野性的呼唤
2012-8
译林出版社
[美]杰克·伦敦
105
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The Call of the Wild is a novel by Americanauthor Jack London published in 1903. The storytakes place in the extreme conditions of the Yukonduring the 19th-century Klondike Gold Rush, where strong sled dogs were in high demand. Afier Buck,a domesticated dog, is snatched from a pastoralranch in California, he is sold into a brutal life as asled dog. The novel details Buck's struggle to adjust and survive the cruel treatment he receives from humans, other dogs, and nature, and how he becomesa respected and feared leader in the wild. The Call of the Wild is London's most popular work and is considered as the masterpiece of his early period.
Jack London (1876-1916)was an American author, journalist, and socialactivist. He was a pioneer in the burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone. He is best remembered as the author of The Ca Hof the Wild and White Fang.
Chapter I Into the PrimitiveChapter II The Law of Club and FangChapter III The Dominant Primordial BeastChapter IV Who Has Won to MastershipChapter V The Toil ofTrace and TrailChapter VI For the Love ofa ManChapter VII The Sounding ofthe Call
Buck did not read the newspapers, or he would have known that trouble was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tidewater dog, strong of muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego. Because men, groping in the Arctic darkness, had found a yellow metal, and because steamship and transportation companies were booming the find, thousands of men were rushing into the Northland. These men wanted dogs, and the dogs they wanted were heavy dogs, with strong muscles by which to toil, and furry coats to protect them from the frost. Buck lived at a big house in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley. Judge Miller's place, it was called. It stood back from the road, half hidden among the trees, through which glimpses could be caught of the wide, cool veranda that ran around its four sides. The house was approached by gravelled driveways which wound about through wide-spreading lawns and under the interlacing boughs of tall poplars. At the rear things were on even a more spacious scale than at the front. There were great stables, where a dozen grooms and boys held forth, rows of vine-clad servants' cottages, an endless and orderly array of outhouses, long grape arbors green pastures, orchards, and berry patches. Then there was the pumping plant for the artesian well, and the big cement tank where Judge Miller's boys took their morning plunge and kept cool in the hot afternoon. By the time Cassiar Bar was reached, he was so weak that he wasfalling repeatedly in the traces. The Scotch half-breed called a halt andtook him out of the team, making the next dog, Sol-leks, fast to the sled.His intention was to rest Dave, letting him run free behind the sled. Sickas he was, Dave resented being taken out, grunting and growling whilethe traces were unfastened, and whimpering brokenheartedly when he sawSol-leks in the position he had held and served so long. For the pride oftrace and trail was his, and, sick unto death, he could not bear that anotherdog should do his work.When the sled started, he floundered in the soft snow alongside thebeaten trail, attacking Sol-leks with his teeth, rushing against him andtrying to thrust him offinto the soft snow on the other side, striving toleap inside his traces and get between him and the sled, and all the whilewhining and yelping and crying with grief and pain. The half-breed triedto drive him away with the whip; but he paid no heed to the stinging lash,and the man had not the heart to strike harder. Dave refused to run quietlyon the trail behind the sled, where the going was easy, but continued toflounder alongside in the soft snow, where the going was most difficult,till exhausted. Then he fell, and lay where he fell, howling lugubriously asthe long train of sleds chumed by.With the last remnant of his strength he managed to stagger alongbehind till the train made another stop, when he floundered past the sleds It was a hard trip, with the mail behind them, and the heavy workwore them down. They were short of weight and in poor condition whenthey made Dawson, and should have had a ten days' or a week's rest atleast. But in two days' time they dropped down the Yukon bank from theBarracks, loaded with letters for the outside. The dogs were tired, thedrivers grumbling, and to make matters worse, it snowed every day. Thismeant a soft trail, greater friction on the runners, and heavier pulling forthe dogs; yet the drivers were fair through it all, and did their best for theanimals.Each night the dogs were attended to first. They ate before the driversate, and no man sought his sleeping-robe till he had seen to the feet ofthe dogs he drove. Still, their strength went down. Since the beginningof the winter they had travelled eighteen hundred miles, dragging sledsthe whole weary distance; and eighteen hundred miles will tell upon lifeof the toughest. Buck stood it, keeping his mates up to their work andmaintaining discipline, though he, too, was very tired. Billee cried andwhimpered regularly in his sleep each night. Joe was sourer than ever, and Sol-Ieks was unapproachable, blind side or other side.But it was Dave who suffered most of all. Something had gonewrong with him. He became more morose and irritable, and when campwas pitched at once made his nest, where his driver fed him. Once outof the harness and down, he did not get on his feet again till harness-uptime in the morning. Sometimes, in the traces, when jerked by a suddenstoppage of the sled, or by straining to start it, he would cry out with pain.The driver examined him, but could find nothing. All the drivers becameinterested in his case. They talked it over at mealtime, and over their last to his own, where he stood alongside Sol-leks. His driver lingered amoment to get a light for his pipe from the man behind. Then he returnedand started his dogs. They swung out on the trail with remarkable lack ofexertion, turned their heads uneasily, and stopped in surprise. The driverwas surprised, too; the sled had not moved. He called his comrades towitness the sight. Dave had bitten through both of Sol-leks's traces, andwas standing directly in front ofthe sled in his proper place,He pleaded with his eyes to remain there. The driver was perplexed.His comrades talked of how a dog could break its heart through beingdenied the work that killed it, and recalled instances they had known,where dogs, too old for the toil, or injured, had died because they werecut out of the traces. Also, they held it a mercy, since Dave was to dieanyway, that he should die in the traces, heart-easy and content.So hewas harnessed in again, and proudly he pulled as of old, though more thanonce he cried out involuntarily from the bite of his inward hurt. Severaltimes he fell down and was dragged in the traces, and once the sled ranupon him so that he limped thereafier in one of his hind legs.But he held out till camp was reached, when his driver made a placefor lum by the fire. Morning found him too weak to travel. At harness-uptime he tried to crawl to his driver. By convulsive efforts he got on hisfeet, staggered, and fell. Then he wormed his way forward slowly towardwhere the harnesses were being put on his mates. He would advance hisfore legs and drag up his body with a sort of hitching movement, whenhe would advance his fore legs and hitch ahead again for a few moreinches. His strength left him. ……
The Call of the Wild is the greatest dog storyever written and ,is at the same time a study of oneof the most curious and profound motives that playhide-and-seek in the human soul. ——Carl Sandburg
一部表现野性与人性之间角斗的动物小说，再现弱肉强食、适者生存的丛林法则，入选美国兰登书屋推荐的“20世纪百部杰出英文小说”，最佳的文学经典读物最好的语言学习读本。
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