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Jack London. The Love of Life (in English, in the original, 1903)

They limped painfully down the bank, and once the foremost of the two men staggered among the rough-strewn rocks. They were tired and weak, and their faces had the drawn expression of patience which comes of hardship long endured.

They were heavily burdened with blanket packs which were strapped to their shoulders. Head-straps, passing across the forehead, helped support these packs. Each man carried a rifle. They walked in a stooped posture, the shoulders well forward, the head still farther forward, the eyes bent upon the ground.

“I wish we had just about two of them cartridges that's layin' in that cache of ourn,” said the second man.

His voice was utterly and drearily expressionless. He without spoken enthusiasm; and the first man, limping into the milky stream that foamed over the rocks, vouchsafed no reply.

The other man followed at his heels. They did not remove their foot-gear, though the water was icy cold so cold that their ankles ached and their feet went numb. In places the water dashed against their knees, and both men staggered for footing.

The man who followed slipped on a smooth boulder, nearly fell, but recovered himself with a violent effort, at the same time uttering a sharp exclamation of pain. He seemed faint and dizzy and put out his free hand while he reeled, as though seeking support against the air. When he had steadied himself he stepped forward, but reeled again and nearly fell. Then he stood still and looked at the other man, who had never turned his head.

The man stood still for fully a minute, as though debating with himself. Then he called out:

“I say, Bill, I’ve sprained my ankle.”

Bill staggered on through the milky water. He did not look around. The man watched him go, and though his face was expressionless as ever, his eyes were like the eyes of a wounded deer.

The other man limped up the farther bank and continued straight on without looking back. The man in the stream watched him. His lips trembled a little, so that the rough thatch of brown hair which covered them was visibly agitated. His tongue even strayed out to moisten them.

“Bill!” he cried out.

It was the pleading cry of a strong man in distress, but Bill's head did not turn. The man watched him go, limping grotesquely and lurching forward with stammering gait up the slow slope towards the soft sky-line of the low-lying hill. He watched him go till he passed over the crest and disappeared. Then he turned his gaze and slowly took in the circle of the world that remained to him now that Bill was gone.

Near the horizon the sun was smouldering dimly, almost obscured by formless mists and vapors, which gave an impression of mass and density without outline or tangibility. The man pulled out his watch, the while resting his weight on one leg. It was four o'clock, and as the season was near the last of July or first of August, he did not know the precise date within a week or two, he knew that the sun was roughly marked the northwest. He looked to the south and knew that somewhere beyond those bleak hills lay the Great Bear Lake; also, he knew that in that direction the Arctic Circle cut its forbidding way across the Canadian Barrens. This stream in which he stood was a feeder to the Coppermine River, which in turn flowed north and emptied into Coronation Gulf and the Arctic Ocean. He had never been there, but he had seen it, once, on a Hudson Bay Company chart.

Again his gaze completed the circle of the world about him. It was not a heartening spectacle. Everywhere was soft skyline. The hills were all low-lying. There were no trees, no shrubs, no grasses naught but a tremendous and terrible desolation that sent fear swiftly dawning into his eyes.

“Bill!” he whispered, once and twice; “Bill!”

Jack London. Love of Life (continue reading in English on page 2)

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Jack London "Love of Life" in Russian (translated by Nina Daruses)

Limping, they went down to the river, and once the one in front staggered, stumbling in the middle of the stone placer. Both were tired and exhausted, and their faces expressed patient resignation - a trace of long hardships. Their shoulders were weighed down by heavy packs tied with straps. Each of them carried a gun. Both walked hunched over, bowing their heads low and not raising their eyes. “It would be nice to have at least two cartridges from those that are in our cache,” said one. His voice sounded dull, without any expression. He spoke indifferently, and his companion, who had just stepped into the milky-white water, foaming on the stones, did not answer him.

The second also entered the river after the first. They did not take off their shoes, although the water was cold as ice - so cold that their legs and even their toes were numb from the cold. In places, the water washed over his knees, and both of them staggered, losing their footing. The second traveler slipped on a smooth boulder and almost fell, but kept on his feet, crying out loudly in pain. He must have felt dizzy.” He staggered and waved his free hand as if he were gasping for air. When he had regained his composure, he took a step forward, but staggered again and almost fell. Then he stopped and looked at his companion: he was still walking ahead, not even looking back.

For a full minute he stood motionless, as if thinking, then he called out, “Listen, Bill, I sprained my leg!” Bill hobbled on through the milky white water. He never looked back. The other stared after him, and although his face was still blank, there was anguish in his eyes, like that of a wounded deer. Bill had already climbed to the other side and trudged on. The one who stood in the middle of the river did not take his eyes off him. His lips trembled so violently that the stiff red mustache above them moved. He licked dry lips with the tip of his tongue. — Bill! he shouted.

It was a desperate plea from a man in distress, but Bill didn't turn his head. His comrade watched for a long time as he clumsily, limping and stumbling, climbed the gentle slope to the undulating horizon line formed by the crest of a low hill. He followed until Bill was out of sight, over the ridge. Then he turned away and slowly looked around at the circle of the universe in which he was left alone after the departure of Bill.

History of the creation of the story

The story "Love of Life" was written by the American writer Jack London in 1905, published in a collection of stories about the adventures of gold diggers in 1907. It seems possible that the story has a share of autobiography, at least it has a real basis, since the writer gained considerable life and writing experience, sailing as a sailor on schooners and taking part in the conquest of the North during the days of the "gold rush". Life provided him with a lot of impressions, which he expressed in his works.

Adds true reality and the geographical detail with which the author depicts the path of his hero - from the Great Bear Lake to the mouth of the Coppermine River, which flows into the Arctic Ocean.

Plot, characters, story idea

The end of the 19th century was marked by a whole chain of "gold rushes" - people in search of gold massively explored California, Klondike, Alaska. A typical picture is also presented in the story "Love for Life". Two friends traveling in search of gold (and having obtained a decent amount) did not calculate their strength for the return trip. There are no provisions, no cartridges, no elementary mental and physical resources - all actions are performed automatically, as if in a fog. The hero, crossing the stream, stumbles and injures his leg. A comrade named Bill, without the slightest thought, leaves him and leaves without even turning around.

