White Fang by Jack London - Part 4, Chapter 1 - The Enemy of His Kind

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Part four, Chapter one of Whitefang, presented by Dream Audio Books.
White Fang by Jack London, Part four, Chapter one, the
enemy of his kind. Had there been in White Fang's
nature any possibility, no matter how remote, of his, ever

(00:22):
coming to fraternize with his kind, Such possibility was irretrievably
destroyed when he was made leader of the sled team.
For now the dogs hated him. Hated him for the
extra meat bestowed upon him by Mitza, hated him for
all the real and fancied favors he received, hated him
for that he fled always at the head of the team,

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his waving brush of a tail, and his perpetually retreating
hindquarters forever maddening their eyes, and White Fang, just as
bitterly hated them back. Being sled leader was anything but
gratifying to him. To be compelled to run away before
the yelling pack, every dog of which for three years

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he had thrashed and mastered, was almost more than he
could endure. But endure he must or perish, and the
life that was in him had no desire to perish.
Out the moment Mitzah gave his order for the start.
That moment, the whole team, with eager, savage cries, sprang
forward at White Fang. There was no defense for him.

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If he turned upon them, Mitza would throw the stinging
lash of the whip into his face. Only remained to
him to run away. He could not encounter that howling
hoard with his tail and hind quarters. These were scarcely
fit weapons with which to meet the many merciless fangs.
So run away he did, violating his own nature and

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pride with every leap he made, and leaping all day long.
One cannot violate the promptings of one's nature without having
that nature recoil upon itself, such a reas the coil
is like that of a hare made to grow out
from the body, turning unnaturally upon the direction of its growth,
and growing into the body a rankling, festering thing of hurt.

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And so with White Fang, every urge of his being
impelled him to spring upon the pack that cried at
his heels. But it was the will of the gods
that this should not be, and behind the will to
enforce it was the whip of caribou Gut, with its
biting thirty foot lash. So White Fang could only eat
his heart in bitterness and develop a hatred and malice

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commensurate with the ferocity and indomitability of his nature. If
ever a creature was the enemy of its kind, white
Fang was that creature. He asked no quarter, gave none.
He was continually marred and scarred by the teeth of
the pack, and as continually he left his own marks
upon the pack. Unlike most leaders, who, when camp was

(02:58):
made and the dogs were unhild huddled near to the
gods for protection, White Fang disdained such protection. He walked
boldly about the camp, inflicting punishment in the night for
what he had suffered in the day. In the time
before he was made leader of the team, the pack
had learned to get out of his way. But now

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it was different. Excited by the day long pursuit of him,
swayed subconsciously by the insistent iteration on their brains of
the sight of him fleeing away. Mastered by the feeling
of mastery enjoyed all day, the dogs could not bring
themselves to give way to him. When he appeared amongst them,

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there was always a squabble. His progress was marked by
snarl and snap and growl. The very atmosphere he breathed
was surcharged with hatred and malice, and this but served
to increase the hatred and malice within him. When Mitza
cried out his command for the team to stop, White
Fang obeyed. At first, this trouble for the other dogs.

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All of them would spring upon the hated leader, only
to find the tables turned behind him would be Mitsa,
the great whips singing in his hand. So the dogs
came to understand that when the team stopped by order,
White Fang was to be let alone. But when White
Fang stopped without orders, then it was allowed them to
spring upon him and destroy him if they could. After

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several experiences, White Fang never stopped without orders, he learned
quickly it was in the nature of things that he
must learn quickly if he were to survive the unusually
severe conditions under which life was vouchsafed him. But the
dogs could never learn the lesson to leave him alone
in camp, each day pursuing him in crying defiance at him,

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the lesson of the previous night was erased, and that
night would have to be learned over again to be
as immediately forgotten. Besides, there was a greater consistence in
their dislike of him. They sensed between themselves and him
a difference of kind caused sufficient in itself for hostility.

