Burning Daylight

by Jack London

  CHAPTER V

  At Sixty Mile they restocked provisions, added a few pounds of lettersto their load, and held steadily on. From Forty Mile they had hadunbroken trail, and they could look forward only to unbroken trailclear to Dyea. Daylight stood it magnificently, but the killing pacewas beginning to tell on Kama. His pride kept his mouth shut, but theresult of the chilling of his lungs in the cold snap could not beconcealed. Microscopically small had been the edges of the lung-tissuetouched by the frost, but they now began to slough off, giving rise toa dry, hacking cough. Any unusually severe exertion precipitatedspells of coughing, during which he was almost like a man in a fit.The blood congested in his eyes till they bulged, while the tears randown his cheeks. A whiff of the smoke from frying bacon would starthim off for a half-hour's paroxysm, and he kept carefully to windwardwhen Daylight was cooking.

  They plodded days upon days and without end over the soft, unpackedsnow. It was hard, monotonous work, with none of the joy andblood-stir that went with flying over hard surface. Now one man to thefore in the snowshoes, and now the other, it was a case of stubborn,unmitigated plod. A yard of powdery snow had to be pressed down, andthe wide-webbed shoe, under a man's weight, sank a full dozen inchesinto the soft surface. Snowshoe work, under such conditions, calledfor the use of muscles other than those used in ordinary walking. Fromstep to step the rising foot could not come up and forward on a slant.It had to be raised perpendicularly. When the snowshoe was pressedinto the snow, its nose was confronted by a vertical wall of snowtwelve inches high. If the foot, in rising, slanted forward theslightest bit, the nose of the shoe penetrated the obstructing wall andtipped downward till the heel of the shoe struck the man's leg behind.Thus up, straight up, twelve inches, each foot must be raised everytime and all the time, ere the forward swing from the knee could begin.

  On this partially packed surface followed the dogs, the man at thegee-pole, and the sled. At the best, toiling as only picked men couldtoil, they made no more than three miles an hour. This meant longerhours of travel, and Daylight, for good measure and for a marginagainst accidents, hit the trail for twelve hours a day. Since threehours were consumed by making camp at night and cooking beans, bygetting breakfast in the morning and breaking camp, and by thawingbeans at the midday halt, nine hours were left for sleep andrecuperation, and neither men nor dogs wasted many minutes of thosenine hours.

  At Selkirk, the trading post near Pelly River, Daylight suggested thatKama lay over, rejoining him on the back trip from Dyea. A strayedIndian from Lake Le Barge was willing to take his place; but Kama wasobdurate. He grunted with a slight intonation of resentment, and thatwas all. The dogs, however, Daylight changed, leaving his ownexhausted team to rest up against his return, while he went on with sixfresh dogs.

  They travelled till ten o'clock the night they reached Selkirk, and atsix next morning they plunged ahead into the next stretch of wildernessof nearly five hundred miles that lay between Selkirk and Dyea. Asecond cold snap came on, but cold or warm it was all the same, anunbroken trail. When the thermometer went down to fifty below, it waseven harder to travel, for at that low temperature the hardfrost-crystals were more like sand-grains in the resistance theyoffered to the sled runners. The dogs had to pull harder than over thesame snow at twenty or thirty below zero. Daylight increased the day'stravel to thirteen hours. He jealously guarded the margin he hadgained, for he knew there were difficult stretches to come.

  It was not yet quite midwinter, and the turbulent Fifty Mile Rivervindicated his judgment. In many places it ran wide open, withprecarious rim-ice fringing it on either side. In numerous places,where the water dashed against the steep-sided bluffs, rim-ice wasunable to form. They turned and twisted, now crossing the river, nowcoming back again, sometimes making half a dozen attempts before theyfound a way over a particularly bad stretch. It was slow work. Theice-bridges had to be tested, and either Daylight or Kama went inadvance, snowshoes on their feet, and long poles carried crosswise intheir hands. Thus, if they broke through, they could cling to the polethat bridged the hole made by their bodies. Several such accidentswere the share of each. At fifty below zero, a man wet to the waistcannot travel without freezing; so each ducking meant delay. As soonas rescued, the wet man ran up and down to keep up his circulation,while his dry companion built a fire. Thus protected, a change ofgarments could be made and the wet ones dried against the nextmisadventure.