The main character is left to fight. He cannot get animal food, the fish escapes from a small lake, despite the fact that he manually scoops out all the water from the reservoir. Gold had to be abandoned due to its weight. Bill's fate turned out to be sad - the nameless hero came across a bunch of pink bones, tattered clothes and a bag of gold.

The culmination of the story is an encounter with a wolf, too sick and weak to attack a man, but clearly hoping to feast on the corpse of a man when he dies of exhaustion and exhaustion. The hero and the wolf guard each other, because he is on an equal footing and in each of them speaks the instinct of survival - the blind and strongest love of life in the world.

The protagonist pretends to be dead, waiting for the wolf to attack, and when he attacks, the man does not even strangle him - he crushes him with his weight and gnaws the wolf's neck.

Near the sea, the crew of a whaler notices a ridiculous swarming creature on the shore, crawling to the water's edge. The hero is accepted on the ship and soon they notice his strangeness - he does not eat the bread served for dinner, but hides it under the mattress. Such insanity developed because of the long, insatiable hunger that he had to experience. However, it soon passed.

The story is built on the opposition first of Bill and the nameless hero, then - the nameless hero and the wolf. Moreover, Bill loses in this comparison, since he is compared taking into account moral criteria and is defeated, and the wolf remains on an equal footing with the hero, since nature does not know pity, like a man brought to the last line.

The main idea of the story is the idea that the struggle of man with nature for the right to exist is merciless, despite the fact that man is also armed with reason. In critical situations, we are guided by instinct or love of life, and practice shows that the strongest survive. Nature does not know pity and indulgence for the weak, equalizing the rights of predators and herbivores. From the point of view of natural survival, Bill considered himself right in getting rid of the ballast in the form of an injured friend. But it is more important to remain human to the end.

Having stumbled upon the remains of his dead comrade in the tundra, he does not gloat and takes his gold for himself. He does not rush to the remains out of hunger (although the day before we see how he ate live chicks), and this becomes the last, extreme manifestation of human dignity.

Reading the story "Love of Life"

"The Love of Life" (1905) is one of Jack London's most famous northern stories. It was included in many collections of the writer's works published here and abroad.

The popularity of the story is well-deserved. Its secret is in the emotional impact, behind which is high writing skills, a kind of artistic talent of Jack London.

The story begins, as is often the case in the works of London, with visual images. Without prologue and exposition, the author introduces the reader to the center of events.

"Limping, they went down to the river, and once the one that walked in front staggered, stumbling in the middle of a stone placer. Both were tired and exhausted, and their faces expressed patient resignation - a trace of long hardships. Their shoulders were pulled down by heavy bales, tied with belts "Each carried a gun. Both walked hunched over, bowing their heads low and not raising their eyes."

The first stepped into "milky white water, foaming over the stones ... The second also entered the river after the first. They did not take off their shoes, although the water was cold as ice - so cold that their legs and even their toes were numb from the cold. In places, the water overwhelmed their knees, and both of them staggered, losing their footing.

From the first lines and in the future, London relies on images associated with the most developed human sense - vision. This helps him to make the picture of events clearer, to strengthen the illusion of their authenticity... Of course, if the writer limited himself to this technique, our perception would be deprived of many of the bright colors that make up the figurative system of a work of art. We "feel" the cold, "hear" the languid voice of one of the companions. But mostly the story goes in visual images - sometimes through the eyes of the author, sometimes through the eyes of a participant in the events.

“He again looked around at that circle of the universe in which he was now alone. The picture was gloomy. Low hills closed the horizon with a monotonous wavy line ...”, “... from the ridge he saw that there was no one in the shallow valley”, etc. d.

Along the way, London tells what the traveler is thinking about: he tries to remember the area, imagines how he will find a cache of ammunition, ponders where he will go next, he hopes that his comrade has not abandoned him. A snapshot of consciousness allows the author to make excursions in time - into the past and the future, but as soon as he turns to the present, he again gives visual pictures one after another.

Here is how the signs of hunger that the hero began to experience are brought to the reader's consciousness: "He had not eaten anything for two days, but he did not eat to his full even more. Every now and then he bent down, picked pale marsh berries, put them in his mouth and swallowed. Berries were watery and quickly melted in the mouth - only the bitter hard seed remained.

The figurative pictures of the hero’s suffering evoke and strengthen our sympathy: “His lips trembled so much that a stiff red mustache moved above them. He licked his dry lips with the tip of his tongue.

Bill! he shouted. It was the desperate plea of a man in distress..."

We read only three pages of the story, and already included vision, hearing, taste, feeling of cold, fear, the author evoked the first response of compassion in our hearts.

Jack London's favorite technique is to influence the reader's imagination by showing the character's attitude to the environment, describing his feelings and sensations. Even at the beginning of his writing career, but after such brilliant stories as "White Silence", "Northern Odyssey", "The Courage of a Woman" and "The Law of Life" were created, London in letters to the young writer Clodesley Jones explained his concept of true art. Convincedly and persistently, he repeats: "Do not get carried away with retelling ... Let your heroes communicate this with their deeds, actions, conversations, etc. ... Write more intensely ... do not narrate, but draw, outline, build! .. ","...Approach the reader through the tragedy and its main character." All these are the most important principles of the creative method of the writer.

As an example of plot development through the soul of the protagonist, London cited his story "The Law of Life". It is about a decrepit old Indian who is left to die in a snowy desert by his tribe. “Everything you learn,” writes London, “even evaluation and generalizations, is all done only through this old Indian by describing his impressions.”

London makes us take the place of the suffering hero, imbued with his torment. The author achieves this effect with the help of the techniques discussed above, but also with the help of those smallest details that, like grains of sand, more and more fall on the scales of the hero’s fate, characterizing either the extinction of his vitality, or the ignition of the fire of his instinct. self-preservation.

But back to the story "Love of Life".

