White Fang Chapter one

Cry after cry, and answering cries, were turning the silence into a bedlam.

And this was the epitaph of a dead dog on the Northland trail - less scant than the epitaph of many another dog, of many a man.

It crushed them into the remotest recesses of their own minds, pressing out of them, like juices from the grape, all the false ardours and exaltations and undue self-values of the human soul, until they perceived themselves finite and small, specks and motes, moving with weak cunning and little wisdom amidst the play and inter-play of the great blind elements and forces.

The wolf-dogs, clustered on the far side of the fire, snarled and bickered among themselves, but evinced no inclination to stray off into the darkness.

Eyelashes and cheeks and lips were so coated with the crystals from their frozen breath that their faces were not discernible.

It freezes the water to prevent it running to the sea; it drives the sap out of the trees till they are frozen to their mighty hearts; and most ferociously and terribly of all does the Wild harry and crush into submission man - man who is the most restless of life, ever in revolt against the dictum that all movement must in the end come to the cessation of movement.

He looked over the remainder of the team with a speculative eye that summed up instantly the salient traits of each animal.

But at front and rear, unawed and indomitable, toiled the two men who were not yet dead.

It freezes the water to prevent it running to the sea; it drives the sap out of the trees till they are frozen to their mighty hearts; and most ferociously and terribly of all does the Wild harry and crush into submission man - man who is the most restless of life, ever in revolt against the dictum that all movement must in the end come to the cessation of movement.

It was to the rear, somewhere in the snow expanse they had just traversed.