The Call of the Wild

He walked to the cen­tre of the open space and lis­tened. It was the call, the many-noted call, sound­ing more lur­ingly and com­pellingly than ever be­fore. And as never be­fore, he was ready to obey. John Thorn­ton was dead. The last tie was bro­ken. Man and the claims of man no longer bound him.

Man and the claims of man no longer bound him.

They had died so eas­ily. It was harder to kill a husky dog than them. They were no match at all, were it not for their ar­rows and spears and clubs.

Mercy did not ex­ist in the pri­mor­dial life. It was mis­un­der­stood for fear, and such mis­un­der­stand­ings made for death. Kill or be killed, eat or be eaten, was the law; and this man­date, down out of the depths of Time, he obeyed.

There is an ec­stasy that marks the sum­mit of life, and be­yond which life can­not rise. And such is the para­dox of liv­ing, this ec­stasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a com­plete for­get­ful­ness that one is alive.

what made him dan­ger­ous was the fact that the club of the man in the red sweater had knocked all blind pluck and rash­ness out of his de­sire for mas­tery

marked, fur­ther, the de­cay or go­ing to pieces of his moral na­ture, a vain thing and a hand­i­cap in the ruth­less strug­gle for ex­is­tence. It was all well enough in the South­land, un­der the law of love and fel­low­ship, to re­spect pri­vate prop­erty and per­sonal feel­ings; but in the North­land, un­der the law of club and fang, whoso took such things into ac­count was a fool, and in so far as he ob­served them he would fail to pros­per.

He was beaten (he knew that); but he was not bro­ken. He saw, once for all, that he stood no chance against a man with a club. He had learned the les­son, and in all his af­ter life he never for­got it. That club was a rev­e­la­tion. It was his in­tro­duc­tion to the reign of prim­i­tive law, and he met the in­tro­duc­tion half­way. The facts of life took on a fiercer as­pect; and while he faced that as­pect un­cowed, he faced it with all the la­tent cun­ning of his na­ture aroused.

in his gam­bling, he had one be­set­ting weak­ness—faith in a sys­tem; and this made his damna­tion cer­tain.

strong of mus­cle

t the team up to four­teen. But the Out­side dogs, though prac­ti­cally bro­ken in si

When he was made, the mould was broke,” said Pete.“Py jingo! I t’ink so mi­n

in­ter­lac­ing

There is an ec­stasy that marks the sum­mit of life, and be­yond which life can­not rise. And such is the para­dox of liv­ing, this ec­stasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a com­plete for­get­ful­ness that one is alive. This ec­stasy, this for­get­ful­ness of liv­ing, comes to the artist, caught up and out of him­self in a sheet of flame; it comes to the sol­dier, war-mad on a stricken field and re­fus­ing quar­ter; and it came to Buck

glim­mer­ing

Thence­for­ward

in­con­ceiv­ably

with­stand­ing

mul­ti­tudi­nous

com­min­gled