The first signs of hunger and fear have already appeared in the hero. But he thinks sensibly, clearly plans his immediate and future actions. He looks at his watch, does not forget to wind it up, with the help of the watch determines the direction to the south, orients himself on the ground. He was left alone with an injured leg, but he is able to drive away fear. Further, the tragedy of his situation is aggravated. At the beginning, hunger pangs, unsuccessful attempts to knock out a partridge, catch a fish by scooping water from a puddle, search for a frog or at least worms to drown out the inexorable call of the stomach. Already his mind was completely dominated by one desire: to eat! At the same time, such details are interspersed: only tatters remained from moccasins, socks sewn from a blanket were torn, legs were worn to the blood. Snow. Man no longer makes a fire or boils water. He sleeps under the open sky in a disturbing hungry dream, and the snow has turned into a cold, penetrating rain everywhere.

He finally managed to catch two minnows. Ate them raw. Then he caught three more, ate two, and left the third for breakfast (what an ascetic dispassionate detail, without the author's assessment, but strong in itself). "On this day he walked no more than ten miles, and the next, moving only when his heart allowed, no more than five." And now, very often, the howl of wolves reaches him from the desert distance. Three wolves, "sneakingly, ran across his path." While still sneaking, this is only the first hint of mortal danger. The barely moving traveler tries to catch up with the partridge, but in vain, he is only completely exhausted. He has already thrown almost everything out of his things, now he pours half of the gold out of the bag, the very gold for which he came to these distant wild lands, and in the evening he throws out the rest. At times he begins to lose consciousness. Meeting with a bear. There are wolves around, but they still don't come close. The unfortunate came across the gnawed bones of a deer. Thought: "It doesn't hurt to die. To die is to fall asleep. Death means the end, peace. Why then does he not want to die?" But here he is no longer reasoning, he is squatting, as London writes, "holding the bone in his teeth and sucking out the last particles of life from it." The picture becomes scary. Ragged, lost in the wilderness, an exhausted man gnaws at the bones half-eaten by wolves, crushes them with a stone and swallows them greedily. He no longer feels pain when a stone hits his fingers.

“He no longer remembered when he stopped for the night and when he set off again. He walked without understanding the time, night and day, rested where he fell, and trudged forward when the life that was fading in him flared up and flared up brighter. he didn't fight like people fight. It was the very life in him that didn't want to perish and drove him forward." Here it is, the fire, the thirst for life. But no, they have not yet drunk the cup of suffering to the dregs. We have been waiting for relief for a long time, but there is none for the hero or for the readers, worse than that - the clouds are gathering. A new threat has already loomed: the traveler begins to be pursued by a she-wolf, sick, sneezing and coughing. There is a bitter irony hidden here: it is humiliating for a man to fight with a sick she-wolf, but the traveler is so exhausted that such rivalry is honorable for him, because it poses a mortal threat to him.

The gnawed bones of a deer and a ship seen by a man in the distance strengthen his will to live, organize his forces and clarify his consciousness. A multi-day convulsive journey to the ship begins.

The weakened beast does not dare to pounce on a person. Two emaciated creatures wander across the plain. The unfortunate traveler stumbles upon the gnawed bones of his friend Bill, who abandoned him. Nearby lies his bag of gold. An evil irony of fate - Bill was overtaken by retribution. The man squeezed out "ha-ha!", he laughed with a hoarse, terrible laugh, similar to the cawing of a crow, and the sick wolf echoed him, howling dejectedly. But the man didn't take the gold and didn't "suck Bill's bones. Bill would have if Bill were in his place," he mused as he trudged on. A terrible, disgusting thought, but so natural in his condition.

The man moves on. He is no longer able to bail out water and catch minnows. He can only crawl. His knees and feet were stripped to living flesh. The wolf licks the bloody trail of a man. The feeling of impending danger forces a person to make a decision. "Even when he died, he did not submit to death. Perhaps it was pure madness, but even in the clutches of death he challenged and fought with her." He pretends to be asleep, trying with all his might not to lose consciousness, patiently waiting for the wolf to approach. And not only the approach, but the bite. A deadly fight begins between two dying, exhausted, unable to kill each other creatures. The person is the winner. He turned out to be smarter and more viable.

And now, not even able to crawl, but only writhing like an unknown monster, in a semi-conscious state, a person advances the last tens of meters to be noticed from the ship. He is found and rescued. After monstrous torment and torment, a happy ending comes. The will to live won. There was a fight to the end, everything was at stake. The victory was given because everything was given to her without a trace.

This is not an artificial exaggeration of certain human properties, but an artistic discovery of London. It was the result of insight into the essence of man, came from an excess of his own vitality and was the fruit of the life experience of a bold, energetic man who, until the end of his days, loved to measure his strength with danger.

Jack London's attention to the acute situations associated with a difficult struggle for the hero, and its realistic interpretation, gave him the opportunity to act as an innovator. Not a single writer in America before London showed with such artistic force the possibilities of man, the inexhaustibility of his physical strength, his perseverance in the struggle. Gorky rightly remarked when he said that "Jack London is a writer who saw well, deeply felt the creative power of will and knew how to portray strong-willed people" *.

The plot of the story "Love of Life" was based on actual incidents in Alaska, which the writer learned about from newspapers. One happened on the Cooperman River, where a gold digger with a sprained leg struggled to get home. Another - near the town of Naum. There, a prospector got lost and almost died in the tundra. Information about the morbid mania to stock up provisions that appeared in a man who suffered a severe famine, Jack London also gathered from a reliable source - from Lieutenant Greeley's book about his polar expedition. As you can see, the plot of the story is based on true facts. Let's add to them the experience of our own starvation and "going through the torment" that London went through, his impressions of his stay in Alaska. All these were grains, but very essential for the realistic canvas of the story. Then the imagination worked and the ruthless judge - reason, who selected the most necessary, the most effective.

The leitmotif of the entire northern cycle is the theme of camaraderie. Comradely support is, according to the writer, the decisive condition for victory over nature. The morality of the North is based on trust and mutual honesty. Harsh conditions peel off the husk of insincerity and ostentatious courage from a person, revealing his true value. London opposes selfishness and individualism, for friendship and mutual assistance, for the strong in spirit. A coward, an insignificant person, according to the author, is more likely to die than a brave one, so do the gold diggers who lost their self-control in the short story "In a distant land" and Bill, who abandoned his comrade, in the story "Love of Life".

