White Fang

e alone, in this particular, took after his father. He was the one little greycub of the litter. He had bred true to the straight wolf-stock

hem in a feeble, awkward way, and evento squabble, his little throat vibrating with a queer rasping noise (theforerunner of the growl), as he worked himself into a passion. And longbefore his eyes had opened he had learned by touch, taste, and sm

ake for longer periods oftime, and he was coming to learn his world quite well. His world wasgloomy; but he did not know

lair; but as hehad no knowledge of the wide world outside,

s. It had been anirresistible attraction before ever his eyes opened and looked upon it. Thelight from it had beat upon his sealed lids, and the eyes and the opticnerves had pulsated to little, sparklike flashes, warm-coloured andstrangely pleasing. The life of his

back-wall. The light drew them as if they were plants;the chemistry of the life that composed them demanded the light as anecessity of being; and their little puppet-bodies crawled blindly andchemically, like the tendrils of a vine. L

d him down and rolled him over andover with swift, calculating stroke. Thus he learned hurt; and on top of ithe learned to avoid hurt, first, by not incurring the risk of it; and second,when he had incurred the risk, by dodging and by retreating. These w

to beexpected. He was a carnivorous animal. He came of a breed of mea

a month old, when his eyes had been openfor but a week, he was beginning himself to eat meat - meat half-dige

re much more terriblethan theirs. It was he that first learned the trick of rolling a fellow-cub overwith a cunning paw-st

the mother the most trouble in keeping

light for the grey cub

other place, much less of a way to get there. So to him the entrance of thecave was a wall - a wall of light. As the sun was to the outside dweller, thiswall was to him the sun of his world. It attracted him as a candle attracts amoth. He was always striving to attain it. The lif

the light and was a bringer ofmeat) - his father had a way of walking right into the white far wall anddisappearing. The grey cub could not understand this. Though neverpermitted by his moth

ng into the wall as apeculiarity of his father, as milk

of men. His brain worked in dim ways. Yet hisconclusions were as sharp and distinct as those

s nose on the back-wall a few times, he acceptedthat he would not disappear into walls. In the same way he accepted thathis father could disappear into walls. But he

t first, the cubs whimpered andcried, but for the most part they slept. It was not long before they werereduced to a coma of hunger. There were no more spats and squabbles, nom

tter and went out in search of meat. In the first days after the birthof the cubs, One Eye had journeyed several times back to the Indian campand robbed th

took interest in the farwhite wall, he found t

no longer liftedher head nor moved about. His little body rounded out with the meat henow ate; but the food had come too late for

pearing and disappearing in the wall nor lying down asleep in theentr

the lynx, she hadfollowed a day-old trail of One Eye. And she had found him, or whatremained of him, at the end of the trail. There were many signs of thebattle that had been fought, and of the ly

fierce, bad-tempered creature and a terrible fighter. It was all verywell for half a dozen wolves to drive a lynx, spitting and bristling, up atree; bu

whether in the Wild or out of it; and the time was tocome when the she-wolf, for her gre