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Like him, they were domesticated wolves, but they have been
domesticated for generations. Much of the wild had been lost,
so that to them the wild was the unknown, the terrible,
the ever menacing, and ever warring. But to him, in
appearance and action and impulse, still clung the wild. He

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symbolized it was its personification, so that when they showed
their teeth to him, they were defending themselves against the
powers of destruction that lurked in the shadows of the
forest and in the dark beyond the campfire. But there
was one lesson the dogs did learn, and that was
to keep together. White Fang was too terrible for any

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of them to face single handed. They met him with
the mass formation. Otherwise he would have killed them one
by one in a night. As it was, he never
had a chance to kill them. He might roll a
dog off its feet, but the pack would be upon
him before he could follow up and deliver the deadly
throat stroke. At the first hint of conflict, the whole

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team drew together and faced him. The dogs had quarrels
among themselves, but these were forgotten when trouble was brewing
with White Fang. On the other hand, try as they would,
they could not kill White Fang. He was too quick
for them, too formidable, too wise. He avoided tight places
and always backed out of it when they bade fair

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to surround him. While as for getting him off his feet,
there was no dog among them capable of doing the trick.
His feet clung to the earth with the same tenacity
that he clung to life. For that matter, life and
footing were synonymous in this unending warfare with the pack,
and none knew it better than White Fang. So he

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became the enemy of his kind, domesticated wolves that they
were softened by the fires of man, weakened in the
sheltering shadow of man's strength. White Fang was bitter and implacable.
The clay of him was so molded. He declared a
vendetta against all dogs. And so terribly did he live

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this vendetta that Gray Beaver, fierce savage himself, could not
but marvel at Whitefang's ferocity. Never, he swore, had there
been the like of this animal, and the Indians and
strange villages swore likewise when they considered the tale of
his killings amongst their dogs. When White Fang was nearly

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five years old, Gray Beaver took him on another great journey,
and long remembered was the havoc he worked amongst the
dogs of the many villages along the Mackenzie, across the Rockies,
and down the Porcupine to the Yukon. He reveled in
the vengeance he wreaked upon his kind. They were ordinary,
unsuspecting dogs. They were not prepared for his swiftness and directness,

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for his attack without warning. They did not know him
for what he was, a lightning flash of slaughter. They
bristled up to him, stiff legged and challenging, while he
wasting no time on elaborate preliminaries, snapping into action like
a steel spring, was at their throats and destroying them
before they knew what was happening, and while they were

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yet in the throes of surprise. He became an adept
at fighting. He economized, He never wasted his strength, never tussled.
He was in too quickly for that, and if he missed,
was out again too quickly. The dislike of the wolf,
for close quarters was his to an unusual degree. He

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could not endure a prolonged contact with another body. It
smacked of danger. It made him frantic. He must be away,
free on his own legs, touching no living thing. It
was the wild still clinging to him, asserting itself through him.
This feeling had been accentuated by the ishmaelite life he

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had led from his puppyhood. Danger lurked in contacts. It
was the trap, ever, the trap, the fear of it,
lurking deep in the life of him, woven into the
fiber of him. In consequence, the strange dogs he encountered
had no chance against him. He eluded their fangs, he
got them, or got away himself untouched in either event.

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In the natural course of things. There were exceptions to this.
There were times when several dogs pitching on to him
punished him before he could get away, and there were
times when a single dog scored deeply on him. But
these were accidents in the main. So efficient a fighter
had he become, he went his way unscathed. Another advantage

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he possessed was that of correctly judging time and distance,
not that he did this consciously. However, he did not
calculate such things. It was all automatic. His eyes saw
correctly and the nerves carried the vision correctly to his brain.
The parts of him were better adjusted than those of
the average dog. They worked together more smoothly and steadily.

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His was a better, far better nervous, mental, and muscular coordination.
When his eyes conveyed to his brain the moving image
of an action, his brain, without conscious effort, knew the
space that limited that action and the time required for
its completion. Thus he could avoid the leap of another
dog or the drive of its fangs, and at the

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same moment could seize the infinitesimal fraction of time in
which to deliver his own attack. Body and brain, his
was a more perfected mechanism, not that he was to
be praised for it. Nature had been more generous to
him than to the average animal, that was all. It
was in the summer that Whitefang arrived at fort Yukon.