London was not one of those romantic writers who paint in rosy colors the difficulties of the struggle and thereby deceive and disarm the reader in the face of serious trials. "Love for Life", "Build a Fire", "Courage of a Woman", "The Law of Life" and dozens of other stories, novels and short stories by an outstanding American writer - these are immortal evidence of Jack London's special, unique talent and his courageous realism.

With his books, he proved again and again that even in the most difficult circumstances a person is not helpless - his spiritual qualities, his moral position decide. His will or lack of will. Humanity or selfishness. A sense of moral duty or a desire to get rich at any cost.

This ability to convey "the greatest tension of the will to live" was especially appreciated by Gorky in him: "Jack London is a writer who saw well, deeply felt the creative power of the will and knew how to portray strong-willed people."

The heroes of the best short stories in London found themselves in unusually dramatic, extremely tense life situations, when everything superficial and untrue in a person recedes and his essence is revealed with merciless clarity. The psychological picture of the northern stories does not recognize the fluctuation of strokes, the whimsical play of shades, the ambiguity of the author's attitude to the characters; it evokes associations not with an impressionist canvas, but with poster graphics.

The first readers of London were struck by the freshness of the material, the fascination of the plot, the unusualness of the characters; it was impossible not to appreciate the strict internal organization of each short story, the energy of dramatic growth lurking in it, its elastic verbal fabric.

London was attracted by holistic, large and expressive characters, but this integrity was not - in any case, in his best short stories - a consequence of simplification, coarsening of the characters' inner world.

"Inhabitants of the North will soon learn the vanity of words and the inestimable blessing of actions." The idea expressed in "White Silence" aphoristically expresses the entire creative program of the Klondike cycle. For countless London "chechacos" - green newcomers who have no idea what awaits them here - the North becomes the most severe test of the possibilities inherent in man in life.

The North is reshaping people, bringing them face to face with the harsh realities of existence that they have not thought about before. Only here does a person begin to truly comprehend the meaning of such concepts as "hunger", "shelter", "peace", as if rediscovering the primordial matter of life for himself and healing from everything false and random that cluttered up his horizon until he hit on North. Eternally haunted by the threat to his very physical existence, he must learn to confront it. And for this, not only strong muscles and a clear head are needed, but - no less - an unrelenting sense of camaraderie, a common destiny for all, human brotherhood. On the Klondike, London saw how people are freed from individualism, bitterness, distrust of each other and, as if from strangers, become brothers again, as they were, probably, many centuries ago, when everyone was united by the need to fight for life.

It was one of the strongest impressions he made from his "Northern Odyssey". And London endowed the heroes closest to itself with this consciousness of the brotherhood of people, which helped them to step over the prejudices nurtured by "civilization", clearing the soul from the filth of boundless egoism.

In the early collections of Klondike short stories - "The Son of the Wolf" (1900), "The God of His Fathers" (1901) - Mailmut Kid acted as such a hero, always ready to provide the traveler with his hut, encourage him in difficult times, intervene in a fight to separate opponents, and even, as in the story "The King's Wife", to teach an Indian woman good manners and dances, since this is necessary for a just cause. Subsequently, he was replaced by Smoke Bellew, the hero of the last northern cycle, written already in 1911, a petty journalist from San Francisco, a child of the bourgeois world with its typical vices, in the North he would certainly have discovered the man in himself for the first time. And he not only learned to endure all the hardships and dangers of Klondike life, but also developed a new ztika for himself, the foundation of which was the principles of justice and camaraderie.

Mailmut Kid and Smoke Bellew are characters who move from novel to novel, "through images". And next to them are many other people who have gone the same way, realized themselves in a new way in the Klondike and learned real morality here. And Smoke's inseparable companion, Jack the Kid. And Wenstondale from the novel "For those who are on the way!" - the first of the London short stories, which saw the light on the pages of a large literary magazine; There was no more honest man in the North.

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Jack London
Love of life

They limped down to the river, and once the one in front staggered, stumbling in the middle of the stone placer. Both were tired and exhausted, and their faces expressed patient resignation - a trace of long hardships. Their shoulders were weighed down by heavy packs tied with straps. Each of them carried a gun. Both walked hunched over, bowing their heads low and not raising their eyes.

“It would be nice to have at least two cartridges from those that are in our cache,” said one.

The second traveler slipped on a smooth boulder and almost fell, but kept on his feet, crying out loudly in pain. He must have felt dizzy.” He staggered and waved his free hand as if he were gasping for air. When he had regained his composure, he took a step forward, but staggered again and almost fell. Then he stopped and looked at his companion: he was still walking forward, not even looking back.

For a full minute he stood motionless, as if thinking, then he shouted:

“Listen, Bill, I sprained my leg!”

Bill had already climbed to the other side and trudged on. The one who stood in the middle of the river did not take his eyes off him. His lips trembled so violently that the stiff red mustache above them moved. He licked dry lips with the tip of his tongue.

- Bill! he shouted.

And that the terrible path of the Arctic Circle runs along the Canadian plain in the same direction. The river in the middle of which he stood was a tributary of the Coppermine. 2
Coppermine is a river in northwestern Canada.

And the Coppermine also flows north and empties into Coronation Bay. 3
Coronation Bay- a gulf of the Arctic Ocean off the northwest coast of Canada.

In the Arctic Ocean. He himself had never been there, but he had once seen these places on a map of the Hudson's Bay Company.

He looked again at that circle of the universe, in which he was now alone. The picture was unhappy. Low hills closed the horizon in a monotonous wavy line. No trees, no bushes, no grass—nothing but a boundless and terrible desert—and a look of fear appeared in his eyes.

- Bill! he whispered, and repeated again, “Bill!

He squatted down in the middle of a muddy stream, as if the boundless desert overwhelmed him with its invincible strength, oppressed him with its terrible calmness. He trembled as if in a fever, and his gun splashed into the water. This made him come to his senses. He overcame his fear, gathered his courage and, dipping his hand into the water, groped for a gun, then moved the bale closer to his left shoulder so that the weight would put less pressure on his injured leg, and slowly and carefully walked towards the shore, wincing in pain.

