Lost Face

by Jack London

  Transcribed from the 1919 Mills and Boon edition by David Price, emailccx074@pglaf.org

  LOST FACE

  BY JACK LONDON

  AUTHOR OF "THE JACKET," "THE VALLEY OF THE MOON," ETC.

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  ENTIRELY UNABRIDGED

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  MILLS & BOON, LIMITED 49 RUPERT STREET LONDON, W. 1

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  _First Published_ _1916__Second Impression_ _1917__Third Impression_ _1918__Fourth Impression_ _1919_

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  _Copyright in the United States of America by Jack London_

  CONTENTS

  PAGELOST FACE 11TRUST 29TO BUILD A FIRE 47THAT SPOT 71FLUSH OF GOLD 85THE PASSING OF MARCUS O'BRIEN 106THE WIT OF PORPORTUK 124

  LOST FACE

  It was the end. Subienkow had travelled a long trail of bitterness andhorror, homing like a dove for the capitals of Europe, and here, fartheraway than ever, in Russian America, the trail ceased. He sat in thesnow, arms tied behind him, waiting the torture. He stared curiouslybefore him at a huge Cossack, prone in the snow, moaning in his pain.The men had finished handling the giant and turned him over to the women.That they exceeded the fiendishness of the men, the man's cries attested.

  Subienkow looked on, and shuddered. He was not afraid to die. He hadcarried his life too long in his hands, on that weary trail from Warsawto Nulato, to shudder at mere dying. But he objected to the torture. Itoffended his soul. And this offence, in turn, was not due to the merepain he must endure, but to the sorry spectacle the pain would make ofhim. He knew that he would pray, and beg, and entreat, even as Big Ivanand the others that had gone before. This would not be nice. To passout bravely and cleanly, with a smile and a jest--ah! that would havebeen the way. But to lose control, to have his soul upset by the pangsof the flesh, to screech and gibber like an ape, to become the veriestbeast--ah, that was what was so terrible.

  There had been no chance to escape. From the beginning, when he dreamedthe fiery dream of Poland's independence, he had become a puppet in thehands of Fate. From the beginning, at Warsaw, at St. Petersburg, in theSiberian mines, in Kamtchatka, on the crazy boats of the fur-thieves,Fate had been driving him to this end. Without doubt, in the foundationsof the world was graved this end for him--for him, who was so fine andsensitive, whose nerves scarcely sheltered under his skin, who was adreamer, and a poet, and an artist. Before he was dreamed of, it hadbeen determined that the quivering bundle of sensitiveness thatconstituted him should be doomed to live in raw and howling savagery, andto die in this far land of night, in this dark place beyond the lastboundaries of the world.

  He sighed. So that thing before him was Big Ivan--Big Ivan the giant,the man without nerves, the man of iron, the Cossack turned freebooter ofthe seas, who was as phlegmatic as an ox, with a nervous system so lowthat what was pain to ordinary men was scarcely a tickle to him. Well,well, trust these Nulato Indians to find Big Ivan's nerves and trace themto the roots of his quivering soul. They were certainly doing it. Itwas inconceivable that a man could suffer so much and yet live. Big Ivanwas paying for his low order of nerves. Already he had lasted twice aslong as any of the others.

  Subienkow felt that he could not stand the Cossack's sufferings muchlonger. Why didn't Ivan die? He would go mad if that screaming did notcease. But when it did cease, his turn would come. And there was Yakagaawaiting him, too, grinning at him even now in anticipation--Yakaga, whomonly last week he had kicked out of the fort, and upon whose face he hadlaid the lash of his dog-whip. Yakaga would attend to him. DoubtlesslyYakaga was saving for him more refined tortures, more exquisitenerve-racking. Ah! that must have been a good one, from the way Ivanscreamed. The squaws bending over him stepped back with laughter andclapping of hands. Subienkow saw the monstrous thing that had beenperpetrated, and began to laugh hysterically. The Indians looked at himin wonderment that he should laugh. But Subienkow could not stop.

