Love of Life Page #4

"Love of Life" is a short story by Jack London that encapsulates the themes of survival, resilience, and the will to live. Set in the harsh wilderness of the Yukon, it follows the harrowing journey of a prospector who faces extreme challenges after being separated from his companion. As he battles the relentless environment and his own deteriorating condition, the story highlights the indomitable spirit of humanity in the face of despair. London's vivid, evocative prose paints a gripping portrait of both the beauty and brutality of nature, making it a poignant exploration of the instinctual drive for survival.

								

ledge, wrapped in a piece of blanket, and returning the other half to
the sack. He also began to use strips of the one remaining blanket for
his feet. He still clung to his gun, for there were cartridges in that
cache by the river Dease.

This was a day of fog, and this day hunger awoke in him again. He was
very weak and was afflicted with a giddiness which at times blinded
him. It was no uncommon thing now for him to stumble and fall; and
stumbling once, he fell squarely into a ptarmigan nest. There were four
newly hatched chicks, a day old--little specks of pulsating life no
more than a mouthful; and he ate them ravenously, thrusting them alive
into his mouth and crunching them like egg-shells between his teeth.
The mother ptarmigan beat about him with great outcry. He used his gun
as a club with which to knock her over, but she dodged out of reach.
He threw stones at her and with one chance shot broke a wing. Then she
fluttered away, running, trailing the broken wing, with him in pursuit.

The little chicks had no more than whetted his appetite. He hopped
and bobbed clumsily along on his injured ankle, throwing stones and
screaming hoarsely at times; at other times hopping and bobbing
silently along, picking himself up grimly and patiently when he fell,
or rubbing his eyes with his hand when the giddiness threatened to
overpower him.

The chase led him across swampy ground in the bottom of the valley, and
he came upon footprints in the soggy moss. They were not his own--he
could see that. They must be Bill's. But he could not stop, for the
mother ptarmigan was running on. He would catch her first, then he
would return and investigate.

He exhausted the mother ptarmigan; but he exhausted himself. She lay
panting on her side. He lay panting on his side, a dozen feet away,
unable to crawl to her. And as he recovered she recovered, fluttering
out of reach as his hungry hand went out to her. The chase was resumed.
Night settled down and she escaped. He stumbled from weakness and
pitched head foremost on his face, cutting his cheek, his pack upon
his back. He did not move for a long while; then he rolled over on his
side, wound his watch, and lay there until morning.

Another day of fog. Half of his last blanket had gone into
foot-wrappings. He failed to pick up Bill's trail. It did not matter.
His hunger was driving him too compellingly--only--only he wondered
if Bill, too, were lost. By midday the irk of his pack became too
oppressive. Again he divided the gold, this time merely spilling half
of it on the ground. In the afternoon he threw the rest of it away,
there remaining to him only the half-blanket, the tin bucket, and the
rifle.

An hallucination began to trouble him. He felt confident that one
cartridge remained to him. It was in the chamber of the rifle and he
had overlooked it. On the other hand, he knew all the time that the
chamber was empty. But the hallucination persisted. He fought it off
for hours, then threw his rifle open and was confronted with emptiness.
The disappointment was as bitter as though he had really expected to
find the cartridge.

He plodded on for half an hour, when the hallucination arose again.
Again he fought it, and still it persisted, till for very relief he
opened his rifle to unconvince himself. At times his mind wandered
farther afield, and he plodded on, a mere automaton, strange conceits
and whimsicalities gnawing at his brain like worms. But these
excursions out of the real were of brief duration, for ever the pangs
of the hunger-bite called him back. He was jerked back abruptly once
from such an excursion by a sight that caused him nearly to faint. He
reeled and swayed, doddering like a drunken man to keep from falling.
Before him stood a horse. A horse! He could not believe his eyes. A
thick mist was in them, intershot with sparkling points of light. He
rubbed his eyes savagely to clear his vision, and beheld, not a horse,
but a great brown bear. The animal was studying him with bellicose
curiosity.

The man had brought his gun halfway to his shoulder before he realized.
He lowered it and drew his hunting-knife from its beaded sheath at
his hip. Before him was meat and life. He ran his thumb along the
edge of his knife. It was sharp. The point was sharp. He would fling
himself upon the bear and kill it. But his heart began its warning
thump, thump, thump. Then followed the wild upward leap and tattoo
of flutters, the pressing as of an iron band about his forehead, the
creeping of the dizziness into his brain.

His desperate courage was evicted by a great surge of fear. In his
weakness, what if the animal attacked him? He drew himself up to his
most imposing stature, gripping the knife and staring hard at the bear.
The bear advanced clumsily a couple of steps, reared up, and gave vent
to a tentative growl. If the man ran, he would run after him; but the
man did not run. He was animated now with the courage of fear. He, too,
growled, savagely, terribly, voicing the fear that is to life germane
and that lies twisted about life's deepest roots.

The bear edged away to one side, growling menacingly, himself appalled
by this mysterious creature that appeared upright and unafraid. But the
man did not move. He stood like a statue till the danger was past, when
he yielded to a fit of trembling and sank down into the wet moss.

He pulled himself together and went on, afraid now in a new way. It
was not the fear that he should die passively from lack of food, but
that he should be destroyed violently before starvation had exhausted
the last particle of the endeavor in him that made toward surviving.
There were the wolves. Back and forth across the desolation drifted
their howls, weaving the very air into a fabric of menace that was so
tangible that he found himself, arms in the air, pressing it back from
him as it might be the walls of a wind-blown tent.

Now and again the wolves, in packs of two and three, crossed his path.
But they sheered clear of him. They were not in sufficient numbers, and
besides they were hunting the caribou, which did not battle, while this
strange creature that walked erect might scratch and bite.

In the late afternoon he came upon scattered bones where the wolves
had made a kill. The debris had been a caribou calf an hour before,
squawking and running and very much alive. He contemplated the bones,
clean-picked and polished, pink with the cell-life in them which had
not yet died. Could it possibly be that he might be that ere the day
was done! Such was life, eh? A vain and fleeting thing. It was only
life that pained. There was no hurt in death. To die was to sleep. It
meant cessation, rest. Then why was he not content to die?

But he did not moralize long. He was squatting in the moss, a bone in
his mouth, sucking at the shreds of life that still dyed it faintly
pink. The sweet meaty taste, thin and elusive almost as a memory,
maddened him. He closed his jaws on the bones and crunched. Sometimes
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