He walked without stopping. Ignoring the pain, with desperate determination, he hurriedly climbed to the top of the hill, behind the crest of which Bill disappeared - and he himself seemed even more ridiculous and awkward than the lame, barely hobbled Bill. But from the ridge he saw that there was no one in the shallow valley! Fear attacked him again, and, again overcoming it, he moved the bale even further to his left shoulder and, limping, began to go down.

The bottom of the valley was swampy, the water soaked the thick moss like a sponge. At every step, she splashed from under her feet, and the sole with a squelch came off the wet moss. Trying to follow in the footsteps of Bill, the traveler moved from lake to lake on stones sticking out in the moss like islands.

Left alone, he did not go astray. He knew that a little more - and he would come to the place where dry firs and firs, low and stunted, surround the small lake Titchinnicili, which in the local language means: "Land of Little Sticks." A stream flows into the lake, and the water in it is not muddy. Reeds grow along the banks of the stream - he remembered this well - but there are no trees there, and he will go up the stream to the very watershed. From the watershed another stream begins, flowing to the west; he will go down it to the river Dees and there he will find his hiding place under an overturned canoe, littered with stones. The cache contains cartridges, hooks and fishing lines for fishing rods and a small net - everything you need in order to get your own food. And there is also flour - though a little, and a piece of brisket, and beans.

Bill would wait for him there, and the two of them would go down the Deese to Great Bear Lake, and then cross the lake and go south, all south, until they reached the Mackenzie River. South, all south—and the winter would catch up with them, and the rapids in the river would freeze over, and the days would grow colder—south, to some Hudson's Bay trading post, where tall, mighty trees grow, and where you can eat as much as you want.

This is what the traveler was thinking about as he struggled forward. But hard as it was for him to walk, it was even more difficult to convince himself that Bill had not abandoned him, that Bill, of course, was waiting for him at the hiding place. He had to think so, otherwise it would make no sense to fight on - all that remained was to lie down on the ground and die. And as the dim disk of the sun slowly hid in the northwest, he had time to calculate - and more than once - every step of the path that he and Bill would have to take, moving south from the coming winter. He went over and over in his mind the stock of food in his hiding place and the stock in the warehouse of the Hudson's Bay Company. He had not eaten anything for two days, but he did not eat his fill for even longer. Every now and then he bent down, picked the pale marsh berries, put them in his mouth, chewed them and swallowed them. The berries were watery and quickly melted in the mouth, leaving only the bitter hard seed. He knew that one would not get enough of them, but nevertheless he chewed patiently, because hope does not want to reckon with experience.

At nine o'clock he bruised his big toe on a stone, staggered and fell from weakness and fatigue. For a long time he lay on his side without moving; then he freed himself from the straps, awkwardly got up and sat down. It was not yet dark, and in the twilight light he began to rummage among the stones, picking up patches of dry moss. Having collected a whole armful, he lit a fire - a smoldering, smoky fire - and put a pot of water on it.

He unpacked the bale and first of all counted how many matches he had. There were sixty-seven of them. In order not to make a mistake, he counted three times. He divided them into three piles and wrapped each in parchment; he put one bundle in an empty pouch, another in the lining of a worn cap, and a third in his bosom. When he had done all this, he suddenly became afraid; he unfolded all three bundles and counted again. There were still sixty-seven matches.

He dried his wet shoes by the fire. The moccasins were all tattered, the socks sewn from the blanket were worn through, and his feet were worn to the blood. The ankle was in great pain, and he examined it: it was swollen, almost as thick as the knee. He tore off a long strip from one of the blankets and tightly bandaged his ankle, tore off several more strips and wrapped them around his legs, replacing socks and moccasins with this, then he drank boiling water, started his watch and lay down, hiding himself with a blanket.

He slept like the dead. By midnight it was dark, but not for long. The sun rose in the northeast - or rather, it began to get light in that direction, because the sun was hiding behind gray clouds.

At six o'clock he woke up, lying on his back. He looked up at the gray sky and felt hungry. Turning and propping himself up on his elbow, he heard a loud snort and saw a large deer, which looked at him warily and with curiosity. The deer stood no more than fifty paces from him, and he immediately imagined the smell and taste of venison sizzling in a frying pan. He involuntarily grabbed an unloaded gun, took aim and pulled the trigger. The deer snorted and ran away, hooves clattering on the rocks.

He cursed, threw the gun away, and with a groan tried to get to his feet. He succeeded with great difficulty and not soon. His joints seemed to have rusted, and it took a great effort of will each time to bend or straighten. When he finally got to his feet, it took him another full minute to straighten up and stand up straight, as a man should.

He climbed up a small mound and looked around. No trees, no bushes—nothing but a gray sea of moss, with only occasional gray boulders, gray lakes, and gray streams. The sky was gray too. Not a ray of sunshine, not a glimpse of the sun! He has lost the idea of where north is and has forgotten which direction he came from last night. But he didn't go astray. This he knew. Soon he will come to the Land of Small Sticks. He knew that she was somewhere to the left, not far from here - perhaps over the next gentle hill.

He returned to tie his pack along the road; checked whether his three bundles of matches were intact, but did not count them. However, he paused in thought over a flat, tightly stuffed buckskin pouch. The pouch was small, it could fit between the palms of his hands, but it weighed fifteen pounds—as much as everything else—and that worried him. Finally he put the pouch aside and began to roll up the bale; then he glanced at the pouch, snatched it up quickly, and looked defiantly about him, as if the desert wanted to take his gold from him. And when he got to his feet and trudged on, the bag lay in a bale behind him.

He turned left and went on, stopping from time to time and picking marsh berries. His leg became stiff and his limp became worse, but the pain meant nothing compared to the pain in his stomach. Hunger tormented him unbearably. The pain gnawed and gnawed at him, and he no longer understood in which direction he had to go in order to get to the Land of Small Sticks. The berries did not satisfy the gnawing pain, they only stung the tongue and palate.

