with a queer, rasping noise, the forerunner of the growl,
as he worked himself into a passion. And long before
his eyes had opened, he had learned, by touch, taste,
and smell to know his mother, a fount of warmth
and liquid food and tenderness. She possessed a gentle, caressing
tongue that soothed him when it passed over his soft
(01:23):
little body, and that impelled him to snuggle close against
her and to doze off to sleep. Most of the
first month of his life had been passed thus in sleeping.
But now he could see quite well, and he stayed
awake for longer periods of time, and he was coming
to learn his world quite well. His world was gloomy,
(01:43):
but he did not know that, for he knew no
other world. It was dim lighted, but his eyes had
never had to adjust themselves to any other light. His
world was very small. Its limits were the walls of
the lair, But as he had no knowledge of the
wide world outside, he was never oppressed by the narrow
confines of his existence. But he had early discovered that
(02:07):
one wall of his world was different from the rest.
This was the mouth of the cave and the source
of the light. He had discovered that it was different
from the other walls long before he had any thoughts
of his own, any conscious volitions. It had been an
irresistible attraction before ever his eyes opened and looked upon it.
(02:27):
The light from it had beat upon his sealed lids,
and the eyes and the optic nerves had pulsated to
little spark like flashes, warm colored and strangely pleasing. The
life of his body and of every fiber of his body,
the life that was the very substance of his body,
and that was apart from his own personal life, had
(02:48):
yearned toward this light, and urged his body toward it,
in the same way that the cunning chemistry of a
plant urges it toward the sun. Always in the beginning,
before his conscious life dawned, he had crawled toward the
mouth of the cave, and in this his brothers and
sisters were one with him. Never in that period did
(03:09):
any of them crawl toward the dark corners of the
back wall. The light drew them as if they were plants.
The chemistry of the life that composed them demanded the
light as a necessity of being, and their little puppet
bodies crawled blindly and chemically, like the tendrils of a vine.
Later on, when each developed individuality and became personally conscious
(03:32):
of impulsions and desires, the attraction of the light increased.
They were always crawling and sprawling toward it, and being
driven back from it by their mother. It was in
this way that the gray cub learned other attributes of
his mother than the soft, soothing tongue. In his insistent
crawling toward the light, he discovered in her a nose that,
(03:54):
with a sharp nudge, administered rebuke, and later a paw
that crushed him down and rolled him over and over
with swift, calculating stroke. Thus he learned hurt, and on
top of it, he learned to avoid hurt, first by
not incurring the risk of it, and second, when he
had incurred the risk, by dodging and by retreating. These
(04:16):
were conscious actions and were the results of his first
generalizations upon the world. Before that, he had recoiled automatically
from hurt, as he had crawled automatically toward the light.
After that, he recoiled from hurt because he knew that
it was hurt. He was a fierce little cub, so
were his brothers and sisters. It was to be expected
(04:39):
he was a carnivorous animal. He came of a breed
of meat killers and meat eaters. His father and mother
lived wholly upon meat. The milk he had sucked with
his first flickering life was milk transformed directly from meat,
And now, at a month old, when his eyes had
been opened for but a week, he was beginning himself
(05:01):
to eat meat, meat half digested by the she wolf
and disgorged for the five growing cubs that already made
too great demand upon her breast. But he was further
the fiercest of the litter. He could make a louder,
rasping growl than any of them. His tiny rages were
much more terrible than theirs. It was he that first
(05:22):
learned the trick of rolling a fellow cub over with
a cunning pawstroke, And it was he that first gripped
another cub by the ear and pulled and tugged and
growled through jaws tight clenched. And certainly it was he
that caused the mother the most trouble in keeping her
litter from the mouth of the cave. The fascination of
the light for the gray cub increased from day to day.
(05:45):
He was perpetually departing on yard long adventures toward the
cave's entrance, and as perpetually being driven back. Only he
did not know it for an entrance. He did not
know anything about entrances, passages whereby one goes from one
place to another place. He did not know any other place,
(06:05):
much less of a way to get there. So to him,
the entrance of the cave was a wall, a wall
of light, as the sun was to the outside dweller.
This wall was to him the son of his world.
It attracted him as a candle attracts a moth. He
was always striving to attain it. The life that was
so swiftly expanding within him urged him continually toward the
(06:29):
wall of light. The life that was within him knew
that it was the one way out, the way he
was predestined to tread, but he himself did not know
anything about it. He did not know there was any
outside at all. There was one strange thing about this
wall of light his father. He had already come to
recognize his father as the one other dweller in the world,
(06:52):
a creature like his mother, who slept near the light
and was a bringer of meat. His father had a
way of walking right into the white far wall and disappearing.
