White Fang by Jack London - Part 4, Chapter 3 - The Reign of Hate

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Part four, Chapter three 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 three, The Reign of Hate. Under the

(00:22):
tutelage of the mad God, White Fang became a fiend.
He was kept chained in a pen at the rear
of the fort, and here Beauty Smith teased and irritated
and drove him wild with petty torments. The man early
discovered White Fang's susceptibility to laughter, and made it a
point after painfully tricking him to laugh at him. This

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laughter was uproarious and scornful, and at the same time
the guide pointed his finger derisively at Whitefang. At such
times reason fled from Whitefang, and in his transports of rage,
he was even more mad than Beauty Smith. Formerly White
Fang had been merely the enemy of his kind withal

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a ferocious enemy. He now became the enemy of all things,
and more ferocious than ever. To such an extent was
he tormented that he hated blindly, and without the faintest
spark of reason. He hated the chain that bound him.
The men who peered in at him through the slats
of the pen, the dogs that accompanied the men, and

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that snarled malignantly at him in his helplessness. He hated
the very wood of the pen that confined him. And first, last,
and most of all, he hated Beauty Smith. But Beauty
Smith had a purpose in all that he did to
White Fang. One day, a number of men gathered about
the pen, Beauty Smith entered, club in hand and took

(01:48):
the chain off from white Fang's neck. When his master
had gone out, White Fang turned loose and tore around
the pen, trying to get at the men outside. He
was magnificently terrible, Fully five feet in length and standing
two and a half feet at the shoulder. He far
outweighed a wolf of corresponding size from his mother. He

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had inherited the heavier proportions of the dog, so that
he weighed without any fat and without an ounce of
superfluous flesh, over ninety pounds. It was all muscle, bone
and sinew, fighting flesh in the finest condition. The door
of the pen was being opened again. White Fang paused

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something unusual was happening. He waited. The door was opened wider.
Then a huge dog was thrust inside, and the door
was slam shut behind him. White Fang had never seen
such a dog. It was a mastiff, but the size
and fierce aspect of the intruder did not deter him.
Here was something not wood nor iron upon which to

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wreak his hate. He leaped him with a flash of
fangs that ripped down the side of the mastiff's neck.
The mastiff shook his head, growled hoarsely, and plunged at Whitefang.
But White Fang was here, there and everywhere, always evading
and eluding, and always leaping in and slashing with his fangs,
and leaping out again in time to escape punishment. The

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men outside shouted and applauded, while Beauty Smith, in an
ecstasy of delight, gloated over the ripping and mangling performed
by Whitefang. There was no hope for the mastiff from
the first. He was too ponderous and slow. In the end,
while Beauty Smith beat White Fang back with a club,
the mastiff was dragged out by its owner. Then there

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was a payment of bets, and money clinked in Beauty
Smith's hand. White Fang came to look forward eagerly to
the gathering of the men around his pen. It meant
a fight, and this was the only way that was
now vouchsafed him of expressing the life that was in him. Tormented,
incited to hate, he was kept a prisoner, so that

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there was no way of satisfying that hate, except at
the times his master saw fit to put another dog
against him. Beauty Smith had estimated his powers well, for
he was invariably the victor. One day three dogs were
turned in upon him in succession. Another day, a full
grown wolf, fresh caught from the wild, was shoved in

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through the door of the pen, and on still another
day two dogs were set against him at the same time.
This was his severest fight, and though in the end
he killed them both, he was himself half killed in
doing it. In the fall of the year, when the
first snows were falling and mush ice was running in
the river, Beauty Smith took passage for himself and White

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Fang on a steamboat bound up the Yukon to Dawson.
White Fang had now achieved a reputation in the land
as the fighting wolf. He was known far and wide,
and the cage in which he was kept on the
the steamboat's deck was usually surrounded by curious men. He
raged and snarled at them, or lay quietly and studied

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them with cold hatred. Why should he not hate them?
He never asked himself the question. He knew only hate,
and lost himself in the passion of it. Life had
become a hell to him. He had not been made
for the close confinement, while beasts endure at the hands
of men. And yet it was imprecisely this way that

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he was treated. Men stared at him, poked sticks between
the bars to make him snarl, and then laughed at him.
They were his environment, these men, and they were molding
the clay of him into a more ferocious thing than
have been intended by nature. Nevertheless, nature had given him plasticity.

