White Fang by Jack London - Part 4, Chapter 2 - The Mad God

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Part four, chapter two of White Fang. This LibriVox recording
is in the public domain and is read by Mark
Smith of Simpsonville, South Carolina. White Fang by Jack London,
Part four, Chapter two, The Mad God. A small number
of white men lived in fort Yukon. These men had

(00:23):
been long in the country. They called themselves sour doughs,
and took great pride in so classifying themselves. For other
men knew in the land. They felt nothing but disdain.
The men who came ashore from the steamers were newcomers.
They were known as chechaquos, and they always wielded at
the application of the name. They made their bread with

(00:44):
baking powder. This was the invidious distinction between them and
the sour doughs, who forsooth made their bread from sourdough,
because they had no baking powder, all of which is
neither here nor there. The men in the fort disdained
the newcomers, and enjoying seeing them come to grief, especially
did they enjoy the havoc worked amongst the newcomer's dogs

(01:07):
by White Fang and his disreputable gang. When a steamer arrived,
the men of the fort made it a point always
to come down to the bank and see the fun.
They looked forward to it with as much anticipation as
did the Indian dogs, while they were not slow to
appreciate the savage and crafty part played by White Fang.

(01:27):
But there was one man amongst them who particularly enjoyed
the sport. He would come running at the first sound
of a steamboat's whistle, and when the last fight was
over and White Fang in the pack had scattered, he
would return slowly to the fort, his face heavy with regret. Sometimes,
when a soft Southland dog went down shrieking its death

(01:48):
cry under the fangs of the pack, this man would
be unable to contain himself and would leap into the
air and cry out with delight. And always he had
a sharp and covetous sigh for White Fang. This man
was called Beauty by the other men of the fort.
No one knew his first name, and in general he

(02:09):
was known in the country as Beauty Smith, But he
was anything save of beauty. To antithesis was due his naming.
He was pre eminently unbeautiful. Nature had been niggardly with him.
He was a small man to begin with, and upon
his meager frame was deposited an even more strikingly meager head.

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Its apex might be likened to a point. In fact,
in his boyhood, before he had been named beauty by
his fellows, he had been called pin head. Backward from
the apex, his head slanted down to his neck, and
forward it slanted uncompromisingly to meet a low and remarkably
wide forehead. Beginning here, as though regretting her parsimony, Nature

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had spread his features with a lavish hand. His eyes
were large, and between them was the distance of two eyes.
His face in relation to the rest of him was prodigious.
In order to discover the necessary area, Nature had given
him an enormous, prognathous jaw. It was wide and heavy,
and protruded outward and down until it seemed to rest

(03:16):
on his chest. Possibly his appearance was due to the
weariness of the slender neck, unable properly to support so
great a burden. This jaw gave the impression of ferocious determination,
but something lacked. Perhaps it was from excess, Perhaps the
jaw was too large. At any rate, it was a lie.

(03:38):
Beauty Smith was known far and wide as the weakest
of weak need in sniveling cowards. To complete his description,
his teeth were large and yellow, while the two eye teeth,
larger than their fellows, showed under his lean lips like fangs.
His eyes were yellow and muddy, as though nature had
run short on pigments and squeezed together the dregs of

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all her tubes. It was the same with his hair,
sparse and irregular of growth, muddy yellow and dirty yellow,
rising on his head and sprouting out of his face
in unexpected tufts and bunches in appearance, like clumped in
wind blown grain. In short, Beauty Smith was a monstrosity,

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and the blame of it lay elsewhere. He was not responsible.
The clay of him had been so molded in the making.
He did the cooking for the other men in the fort,
the dishwashing, and the drudgery. They did not despise him.
Rather did they tolerate him in a broad human way,
as one tolerates any creature evilly treated in the making.

(04:44):
Also they feared him. His cowardly rages made them dread
a shot in the back or poison in their coffee.
But somebody had to do the cooking, and whatever else's shortcomings,
Beauty Smith could cook. This was the man that looked
at White Fang, delighted in his ferocious prowess, and desired

(05:04):
to possess him. He made overtures to White Fang. From
the first, White Fang began by ignoring him. Later on,
when the overtures became more insistent, White Fang bristled and
bared his teeth and backed away. He did not like
the man. The feel of him was bad. He sensed
the evil in him, and feared the extended hand and

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the attempts at soft spoken speech. Because of all this,
he hated the man with the simpler creatures. Good and
bad are things simply understood. The good stands for all
things that bring easement and satisfaction, and circes from pain. Therefore,
the good is liked. The bad stands for all things

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that are fraught with discomfort, menace, and hurt, and is
hated Accordingly, White Fang's feel of beauty Smith was bad.
From the man's distorted body and twisted mind. In in
occult ways, like mists rising from malarial marshes, came emanations
of the unhealth within, not by reasoning, not by the

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five senses alone, but by other and remoter and uncharted
senses came the feeling to White Fang that the man
was ominous with evil, pregnant with hurtfulness, and therefore a
thing bad and wisely to be hated. White Fang was
in Gray Beaver's camp when Beauty Smith first visited it.

