 This is the LibraVox recording. All LibraVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibraVox.org. This reading by Lucy Burgoyne. An Old Mate of Your Fathers by Henry Lawson. You remember when we hurried home from the old Bush school, how we were sometimes startled by a bearded apparition, who smiled kindly down on us, and whom our mother introduced as we raked off our hats, as an old mate of your fathers on the diggings, Johnny. And he would pat our heads and say we were fine boys, all girls, as the case may have been, and that we had our fathers' nose but our mother's eyes, all the other way about, and say that the baby was the dead spit of its mother, and then added, for fathers' benefit, but yet he's like you, Tom. It did seem strange to the children to hear him address the old man by his Christian name, considering that the mother always referred to him as father. She called the old mate Mr. So-and-So, and father called him Bill, or something to that effect. Occasionally the old mate would come dressed in the latest city fashion, and at other times in a new suit of rich midowns, and yet again he would turn up in clean white mould skins, washed tweed coat, creamy and shirt, blue chiboot, soft felt hat, with the fresh-looking speckled handkerchief round his neck. But his face was mostly round and brown and jolly. His hands were always horny, and his beard grey. Sometimes he might have seemed strange and uncoothed to us at first, but the old man never appeared the least surprised at anything he said or did. They understood each other so well, and we would soon take to this relic of our father's past, who would have fruit or lollies for us, strange that he always remembered them, and would surreptitiously slip shillings into our dirty little hands, and tell us stories about the old days, when me and your father was on the diggins, and you wasn't thought of my boy. Sometimes the old mate would stay over Sunday, and in the fall noon or after dinner, he and father would take a walk amongst the deserted shafts of Sapling Gully, or along Quartz Ridge, and criticise old ground, and talk of past diggers, mistakes, taken bottoms, and fillers, and dips, and leads, also outcrops, and absently picked up pieces of quartz and slate, rubbed them on their sleeves, looked at them in an obstructed manner, and dropped them again, and they would talk of some old lead they had worked on. Hogan's party was here on one side of us, Macintosh was here on the other, Mac was getting good gold, and so was Hogan, and now, while the blankety-blank went we on gold, and the mate would always agree that there was gold in them ridges and gullies yet, if a man only had the money behind him to get at it, and then perhaps the governor would show him a spot where he intended to put down a shaft someday. The old man was always thinking of putting down a shaft, and these two old fifty-niners would mooch round and sit on their heels on the sunny mellow keeps and braid clay lumps between their hands, and lay plans for the putting down a shaft and smoke till an urchin was sent to look for his father and Mr. So-and-so, and tell him to come to their dinner. And again, mostly in the fresh of the morning, they would hang about the fences on the selection and review the livestock. Five dusty skeleton cows, a hollow-sided carp or two, and one shocking piece of a queen's scenery, which, by the way, the old mate always praised, that the selector's heart was not in farming nor on selections, it was far away with the last new rush in Western Australia or Queensland, or perhaps buried in the worked-out ground of Tambura, Married Man's Creek, or Araloon, and by and by the memory of some half-forgotten reef or lead or last chance, Nildes brandum or brown snake claim would take their thoughts far back and away from the dusty patch of sods and struggling sprouts called the crop, or the few discouraged half-dead slits which comprise the orchard. Then their conversation would be pointed with many golden points, bakery hill, deep creeks, mateland bars, specimen flats, and Chinaman scullies. And so they'd yarn till the youngster came to tell him that mother says the breakfast is getting cold, and then the old mate would rouse himself and stretch and say, well, we mustn't keep the missus waiting, Tom. And after tea they would sit on a log of the wood heap or the edge of the veranda, that is, in warm weather, and yarn about Ballarat and Bendigo, of the days when we spoke of being on a place oftener than at it, on Ballarat, on Galgon, on Lambing Flat, on Creswick, and they would use the definite article before the names as On the Terrain, the Lachlan, the Home Rule, the Canadian Lead. Then again they'd yarn of old mates such as Tom Brooke, Jack Henright, and