  This would never do. He controlled himself, the spasmodic twitchingsslowly dying away. He strove to think of other things, and began readingback in his own life. He remembered his mother and his father, and thelittle spotted pony, and the French tutor who had taught him dancing andsneaked him an old worn copy of Voltaire. Once more he saw Paris, anddreary London, and gay Vienna, and Rome. And once more he saw that wildgroup of youths who had dreamed, even as he, the dream of an independentPoland with a king of Poland on the throne at Warsaw. Ah, there it wasthat the long trail began. Well, he had lasted longest. One by one,beginning with the two executed at St. Petersburg, he took up the countof the passing of those brave spirits. Here one had been beaten to deathby a jailer, and there, on that bloodstained highway of the exiles, wherethey had marched for endless months, beaten and maltreated by theirCossack guards, another had dropped by the way. Always it had beensavagery--brutal, bestial savagery. They had died--of fever, in themines, under the knout. The last two had died after the escape, in thebattle with the Cossacks, and he alone had won to Kamtchatka with thestolen papers and the money of a traveller he had left lying in the snow.

  It had been nothing but savagery. All the years, with his heart instudios, and theatres, and courts, he had been hemmed in by savagery. Hehad purchased his life with blood. Everybody had killed. He had killedthat traveller for his passports. He had proved that he was a man ofparts by duelling with two Russian officers on a single day. He had hadto prove himself in order to win to a place among the fur-thieves. Hehad had to win to that place. Behind him lay the thousand-years-longroad across all Siberia and Russia. He could not escape that way. Theonly way was ahead, across the dark and icy sea of Bering to Alaska. Theway had led from savagery to deeper savagery. On the scurvy-rotten shipsof the fur-thieves, out of food and out of water, buffeted by theinterminable storms of that stormy sea, men had become animals. Thricehe had sailed east from Kamtchatka. And thrice, after all manner ofhardship and suffering, the survivors had come back to Kamtchatka. Therehad been no outlet for escape, and he could not go back the way he hadcome, for the mines and the knout awaited him.

  Again, the fourth and last time, he had sailed east. He had been withthose who first found the fabled Seal Islands; but he had not returnedwith them to share the wealth of furs in the mad orgies of Kamtchatka.He had sworn never to go back. He knew that to win to those dearcapitals of Europe he must go on. So he had changed ships and remainedin the dark new land. His comrades were Slavonian hunters and Russianadventurers, Mongols and Tartars and Siberian aborigines; and through thesavages of the new world they had cut a path of blood. They hadmassacred whole villages that refused to furnish the fur-tribute; andthey, in turn, had been massacred by ships' companies. He, with oneFinn, had been the sole survivor of such a company. They had spent awinter of solitude and starvation on a lonely Aleutian isle, and theirrescue in the spring by another fur-ship had been one chance in athousand.

  But always the terrible savagery had hemmed him in. Passing from ship toship, and ever refusing to return, he had come to the ship that exploredsouth. All down the Alaska coast they had encountered nothing but hostsof savages. Every anchorage among the beetling islands or under thefrowning cliffs of the mainland had meant
a battle or a storm. Eitherthe gales blew, threatening destruction, or the war canoes came off,manned by howling natives with the war-paint on their faces, who came tolearn the bloody virtues of the sea-rovers' gunpowder. South, south theyhad coasted, clear to the myth-land of California. Here, it was said,were Spanish adventurers who had fought their way up from Mexico. He hadhad hopes of those Spanish adventurers. Escaping to them, the rest wouldhave been easy--a year or two, what did it matter more or less--and hewould win to Mexico, then a ship, and Europe would be his. But they hadmet no Spaniards. Only had they encountered the same impregnable wall ofsavagery. The denizens of the confines of the world, painted for war,had driven them back from the shores. At last, when one boat was cut offand every man killed, the commander had abandoned the quest and sailedback to the north.