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At the faint sound of his distant feet before he
came in sight, white Fang knew who was coming and
began to bristle. He had been lying down in an
abandon of comfort, but he arose quickly, and as the
man arrived, slid away in true wolf fashion to the
edge of the camp. He did not know what they said,
but he could see the man in Gray Beaver talking together.

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Once the man pointed at him, and White Fang snarled back,
as though the hand were just to say him, instead
of being as it was fifty feet away. The man
laughed at this, and White Fang slunk away to the
sheltering woods, his head turned to observe as he glided
softly over the ground. Gray Beaver refused to sell the dog.

(07:17):
He had grown rich with his trading and stood in
need of nothing. Besides, White Fang was a valuable animal,
the strongest sledge dog he had ever owned, and the
best leader. Furthermore, there was no dog like him on
the Mackenzie nor the Yukon. He could fight. He killed
other dogs as easily as men killed mosquitos. Beauty Smith's

(07:39):
eyes lighted up at this, and he licked his thin
lips with an eager tongue. No white fang was not
for sale at any price, but beauty Smith knew the
ways of Indians. He visited gray Beaver's camp often, and
hidden under his coat was always a black bottle or so,
one of the potencies of whiskey as the breeding of thirst.

(08:02):
Gray Beaver got the thirst. His fevered membranes and burnt
stomach began to clamor for more and more of a
scorching fluid, while his brain, thrust all awry by the
unwonted stimulant, permitted him to go any length to obtain it.
The money he had received for his furs and mittens
and moccasins began to go. It went faster and faster,

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and the shorter his money sack grew, the shorter grew
his temper. In the end, his money and goods and
temper were all gone. Nothing remained to him but his thirst,
a prodigious possession in itself that grew more prodigious with
every sober breath he drew. Then it was that Beauty
Smith had talked with him again about the sale of

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White Fang, but this time the price offered was in bottles,
not dollars, and gray Beaver's ears were more eager to hear.
You cutch eem dog. You'd take 'em all right, was
his last word. The bottles were delivered, but after two days.
You catch um dog, were Beauty Smith's words to Gray Beaver.

(09:11):
White Fang slunk into camp one evening and dropped down
with a sigh of content. The dreaded White God was
not there for days. His manifestations of desire to lay
hands on him had been growing more insistent, and during
that time White Fang had been compelled to avoid the camp.
He did not know what evil was threatened by those

(09:31):
insistent hands. He knew only that they did threaten evil
of some sort, and that it was best for him
to keep out of their reach. But scarcely had he
lain down when Gray Beaver staggered over to him and
tied a leather thong around his neck. He sat down
beside White Fang, holding the end of the thong in
his hand. In the other hand he held a bottle, which,

(09:54):
from time to time was inverted above his head to
the accompaniment of gurgling noises. An hour of this passed
when the vibrations of feet in contact with the ground
fore ran. The one who approached White Fang heard it first,
and he was bristling with recognition, while Gray Beaver still
nodded stupidly. White Fang tried to draw the thong softly

(10:18):
out of his master's hand, but the relaxed fingers closed tightly,
and Gray Beaver roused himself. Beauty Smith strode into camp
and stood over Whitefang. He snarled softly up at the
thing of fear, watching keenly the deportment of the hands.
One hand extended outward and began to descend upon his head.

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His soft snarl grew tense and harsh. The hand continued
slowly to descend while he crouched beneath it, eyeing it malignantly,
his snarl growing shorter and shorter as with quickening breath,
it approached its culmination. Suddenly, he snapped, striking with his
fangs like a snake. The hand was jerked back, and

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the teeth came together emptily with a sharp click. Beauty
Smith was frightened and angry. Gray Beaver clouded White Fang
alongside the head so that he cowered down close to
the earth in respectful obedience. White Fang's suspicious eyes followed
every movement. He saw Beauty Smith go away and return

(11:23):
with a stout club. Then the end of the thong
was given over to him by Gray Beaver. Beauty Smith
started to walk away, the thong grew taut, White Fang
resisted it. Gray Beaver clouded him right and left to
make him get up and follow. He obeyed, but with
a rush, hurling himself upon the stranger who was dragging

(11:45):
him away. Beauty Smith did not jump away. He had
been waiting for this. He swung the club smartly, stopping
the rush midway and smashing White Fang down upon the ground.
Gray Beaver laughed and nodded approval. Beauty Smith tightened the
thong again, and White Fang crawled limply and dizzily to

(12:05):
his feet. He did not rush a second time. One
smash from the club was sufficient to convince him that
the White God knew how to handle it, and he
was too wise to fight the inevitable, so he followed
morosely at Beauty Smith's heels, his tail between his legs,
yet snarling softly under his breath. But Beauty Smith kept

(12:27):
a wary eye on him, and the club was held,
always ready to strike. At the fort. Beauty Smith left
him securely tied and went in to bed. White Fang
waited an hour. Then he applied his teeth to the thong,
and in the space of ten seconds was free. He
had wasted no time with his teeth. There had been

