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

at this open mutiny, and sprang upon his overthrown leader. Buck,
to whom fair play was a forgotten code, likewise sprang upon
Spitz. But Francois, chuckling at the incident while unswerving
in the administration of justice, brought his lash down upon Buck
with all his might. This failed to drive Buck from his prostrate
rival, and the butt of the whip was brought into play. Half-
stunned by the blow, Buck was knocked backward and the lash laid
upon him again and again, while Spitz soundly punished the many
times offending Pike.


In the days that followed, as Dawson grew closer and closer, Buck
still continued to interfere between Spitz and the culprits; but
he did it craftily, when Francois was not around, With the covert
mutiny of Buck, a general insubordination sprang up and increased.
Dave and Sol-leks were unaffected, but the rest of the team went
from bad to worse. Things no longer went right. There was
continual bickering and jangling. Trouble was always afoot, and
at the bottom of it was Buck. He kept Francois busy, for the dog-
driver was in constant apprehension of the life-and-death struggle
between the two which he knew must take place sooner or later; and
on more than one night the sounds of quarrelling and strife among
the other dogs turned him out of his sleeping robe, fearful that
Buck and Spitz were at it.


But the opportunity did not present itself, and they pulled into
Dawson one dreary afternoon with the great fight still to come.
Here were many men, and countless dogs, and Buck found them all at
work. It seemed the ordained order of things that dogs should
work. All day they swung up and down the main street in long
teams, and in the night their jingling bells still went by. They
hauled cabin logs and firewood, freighted up to the mines, and did
all manner of work that horses did in the Santa Clara Valley.
Here and there Buck met Southland dogs, but in the main they were
the wild wolf husky breed. Every night, regularly, at nine, at
twelve, at three, they lifted a nocturnal song, a weird and eerie
chant, in which it was Buck's delight to join.


With the aurora borealis flaming coldly overhead, or the stars
leaping in the frost dance, and the land numb and frozen under its
pall of snow, this song of the huskies might have been the
defiance of life, only it was pitched in minor key, with long-
drawn wailings and half-sobs, and was more the pleading of life,
the articulate travail of existence. It was an old song, old as
the breed itself-one of the first songs of the younger world in a
day when songs were sad. It was invested with the woe of
unnumbered generations, this plaint by which Buck was so strangely
stirred. When he moaned and sobbed, it was with the pain of