  The years had passed. He had served under Tebenkoff when MichaelovskiRedoubt was built. He had spent two years in the Kuskokwim country. Twosummers, in the month of June, he had managed to be at the head ofKotzebue Sound. Here, at this time, the tribes assembled for barter;here were to be found spotted deerskins from Siberia, ivory from theDiomedes, walrus skins from the shores of the Arctic, strange stonelamps, passing in trade from tribe to tribe, no one knew whence, and,once, a hunting-knife of English make; and here, Subienkow knew, was theschool in which to learn geography. For he met Eskimos from NortonSound, from King Island and St. Lawrence Island, from Cape Prince ofWales, and Point Barrow. Such places had other names, and theirdistances were measured in days.

  It was a vast region these trading savages came from, and a vaster regionfrom which, by repeated trade, their stone lamps and that steel knife hadcome. Subienkow bullied, and cajoled, and bribed. Every far-journeyeror strange tribesman was brought before him. Perils unaccountable andunthinkable were mentioned, as well as wild beasts, hostile tribes,impenetrable forests, and mighty mountain ranges; but always from beyondcame the rumour and the tale of white-skinned men, blue of eye and fairof hair, who fought like devils and who sought always for furs. Theywere to the east--far, far to the east. No one had seen them. It wasthe word that had been passed along.

  It was a hard school. One could not learn geography very well throughthe medium of strange dialects, from dark minds that mingled fact andfable and that measured distances by "sleeps" that varied according tothe difficulty of the going. But at last came the whisper that gaveSubienkow courage. In the east lay a great river where were theseblue-eyed men. The river was called the Yukon. South of MichaelovskiRedoubt emptied another great river which the Russians knew as theKwikpak. These two rivers were one, ran the whisper.

  Subienkow returned to Michaelovski. For a year he urged an expedition upthe Kwikpak. Then arose Malakoff, the Russian half-breed, to lead thewildest and most ferocious of the hell's broth of mongrel adventurers whohad crossed from Kamtchatka. Subienkow was his lieutenant. Theythreaded the mazes of the great delta of the Kwikpak, picked up the firstlow hills on the northern bank, and for half a thousand miles, in skincanoes loaded to the gunwales with trade-goods and ammunition, foughttheir way against the five-knot current of a river that ran from two toten miles wide in a channel many fathoms deep. Malakoff decided to buildthe fort at Nulato. Subienkow urged to go farther. But he quicklyreconciled himself to Nulato. The long winter was coming on. It wouldbe better to wait. Early the following summer, when the ice was gone, hewould disappear up the Kwikpak and work his way to the Hudson BayCompany's posts. Malakoff had never heard the whisper that the Kwikpakwas the Yukon, and Subienkow did not tell him.

  Came the building of the fort. It was enforced labour. The tiered wallsof logs arose to the sighs and groans of the Nulato Indians. The lashwas laid upon their backs, and it was the iron hand of the freebooters ofthe sea that laid on the lash. There were Indians that ran away, andwhen they were caught they were brought back and spread-eagled before thefort, where they and their tribe learned the efficacy of the knout. Twodied under it; others were injured for life; and the rest took the lessonto heart and ran away no more. The snow was flying ere the fort wasfinished, and then it was the time for furs. A heavy tribute was laidupon the tribe. Blows and lashings continued, and that the tributeshould be paid, the women and children were held as hostages and treatedwith the barbarity that only the fur-thieves knew.

  Well, it had been a sowing of blood, and now was come the harvest. Thefort was gone. In the light of its burning, half the fur-thieves hadbeen cut down. The other half had passed under the torture. OnlySubienkow remained, or Subienkow and Big Ivan, if that whimpering,moaning thing in the snow could be called Big Ivan. Subienkow caughtYakaga grinning at him. There was no gainsaying Yakaga. The mark of thelash was still on his face. After all, Subienkow could not blame him,but he disliked the thought of what Yakaga would do to him. He thoughtof appealing to Makamuk, the head-chief; but his judgment told him thatsuch appeal was useless. Then, too, he thought of bursting his bonds anddying fighting. Such an end would be quick. But he could not break hisbonds. Caribou thongs were stronger than he. Still devising, anotherthought came to him. He signed for Makamuk, and that an interpreter whoknew the coast dialect should be brought.