poor Martin Ratcliffe, who was killed in his golden hole and of the men whom they didn't seem to have known much about. And he went by the names of Adelaide Adolphus, Cornie George, and other names, which might have been more or less applicable. And sometimes they'd get talking, low and mysterious like, about the Eureka Stockade, and if we didn't understand and ask questions, what was the Eureka Stockade, or what did they do it for? Father would say, Now run away, Sonny, and don't bother. Me and Mr. So-and-so want to talk. Father had the mark of a hole on his leg, which he said he got through a gun accident when a boy and a scar on his side that we saw when he was in swimming with us. He said he got that in an accident in a quartz crushing machine. Mr. So-and-so had a big scar on the side of his forehead which was caused by a pick accidentally slipping out of a loop in the rope and falling down a shark where he was working. But how was it they talked low, and their eyes brightened up, and they didn't look at each other, but away over sunset, and had to get up and walk about and take a stroll in the cool of the evening when they talked about Eureka. And again they'd talked lower and more mysterious like, and perhaps mother would be passing the wood heap and catch a word and ask, Who was she, Tom? And Tom, Father, would say, Oh, you didn't know her, Mary, she belonged to a family Bill knew at home. And Bill would look solemn till mother had gone, and then they would smile a quiet smile and stretch and say, Ah well, and start something else. They had yarns for the fireside too, some of those old mates of their fathers, and one of them would often tell how a girl, a queen of the diggings, was married, and had her wedding ring made out of the gold of that field, and how the diggers weighed their gold with the new wedding ring for luck by hanging the ring on the hook of the scales and attaching their chamois leather gold bags to it. Whereupon she boasted that four hundred ounces of the precious metal passed through her wedding ring, and how they lowered the young bride, blindfolded, down a golden hole in a big bucket, and got her to point out the drive from which the gold came that her ring was made out of. The point of this story seems to have been lost, or else we forget it, but it was characteristic. Had the girl been lowered down a duffer, and asked to point out the way to the gold, and had she done so successfully, there would have been some sense in it. And they would talk of King and Maggie Oliver, and G. V. Brooke, and others, and remember how the diggers went five miles out to meet the coach that brought the girl actress, and took the horses out and brought her in, in triumph, and worshipped her, and sent her off in glory, and threw nuggets into her lap, and how she stood upon the box seat and tore her sailor hat to pieces, and threw the fragments amongst the crown, and how the diggers fought for the bits and thrust them inside their shirt bosoms, and how she broke down and cried, and could in her turn have worshipped those men, loved them, everyone, they were boys all, and gentlemen all. There were college men, artists, poets, musicians, journalists, Bohemians all. Men from all the lands, and one. They understood art, and poverty was dead. And perhaps the old mate would say slyly, but with a sad, quiet smile. Have you got that bit of straw yet, Tom? Those old mates had each three pasts behind them, the two they told each other when they became mates, and the one they had shared. And when the visitor had gone by the coach, we noticed that the old man would smoke a lot, and think as much, and take great interest in the fire, and be a trifle irritable perhaps. Those old mates of our fathers are getting few and far between, and only happen along once in a way to keep the old man's memory afresh, as it were. We met one today, and had a yarn with him, and afterwards we got thinking, and somehow begun to wonder whether those ancient friends of ours were, or were not, better and kinder to their mates than we of the rising generation are to our fathers, and the doubt is painfully on the wrong side in the story. 