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Gray Beaver had crossed the Great Watershed between Mackenzie and
the Yukon in the late winter and spent the spring
in hunting among the western outlying spurs of the Rockies. Then,
after the break up of the ice on the Porcupine.
He had built a canoe and paddled down that stream
to where it affected its junction with the Yukon, just
under the Arctic Circle. Here stood the old Hudson's Bay

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Company Fort, and here were many Indians, much food, and
unprecedented excitement. It was the summer of eighteen ninety eight,
and thousands of gold hunters were going up the Yukon
to Dawson and the Klondike, still hundreds of miles from
their goal. Nevertheless, many of them had been on the
way for a year, and the least any of them

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had traveled to get that far was five thousand miles,
while some had come from the other side of the world.
Here Gray Beaver stopped. A whisper of the gold rush
had reached his ears, and he had come with several
bales of furs and another of gutsown mittens and moccasins.
He would not have ventured so long a trip had

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he not expected generous prophets. But what he had expected
was nothing to what he realized. His wildest dreams had
not exceeded one hundred percent profit. He made a thousand percent,
and like a true Indian, he settled down to trade
carefully and slowly, even if it took all summer and
the rest of the winter to dispose of his goods.

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It was at fort Yukon that White Fang saw his
first white men as compared with the Indians he had known.
They were to him another race of beings, a race
of superior gods. They impressed him as possessing superior power.
And it is on power that God had rests. White
Fang did not reason it, oubt did not in his

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mind make the sharp generalization that the white gods were
more powerful. It was a feeling, nothing more, and yet
none the less potent. As in his puppyhood, the looming
bulks of the teepees man reared had affected him manifestations
of power, so was he affected now by the houses
and the huge fort all of massive logs. Here was power.

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Those white gods were strong. They possessed greater mastery over
matter than the gods he had known, most powerful among
which was gray Beaver. And yet gray Beaver was as
a child god among these white skinned ones. To be sure,
White Fang only felt these things, he was not conscious
of them. Yet it is upon feeling, more often than thinking,

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that animals act, and every act White Fang now performed
was based upon the feeling that the white men were
the superior gods. In the first place, he was very
suspicious of them. There was no telling what unknown terrors
were theirs, what unknown hurts they could administer. He was
curious to observe them, fearful of being noticed by them.

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For the first few hours, he was content with slinking
around in watching them from a safe distance. Then he
saw that no harm befell the dogs that were near
to them, and he came in closer. In turn, he
was an object of great curiosity to them. His wolfish
appearance caught their eyes at once, and they pointed him
out to one another. This act of pointing put White

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Fang on his guard, and when they tried to approach him,
he showed his teeth and backed away. Not one succeeded
in laying a hand on him, and it was well
they did not. White Fang soon learned that very few
of these gods, not more than a dozen, lived at
this place. Every two or three days a steamer, another

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and colossal manifestation of power, came into the bank and
stopped for several hours. The white men came from off
these steamers and went away on them again. There seemed
untold numbers of these white men. In the first day
or so, he saw more of them than he had
seen Indians in all his life, And as the days

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went by they continued to come up the river, stop
and then go on up the river out of sight.
But if the white gods were all powerful, their dogs
did not amount to much. This White Fang quickly discovered
by mixing with those that came ashore with their masters.
They were irregular shapes and sizes. Some were short legged

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too short, others were long legged too long. They had
hair instead of fur, and a few had very little
hair at that, and none of them knew how to fight.
As an enemy of his kind, it was in White
Fang's province to fight with them. This he did, and
he quickly achieved for them a mighty contempt. They were

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soft and helpless, made much noise, and floundered around clumsily,
trying to accomplish by main strength what he accomplished by
dexterity and cunning. They rushed, bellowing at him. He sprang
to the side. They did not know what had become
of him, and in that moment, he struck them on
the shoulder, rolling them off their feet and delivering his