  "Oh, Makamuk," he said, "I am not minded to die. I am a great man, andit were foolishness for me to die. In truth, I shall not die. I am notlike these other carrion."

  He looked at the moaning thing that had once been Big Ivan, and stirredit contemptuously with his toe.

  "I am too wise to die. Behold, I have a great medicine. I alone knowthis medicine. Since I am not going to die, I shall exchange thismedicine with you."

  "What is this medicine?" Makamuk demanded.

  "It is a strange medicine."

  Subienkow debated with himself for a moment, as if loth to part with thesecret.

  "I will tell you. A little bit of this medicine rubbed on the skin makesthe skin hard like a rock, hard like iron, so that no cutting weapon cancut it. The strongest blow of a cutting weapon is a vain thing againstit. A bone knife becomes like a piece of mud; and it will turn the edgeof the iron knives we have brought among you. What will you give me forthe secret of the medicine?"

  "I will give you your life," Makamuk made answer through the interpreter.

  Subienkow laughed scornfully.

  "And you shall be a slave in my house until you die."

  The Pole laughed more scornfully.

  "Untie my hands and feet and let us talk," he said.

  The chief made the sign; and when he was loosed Subienkow rolled acigarette and lighted it.

  "This is foolish talk," said Makamuk. "There is no such medicine. Itcannot be. A cutting edge is stronger than any medicine."

  The chief was incredulous, and yet he wavered. He had seen too manydeviltries of fur-thieves that worked. He could not wholly doubt.

  "I will give you your life; but you shall not be a slave," he announced.

  "More than that."

  Subienkow played his game as coolly as if he were bartering for afoxskin.

  "It is a very great medicine. It has saved my life many times. I want asled and dogs, and six of your hunters to travel with me down the riverand give me safety to one day's sleep from Michaelovski Redoubt."

  "You must live here, and teach us all of your deviltries," was the reply.

  Subienkow shrugged his shoulders and remained silent. He blew cigarettesmoke out on the icy air, and curiously regarded what remained of the bigCossack.

  "That scar!" Makamuk said suddenly, pointing to the Pole's neck, where alivid mark advertised the slash of a knife in a Kamtchatkan brawl. "Themedicine is not good. The cutting edge was stronger than the medicine."

  "It was a strong man that drove the stroke." (Subienkow considered.)"Stronger than you, stronger than your strongest hunter, stronger thanhe."

  Again, with the toe of his moccasin, he touched the Cossack--a grislyspectacle, no longer conscious--yet in whose dismembered body thepain-racked life clung and was loth to go.
<
br />   "Also, the medicine was weak. For at that place there were no berries ofa certain kind, of which I see you have plenty in this country. Themedicine here will be strong."

  "I will let you go down river," said Makamuk; "and the sled and the dogsand the six hunters to give you safety shall be yours."

  "You are slow," was the cool rejoinder. "You have committed an offenceagainst my medicine in that you did not at once accept my terms. Behold,I now demand more. I want one hundred beaver skins." (Makamuk sneered.)

  "I want one hundred pounds of dried fish." (Makamuk nodded, for fishwere plentiful and cheap.) "I want two sleds--one for me and one for myfurs and fish. And my rifle must be returned to me. If you do not likethe price, in a little while the price will grow."

  Yakaga whispered to the chief.

  "But how can I know your medicine is true medicine?" Makamuk asked.

  "It is very easy. First, I shall go into the woods--"

  Again Yakaga whispered to Makamuk, who made a suspicious dissent.

  "You can send twenty hunters with me," Subienkow went on. "You see, Imust get the berries and the roots with which to make the medicine.Then, when you have brought the two sleds and loaded on them the fish andthe beaver skins and the rifle, and when you have told off the sixhunters who will go with me--then, when all is ready, I will rub themedicine on my neck, so, and lay my neck there on that log. Then canyour strongest hunter take the axe and strike three times on my neck.You yourself can strike the three times."

