White Fang by Jack London - Part 2, Chapter 4 - The Wall of the World

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Part two, Chapter four of White Fang, presented by Dream
Audio Books. White Fang by Jack London, Part two, Chapter four,
The Wall of the World. By the time his mother
began leaving the cave on hunting expeditions, the cub had
learned well the law that forbade his approaching the entrance.

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Not only had this law been forcibly and many times
impressed on him by his mother's nose and paw, but
in him the instinct of fear was developing. Never in
his brief cave life had he encountered anything of which
to be afraid. Yet fear was in him. It had
come down to him from a remote ancestry, through one
thousand thousand lives. It was a heritage he had received

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directly from one Eye and the she Wolf, but to
them in turn it had been passed down through all
the generations of wolves that had gone before. Fear, that
legacy of the wife, which no animal may escape nor
exchange for pottage. So the Gray Cub knew fear, though
he knew not the stuff of which fear was made. Possibly,

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he accepted it as one of the restrictions of life,
for he had already learned that there were such restrictions,
hunger he had known, and when he could not appease
his hunger, he had felt restriction. The hard obstruction of
the cave wall, the sharp nudge of his mother's nose,
the smashing stroke of her paw. The hunger, unappeased of

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several famines, had borne in upon him. That all was
not freedom in the world, that to life there was
limitations and restraints. These limitations and restraints were laws. To
be obedient to them was to escape hurt and make
for happiness. He did not reason the question out in
this man fashion. He merely classified the things that hurt

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and the things that did not hurt. And after such classification,
he avoided the things that hurt, the restrictions and restraints,
in order to enjoy the satisfactions and the remunerations of life.
Thus it was that, in obedience to the law laid
down by his mother, and in obedience to the law
of that unknown and nameless thing fear, he kept away

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from the mouth of the cave. It remained to him
a white wall of light. When his mother was absent,
he slept most of the time, while during the intervals
that he was awake, he kept very quiet suppressing the
whimpering cries that tickled in his throat, and strove for noise.
Once lying awake, he heard a strange sound in the
white wall. He did not know that it was a

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wolverine standing outside, all a trembling with its own daring
and cautiously scenting out the contents of the cave. The
cub only knew that the sniff was strange, a something unclassified,
therefore unknown and terrible, for the unknown was one of
the chief elements that went into the making of fear.

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The hair bristled upon the gray cub's back, but it
bristle silently. How was he to know that this thing
that sniffed was a thing at which to bristle. It
was not born of any knowledge of his Yet it
was the visible expression of the fear that was in him,
and for which in his own life there was no accounting.
But fear was accompanied by another instinct, that of concealment.

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The cub was in a frenzy of terror. Yet he
lay without movement or sound, frozen, petrified into immobility, to
all appearances dead. His mother, coming home, growled as she
smelt the wolverine's track and bounded into the cave and
licked and nuzzled him with undue vehemence of affection, and

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the cub felt that somehow he had escaped a great hurt.
But there were other forces at work in the cub,
the greatest of which was growth. Instinct in law demanded
of him obedience, but growth demanded disobedience his mother, and
fear impelled him to keep away from the white wall.
Growth is life, and life is forever destined to make

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for light. So there was no damming up the tide
of life that was rising within him, rising with every
mouthful of meat he swallowed, with every breath he drew.
In the end, one day, fear and obedience were swept
away by the rush of life, and the cub straddled
and sprawled toward the entrance. Unlike any other wall with

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which he had had experience, this wall seemed to recede
from him as he approached. No hard surface collided with
the tender little nose he thrust out tentatively before him.
The substance of the wall seemed as permeable and yielding
as light, and as condition. In his eyes, had the
seeming of form. So he entered into what had been

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walled to him and bathed in the substance that composed it.
It was bewildering. He was sprawling through solidity, and ever
the light grew brighter. Fear urged him to go back,
but growth drove him on. Suddenly he found himself at
the mouth of the cave. The wall inside which he
had thought himself as suddenly leaped back before him to

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an immeasurable distance. The light had become painfully bright. He
was dazzled by it. Likewise, he was made dizzy by
this abrupt and tremendous extension of space. Automatically, his eyes
were adjusting themselves to the brightness, focusing themselves to meet
the increased distance of objects. At first the wall had

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leaped beyond his vision. He now saw it again, but
it had taken upon itself a remarkable remoteness. Also, its
appearance had changed. It was now a variegated wall, composed
of the trees that fringed the stream, the opposing mountain
that towered above the trees, and the sky that out
towered the mountain. A great fear came upon him. This