2006 Sitka Charlie smoked his pipe and gazed thoughtfully at the police gazette illustration on the wall. For half an hour he had been steadily regarding it, and for half an hour I had been slyly watching him. Something else was going on in that mind of his, and whatever it was I knew it was well worth knowing. He had lived life and seen things, and performed that prodigy of prodigies, namely the turning of his back on his own people, and in, so far as it was possible for an Indian, becoming a white man even in his mental processes. As he phrased it himself, he had come into the warm, sat among us by our fires, and become one of us. He had never learned to read nor write, but his vocabulary was remarkable, and more remarkable still was the completeness with which he had assumed the white man's point of view. The white man's attitude towards things. We had struck this deserted cabin after a hard day on trail. The dogs had been fed, the supper dishes washed, the beds made, and we were now enjoying that most delicious hour that comes each day, and but once each day on the Alaskan Trail, the hour when nothing intervenes between the tired body and bed, save the smoking of the evening pipe. Some former denizen of the cabin had decorated its walls with illustrations torn from magazines and newspapers, and it was these illustrations that had held Sitka Charlie's attention from the moment of our arrival two hours before. He had studied them intently, ranging from one to another and back again, and I could see that there was uncertainty in his mind and be puzzlement. Well, I finally broke the silence. He took the pipe from his mouth and said simply, I do not understand. He smoked on again and again removed the pipe, using it to point at the police-gazette illustration. That picture. What does it mean? I do not understand. A man with a preposterously wicked face, his right hand pressed dramatically to his heart, was falling backward to the floor, confronting him with a face that was a composite of destroying Angel and Adonis, was a man holding a smoking revolver. One man is killing the other man, I said, aware of a distinct bepuzzlement of my own and of failure to explain. Why? asked Sitka Charlie. I do not know, I confessed. That picture is all end, he said, it has no beginning. It is life, I said. Life has beginning, he objected. I was silenced for the moment, while his eyes wandered on to an adjoining decoration, a photographic reproduction of somebody's Lita and the Swan. That picture, he said, has no beginning, it has no end. I do not understand pictures. Look at that picture, I commanded, pointing to a third decoration. It means something, tell me what it means to you. He studied it for several minutes. The little girl is sick, he said, finally. That is the doctor looking at her. They have been up all night. See, the oil is low in the lamp. The first morning light is coming in at the window. It is a great sickness. Maybe she will die. That is why the doctor looks so hard. That is the mother. It is a great sickness, because the mother's head is on the table and she is crying. How do you know she is crying, I interrupted. You cannot see her face. Perhaps she is asleep. Sitka Charlie looked at me and swift surprised, then back at the picture. It was evident that he had not reasoned the impression. Perhaps she is asleep, he repeated. He studied it closely. No, she is not asleep. The shoulders show that she is not asleep. I have seen the shoulders of a woman who cried. The mother is crying. It is a very great sickness. And now you understand the picture I cried. He shook his head and asked. The little girl, does it die? It was my turn for silence. Does it die, he reiterated. You are a painter man. Maybe you know. No, I do not know, I confessed. It is not life, he delivered himself dogmatically. In life little girl die or get well. Something happened in life. In picture nothing happened. No, I do not understand pictures. His disappointment was patent. It was his desire to understand all things that white men understand. And here in this matter he failed. I felt also that there is challenge in his attitude. He was bent upon compelling me to show him the wisdom of pictures. Besides, he had remarkable powers of visualization. I had long since learned this. He visualized everything. He saw life in pictures, felt life in pictures, generalized life in pictures, and yet he did not understand pictures when seen through other men's eyes and expressed by those men with color and line upon canvas. Pictures are bits of life, I said. We paint life as we see it. For instance, Charlie, you are coming along the trail. It is night. You see a cabin. The window is lighted. You look through the window for one second or for two seconds. You see something and you go on your way. You saw maybe a man writing a letter. You saw something without beginning or end. Nothing happened. Yet it was a bit of life you saw. You remember it afterward. It is like a picture in your memory. The window is the frame of the picture. I could see that he was interested and I knew that as I spoke he had looked through the window and seen the man writing the letter. There is a picture you have painted that I understand, he said. It is a true picture. It has much meaning. It is a pharaoh table. There are men playing. It is a large game. The limit is off. How