  Makamuk stood with gaping mouth, drinking in this latest and mostwonderful magic of the fur-thieves.

  "But first," the Pole added hastily, "between each blow I must put onfresh medicine. The axe is heavy and sharp, and I want no mistakes."

  "All that you have asked shall be yours," Makamuk cried in a rush ofacceptance. "Proceed to make your medicine."

  Subienkow concealed his elation. He was playing a desperate game, andthere must be no slips. He spoke arrogantly.

  "You have been slow. My medicine is offended. To make the offence cleanyou must give me your daughter."

  He pointed to the girl, an unwholesome creature, with a cast in one eyeand a bristling wolf-tooth. Makamuk was angry, but the Pole remainedimperturbable, rolling and lighting another cigarette.

  "Make haste," he threatened. "If you are not quick, I shall demand yetmore."

  In the silence that followed, the dreary northland scene faded beforehim, and he saw once more his native land, and France, and, once, as heglanced at the wolf-toothed girl, he remembered another girl, a singerand a dancer, whom he had known when first as a youth he came to Paris.

  "What do you want with the girl?" Makamuk asked.

  "To go down the river with me." Subienkow glanced over her critically."She will make a good wife, and it is an honour worthy of my medicine tobe married to your blood."

  Again he remembered the singer and dancer and hummed aloud a song she hadtaught him. He lived the old life over, but in a detached, impersonalsort of way, looking at the memory-pictures of his own life as if theywere pictures in a book of anybody's life. The chief's voice, abruptlybreaking the silence, startled him

  "It shall be done," said Makamuk. "The girl shall go down the river withyou. But be it understood that I myself strike the three blows with theaxe on your neck."

  "But each time I shall put on the medicine," Subienkow answered, with ashow of ill-concealed anxiety.

  "You shall put the medicine on between each blow. Here are the hunterswho shall see you do not escape. Go into the forest and gather yourmedicine."

  Makamuk had been convinced of the worth of the medicine by the Pole'srapacity. Surely nothing less than the greatest of medicines couldenable a man in the shadow of death to stand up and drive an old-woman'sbargain.

  "Besides," whispered Yakaga, when the Pole, with his guard, haddisappeared among the spruce trees, "when you have learned the medicineyou can easily destroy him."

  "But how can I destroy him?" Makamuk argued. "His medicine will not letme destroy him."

  "There will be some part where he has not rubbed the medicine," wasYakaga's reply. "We will destroy him through that part. It may be hisears. Very well; we will thrust a spear in one ear and out the other.Or it may be his eyes. Surely the medicine will be much too strong torub on his eyes."

  The chief nodded. "You are wise, Yakaga. If he possesses no otherdevil-things, we will then destroy him."

  Subienkow did not waste time in gathering the ingredients for hismedicine, he selected whatsoever came to hand such as spruce needles, theinner bark of the willow, a strip of birch bark, and a quantity ofmoss-berries, which he made the hunters dig up for him from beneath thesnow. A few frozen roots completed his supply, and he led the way backto camp.

  Makamuk and Yakaga crouched beside him, noting the quantities and kindsof the ingredients he dropped into the pot of boiling water.

  "You must be careful that the moss-berries go in first," he explained.

  "And--oh, yes, one other thing--the finger of a man. Here, Yakaga, letme cut off your finger."

  But Yakaga put his hands behind him and scowled.

  "Just a small finger," Subienkow pleaded.

  "Yakaga, give him your finger," Makamuk commanded.

  "There be plenty of fingers lying around," Yakaga grunted, indicating thehuman wreckage in the snow of the score of persons who had been torturedto death.

  "It must be the finger of a live man," the Pole objected.

  "Then shall you have the finger of a live man." Yakaga strode over tothe Cossack and sliced off a finger.