When he reached a small hollow, white partridges rose up to meet him from stones and bumps, rustling their wings and shouting: cr, cr, cr ... He threw a stone at them, but missed. Then, putting the bale on the ground, he began to creep up to them, crawling like a cat creeps up to sparrows. His pants were torn on sharp stones, a bloody trail stretched from his knees, but he did not feel this pain - hunger drowned it out. He crawled through the wet moss; his clothes were wet, his body was cold, but he did not notice anything, his hunger tormented him so much. And the white partridges kept fluttering around him, and at last this "cr, cr" began to seem to him a mockery; he scolded the partridges and began to mimic their cry loudly.

Once he almost ran into a partridge, which must have been asleep. He didn't see her until she fluttered right into his face from her hiding place among the rocks. No matter how fast the partridge fluttered, he managed to grab it with the same quick movement - and he had three tail feathers in his hand. Watching the partridge fly away, he felt such hatred for her, as if she had done him terrible harm. Then he went back to his pack and put it on his back.

By the middle of the day he reached the marsh, where there were more game. As if teasing him, a herd of deer passed by, twenty heads, so close that they could be shot with a gun. He was seized with a wild desire to run after them, he was sure that he would catch up with the herd. Towards him came across a black-brown fox with a partridge in his teeth. He screamed. The cry was terrible, but the fox, jumping back in fright, still did not release the prey.

In the evening he walked along the bank of a stream muddy with lime, overgrown with rare reeds. Firmly grasping a stalk of reeds at the very root, he pulled out something like an onion, no larger than a wallpaper nail. The bulb turned out to be soft and appetizingly crunched on the teeth. But the fibers were tough, as watery as berries, and did not saturate. He dropped his load and crawled on all fours into the reeds, crunching and chomping like a ruminant.

He was very tired, and was often tempted to lie down on the ground and sleep; but the desire to reach the Land of Small Sticks, and even more hunger, did not give him rest. He looked for frogs in the lakes, dug the earth with his hands in the hope of finding worms, although he knew that there were neither worms nor frogs so far in the North.

He peered into every puddle, and finally, at dusk, he saw in such a puddle a single fish the size of a gudgeon. He put his right hand into the water up to his shoulder, but the fish eluded him. Then he began to catch it with both hands and lifted all the mud from the bottom. From excitement, he stumbled, fell into the water and was soaked to the waist. He muddied the water so much that the fish could not be seen, and he had to wait until the mud settles to the bottom.

He again set to fishing and fished until the water again became muddy. He couldn't wait any longer. Untying the tin bucket, he began to bail out water. At first he bailed out furiously, drenched himself all over and splashed water so close to the puddle that it flowed back. Then he began to draw more carefully, trying to be calm, although his heart was beating strongly and his hands were trembling. Half an hour later, there was almost no water left in the puddle. Nothing could be scooped up from the bottom. But the fish is gone. He saw an imperceptible crevice among the stones, through which a fish slipped into a nearby puddle, so large that it could not be dredged out in a day. If he had noticed this gap earlier, he would have blocked it with a stone from the very beginning, and the fish would have gone to him.

In desperation, he sank to the wet ground and wept. At first he wept quietly, then he began to weep loudly, awakening the merciless desert that surrounded him; and for a long time he wept without tears, shaking with sobs. He built a fire and warmed himself by drinking a lot of boiling water, then arranged for himself to spend the night on a rocky ledge, just as he had done the previous night. Before going to bed, he checked the matches for dampness and wound up the clock. The blankets were damp and cold to the touch. The whole leg burned with pain, like on fire. But he felt only hunger; and at night he dreamed of feasts, dinner parties, and tables filled with food.

He woke up cold and sick. There was no sun. The gray colors of the earth and sky became darker and deeper. A sharp wind was blowing, and the first snowfall whitened the hills. The air seemed to thicken and turn white as he lit a fire and boiled water. It brought down the wet snow in large wet flakes. At first they melted as soon as they touched the ground, but the snow fell thicker and thicker, covering the ground, and finally all the moss he had collected became damp and the fire went out.

This was the signal for him to put the pack on his back again and trudge forward, no one knew where. He no longer thought of the Land of Little Sticks, or of Bill, or of the cache by the River Dees. They had only one desire: to eat! He went mad with hunger. He didn't care where he went, as long as he walked on level ground. Under the wet snow, he groped for watery berries, pulled out the stalks of reeds with roots. But it was all insipid and not satiating. Then he came across some kind of sour-tasting grass, and he ate as much as he could find, but this was very little, because the grass spread along the ground and was not easy to find under the snow.

That night he had neither a fire nor hot water, and he crawled under the covers and fell into a sleep disturbed by hunger. The snow turned into cold rain. He woke up every now and then, feeling the rain wet his face. The day came - a gray day without the sun. Rain stopped. Now the traveler's hunger has blunted. There was a dull, aching pain in the stomach, but it did not really torment him. His mind cleared, and he thought again of the Land of the Little Sticks and his hiding place by the River Dees.

He tore the rest of one of the blankets into strips and wrapped his bleeding legs around him, then bandaged his bad leg and prepared for the day's march. When it came to the bale, he looked for a long time at the buckskin pouch, but in the end he grabbed that too.

The rain had melted the snow, leaving only the tops of the hills white. The sun came out, and the traveler managed to determine the cardinal points, although now he knew that he had lost his way. He must have veered too far to the left in his wanderings in these last days. Now he turned to the right to get on the right track.

The pangs of hunger had already dulled, but he felt himself weakened. He often had to stop and rest, picking marsh berries and reed bulbs. His tongue was swollen and dry, as if woolly, and there was a bitter taste in his mouth. And most of all, his heart bothered him. After a few minutes of travel, it began to knock mercilessly, and then seemed to jump up and tremble painfully, bringing him to suffocation and dizziness, almost to fainting.

Around noon he saw two minnows in a large puddle. Bailing out the water was unthinkable, but now he was calmer and managed to catch them with a tin pail. They were about the length of a little finger, no more, but he was not particularly hungry. The pain in the stomach was getting weaker, becoming less and less acute, as if the stomach was dozing. He ate the fish raw, carefully chewing them, and this was a purely rational act. He did not want to eat, but he knew that it was necessary to stay alive.