do you know the limit is off? I broke in excitedly. For here was where my work could be tried out on an unbiased judge who knew life only and not art and who was a sheer master of reality. Also, I was very proud of that particular piece of work. I had named it The Last Turn. And I believed it to be one of the best things I had ever done. There are no chips on the table, Sitka Charlie explained. The men are playing with markers. That means the roof is the limit. One man play yellow markers. Maybe one yellow marker worth $1,000. Maybe $2,000. One man play red markers. Maybe they are worth $500. Maybe $1,000. It is a very big game. Everybody play very high up to the roof. You know, you make the dealer with blood a little bit warm in his face. I was delighted. The lookout. You make him lean forward in his chair. Why he lean forward? Why his face very much quiet? Why his eyes very much bright? Why dealer warm with blood a little bit in the face? Why all men very quiet? The man with yellow markers? The man with white markers? The man with red markers? Nobody talk. Because very much money. Because last turn. How do you know it is the last turn? I asked. The king is coppered. The seven is played open, he answered. Nobody bet on other cards. Other cards all gone. Everybody won mind. Everybody play king to lose. Seven to win. Maybe bank lose $20,000. Maybe bank win. Maybe I understand. Yet you do not know the AND I cried triumphantly. It is the last turn. But the cards are not yet turned. In the picture they will never be turned. Nobody will ever know who wins nor who loses. And the men will sit there and never talk, he said. Wonder and awe growing in his face. And the lookout will lean forward and the blood will be warm in the face of the dealer. It is a strange thing. Always will they sit there, always. And the cards will never be turned. It is a picture, I said. It is life. You have seen things like it yourself. He looked at me and pondered. Then said very slowly. Know as you say there is no end to it. Nobody will ever know the end. Yet it is a true thing. I have seen it. It is life. For a long time he smoked on in silence, weighing the pictorial wisdom of the white man and verifying it by the facts of life. He nodded his head several times and grunted once or twice. Then he knocked the ashes from his pipe, carefully refilled it, and after a thoughtful pause lighted it again. Then have I too seen many pictures of life he began. Pictures not painted but seen with the eyes. I have looked at them like through the window at the man writing the letter. I have seen many pieces of life without beginning, without end, without understanding. With a sudden change of position he turned his eyes full upon me and regarded me thoughtfully. Look you, he said. You are a painter man. How would you paint this which I saw? A picture without beginning. The ending of which I do not understand. A piece of life with the northern lights for a candle and Alaska for a frame. It is a large canvas, I murmured. But he ignored me for the picture he had in mind was before his eyes and he was seeing it. There are many names for this picture, he said. But in the picture there are many sun-dogs and it comes into my mind to call it the sun-dog trail. It was a long time ago, seven years ago, the fall of 97 when I saw the woman first time. At Lake Linderman I had one canoe very good Peterborough canoe. I came over Chilkoot Pass with good Peterborough canoe. I came over Chilkoot Pass with 2,000 letters for Dawson. I was letter carrier. Everybody rushed to Klondike at that time. Many people on trail. Many people chopped down trees on boats. Last water, snow in the air, snow on the ground, ice on the lake, on the river, ice in the yetis. Every day, more snow, more ice. Maybe one day, maybe three days, maybe six days, any day, maybe freeze up, come. Then, no more water, all ice. Everybody walk. Dawson 600 miles, long time walk. Everybody want to go boat. Everybody say, Charlie $200, you take me in canoe. Charlie $300. Charlie $400. I say no. All the time I say no. I am letter carrier. In morning I get to Lake Linderman. I walk all night and am much tired. I cook breakfast, I eat, then I sleep on the beach three hours. I wake up. It is ten o'clock, snow is falling. There is wind. Much wind that blows fair. Also, there is a woman who sits in the snow alongside. She is white woman. She is young, very pretty. Maybe she is twenty years old. Maybe twenty five years old. She look at me. I look at her. She is very tired. She is no dance woman. I see that right away. She is good woman and she is very tired. Maybe she says, I get up quick and roll blankets so snow does not get inside. I go to Dawson, she says. I go in your canoe. How much? I do not want anybody