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was more of the terrible unknown. He crouched down on
the lip of the cave and gazed out on the world.
He was very much afraid because it was unknown, it
was hostile to him. Therefore, the hare stood up on
end along his back, and his lips wrinkled weakly in
an attempt at a ferocious and intimidating snarl. Out of

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his puniness and fright, he challenged and menaced the whole
wide world. Nothing happened. He continued to gaze, and in
his interest he forgot to snarl. Also, he forgot to
be afraid. For the time, fear had been routed by growth.
While growth had assumed the guise of curiosity, he began

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to notice near objects. An open portion of the stream
that flashed in the sun, the blasted pine tree that
stood at the base of the slope, and the slope
itself that ran right up to him and ceased two
feet beneath the lip of the cave on which he crouched. Now,
the gray cub had lived all his days on a
level floor. He had never experienced the hurt of a fall.

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He did not know what a fall was, so he
stepped boldly out upon the air. His hind legs still
rested on the cave lip, so he fell forward, head downward.
The earth struck him a harsh blow on the nose
that made him yelp. Then he began rolling down the
slope over and over. He was in a panic of terror.
The unknown neg caught him at last, It had gripped

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savagely hold of him, and was about to wreak upon
him some terrific hurt. Growth was now routed by fear,
and he kai eyed like any frightened puppy. The Unknown
bore him on. He knew not to what frightful hurt,
and he yelped and kay eyed unceasingly. This was a
different proposition from crouching in frozen fear while the unknown

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lurked just alongside. Now the Unknown had caught tight hold
of him. Silence would do no good. Besides, it was
not fear but terror that convulsed him. But the slope
grew more gradual, and its base was grass covered. Here
the cub lost momentum. When at last he came to
a stop, he gave one last agonized yell, and then

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a long whimpering wail. Also, and quite as a matter
of course, as though in his life he had already
made a thousand toilets, he proceeded to lick away the
dry clay that soiled him. After that, he sat up
and gazed about him, as might the first man of
the Earth who landed upon Mars. The cup had broken
through the wall of the world. The Unknown had let

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go its hold of him, and here he was without hurt.
But the first man on Mars would have experienced less
unfamiliarity than did he. Without any antecedent knowledge, without any
warning whatever that such existed, he found himself an explorer
in a totally new world. Now that the terrible unknown

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had let go of him, he forgot that the unknown
had any terrors. He was aware only of curiosity In
all the things about him. He inspected the grasp beneath him,
the mossberry plant just beyond, and the dead trunk of
the blasted pine that stood on the edge of an
open space among the trees. A squirrel running around the

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base of the trunk came full upon him and gave
him a great fright. He cowered down and snarled, but
the squirrel was as badly scared. It ran up the tree, and,
from a point of safety, chattered back savagely. This halped
the cub's courage, and though the woodpecker he next encountered
gave him a start, he proceeded confidently on his way.

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Such was his confidence that when a moose bird impudently
hopped up to him, he reached out at it with
a playful paw. The result was a sharp peck on
the end of his nose that made him cower down
in Kai yai. The noise he made was too much
for the moose bird, who sought safety in flight. But
the cub was learning. His misty little mind had already

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made an unconscious classification. There were live things and things
not alive. Also, he must watch out for the life.
The things not alived remained always in one place, but
the live things moved about, and there was no telling
what they might do. The thing to expect of them
was the unexpected, and for this he must be prepared.

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He traveled very clumsily. He ran into sticks and things.
A twig that he thought a long way off would
the next instant hit him on the nose, or rake
along his ribs. There were inequalities of surface. Sometimes he
overstepped and stubbed his nose, quite as often he under
stepped and stubbed his feet. Then there were the pebbles

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and stones that turned under him when he trod upon them,
And from them he came to know that the things
not alive were not all in the same state of
stable equilibrium as was his cave. Also that small things
not alive were more liable than large things to fall
down or turn over. But with every mishap he was learning.

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The longer he walked, the better he walked. He was
adjusting himself. He was learning to calculate his own muscular movements,
to know his physical limitations, to measure distances between objects,
and between objects and himself. His was the luck of
the beginner. Born to be a hunter of meat, though
he did not know it, he blundered upon meat just

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outside his own cave door. On his first foray into
the world. It was by sheer blundering that he chanced
upon the shrewdly hidden Ptarmigan nest. He fell into it.
He had essayed to walk along the trunk of a
fallen pine. The rotten bark gave way under his feet,
and with a despairing yelp, he pitched down. The rounded

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crescent smashed through the leafage and stalks of a small bush,
and in the heart of the bush on the ground
fetched up in the midst of seven ptarmigan chicks. They
made noises, and at first he was frightened at them.
Then he perceived that they were very little, and he
became bolder. They moved. He placed his paw on one

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in its movements were accelerated. This was a source of
enjoyment to him. He smelled it. He picked it up
in his mouth. It struggled and tickled his tongue. At
the same time, he was made aware of a sensation
of hunger. His jaws closed together. There was a crunching
of fragile bones, and warm blood ran in his mouth.