  To make matters worse, this dangerous river travel could not be done inthe dark, and their working day was reduced to the six hours oftwilight. Every moment was precious, and they strove never to loseone. Thus, before the first hint of the coming of gray day, camp wasbroken, sled loaded, dogs harnessed, and the two men crouched waitingover the fire. Nor did they make the midday halt to eat. As it was,they were running far behind their schedule, each day eating into themargin they had run up. There were days when they made fifteen miles,and days when they made a dozen. And there was one bad stretch wherein two days they covered nine miles, being compelled to turn theirbacks three times on the river and to portage sled and outfit over themountains.

  At last they cleared the dread Fifty Mile River and came out on Lake LeBarge. Here was no open water nor jammed ice. For thirty miles ormore the snow lay level as a table; withal it lay three feet deep andwas soft as flour. Three miles an hour was the best they could make,but Daylight celebrated the passing of the Fifty Mile by travelinglate. At eleven in the morning they emerged at the foot of the lake.At three in the afternoon, as the Arctic night closed down, he caughthis first sight of the head of the lake, and with the first stars tookhis bearings. At eight in the evening they left the lake behind andentered the mouth of the Lewes River. Here a halt of half an hour wasmade, while chunks of frozen boiled beans were thawed and the dogs weregiven an extra ration of fish. Then they pulled on up the river tillone in the morning, when they made their regular camp.

  They had hit the trail sixteen hours on end that day, the dogs had comein too tired to fight among themselves or even snarl, and Kama hadperceptibly limped the last several miles; yet Daylight was on trailnext morning at six o'clock. By eleven he was at the foot of WhiteHorse, and that night saw him camped beyond the Box Canon, the last badriver-stretch behind him, the string of lakes before him.

  There was no let up in his pace. Twelve hours a day, six in thetwilight, and six in the dark, they toiled on the trail. Three hourswere consumed in cooking, repairing harnesses, and making and breakingcamp, and the remaining nine hours dogs and men slept as if dead. Theiron strength of Kama broke. Day by day the terrific toil sapped him.Day by day he consumed more of his reserves of strength. He becameslower of movement, the resiliency went out of his muscles, and hislimp became permanent. Yet he labored stoically on, never shirking,never grunting a hint of complaint. Daylight was thin-faced and tired.

  He looked tired; yet somehow, with that marvelous mechanism of a bodythat was his, he drove on, ever on, remorselessly on. Never was hemore a god in Kama's mind than in the last days of the south-boundtraverse, as the failing Indian watched him, ever to the fore, pressingonward with urgency of endurance such as Kama had never seen nordreamed could thrive in human form.

  The time came when Kama was unable to go in the lead and break trail,and it was a proof that he was far gone when he permitted Daylight totoil all day at the heavy snowshoe work. Lake by lake they crossed thestring of lakes from Marsh to Linderman, and began the ascent ofChilcoot. By all rights, Daylight should have camped below the lastpitch of the pass at the dim end of day; but he kept on and over anddown to Sheep Camp, while behind him raged a snow-storm that would havedelayed him twenty-four hours.

  This last excessive strain broke Kama completely. In the morning hecould not travel. At five, when called, he sat up after a struggle,groaned, and sank back again. Daylight did the camp work of both,harnessed the dogs, and, when ready for the start, rolled the helplessIndian in all three sleeping robes and lashed him on top
of the sled.The going was good; they were on the last lap; and he raced the dogsdown through Dyea Canon and along the hard-packed trail that led toDyea Post. And running still, Kama groaning on top the load, andDaylight leaping at the gee-pole to avoid going under the runners ofthe flying sled, they arrived at Dyea by the sea.

  True to his promise, Daylight did not stop. An hour's time saw thesled loaded with the ingoing mail and grub, fresh dogs harnessed, and afresh Indian engaged. Kama never spoke from the time of his arrivaltill the moment Daylight, ready to depart, stood beside him to saygood-by. They shook hands.

  "You kill um dat damn Indian," Kama said. "Sawee, Daylight? You killum."

  "He'll sure last as far as Pelly," Daylight grinned.

  Kama shook his head doubtfully, and rolled over on his side, turninghis back in token of farewell.