in my canoe. I do not like to say no. So I say, $1,000. Just for fun I say it. So woman cannot come with me. Much better than say no. She look at me very hard. I start. I say right away. Then she says, all right. She will give me $1,000. What can I say? I do not want the woman yet I have given my word that for $1,000 she can come. I am surprised. Maybe she make fun too. So I say, let me see $1,000. And that woman, that young woman, all alone on the trail of greenbacks. And she put them in my hand. I look at money. I look at her. What can I say? I say, no. My canoe very small. There is no room for outfit. She laugh. She says, I am great traveler. This is my outfit. She kick one small pack in the snow. It is two fur robes. Canvas outside. 35 pounds. I am surprised. She take it away from me. She says, come, let us start. She carries pack into canoe. What can I say? I put my blankets into canoe. We start. And that is the way I saw the woman first time. The wind was fair. I put up small sail. The canoe went very fast. It flew like a bird over the high waves. Some clondike much afraid, I ask. She laugh at me. A hard laugh. But she is still much afraid. Also she is very tired. I run canoe through rapids to Lake Bennett. Water very bad. And woman cry out because she is afraid. We go down Lake Bennett. Snow. Ice. Wind like a gale. But woman is very tired and go to sleep. That night we camp at Windy Arm. And sit by fire and eat supper. I look at her. She is pretty. She fix hair. There is much hair. And it is brown. Also sometimes it is like gold in the fire light. When she turn her head. So, and flashes come from it. Like golden fire. The eyes are large and brown. Sometimes warm like a candle behind a curtain. Sometimes very hard and bright. Like broken ice when sun shines upon it. When she smile. How can I say? When she smile. I know white man like to kiss her. Just like that. When she smile. She never do hard work. Her hands are soft like baby's hand. She is soft all over like baby. She is not thin. But round like baby. Her arm. Her leg. Her muscles. All soft and round like baby. Her waist is small. When she stand up. When she walk. Or move her head or arm. It is. I do not know the word. But it is nice to look at. Like. Maybe I can say she is built on lines. Like the lines of a good canoe. Just like that. And when she move. She is like the movement of the good canoe. Sliding through still water. Or leaping through water. Why does she come into Klondike. All alone. With plenty of money. I do not know. Next day I ask her. She laugh and says. Sitka Charlie. That is none of your business. I give you one thousand dollars. Take me to Dawson. That only is your business. Next day after that. I ask her what is her name. She laugh. Then she says. Mary Jones. I do not know her name. But I know all the time. That Mary Jones is not her name. It is very cold in canoe. Because of cold. Sometimes she not feel good. Sometimes she feel good. And she sing. Her voice is like a silver bell. And I feel good all over. Like when I go into church. At holy cross mission. And when she sing. I feel strong. And paddle like hell. Then she laugh and says. Listen before freeze up Charlie. Sometimes she sit in canoe. And is thinking far away. Her eyes like that. All empty. She does not see Sitka Charlie. Nor the ice. Nor the snow. She is far away. Very often she is like that. Thinking far away. Sometimes when she is thinking far away. Her face is not good to see. It looks like a face that is angry. Like when the face of one man. When he want to kill another man. Last day to Dawson very bad. Shore ice in all the eddies. Mush ice in the stream. I cannot paddle. The canoe freezes to ice. I cannot get to shore. There is much danger. All the time we go down Yukon in the ice. That night there is much noise of ice. Then ice stop. Canoes stop. Everything stop. Let us go to shore the woman says. I say no better wait. By and by everything start downstream again. There is much snow. I cannot see. At eleven o'clock at night everything stop. At one o'clock everything start again. At three o'clock everything stop. Canoes is smashed like eggshell. But is on top of ice and cannot sink. I hear dogs howling. We wait. We sleep. By and by morning come. There is no more snow. It is the freeze up and there is Dawson. Canoes smash and stop. Right at Dawson. Sitka Charlie has come in with two thousand letters on very last water. The woman rent a cabin on the hill and for one week I see her no more. Then one day she come to me. Charlie she says. How do you like to work for me? You drive dogs. Make camp. Travel with me. I say that I make too much money carrying letters. She says. Charlie I will pay you more money. I tell her that pick and shovel man get fifteen dollars