The Great Cub could not understand this, Though never permitted
by his mother to approach that wall. He had approached
the other walls and encountered hard obstruction on the end
(07:13):
of his tender nose. This hurt, and after several such adventures,
he left the walls alone without thinking about it. He
accepted this disappearing into the wall as a peculiarity of
his father, as milk and half digested meat were peculiarities
of his mother. In fact, the Great Cub was not
(07:34):
given to thinking, at least to the kind of thinking
customary of men. His brain worked in dim ways, yet
his conclusions were as sharp and distinct as those achieved
by men. He had a method of accepting things without
questioning the why and Wherefore, in reality, this was the
act of classification. He was never disturbed over why a
(07:58):
thing happened. How it happened was sufficient for him. Thus,
when he had bumped his nose on the back wall
a few times, he accepted that he would not disappear
into walls in the same way he accepted that his
father could disappear into walls. But he was not in
the least disturbed by desire to find out the reason
for the difference between his father and himself. Logic and
(08:21):
physics were no part of his mental makeup. Like most
creatures of the wild, he early experienced famine. There came
a time when not only did the meat supply cease,
but the milk no longer came from his mother's breast.
At first, cubs whimpered and cried, but for the most
part they slept. It was not long before they were
(08:42):
reduced to a coma of hunger. There were no more
spats and squabbles, no more tiny rages, nor attempts at growling.
While the adventures toward the far White Wall ceased altogether,
the cubs slept while the life that was in them
flickered and died down. One Eye was desperate. He ranged
(09:04):
far and wide, and slept but little in the lair
that had now become cheerless and miserable. The she wolf, too,
left her litter and went out in search of meat.
In the first days after the birth of the cubs,
one Eye had journeyed several times back to the Indian
camp and robbed the rabbit snares. But with the melting
of the snow and the opening of the streams, the
(09:26):
Indian camp had moved away, and that source of supply
was closed to him. When the gray Cub came back
to life and again took interest in the far white wall.
He found that the population of his world had been reduced.
Only one sister remained to him, the rest were gone.
As he grew stronger, he found himself compelled to play alone,
(09:48):
for the sister no longer lifted her head nor moved about.
His little body rounded out with the meat he now ate,
but the food had come too late for her. She
slept continuously, a tiny skeleton, flung round with skin in
which the flame flickered lower and lower, and at last
went out. Then there came a time when the gray
(10:11):
Cub no longer saw his father appearing and disappearing in
the wall, nor lying down asleep in the entrance. This
had happened at the end of a second and less
severe famine. The she wolf knew why One Eye never
came back, but there was no way by which she
could tell what she had seen to the gray Cub.
Hunting herself for meat up the left fork of the
(10:33):
stream where lived the lynx, she had followed the day
old trail of One Eye, and she had found him,
or what remained of him. At the end of the trail.
There were many signs of the battle that had been fought,
and of the Lynx's withdrawal to her lair after having
won the victory. Before she went away, the she wolf
had found this lair, but the signs told her that
(10:55):
the Lynx was inside, and she had not dared to
venture in. After that, the she Wolf, in her hunting
avoided the Left Fork, for she knew that in the
Lynx's lair was a litter of kittens, and she knew
the Lynx for a fierce, bad tempered creature and a
terrible fighter. It was all very well for half a
(11:15):
dozen wolves to drive a Lynx spitting in bristling up
a tree, but it was quite a different matter for
a lone wolf to encounter a Lynx, especially when the
Lynx was known to have a litter of hungry kittens
at her back. But the wild is the wild, and
motherhood is motherhood at all times fiercely protective, whether in
(11:37):
the wild or out of it. And the time was
to come when the she Wolf, for her great Cub's sake,
would venture the Left Fork and the lair in the
rocks and the Lynx's wrath. End of Chapter three
Part two, Chapter three of White Fang, presented by Dream
Audio Books. White Fang by Jack London, Part two, Chapter three.
The Gray Cub. He was different from his brothers and sisters.
Their hair already betrayed the reddish hue inherited from their mother,
(00:21):
the she wolf, while he alone, in this particular, took
after his father. He was the one little gray cub
of the litter. He had bred true to the straight
wolf stock. In fact, he had bred true to old
one eye himself physically, with but a single exception, and
that was he had two eyes to his father's one.
(00:41):
The gray Cub's eyes had not been opened long yet,
already he could see with steady clearness, And while his
eyes were still closed, he had felt, tasted and smelled.
He knew his two brothers and his two sisters very well.