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Where many another animal would have died or had its
spirit broken, he adjusted himself and lived, and at no
expense of the spirit. Possibly Beauty Smith, arch fiend and tormentor,
was capable of breaking White Fang's spirit, but as yet
there were no signs of his succeeding. If Beauty Smith

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had in him a devil, White Fang had another, and
the two of them raged against each other unceasingly. In
the days before, White Fang had had the wisdom to
cower down and submit to a man with a club
in his hand. But this wisdom now left him. The
mere sight of Beauty Smith was sufficient to send him
into transports of fury. And when they came to close

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quarters and he had been beaten back by the club,
he went on growling and snarling and showing his fangs.
The last growl could never be extracted from him, no
matter how terribly he was beaten. He had always another growl.
And when Beauty Smith gave up and withdrew, the defiant
growl followed after him. Or White Fang sprang at the

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bars of the cage, bellowing his hatred. When the steamboat
arrived at Dawson, Whitefang went ashore, but he still lived
a public life in a cage surrounded by curious men.
He was exhibited as the fighting Wolf, and then paid
fifty cents in gold dust to see him. He was

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given no rest, did he lie down to sleep. He
was stirred up by a sharp stick so that the
audience might get its money's worth. In order to make
the exhibition interesting. He was kept in a rage most
of the time. But worse than all this was the
atmosphere in which he lived. He was regarded as the
most fearful of wild beasts, and this was borne in

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to him through the bars of the cage. Every word,
every cautious action on the part of the men impressed
upon him his own terrible ferocity. It was so much
added fuel to the flame of his fierceness. There could
be but one result, and that was that his ferocity
fed upon itself and increased. It was an another instance

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of the plasticity of his clay, of his capacity for
being molded by the pressure of environment. In addition to
being exhibited, he was a professional fighting animal. At irregular intervals,
whenever a fight could be arranged, he was taken out
of his cage and led off into the woods a
few miles from town. Usually this occurred at night, so

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as to avoid interference from the mounted police of the territory.
After a few hours of waiting, when daylight had come,
the audience and the dog with which he was to
fight arrived. In this manner, it came about that he
fought all sizes and breeds of dogs. It was a
savage land. The men were savage, and the fights were

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usually to the death. Since White Fang continued to fight,
it is obvious that it was the other dogs that died.
He never knew defeat his early training, when he fought
with lip Lip and the whole puppy pack stood him
in good stead. There was the tenacity with which he
clung to the earth. No dog could make him lose

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his footing. This was the favorite trick of the wolf
breeds to rush in upon him, either directly or with
an unexpected swerve, in the hope of striking his shoulder
and overthrowing him. Mackenzie hounds, esquimaux and Labrador dogs, Huskies
and malamoots all tried it on him, and all failed.

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He was never known to lose his footing. Men told
this to one another and looked each time to see
it happen, but White Fang always disappointed them. Then there
was his lightning quickness. He gave him a tremendous advantage
over his antagonists. No matter what their fighting experience, they
had never encountered a dog that moved so swiftly as he.

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Also to be reckoned with was the immediateness of his attack.
The average dog was accustomed to the preliminaries of snarling
and bristling and growling, and the average dog was knocked
off his feet and finished before he had begun to
fight or recovered from his surprise. So often did this
happen that it became the custom to hold White Fang

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until the other dog went through its preliminaries, was good
and ready, and even made the first attack. But greatest
of all the advantages in White Fang's favor was his experience.
He knew more about fighting than did any of the
dogs that faced him. He had fought more fights, knew
how to meet more tricks and methods, and had more

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tricks himself, while his own method was scarcely to be
improved upon. As the time went by he had fewer
and fewer fights, men despaired of matching him with an
equal and beauty Smith was compelled to pit wolves against him.
These were trapped by the Indians for the purpose, and
a fight between White Fang and a wolf was always

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sure to draw a crowd. Once a full grown female
lynx was secured, and this time White Fang fought for
his life. Her quickness matched his, her ferocity equalled his,
while He fought with his fangs alone, and she fought
with her sharp clawed feet as well. But after the

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Lynx all fighting ceased. For White Fang. There were no
more animals with which to fight, at least there were
none considered worthy of fighting with him, so he remained
on exhibition until spring, when one tim Keenan, a Faraoh dealer,
arrived in the land. With him came the first bulldog
that had ever entered the Klondike. That this dog and

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White Fang should come together was inevitable, and for a
week the anticipated fight was the mainspring of conversation in
certain quarters of the town. End of Chapter three