  "He is not yet dead," he announced, flinging the bloody trophy in thesnow at the Pole's feet. "Also, it is a good finger, because it islarge."

  Subienkow dropped it into the fire under the pot and began to sing. Itwas a French love-song that with great solemnity he sang into the brew.

  "Without these words I utter into it, the medicine is worthless," heexplained. "The words are the chiefest strength of it. Behold, it isready."

  "Name the words slowly, that I may know them," Makamuk commanded.

  "Not until after the test. When the axe flies back three times from myneck, then will I give you the secret of the words."

  "But if the medicine is not good medicine?" Makamuk queried anxiously.

  Subienkow turned upon him wrathfully.

  "My medicine is always good. However, if it is not good, then do by meas you have done to the others. Cut me up a bit at a time, even as youhave cut him up." He pointed to the Cossack. "The medicine is now cool.Thus, I rub it on my neck, saying this further medicine."

  With great gravity he slowly intoned a line of the "Marseillaise," at thesame time rubbing the villainous brew thoroughly into his neck.

  An outcry interrupted his play-acting. The giant Cossack, with a lastresurgence of his tremendous vitality, had arisen to his knees. Laughterand cries of surprise and applause arose from the Nulatos, as Big Ivanbegan flinging himself about in the snow with mighty spasms.

  Subienkow was made sick by the sight, but he mastered his qualms and madebelieve to be angry.

  "This will not do," he said. "Finish him, and then we will make thetest. Here, you, Yakaga, see that his noise ceases."

  While this was being done, Subienkow turned to Makamuk.

  "And remember, you are to strike hard. This is not baby-work. Here,take the axe and strike the log, so that I can see you strike like aman."

  Makamuk obeyed, striking twice, precisely and with vigour, cutting out alarge chip.

  "It is well." Subienkow looked about him at the circle of savage facesthat somehow seemed to symbolize the wall of savagery that had hemmed himabout ever since the Czar's police had first arrested him in Warsaw."Take your axe, Makamuk, and stand so. I shall lie down. When I raisemy hand, strike, and strike with all your might. And be careful that noone stands behind you. The medicine is good, and the axe may bounce fromoff my neck and right out of your han
ds."

  He looked at the two sleds, with the dogs in harness, loaded with fursand fish. His rifle lay on top of the beaver skins. The six hunters whowere to act as his guard stood by the sleds.

  "Where is the girl?" the Pole demanded. "Bring her up to the sledsbefore the test goes on."

  When this had been carried out, Subienkow lay down in the snow, restinghis head on the log like a tired child about to sleep. He had lived somany dreary years that he was indeed tired.

  "I laugh at you and your strength, O Makamuk," he said. "Strike, andstrike hard."

  He lifted his hand. Makamuk swung the axe, a broadaxe for the squaringof logs. The bright steel flashed through the frosty air, poised for aperceptible instant above Makamuk's head, then descended upon Subienkow'sbare neck. Clear through flesh and bone it cut its way, biting deeplyinto the log beneath. The amazed savages saw the head bounce a yard awayfrom the blood-spouting trunk.

  There was a great bewilderment and silence, while slowly it began to dawnin their minds that there had been no medicine. The fur-thief hadoutwitted them. Alone, of all their prisoners, he had escaped thetorture. That had been the stake for which he played. A great roar oflaughter went up. Makamuk bowed his head in shame. The fur-thief hadfooled him. He had lost face before all his people. Still theycontinued to roar out their laughter. Makamuk turned, and with bowedhead stalked away. He knew that thenceforth he would be no longer knownas Makamuk. He would be Lost Face; the record of his shame would be withhim until he died; and whenever the tribes gathered in the spring for thesalmon, or in the summer for the trading, the story would pass back andforth across the camp-fires of how the fur-thief died peaceably, at asingle stroke, by the hand of Lost Face.

  "Who was Lost Face?" he could hear, in anticipation, some insolent youngbuck demand, "Oh, Lost Face," would be the answer, "he who once wasMakamuk in the days before he cut off the fur-thief's head."