He had begun to romp with them in a feeble,
awkward way, and even to wobble, his little throat vibrating
(01:02):
with a queer, rasping noise, the forerunner of the growl,
as he worked himself into a passion. And long before
his eyes had opened, he had learned, by touch, taste,
and smell to know his mother, a fount of warmth
and liquid food and tenderness. She possessed a gentle, caressing
tongue that soothed him when it passed over his soft
(01:23):
little body, and that impelled him to snuggle close against
her and to doze off to sleep. Most of the
first month of his life had been passed thus in sleeping.
But now he could see quite well, and he stayed
awake for longer periods of time, and he was coming
to learn his world quite well. His world was gloomy,
(01:43):
but he did not know that, for he knew no
other world. It was dim lighted, but his eyes had
never had to adjust themselves to any other light. His
world was very small. Its limits were the walls of
the lair, But as he had no knowledge of the
wide world outside, he was never oppressed by the narrow
confines of his existence. But he had early discovered that
(02:07):
one wall of his world was different from the rest.
This was the mouth of the cave and the source
of the light. He had discovered that it was different
from the other walls long before he had any thoughts
of his own, any conscious volitions. It had been an
irresistible attraction before ever his eyes opened and looked upon it.
(02:27):
The light from it had beat upon his sealed lids,
and the eyes and the optic nerves had pulsated to
little spark like flashes, warm colored and strangely pleasing. The
life of his body and of every fiber of his body,
the life that was the very substance of his body,
and that was apart from his own personal life, had
(02:48):
yearned toward this light, and urged his body toward it,
in the same way that the cunning chemistry of a
plant urges it toward the sun. Always in the beginning,
before his conscious life dawned, he had crawled toward the
mouth of the cave, and in this his brothers and
sisters were one with him. Never in that period did
(03:09):
any of them crawl toward the dark corners of the
back wall. The light drew them as if they were plants.
The chemistry of the life that composed them demanded the
light as a necessity of being, and their little puppet
bodies crawled blindly and chemically, like the tendrils of a vine.
Later on, when each developed individuality and became personally conscious
(03:32):
of impulsions and desires, the attraction of the light increased.
They were always crawling and sprawling toward it, and being
driven back from it by their mother. It was in
this way that the gray cub learned other attributes of
his mother than the soft, soothing tongue. In his insistent
crawling toward the light, he discovered in her a nose that,
(03:54):
with a sharp nudge, administered rebuke, and later a paw
that crushed him down and rolled him over and over
with swift, calculating stroke. Thus he learned hurt, and on
top of it, he learned to avoid hurt, first by
not incurring the risk of it, and second, when he
had incurred the risk, by dodging and by retreating. These
(04:16):
were conscious actions and were the results of his first
generalizations upon the world. Before that, he had recoiled automatically
from hurt, as he had crawled automatically toward the light.
After that, he recoiled from hurt because he knew that
it was hurt. He was a fierce little cub, so
were his brothers and sisters. It was to be expected
(04:39):
he was a carnivorous animal. He came of a breed
of meat killers and meat eaters. His father and mother
lived wholly upon meat. The milk he had sucked with
his first flickering life was milk transformed directly from meat,
And now, at a month old, when his eyes had
been opened for but a week, he was beginning himself
(05:01):
to eat meat, meat half digested by the she wolf
and disgorged for the five growing cubs that already made
too great demand upon her breast. But he was further
the fiercest of the litter. He could make a louder,
rasping growl than any of them. His tiny rages were
much more terrible than theirs. It was he that first
(05:22):
learned the trick of rolling a fellow cub over with
a cunning pawstroke, And it was he that first gripped
another cub by the ear and pulled and tugged and
growled through jaws tight clenched. And certainly it was he
that caused the mother the most trouble in keeping her
litter from the mouth of the cave. The fascination of
the light for the gray cub increased from day to day.
(05:45):
He was perpetually departing on yard long adventures toward the
cave's entrance, and as perpetually being driven back. Only he
did not know it for an entrance. He did not
know anything about entrances, passages whereby one goes from one
place to another place. He did not know any other place,
(06:05):
much less of a way to get there. So to him,
the entrance of the cave was a wall, a wall
of light, as the sun was to the outside dweller.
This wall was to him the son of his world.
It attracted him as a candle attracts a moth. He
was always striving to attain it. The life that was
so swiftly expanding within him urged him continually toward the
(06:29):
wall of light. The life that was within him knew
that it was the one way out, the way he
was predestined to tread, but he himself did not know
anything about it. He did not know there was any
outside at all. There was one strange thing about this
wall of light his father. He had already come to
recognize his father as the one other dweller in the world,
(06:52):
a creature like his mother, who slept near the light
and was a bringer of meat. His father had a
way of walking right into the white far wall and disappearing.