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no useless gnawing. The thong was cut across diagonally, almost
as clean as though done by a knife. White Fang
looked up at the fort at the same time, bristling
and growling, and he turned and trotted back to gray
Beaver's camp. He owed no allegiance to this strange and
terrible god. He had given himself to gray Beaver, and

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to gray Beaver he considered he still belonged. But what
had occurred before was repeated with a difference. Gray Beaver
again made him fast with a thong, and in the
morning turned him over to Beauty Smith. And here was
where the difference came in. Beauty Smith gave him a beating.
Tied securely, White Fang could only rage feutally and endure

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the punishment. Club and whip were both used upon him,
and he experienced the worst beating he had ever received
in his life. Even the big beating given him in
his puppyhood by Gray Beaver was mild compared with this.
Beauty Smith enjoyed the task. He delighted in it. He
gloated over his victim, and his eyes flamed dully as

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he swung the whip or club and listened to White
Fang's cries of pain and to his help bellows and snarls.
For Beauty Smith was cruel in the way that cowards
are cruel, cringing and sniveling himself before the blows or
angry speech of a man. He revenged himself in turn
upon creatures weaker than he. All life likes power, and

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Beauty Smith was no exception denied the expression of power
amongst his own kind. He fell back upon the lesser creatures,
and there vindicated the life that was in him. But
Beauty Smith had not created himself, and no blame was
to be attached to him. He had come into the
world with a twisted body and a brute intelligence. This

(14:40):
had constituted the clay of him, and it had not
been kindly molded by the world. White Fang knew why
he was being beaten. When Gray Beaver tied the thong
around his neck and passed the end of the thong
into Beauty Smith's keeping, White Fang knew that it was
his God's will for him to go with Beauty Smith.
And when Beauty Smith left him tied outside the fort,

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he knew that it was Beauty Smith's will that he
should remain there. Therefore, he had disobeyed the will of
both the gods and earned the consequent punishment. He had
seen dog's change owners in the past, and he had
seen the runaways beaten as he was being beaten. He
was wise, and yet in the nature of him there
were forces greater than wisdom. One of these was fidelity.

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He did not love Gray Beaver, yet even in the
face of his will and his anger, he was faithful
to him. It could not help it. This faithfulness was
a quality of the clay that composed him. It was
the quality that was peculiarly the possession of his kind,
the quality that set apart his species from all other species,

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the quality that enabled the wolf and the wild dog
to come in from the open and be the companions
of man. After the beating, why k Fang was dragged
back to the fort, but this time Beauty Smith left
him tied with a stick. One does not give up
a god easily, and so with Whitefang, gray Beaver was

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his own particular god. And in spite of gray Beaver's will,
white Fang still clung to him and would not give
him up. Gray Beaver had betrayed and forsaken him, but
that had no effect upon him. Not for nothing had
he surrendered himself, body and soul to gray Beaver. There
had been no reservation on White Fang's part, and the

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bond was not to be broken easily. So in the night,
when the men in the fort were asleep, White Fang
applied his teeth to the stick that held him. The
wood was seasoned and dry, and it was tied so
closely to his neck that he could scarcely get his
teeth to it. It was only by the severest muscular

(16:53):
exertion and neck arching that he succeeded in getting the
wood between his teeth and barely between his teeth at
that and it was only by the exercise of an
immense patience extending through many hours, that he succeeded in
gnawing through the stick. This was something that dogs were
not supposed to do. It was unprecedented, but White Fang

(17:15):
did it. Trotting away from the fort in the early
morning with the end of the stick hanging to his neck.
He was wise. But had he been merely wise, he
would not have gone back to gray Beaver, who had
already twice betrayed him. But there was his faithfulness, and
he went back to be betrayed yet a third time.

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Again he yielded to the tying of a thong around
his neck by gray Beaver, and again Beauty Smith came
to claim him, and this time he was beaten even
more severely than before. Gray Beaver looked on stolidly while
the white man wielded the whip. He gave no protection.
It was no longer his dog. When the beating was over,

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White Fang was sick. A soft southolind dog would have
died under it, but not he. His school of life
had been sterner, and he was himself of sterner stuff.
He had too great vitality. His clutch on life was
too strong, but he was very sick. At first he
was unable to drag himself along, and Beauty Smith had

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to wait half an hour for him. And then, blind
and reeling, he followed at Beauty Smith's heels back to
the fort. But now he was tied with a chain
that defied his teeth, and he strove in vain by
lunging to draw the staple from the timber into which
it was driven. After a few days, sober and bankrupt,

(18:42):
Gray Beaver departed up the Porcupine on his long journey
to the Mackenzie. White Fang remained on the yukon the
property of a man more than half mad and all brute.
But what is a dog to know in its consciousness
of madness? To White Fang, Beauty Smith was a veritable,
if terrible god. He was a mad god at best.

(19:05):
But White Fang knew nothing of madness. He knew only
that he must submit to the will of this new master,
obey his every whim and fancy. End of Chapter two