In the evening he caught three more minnows, ate two, and left the third for breakfast. The sun had dried up the occasional patches of moss, and he warmed himself by boiling water for himself. On this day he walked no more than ten miles, and the next, moving only when his heart allowed, no more than five. But the pains in his stomach no longer bothered him; the stomach seemed to fall asleep. The area was now unfamiliar to him, deer came across more and more often, and wolves too. Very often their howl reached him from the desert distance, and once he saw three wolves, which, stealthily, ran across his path.

Another night, and the next morning, having finally come to his senses, he untied the strap that held the leather pouch. Coarse gold sand and nuggets rained down from it in a yellow stream. He divided the gold in half, hid one half on a rock ledge visible from afar, wrapped in a piece of blanket, and poured the other back into the bag. He also used his last blanket to wrap his legs. But he still did not throw the gun away, because there were cartridges in a cache near the Dees River.

The day was foggy. On this day, hunger awakened in him again. The traveler became very weak, and his head was spinning so that at times he could not see anything. Now he constantly stumbled and fell, and one day he fell right on the partridge's nest. There were four newly hatched chicks, no more than a day old; each would only be enough for a sip; and he ate them greedily, stuffing them alive into his mouth: they crunched on his teeth like eggshells. The partridge mother flew around him with a loud cry. He wanted to hit her with the butt of his gun, but she dodged it. Then he began to throw stones at her and broke her wing. The partridge rushed away from him, fluttering and dragging a broken wing, but he did not lag behind.

The chicks only teased his hunger. Clumsily jumping up and falling on his injured leg, he either threw stones at the partridge and cried out hoarsely, then he walked silently, sullenly and patiently getting up after each fall, and rubbed his eyes with his hand to drive away the dizziness that threatened to faint.

The pursuit of a partridge led him to a marshy lowland, and there he noticed human footprints in the wet moss. The footprints weren't his, he saw it. Must be Bill's footprints. But he could not stop, because the white partridge ran farther and farther away. First he will catch her, and then he will return and examine the traces.

He drove the partridge, but he himself was exhausted. She lay on her side, breathing heavily, and he, too, breathing heavily, lay ten paces away from her, unable to crawl closer. And when he rested, she, too, gathered her strength and flew away from his greedily outstretched hand. The chase started again. But then it got dark, and the bird disappeared. Stumbling with fatigue, he fell with a bale on his back and hurt his cheek. He did not move for a long time, then turned on his side, started the clock and lay like that until morning.

Fog again. He used up half of the blanket for windings. He couldn't find any trace of Bill, but that didn't matter now. Hunger stubbornly drove him forward. But what if…if Bill got lost too? By noon he was completely exhausted. He divided the gold again, this time simply pouring half of it on the ground. By evening, he threw away the other half, leaving himself only a piece of blanket, a tin bucket and a gun.

He began to suffer obsessive thoughts. For some reason, he was sure that he had one cartridge left - the gun was loaded, he just did not notice it. And at the same time, he knew that there was no cartridge in the magazine. This thought haunted him. He fought with it for hours, then looked around the magazine and made sure that there was no cartridge in it. The disappointment was so strong, as if he really expected to find a cartridge there.

About half an hour passed, then the obsessive thought returned to him again. He struggled with it and could not overcome it, and in order to help himself in any way, he again examined the gun. At times his mind was confused, and he continued to wander on unconsciously, like an automaton; strange thoughts and absurd notions whetted his brain like worms. But he quickly regained consciousness - the pangs of hunger constantly brought him back to reality. One day he was brought to his senses by a spectacle, from which he immediately almost fainted. He swayed and staggered like a drunk, trying to stay on his feet. There was a horse in front of him. Horse! He didn't believe his eyes. They were covered in a thick fog pierced by bright points of light. He rubbed his eyes furiously, and when his vision cleared, he saw before him not a horse, but a large brown bear. The beast regarded him with unfriendly curiosity.

He had already raised his gun, but quickly came to his senses. Lowering his gun, he drew a hunting knife from its beaded scabbard. Before him was meat and life. He ran his thumb along the blade of the knife. The blade was sharp, and the tip was also sharp. Now he will rush at the bear and kill him. But the heart pounded, as if warning: knock, knock, knock, - then it jumped wildly upwards and trembled fractionally; forehead squeezed, as if with an iron hoop, and darkened in the eyes.

Desperate courage was washed away by a wave of fear. He is so weak - what will happen if the bear attacks him? He drew himself up to his full height as imposingly as possible, drew his knife and looked the bear straight in the eyes. The beast lumbered forward, reared up and growled. If a man started to run, the bear would chase him. But the man did not move from his place, emboldened by fear; he, too, snarled, savagely like a wild animal, expressing the fear that is inextricably linked with life and is intimately intertwined with its deepest roots.

The bear stepped aside, roaring menacingly, in fear of this mysterious creature, which stood up straight and was not afraid of him. But the man did not move. He stood rooted to the spot until the danger had passed, and then, shaking all over, as if in a fever, he fell on the wet moss.

Gathering his strength, he went on, tormented by a new fear. It was no longer the fear of starvation: now he was afraid to die a violent death before the last desire to preserve life died out in him from hunger. There were wolves all around. From all sides in this desert came their howl, and the very air around him breathed threat so relentlessly that he involuntarily raised his hands, pushing away this threat, like the flag of a tent swayed by the wind.

Wolves in twos and threes now and then crossed his path. But they didn't come close. There weren't many of them; besides, they were used to hunting deer, which did not resist them, and this strange animal walked on two legs and must have scratched and bitten.

By evening, he came across the bones, scattered where the wolves overtook their prey. An hour ago it was a live deer, it ran briskly and mooed. The man looked at the bones, cleanly gnawed, shiny and pink, because life had not yet died out in their cells. Perhaps by the end of the day there would be no more of him left? After all, such is life, vain and fleeting. Only life makes you suffer. It doesn't hurt to die. To die is to sleep. Death means the end, peace. Why then does he not want to die?

But he didn't talk long. Soon he was squatting, holding the bone in his teeth and sucking out of it the last bits of life that still stained it pink. The sweet taste of meat, barely audible, elusive, like a memory, drove him to madness. He clenched his teeth tighter and began to chew. Sometimes a bone broke, sometimes his teeth. Then he began to crush the bones with a stone, grinding them into porridge, and swallow them greedily. In his haste, he hit his fingers, and yet, despite his haste, he found time to wonder why he did not feel pain from blows.