a day in the mines. She says. That is four hundred and fifty dollars a month. And I say. Sitka Charlie is no pick and shovel man. Then she says. I understand Charlie. I will give you seven hundred and fifty dollars each month. It is a good price. And I go to work for her. I buy for her dogs and sled. We travel up Klondike, up Bonanza and El Dorado. Over to Indian River to Sulphur Creek to Dominion. Back across Divide to Gold Bottom and to Too Much Gold and back to Dawson. All the time she look for something I do not know what. I am puzzled. What thing you look for? I ask. She laugh. Then she says. That is none of your business Charlie. And after that I never ask anymore. She has a small revolver which she carries in her belt. Sometimes on trail she makes practice with revolver. I laugh. What for you laugh Charlie? She ask. What for you play with that? I say. It is no good. It is too small. A little play thing. When we get back to Dawson she ask me to buy a good revolver for her. I buy a Colts 44. It is very heavy. But she carry it in her belt all the time. At Dawson comes the man. Which way he come I do not know. Only do I know he is check a quo. What you call tender foot. His hands are soft just like hers. He never do hard work. He is soft all over. At first I think maybe he is her husband. But he is too young. Also they make two beds at night. He is maybe 20 years old. His eyes blue. His hair yellow. He has a little mustache. Which is yellow. His name is John Jones. Maybe he is her brother. I do not know. I ask questions no more. Only I think his name not John Jones. Other people call him Mr. Gervan. I do not think that is his name. I do not think her name is Ms. Gervan. Which other people call her. I think nobody know their names. One night I am asleep at Dawson. He wake me up. He says get the dogs ready. We start. No more do I ask questions. So I get the dogs ready and we start. We go down the Yukon. It is night time. She is soft. He is soft. The cold bites. They get tired. They cry under their breaths to themselves. By and by I say better we stop and make camp. But they say that they will go on. Three times I say better to make camp and rest. But each time they say they will go on. After that I say nothing. All the time day after day is it that way. They are very soft. They get stiff and sore. They do not understand moccasins and their feet hurt very much. They limp. They stagger like drunken people. They cry under their breaths. And all the time they say on, on we will go on. They are like crazy people. All the time do they go on and on. Why do they go on? I do not know. What are they after? I do not know. They are not after gold. There is no stampede. Besides, they spend plenty of money. But I ask questions no more. I too go on and on because I am strong on the trail and because I am greatly paid. We make circle city. That for which they look is not there. I think now that we will rest and rest the dogs. But we do not rest. Why do we rest? Come, says the woman to the man. Let us go on. And we go on. We leave the Yukon. We cross the divide to the west and swing down into Tanana country. There are new diggings there. But that for which they look is not there. And we take the back trail to circle city. It is a hard journey. December is most gone. The days are short. It is almost zero. Better that we do not travel today, I say. Else will the frost be unwarmed in the breathing and bite all the edges of our lungs. After that we will have bad cough and maybe next spring will come pneumonia. But they are, check a quo. They do not understand the trail. They are like dead people. They are so tired. But they say, let us go on. We go on. The frost bites their lungs and cough. They cough till the tears run down their cheeks. When bacon is frying they must run away from the fire and cough half an hour in the snow. They freeze their cheeks a little bit so that the skin turns black and is very sore. Also the man freezes his thumb till the end is like to come off and he must wear a large thumb on his mitten to keep it warm. And sometimes when the frost bites hard and the thumb is very cold the man between his legs next to the skin so that the thumb may get warm again. We limp into circle city and even I, Sitka Charlie, am tired. It is Christmas Eve. I dance, drink, make a good time for tomorrow is Christmas day and we will rest. But no. It is five o'clock in the morning, Christmas morning. I am two hours asleep. The man stand by my bed. We start. Have I not said that I ask questions no more? They pay me $750 each month. They are my masters. I am their man. If they say, Charlie, come let us start for hell. I will harness the dogs and snap the whip and start for hell. So I harness the dogs and we start down the