"Jack London. The Call of the Wild (Сборник из 7 рассказов на англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

he might receive instruction. Apt scholar that he was, they were
equally apt teachers, never allowing him to linger long in error,
and enforcing their teaching with their sharp teeth. Dave was
fair and very wise. He never nipped Buck without cause, and he
never failed to nip him when he stood in need of it. As
Francois's whip backed him up, Buck found it to be cheaper to mend
his ways than to retaliate, Once, during a brief halt, when he got
tangled in the traces and delayed the start, both Dave and Sol-
leks flew at him and administered a sound trouncing. The
resulting tangle was even worse, but Buck took good care to keep
the traces clear thereafter; and ere the day was done, so well had
he mastered his work, his mates about ceased nagging him.
Francois's whip snapped less frequently, and Perrault even honored
Buck by lifting up his feet and carefully examining them.


It was a hard day's run, up the Canon, through Sheep Camp, past
the Scales and the timber line, across glaciers and snowdrifts
hundreds of feet deep, and over the great Chilcoot Divide, which
stands between the salt water and the fresh and guards
forbiddingly the sad and lonely North. They made good time down
the chain of lakes which fills the craters of extinct volcanoes,
and late that night pulled into the huge camp at the head of Lake
Bennett, where thousands of goldseekers were building boats
against the break-up of the ice in the spring. Buck made his hole
in the snow and slept the sleep of the exhausted just, but all too
early was routed out in the cold darkness and harnessed with his
mates to the sled.


That day they made forty miles, the trail being packed; but the
next day, and for many days to follow, they broke their own trail,
worked harder, and made poorer time. As a rule, Perrault
travelled ahead of the team, packing the snow with webbed shoes to
make it easier for them. Francois, guiding the sled at the gee-
pole, sometimes exchanged places with him, but not often.
Perrault was in a hurry, and he prided himself on his knowledge of
ice, which knowledge was indispensable, for the fall ice was very
thin, and where there was swift water, there was no ice at all.


Day after day, for days unending, Buck toiled in the traces.
Always, they broke camp in the dark, and the first gray of dawn
found them hitting the trail with fresh miles reeled off behind
them. And always they pitched camp after dark, eating their bit
of fish, and crawling to sleep into the snow. Buck was ravenous.
The pound and a half of sun-dried salmon, which was his ration for
each day, seemed to go nowhere. He never had enough, and suffered
from perpetual hunger pangs. Yet the other dogs, because they
weighed less and were born to the life, received a pound only of