Terrible days of rain and snow came. He no longer remembered when he stopped for the night and when he set off again. He walked, without understanding the time, night and day, rested where he fell, and dragged forward when the life that was fading in him flared up and flared up brighter. He no longer fought the way people fight. It was the very life in him that did not want to perish and drove him forward. He didn't suffer anymore. His nerves were blunted, as if numb, strange visions crowded in his brain, rosy dreams.

He constantly sucked and chewed on the crushed bones, which he picked up to the last crumb and took with him. He no longer climbed the hills, did not cross the watersheds, but wandered along the sloping bank of a large river that flowed through a wide valley. Before his eyes were only visions. His soul and body walked side by side, and yet apart - the thread that connected them became so thin.

He regained consciousness one morning while lying on a flat stone. The sun shone brightly and warmed. From a distance he could hear the mooing of deer. He vaguely remembered rain, wind, and snow, but how long the storm had haunted him—two days or two weeks—he did not know.

For a long time he lay motionless, and the generous sun poured its rays on him, saturating his miserable body with warmth. Good day, he thought. Perhaps he will be able to determine the direction of the sun. With a painful effort, he rolled onto his side. Down there, a wide, sluggish river flowed. She was a stranger to him, and that surprised him. He slowly followed its course, watched it meander through bare, gloomy hills, even gloomier and lower than those he had seen so far. Slowly, indifferently, without any interest, he followed the course of an unfamiliar river almost to the very horizon and saw that it was pouring into a bright, shining sea. And yet it did not excite him. "Very strange," he thought, "this is either a mirage or a vision, the fruit of an unhinged imagination." He was even more convinced of this when he saw a ship anchored in the midst of a glittering sea. He closed his eyes for a second and opened them again. It is strange that the vision does not disappear! And yet, there is nothing strange. He knew that in the heart of this barren land there was no sea, no ships, just as there were no cartridges in his unloaded gun.

He heard a sort of sniffing behind him - something like a sigh, something like a cough. Very slowly, overcoming extreme weakness and stupor, he turned on his other side. Nearby, he saw nothing and began to wait patiently. Again he heard sniffling and coughing, and between two pointed stones, no more than twenty paces away from him, he saw the gray head of a wolf. The ears did not stick up, as he had seen in other wolves, his eyes became cloudy and bloodshot, his head drooped helplessly. The wolf must have been sick: he was sneezing and coughing all the time.

“At least it doesn’t seem like it,” he thought, and again turned on the other side to see the real world, now not shrouded in a haze of visions. But the sea still sparkled in the distance, and the ship was clearly visible. Perhaps this is still real? He closed his eyes and began to think - and in the end he understood what was happening. He went to the northeast, moving away from the River Dees, and fell into the valley of the Coppermine River. This wide, sluggish river was the Coppermine. This shining sea is the Arctic Ocean. This ship is a whaling ship sailing far east of the mouth of the Mackenzie River, anchored in Coronation Bay. He remembered a map of the Hudson's Bay Company he had seen once, and everything became clear and understandable.

He sat down and began to think about the most pressing matters. The wrappings from the blanket were completely worn out, and his legs were torn to living meat. The last blanket was used up. He lost his gun and knife. The hat was also gone, and with it the matches hidden behind the lining, but the matches in the pouch in the bosom, wrapped in parchment, remained intact and did not dampen. He looked at his watch. They were still walking and showing eleven o'clock. He must have remembered to wind them up.

He was calm and fully conscious. Despite the terrible weakness, he did not feel any pain. He did not want to eat. The thought of food was even unpleasant to him, and everything he did was done by him at the behest of reason. He tore off his trousers to the knees and tied them around his feet. For some reason he did not leave the bucket: he would have to drink boiling water before starting the journey to the ship - very difficult, as he foresaw.

All his movements were slow. He trembled as if paralyzed. He wanted to pick up some dry moss, but he couldn't get to his feet. Several times he tried to get up and eventually crawled on all fours. Once he crawled very close to a sick wolf. The beast reluctantly stepped aside and licked its muzzle, forcibly moving its tongue. The man noticed that the tongue was not healthy, red, but yellowish-brown, covered with semi-dried mucus.

After drinking boiling water, he felt that he could rise to his feet and even walk, although his strength was almost running out. He had to rest almost every minute. He walked with weak, unsteady steps, and the wolf trailed after him with the same weak, unsteady steps.

And that night, when the glittering sea hid in darkness, the man realized that he had come no closer than four miles to him.

At night, he heard the cough of a sick wolf all the time, and sometimes the cries of deer. There was life around, but life full of strength and health, and he understood that a sick wolf was trailing in the footsteps of a sick person in the hope that this person would die first. In the morning, opening his eyes, he saw that the wolf was looking at him sadly and greedily. The beast, looking like a tired, despondent dog, stood with its head bowed and its tail between its legs. He shivered in the cold wind and bared his teeth grimly as the man spoke to him in a voice that dropped to a hoarse whisper.

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“It would be nice to have at least two cartridges from those that are in our cache,” said one.

For a full minute he stood motionless, as if thinking, then he shouted:

“Listen, Bill, I sprained my leg!”

- Bill! he shouted.

Above the very horizon, the sun shone dimly, barely visible through the darkness and thick fog, which lay in a dense veil, without visible boundaries and outlines. Leaning on one leg with all his weight, the traveler took out his watch. It was already four. For the last two weeks he has lost count; since it was the end of July or the beginning of August, he knew that the sun must be in the northwest. He looked to the south, realizing that somewhere beyond those gloomy hills lay the Great Bear Lake, and that in the same direction the terrible path of the Arctic Circle ran across the Canadian plain. The river in the middle of which he stood was a tributary of the Coppermine, and the Coppermine also flows northward and empties into Coronation Bay, into the Arctic Ocean. He himself had never been there, but he had once seen these places on a map of the Hudson's Bay Company.

- Bill! he whispered, and repeated again, “Bill!