  Daylight won across Chilcoot that same day, dropping down five hundredfeet in the darkness and the flurrying snow to Crater Lake, where hecamped. It was a 'cold' camp, far above the timber-line, and he hadnot burdened his sled with firewood. That night three feet of snowcovered them, and in the black morning, when they dug themselves out,the Indian tried to desert. He had had enough of traveling with whathe considered a madman. But Daylight persuaded him in grim ways tostay by the outfit, and they pulled on across Deep Lake and Long Lakeand dropped down to the level-going of Lake Linderman. It was the samekilling pace going in as coming out, and the Indian did not stand it aswell as Kama. He, too, never complained. Nor did he try again todesert. He toiled on and did his best, while he renewed his resolve tosteer clear of Daylight in the future. The days slipped into days,nights and twilight's alternating, cold snaps gave way to snow-falls,and cold snaps came on again, and all the while, through the longhours, the miles piled up behind them.

  But on the Fifty Mile accident befell them. Crossing an ice-bridge,the dogs broke through and were swept under the down-stream ice. Thetraces that connected the team with the wheel-dog parted, and the teamwas never seen again. Only the one wheel-dog remained, and Daylightharnessed the Indian and himself to the sled. But a man cannot takethe place of a dog at such work, and the two men were attempting to dothe work of five dogs. At the end of the first hour, Daylightlightened up. Dog-food, extra gear, and the spare ax were thrown away.Under the extraordinary exertion the dog snapped a tendon the followingday, and was hopelessly disabled. Daylight shot it, and abandoned thesled. On his back he took one hundred and sixty pounds of mail andgrub, and on the Indian's put one hundred and twenty-five pounds. Thestripping of gear was remorseless. The Indian was appalled when he sawevery pound of worthless mail matter retained, while beans, cups,pails, plates, and extra clothing were thrown by the board. One robeeach was kept, one ax, one tin pail, and a scant supply of bacon andflour. Bacon could be eaten raw on a pinch, and flour, stirred in hotwater, could keep men going. Even the rifle and the score of rounds ofammunition were left behind.

  And in this fashion they covered the two hundred miles to Selkirk.Daylight travelled late and early, the hours formerly used bycamp-making and dog-tending being now devoted to the trail. At nightthey crouched over a small fire, wrapped in their robes, drinking flourbroth and thawing bacon on the ends of sticks; and in the morningdarkness, without a word, they arose, slipped on their packs, adjustedhead-straps, and hit the trail. The last miles into Selkirk, Daylightdrove the Indian before him, a hollow-cheeked, gaunt-eyed wraith of aman who else would have lain down and slept or abandoned his burden ofmail.

  At Selkirk, the old team of dogs, fresh and in condition, wereharnessed, and the same day saw Daylight plodding on, alternatingplaces at the gee-pole, as a matter of course, with the Le Barge Indianwho had volunteered on the way out. Daylight was two days behind hisschedule, and falling snow and unpacked trail kept him two days behindall the way to Forty Mile. And here the weather favored. It was timefor a big cold snap, and he gambled on it, cutting down the weight ofgrub for dogs and men. The men of Forty Mile shook their headsominously, and demanded to know what he would do if the snow still fell.

  "That cold snap's sure got to come," he laughed, and mushed out on thetrail.

  A number of sleds had passed back and forth already that winter betweenForty Mile and Circle City, and the trail was well packed. And thecold snap came and remained, and Circle City was only two hundred milesaway. The Le Barge Indian was a young man, unlearned yet in his ownlimitations, and filled with pride.

  He took Daylight's pace with joy, and even dreamed, at first, that hewould play the white man out. The first hundred miles he looked forsigns of weakening, and marveled that he saw them not.

  Throughout the second hundred miles he observed signs in himself, andgritted his teeth and kept up. And ever Daylight flew on and on,running at the gee-pole or resting his spell on top the flying sled.The last day, clearer and colder than ever, gave perfect going, andthey covered seventy miles. It was ten at night when they pulled upthe earth-bank and flew along the main street of Circle City; and theyoung Indian, though it was his spell to ride, leaped off and ranbehind the sled. It was honorable braggadocio, and despite the factthat he had found his limitations and was pressing desperately againstthem, he ran gamely on.