The Great Cub could not understand this, Though never permitted
by his mother to approach that wall. He had approached
the other walls and encountered hard obstruction on the end
(07:13):
of his tender nose. This hurt, and after several such adventures,
he left the walls alone without thinking about it. He
accepted this disappearing into the wall as a peculiarity of
his father, as milk and half digested meat were peculiarities
of his mother. In fact, the Great Cub was not
(07:34):
given to thinking, at least to the kind of thinking
customary of men. His brain worked in dim ways, yet
his conclusions were as sharp and distinct as those achieved
by men. He had a method of accepting things without
questioning the why and Wherefore, in reality, this was the
act of classification. He was never disturbed over why a
(07:58):
thing happened. How it happened was sufficient for him. Thus,
when he had bumped his nose on the back wall
a few times, he accepted that he would not disappear
into walls in the same way he accepted that his
father could disappear into walls. But he was not in
the least disturbed by desire to find out the reason
for the difference between his father and himself. Logic and
(08:21):
physics were no part of his mental makeup. Like most
creatures of the wild, he early experienced famine. There came
a time when not only did the meat supply cease,
but the milk no longer came from his mother's breast.
At first, cubs whimpered and cried, but for the most
part they slept. It was not long before they were
(08:42):
reduced to a coma of hunger. There were no more
spats and squabbles, no more tiny rages, nor attempts at growling.
While the adventures toward the far White Wall ceased altogether,
the cubs slept while the life that was in them
flickered and died down. One Eye was desperate. He ranged
(09:04):
far and wide, and slept but little in the lair
that had now become cheerless and miserable. The she wolf, too,
left her litter and went out in search of meat.
In the first days after the birth of the cubs,
one Eye had journeyed several times back to the Indian
camp and robbed the rabbit snares. But with the melting
of the snow and the opening of the streams, the
(09:26):
Indian camp had moved away, and that source of supply
was closed to him. When the gray Cub came back
to life and again took interest in the far white wall.
He found that the population of his world had been reduced.
Only one sister remained to him, the rest were gone.
As he grew stronger, he found himself compelled to play alone,
(09:48):
for the sister no longer lifted her head nor moved about.
His little body rounded out with the meat he now ate,
but the food had come too late for her. She
slept continuously, a tiny skeleton, flung round with skin in
which the flame flickered lower and lower, and at last
went out. Then there came a time when the gray
(10:11):
Cub no longer saw his father appearing and disappearing in
the wall, nor lying down asleep in the entrance. This
had happened at the end of a second and less
severe famine. The she wolf knew why One Eye never
came back, but there was no way by which she
could tell what she had seen to the gray Cub.
Hunting herself for meat up the left fork of the
(10:33):
stream where lived the lynx, she had followed the day
old trail of One Eye, and she had found him,
or what remained of him. At the end of the trail.
There were many signs of the battle that had been fought,
and of the Lynx's withdrawal to her lair after having
won the victory. Before she went away, the she wolf
had found this lair, but the signs told her that
(10:55):
the Lynx was inside, and she had not dared to
venture in. After that, the she Wolf, in her hunting
avoided the Left Fork, for she knew that in the
Lynx's lair was a litter of kittens, and she knew
the Lynx for a fierce, bad tempered creature and a
terrible fighter. It was all very well for half a
(11:15):
dozen wolves to drive a Lynx spitting in bristling up
a tree, but it was quite a different matter for
a lone wolf to encounter a Lynx, especially when the
Lynx was known to have a litter of hungry kittens
at her back. But the wild is the wild, and
motherhood is motherhood at all times fiercely protective, whether in
(11:37):
the wild or out of it. And the time was
to come when the she Wolf, for her great Cub's sake,
would venture the Left Fork and the lair in the
rocks and the Lynx's wrath. End of Chapter three
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Are You A Charlotte?
In 1997, actress Kristin Davis’ life was forever changed when she took on the role of Charlotte York in Sex and the City. As we watched Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte navigate relationships in NYC, the show helped push once unacceptable conversation topics out of the shadows and altered the narrative around women and sex. We all saw ourselves in them as they searched for fulfillment in life, sex and friendships. Now, Kristin Davis wants to connect with you, the fans, and share untold stories and all the behind the scenes. Together, with Kristin and special guests, what will begin with Sex and the City will evolve into talks about themes that are still so relevant today. "Are you a Charlotte?" is much more than just rewatching this beloved show, it brings the past and the present together as we talk with heart, humor and of course some optimism.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.