Yukon. Where do we go? They do not say. Only do they say, on, they are very weary. They have traveled many hundreds of miles and they do not understand the way of the trail. Besides their cough is very bad. The dry cough that makes strong men swear and weak men cry but they go on. Every day they go on. Never do they rest the dogs. Always do they buy new dogs. At every camp, at every post, at every Indian village do they cut out the tired dogs and fresh dogs. They have spent much money. Money without end and like water they spend it. They are crazy? Sometimes I think so for there is a devil in them that drives them on and on. Always on. What is it that they try to find? It is not gold. Never do they dig in the ground. I think a long time. Then I think it is a man they try to find. But what man? Yet they are like wolves on the trail of the kill. But they are funny wolves. Soft wolves. Baby wolves who do not understand the way of the trail. They cry aloud in their sleep at night. In their sleep they moan and groan with the pain of their weariness and in the day as they stagger along the trail they cry under their breaths. They are funny wolves. We pass fort Yukon. We pass fort Hamilton. We pass Minook. The days come and nearly gone. The days are very short. At nine o'clock comes daylight. At three o'clock comes night. And it is cold. And even I, Sitka Charlie, am tired. Will we go on forever this way without end? I do not know. But always do I look along the trail for that which they try to find. There are few people on the trail. Sometimes we travel one hundred miles and never see a sign of life. It is very quiet. There is no sound. Sometimes it snows and we are like wandering ghosts. Sometimes it is clear and at midday the sun looks at us for a moment over the hills to the south. The northern lights flame in the sky and the sun dogs dance and the air is filled with frost dust. I am Sitka Charlie, a strong man. I was born on the trail and all my days have I lived on the trail. And yet have these two baby wolves made me very tired. I am lean like a starving cat and I am glad of my bed at night and in the morning I am greatly weary. Yet ever are we hitting the trail in the dark before daylight and still on the trail does the dark after nightfall find us. These two baby wolves, if I am lean like a starved cat they are lean like cats that have never eaten and have died. Their eyes are sunk deep in their heads, bright sometimes as with fever, dim and cloudy sometimes like the eyes of the dead. Their cheeks are hollow like caves in a cliff, also are their cheeks black and raw from many freezings. Sometimes it is the woman in the morning who says, I cannot get up, I cannot move, let me die. And it is the man who stands beside her and says, come, let us go on, and they go on. And sometimes it is the man who gets up and the woman says, come, let us go on. But the one thing they do and always do is to go on. Always do they go on. Sometimes at the trading post the man and woman get letters. I do not know what is in the letters but it is the scent that they follow. These letters themselves are the scent. One time an Indian gives them a letter. I talk with him privately. He says it is a man with one eye and gives him the letter, a man who travels fast down the Yukon. That is all. But I know that the baby wolves are after the man with the one eye. It is February and we have traveled 1500 miles. We are getting near Bering Sea and there are storms and blizzards. The going is hard. We come to Anvig. I do not know, but I think sure they get a letter at Anvig for they are much excited to let us go on. But I say we must buy grub and they say we must travel light and fast. Also they say that we can get grub at Charlie McKeon's cabin. Then do I know that they take the big cut off. For it is there that Charlie McKeon lives where the black rock stands by the trail. Before we start I talk maybe two minutes with the priest at Anvig. Yes, there is a man with one eye who has gone by and who travels fast. And I know that for which they look is the man with the one eye. We leave Anvig with little grub and travel light and fast. There are three fresh dogs bought in Anvig and we travel very fast. The man and woman are like mad. We start earlier in the morning. We travel later at night. I look sometimes to see them die these two baby wolves. But they will not die. They go on and on. They take hold of them hard. They hold their hands against their stomach and double up in the snow and cough and cough and cough. They cannot walk. They cannot talk. Maybe for ten minutes they cough. Maybe for half an hour. And then they straighten up. The tears from the coughing frozen on their faces and the words they say are come, let us go on. Even I, Sitka