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The taste of it was good. This was meat, the
same as his mother gave him, only it was alive
between his teeth, and therefore better. So he ate the ptarmigan,
nor did he stop till he had devoured the whole brood.
Then he licked his chops in quite the same way
his mother did, and began to crawl out of the bush.

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He encountered a feathered whirlwind. He was confused and blinded
by the rush of it and the beat of angry wings.
He hid his head between his paws and yelped. The
blows increased. The mother ptarmigan was in a fury. Then
he became angry. He rose up, snarling, striking out with
his paws. He sank his tiny teeth into one of

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the wings and pulled and tugged sturdily. The ptarmigan struggled
against him, showering blows upon him with her free wing.
It was his first battle. He was elated. He forgot
all about the unknown. He no longer was afraid of anything.
He was fighting, tearing at a live thing that was
striking at him. Also, this live thing was meat. The

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lust to kill was on him. He had just destroyed
little live things. He would now destroy a big live thing.
He was too busy and happy to know that he
was happy. He was thrilling and exalting in ways new
to him and greater to him than any he had
known before. He held on to the wing and growled
between tight clenched teeth. The ptarmigan dragged him out of

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the bush. When she turned and tried to drag him
back into the bush's shelter, he pulled her away from
it and on into the open, And all the time
she was making outcry and striking with her free while
feathers were flying like a snowfall. The pitch to which
he was aroused was tremendous. All the fighting blood of
his breed was up in him and surging through him.

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This was living, though he did not know it. He
was realizing his own meaning in the world. He was
doing that for which he was made, killing meat him
battling to kill it. He was justifying his existence than
which life can do no greater, for life achieves its
summit when it does to the uttermost that which it
was equipped to do. After a time, the Ptarmigan ceased

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her struggling. He still held her by the wing, and
they lay on the ground and looked at each other.
He tried to growl threateningly ferociously. She pecked on his nose, which,
by now one of previous adventures, was sore. He winced,
but held on. She pecked him again and again. From wincing,
he went to whimpering. He tried to back away from her,

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oblivious to the fact that eye his hold on her,
he dragged her after him. A rain of pecks fell
on his ill used nose. The flood of fight ebbed
down in him. And releasing his prey, he turned tail
and scampered on across the open in inglorious retreat. He
lay down to rest on the other side of the

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open near the edge of the bushes, his tongue lolling out,
his chest heaving and panting, his nose still hurting him
and causing him to continue his whimper. But as he
lay there, suddenly there came to him a feeling as
of something terrible impending. The unknown with all its terrors,
rushed upon him, and he shrank back instinctively into the

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shelter of the bush. As he did so, a draft
of air fanned him, and a large winged body swept
ominously and silently passed. A hawk, driving down out of
the blue, had barely missed him. While he lay in
the bush, recovering from his fright and peering fearfully out,
the mother ptarmigan on the other side of the open

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space fluttered out of the ravaged nest. It was because
of her loss that she paid no attention to the
winged bolt of the sky. But the cub saw, and
it was a warning and a lesson to him. The
swift downward swoop of the hawk, the short skim of
its body just above the ground. The strike of its
talons and the body of the ptarmigan. The ptarmigan's squawk

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of agony and fright, and the hawks rush upward into
the blue, carrying the ptarmigan away with it. It was
a long time before the cub left it shelter. He
had learned much. Live things were meat. They were good
to eat. Also, live things, when they were large enough,
could give hurt. It was better to eat small live

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things like ptarmigan chicks, and to let alone large live
things like ptarmigan hens. Nevertheless, he felt a little prick
of ambition, a sneaking desire to have another battle with
that ptarmigan hen. Only the hawk had carried her away.
Maybe there were other ptarmigan hens he would go and see.

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He came down a shelving bank to the stream. He
had never seen water before. The footing looked good, there
were no inequalities of surface. He stepped boldly out on
it and went down, crying with fear, into the embrace
of the unknown. It was cold, and he gasped breathing quickly.
The water rushed into his lungs instead of the air

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that had always accompanied his act of breathing. The suffocation
he experienced was like the pang of death. To him,
it signified death. He had no conscious knowledge of death,
but like every animal of the wild, he possessed the
instinct of death. To him, it stood as the greatest
of hurts. It was the very essence of the unknown.

