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

The willows and aspens were bursting out in young buds. Shrubs
and vines were putting on fresh garbs of green. Crickets sang in
the nights, and in the days all manner of creeping, crawling
things rustled forth into the sun. Partridges and woodpeckers
were booming and knocking in the forest. Squirrels were
chattering, birds singing, and overhead honked the wild-fowl
driving up from the south in cunning wedges that split the air.


From every hill slope came the trickle of running water, the music
of unseen fountains. AU things were thawing, bending, snapping.
The Yukon was straining to break loose the ice that bound it down.
It ate away from beneath; the sun ate from above. Air-holes
formed, fissures sprang and spread apart, while thin sections of
ice fell through bodily into the river. And amid all this
bursting, rending, throbbing of awakening life, under the blazing
sun and through the soft-sighing breezes, like wayfarers to death,
staggered the two men, the woman, and the huskies.


With the dogs falling, Mercedes weeping and riding, Hal swearing
innocuously, and Charles's eyes wistfully watering, they staggered
into John Thornton's camp at the mouth of White River. When they
halted, the dogs dropped down as though they had all been struck
dead. Mercedes dried her eyes and looked at John Thornton.
Charles sat down on a log to rest. He sat down very slowly and
painstakingly what of his great stiffness. Hal did the talking.
John Thornton was whittling the last touches on an axe-handle he
had made from a stick of birch. He whittled and listened, gave
monosyllabic replies, and, when it was asked, terse advice.
He knew the breed, and he gave his advice in the certainty that it
would not be followed.


"They told us up above that the bottom was dropping out of the
trail and that the best thing for us to do was to lay over," Hal
said in response to Thornton's warning to take no more chances on
the rotten ice. "They told us we couldn't make White River, and
here we are." This last with a sneering ring of triumph in it.


"And they told you true," John Thornton answered. "The bottom's
likely to drop out at any moment. Only fools, with the blind luck
of fools, could have made it. I tell you straight, I wouldn't
risk my carcass on that ice for all the gold in Alaska."


"That's because you're not a fool, I suppose," said Hal. "All the
same, we'll go on to Dawson." He uncoiled his whip. "Get up there,
Buck! Hi! Get up there! Mush on!"