White Fang

1906

WHITE FANG

by Jack London

PART ONE.

CHAPTER ONE.

The Trail of the Meat.

DARK SPRUCE FOREST frowned on either side the frozen waterway. The
trees had been stripped by a recent wind of their white covering of
the frost, and they seemed to lean toward each other, black and
ominous, in the fading light. A vast silence reigned over the land.
The land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without movement, so
lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness.
There was a hint in it of laughter, but of a laughter more terrible
than any sadness- a laughter that was mirthless as the smile of the
Sphinx, a laughter cold as the frost and partaking of the grimness
of infallibility. It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of
eternity laughing at the futility of life and the effort of life. It
was the Wild, the...