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stroke at the throat. Sometimes this stroke was successful, and
a stricken dog rolled in the dirt to be pounced
upon and torn to pieces by the pack of Indian
dogs that waited. White Fang was wise. He had long
since learned that the gods were made angry when their
dogs were killed. The white men were no exception to this,

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so he was content when he had overthrown and slashed
wide the throat of one of their dogs, to drop
back and let the pack go in and do the
cruel finishing work. It was then that the white men
rushed in, visiting their wrath heavily on the pack, while
White Fang went free. He would stand off at a
little distance and look on while stones, clubs, axes, and

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all sorts of weapons fell upon his fellows. White Fang
was very wise, but his fellows grew wise in their
own way, and in this White Fang grew wise with them.
They learned that it was when a steamer first tied
to the bank that they had their fun. After the
first two or three strange dogs had been downed and destroyed,

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the white men hustled their own animals back on board,
and wreaked savage vengeance on the offenders. One white man,
having seen his dog, a setter, torn to pieces before
his eyes, drew a revolver. He fired rapidly six times,
and six of the pack lay dead or dying, another
manifestation of power that sank deep into White Fang's consciousness.

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White Fang enjoyed it all. He did not love his kind,
and he was shrewd enough to escape hurt himself. At first,
the killing of the white men's dogs had been a diversion.
After a time, it became his occupation. There was no
work for him to do. Gray Beaver was busy trading
and getting wealthy, so White Fang hung around the landing

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with the disreputable gang of Indian dogs, waiting for steam.
With the arrival of a steamer, the fun began after
a few minutes. By the time the white men had
got over their surprise, the gang scattered. The fun was
over until the next steamer should arrive. But it can
scarcely be said that White Fang was a member of

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the gang. He did not mingle with it, but remained
aloof always himself, and was even feared by it. It
is true he worked with it. He picked the quarrel
with the strange dog while the gang waited, and when
he had overthrown the strange dog, the gang went in
to finish it. But it is equally true that he
then withdrew, leaving the gang to receive the punishment of

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the outraged gods. It did not require much exertion to
pick these quarrels. All he had to do when the
strange dogs came ashore was to show himself. When they
saw him, they rushed for him. It was their instinct.
He was the wild, the unknown, the terrible, the ever menacing,

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the thing that prowled in the darkness around the fires
of the primeval world. When they cowering close to the fires,
were reshaping their instincts, learning to fear the wild out
of which they had come, and which they had deserted
and betrayed. Generation by generation down all the generations had
this fear of the wild been stamped into their natures.

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For centuries, the wild had stood for terror and destruction,
and during all this time, free license had been theirs
from their masters to kill the things of the wild.
In doing this, they had protected both themselves and the
gods whose companionship they shared. And so fresh from the
soft southern world, these dogs trotting down the gangplank and

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out upon the Yukon shore, had but to see White Fang,
to experience the irresistible impulse to rush upon him and
destroy him. They might be town reared dogs, but the
instinctive fear of the wild was theirs just the same.
Not alone with their own eyes did they see the
wolfish creature in the clear light of day standing before them.

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They saw him with the eyes of their ancestors, and
by their inherited memory, they knew White Fang for the wolf,
and they remembered the ancient feud, all of which served
to make White Fang's days enjoyable. If the sight of
him drove these strange dogs upon him, so much the
better for him, so much the worse for them. They

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looked upon him as legitimate prey, and as legitimate prey
he looked upon them. Not for nothing had he first
seen the light of day in a lonely lair, and
thought his first fights with the ptarmigan, the weasel, and
the lynx. And not for nothing had his puppy hood
been made bitter by the persecution of lip Lip than
the whole puppy pack. It might have been otherwise, and

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he would then have been otherwise. Had lip Lip not existed,
he would have passed his puppy hood with the other
puppies and grown up more dull like and with more
liking for dogs. Had Gray Beaver possessed the plummet of
affection and love, he might have sounded the deeps of
White Fang's nature and brought up to the surface all
manner of kindly qualities. But these things had not been so.

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The clay of White Fang had been molded until he
became what he was, morose and lonely, unloving and ferocious,
the enemy of all his kind. End of Chapter one.