The Unexpected

"The Unexpected" is a short story by Jack London that explores themes of survival, human resilience, and the unpredictability of nature. Set against the backdrop of the wilderness, the narrative follows a group of men facing unforeseen challenges that test their limits and camaraderie. Through vivid descriptions and intense situations, London delves into the complexities of human instinct and the unexpected twists of fate that can change lives in an instant. The story reflects London's characteristic rugged individualism and profound understanding of the human spirit in the face of adversity.

								
It is a simple matter to see the obvious, to do the expected. The
tendency of the individual life is to be static rather than dynamic,
and this tendency is made into a propulsion by civilization, where
the obvious only is seen, and the unexpected rarely happens. When
the unexpected does happen, however, and when it is of sufficiently
grave import, the unfit perish. They do not see what is not obvious,
are unable to do the unexpected, are incapable of adjusting their
well-grooved lives to other and strange grooves. In short, when they
come to the end of their own groove, they die.

On the other hand, there are those that make toward survival, the fit
individuals who escape from the rule of the obvious and the expected
and adjust their lives to no matter what strange grooves they may stray
into, or into which they may be forced. Such an individual was Edith
Whittlesey. She was born in a rural district of England, where life
proceeds by rule of thumb and the unexpected is so very unexpected
that when it happens it is looked upon as an immorality. She went
into service early, and while yet a young woman, by rule-of-thumb
progression, she became a lady's maid.

The effect of civilization is to impose human law upon environment
until it becomes machine-like in its regularity. The objectionable is
eliminated, the inevitable is foreseen. One is not even made wet by
the rain nor cold by the frost; while death, instead of stalking about
grewsome and accidental, becomes a prearranged pageant, moving along a
well-oiled groove to the family vault, where the hinges are kept from
rusting and the dust from the air is swept continually away.

Such was the environment of Edith Whittlesey. Nothing happened. It
could scarcely be called a happening, when, at the age of twenty-five,
she accompanied her mistress on a bit of travel to the United States.
The groove merely changed its direction. It was still the same groove
and well oiled. It was a groove that bridged the Atlantic with
uneventfulness, so that the ship was not a ship in the midst of the
sea, but a capacious, many-corridored hotel that moved swiftly and
placidly, crushing the waves into submission with its colossal bulk
until the sea was a mill-pond, monotonous with quietude. And at the
other side the groove continued on over the land--a well-disposed,
respectable groove that supplied hotels at every stopping-place, and
hotels on wheels between the stopping-places.

In Chicago, while her mistress saw one side of social life, Edith
Whittlesey saw another side; and when she left her lady's service and
became Edith Nelson, she betrayed, perhaps faintly, her ability to
grapple with the unexpected and to master it. Hans Nelson, immigrant,
Swede by birth and carpenter by occupation, had in him that Teutonic
unrest that drives the race ever westward on its great adventure. He
was a large-muscled, stolid sort of a man, in whom little imagination
was coupled with immense initiative, and who possessed, withal, loyalty
and affection as sturdy as his own strength.

"When I have worked hard and saved me some money, I will go to
Colorado," he had told Edith on the day after their wedding. A year
later they were in Colorado, where Hans Nelson saw his first mining
and caught the mining-fever himself. His prospecting led him through
the Dakotas, Idaho, and eastern Oregon, and on into the mountains
of British Columbia. In camp and on trail, Edith Nelson was always
with him, sharing his luck, his hardship, and his toil. The short
step of the house-reared woman she exchanged for the long stride
of the mountaineer. She learned to look upon danger clear-eyed and
with understanding, losing forever that panic fear which is bred of
ignorance and which afflicts the city-reared, making them as silly
as silly horses, so that they await fate in frozen horror instead of
grappling with it, or stampede in blind self-destroying terror which
clutters the way with their crushed carcasses.

Edith Nelson met the unexpected at every turn of the trail, and she
trained her vision so that she saw in the landscape, not the obvious,
but the concealed. She, who had never cooked in her life, learned to
make bread without the mediation of hops, yeast, or baking-powder, and
to bake bread, top and bottom, in a frying-pan before an open fire. And
when the last cup of flour was gone and the last rind of bacon, she was
able to rise to the occasion, and of moccasins and the softer-tanned
bits of leather in the outfit to make a grub-stake substitute that
somehow held a man's soul in his body and enabled him to stagger on.
She learned to pack a horse as well as a man,--a task to break the
heart and the pride of any city-dweller, and she knew how to throw the
hitch best suited for any particular kind of pack. Also, she could
build a fire of wet wood in a downpour of rain and not lose her temper.
In short, in all its guises she mastered the unexpected. But the Great
Unexpected was yet to come into her life and put its test upon her.

The gold-seeking tide was flooding northward into Alaska, and it was
inevitable that Hans Nelson and his wife should he caught up by the
stream and swept toward the Klondike. The fall of 1897 found them at
Dyea, but without the money to carry an outfit across Chilcoot Pass and
float it down to Dawson. So Hans Nelson worked at his trade that winter
and helped rear the mushroom outfitting-town of Skaguay.

He was on the edge of things, and throughout the winter he heard all
Alaska calling to him. Latuya Bay called loudest, so that the summer
of 1898 found him and his wife threading the mazes of the broken
coast-line in seventy-foot Siwash canoes. With them were Indians, also
three other men. The Indians landed them and their supplies in a lonely
bight of land a hundred miles or so beyond Latuya Bay, and returned to
Skaguay; but the three other men remained, for they were members of
the organized party. Each had put an equal share of capital into the
outfitting, and the profits were to be divided equally. In that Edith
Nelson undertook to cook for the outfit, a man's share was to be her
portion.

First, spruce trees were cut down and a three-room cabin constructed.
To keep this cabin was Edith Nelson's task. The task of the men was
to search for gold, which they did; and to find gold, which they
likewise did. It was not a startling find, merely a low-pay placer
where long hours of severe toil earned each man between fifteen and
twenty dollars a day. The brief Alaskan summer protracted itself beyond
its usual length, and they took advantage of the opportunity, delaying
their return to Skaguay to the last moment. And then it was too late.
Arrangements had been made to accompany the several dozen local Indians
on their fall trading trip down the coast. The Siwashes had waited on
the white people until the eleventh hour, and then departed. There was
no course left the party but to wait for chance transportation. In the
meantime the claim was cleaned up and firewood stocked in.

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