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

Best of all, perhaps, he loved to lie near the fire, hind legs
crouched under him, fore legs stretched out in front, head raised,
and eyes blinking dreamily at the flames. Sometimes he thought of
Judge Miller's big house in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley, and
of the cement swimming-tank, and Ysabel, the Mexican hairless, and
Toots, the Japanese pug; but oftener he remembered the man in the
red sweater, the death of Curly, the great fight with Spitz, and
the good things he had eaten or would like to eat. He was not
homesick. The Sunland was very dim and distant, and such memories
had no power over him. Far more potent were the memories of his
heredity that gave things he had never seen before a seeming
familiarity; the instincts (which were but the memories of his
ancestors become habits) which had lapsed in later days, and still
later, in him, quickened and become alive again.


Sometimes as he crouched there, blinking dreamily at the flames,
it seemed that the flames were of another fire, and that as he
crouched by this other fire he saw another and different man from
the half-breed cook before him. This other man was shorter of leg
and longer of arm, with muscles that were stringy and knotty
rather than rounded and swelling. The hair of this man was long
and matted, and his head slanted back under it from the eyes. He
uttered strange sounds, and seemed very much afraid of the
darkness, into which he peered continually, clutching in his hand,
which hung midway between knee and foot, a stick with a heavy
stone made fast to the end. He was all but naked, a ragged and
fire-scorched skin hanging part way down his back, but on his body
there was much hair. In some places, across the chest and
shoulders and down the outside of the arms and thighs, it was
matted into almost a thick fur. He did not stand erect, but with
trunk inclined forward from the hips, on legs that bent at the
knees. About his body there was a peculiar springiness, or
resiliency, almost catlike, and a quick alertness as of one who
lived in perpetual fear of things seen and unseen.


At other times this hairy man squatted by the fire with head
between his legs and slept. On such occasions his elbows were on
his knees, his hands clasped above his head as though to shed rain
by the hairy arms. And beyond that fire, in the circling
darkness, Buck could see many gleaming coals, two by two, always
two by two, which he knew to be the eyes of great beasts of prey.
And he could hear the crashing of their bodies through the
undergrowth, and the noises they made in the night. And dreaming
there by the Yukon bank, with lazy eyes blinking at the fire,
these sounds and sights of another world would make the hair to
rise along his back and stand on end across his shoulders and up
his neck, till he whimpered low and suppressedly, or growled
softly, and the half-breed cook shouted at him, "Hey, you Buck,