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It was the sum of the terrors of the unknown,
the one culminating and unthinkable catastrophe that could happen to
him about which he knew nothing, and about which hear everything.
He came to the surface, and the sweet air rushed
into his open mouth. He did not go down again,
quite as though it had been a long established custom

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of his. He struck out with all his legs and
began to swim. The near bank was a yard away,
but he had come up with his back to it,
and the first thing his eyes rested upon was the
opposite bank, toward which he immediately began to swim. The
stream was a small one, but in the pool it
widened out to a score of feet. Midway in the passage,

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the current picked up the cub and swept him downstream.
He was caught in the miniature rapid at the bottom
of the pool. Here was little chance for swimming. The
quiet water had become suddenly angry. Sometimes he was under,
sometimes on top. At all times he was in violent motion,
now being turned over or around, and again being smashed

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against a rock. And with every rock he struck, he yelped.
His progress was a series of yelps, from which might
have been adduced the number of rocks he encountered. Below
the rapid was a second pool, and here captured by
the eddy, he was gently born to the bank, and
is gently deposited on a bed of gravel. He crawled

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frantically clear of the water and lay down. He had
learned some more about the world. Water was not alive,
yet it moved. Also, it looked as solid as the earth,
but was without any solidity at all. His conclusion was
that things were not always what they appeared to be.
The cub's fear of the unknown was an inherited distrust,

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and it had now been strengthened by experience. Thenceforth, in
the nature of things he would possess an abiding distrust
of appearances. He would have to learn the reality of
a thing before he could put his faith into it.
One other adventure was destined for him. That day he
had recollected that there was such a thing in the

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world as his mother, and then there came to him
a feeling that he wanted her more than all the
rest of the things in the world. Not only was
his body tired with the adventures it had undergone, but
his little brain was equally tired. And all the days
he had lived it had not worked so hard as
on this one day. Furthermore, he was sleepy, so he

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started out to look for the cave and his mother,
feeling at the same time an overwhelming rush of loneliness
and helplessness. He was sprawling along between some bushes when
he heard a sharp, intimidating cry. There was a flash of
yellow before his eyes. He saw a weasel leaping swiftly
away from him. It was a small live thing, and

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he had no fear. Then before him, at his feet
he saw an extremely small live thing, only several inches long,
a young weasel that, like himself, had disobediently gone out adventuring.
It tried to retreat before he turned it over with
his paw. It made a queer, grating noise. The next moment,

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the flash of yellow reappeared before his eyes. He heard
again the intimidating cry, and at the same instant received
a sharp blow on the side of the neck and
felt the sharp teeth of the mother weasel cut into
his flesh. While he yelped and kay eyed and scrambled backward,
he saw the mother weasel leap upon her young one
and disappear with it into the neighboring thicket. The cut

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of her teeth and his neck still hurt, but his
feelings were hurt more grievously, and he sat down and
weakly whimpered. This mother weasel was so small and so savage.
He was yet to learn that for size and weight,
the weasel was the most ferocious, vindictive, and terrible of
all the killers of the wild, But a portion of

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this knowledge was quickly to be his. He was still whimpering.
When the mother weasel reappeared, she did not rush him.
Now that her young one was safe, she approached more cautiously,
and the cub had full opportunity to observe her lean,
snakelike body and her head erect, eager and snake like itself.

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Her sharp, menacing cry sent the hair bristling along his back,
and he snarled warningly at her. She came closer and closer.
There was a leap, swifter than his unpracticed sight, and
the lean yellow body disappeared for a moment out of
the field of his vision. The next moment she was
at his throat, her teeth buried in his hair in flesh.

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At first he snarled and tried to fight, but he
was very young and this was only his first day
in the world, and his snarl became a whimper, his
fight a struggle to escape. The weasel never relaxed her hold.
She hung on, striving to press down with her teeth
to the great vein where his life blood bubbled. The
weasel was a drinker of blood, and was ever her preference,

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to drink from the throat of life itself. The gray
cub would have died, and there would have been no
story to write about him, had not the she wolf
come bounding through the bushes. The weasel let go of
the cub and flashed at the she wolf's throat, missing
but getting a hold on the jaw. Instead, the she
wolf flirted her head like the snap of a whip,

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breaking the weasel's hold and flinging it high in the air,
and still in the air, the she wolf's jaws closed
on the lean yellow body, and the weasel knew death.
Between the crunching teeth, the cub experienced another excess of
affection on the part of his mother. Her joy at
finding him seemed even greater than his joy at being found.

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She nuzzled him and caressed him and licked the cuts
made in him by the weasel's teeth. Then between them
mother and cub they ate the blood drinker, and after
that went back to the cave and slept end of
chapter four.