Charlie, am greatly weary. $150 is a cheap price for the labor I do. We take the big cut off and the trail is fresh. The baby wolves have their noses down to the trail and they say hurry. All the time do they say hurry, faster, faster. It is hard on the dogs. We have not much food and we cannot give them enough to eat and they grow weak. Also they must work hard. The woman has true sorrow for them who are in her eyes. But the devil in her that drives her on will not let her stop and rest the dogs. And then when we come upon the man with the one eye, he is in the snow by the trail and his leg is broken. Because of the leg he has made a poor camp and has been lying on his blankets for three days and keeping a fire going. When we find him he is swearing. He swears like hell. Never have I heard a man swear like that man. I am glad. Now that they have found that for which they look we will have rest. But the woman says, let us start, hurry. I am surprised. But the man with one eye says, never mind me. Give me your grub. You will get more grub at McKeon's cabin tomorrow. Send McKeon back for me. But do you go on? Here is another wolf and the old wolf is not to go on. So we give him our grub which is not much and we chop wood for his fire and we take his strongest dogs and go on. We left the man with the one eye there in the snow and he died there in the snow for McKeon never went back for him. And who that man was and why he came to be there I do not know. But I think he was greatly paid by the man and the woman and the day and the next night we had nothing to eat and all next day we traveled fast and we were weak with hunger. Then we came to the black rock which rose five hundred feet above the trail. It was at the end of the day darkness was coming and we could not find the cabin of McKeon. We slept hungry and in the morning looked for the cabin. It was not there which was a strange thing for everybody knew that McKeon lived we were near to the coast where the wind blows hard and there is much snow. Everywhere there were small hills of snow where the wind had piled it up. I have a thought and I dig in one and another of the hills of snow. Soon I find the walls of the cabin and I dig down to the door. I go inside. McKeon is dead. Maybe two or three weeks he is dead. His sickness had come upon him and the snow had covered the cabin. He had eaten his grub and died. I looked for his cash but there was no grub in it. Let us go on said the woman. Her eyes were hungry and her hand was upon her heart as with the hurt of something inside. She bent back and forth like a tree in the wind as she stood there. Yes, let us go on said the man. His voice was hollow like the clunk of an old raven and he was hunger mad. His eyes were like live coals of fire and as his body rocked to and fro so rocked his soul inside. And I too said, let us go on. For that one thought laid upon me like a lash for every mile of fifteen hundred miles had burned itself into my soul and I think that I too was mad. Besides, we could only go on for there was no grub giving no thought to the man with the one eye in the snow. There is little travel on the big cut-off. Sometimes two or three months and nobody goes by. The snow had covered the trail and there was no sign that men had ever come or gone that way. All day the wind blew and the snow fell and all day we traveled while our stomachs nod their desire and our bodies grew weaker with every step they took. Then the man. I did not fall but my feet were heavy and I caught my toes and stumbled many times. That night is the end of February. I kill three ptarmigan with the woman's revolver and we are made somewhat strong again. But the dogs have nothing to eat. They try to eat their harness which is of leather and walrus hide and I must fight them off with a club and hang all the harness in a tree and all night they howl but we do not mind. We sleep like dead people and in the morning we get up like dead people out of their graves and go on along the trail. That morning is the first of March and on that morning I see the first sign of that after which the baby wolves are in search. It is clear weather and cold. The sun stay longer in the sky and there are sun dogs flashing on either side and the air is bright with frost dust. The snow falls no more upon the trail and I see the fresh sign of dogs and sled. There is one man with that outfit and I see in the snow that he is not strong. He too has not enough to eat. The young wolves see the fresh sign too and they are much excited. Hurry they say. All the time they say hurry. Faster Charlie, faster. We make hurry very slow. All the time the man falls down. When they try to ride on the sled the dogs are too weak and the dogs fall down. Besides it is so cold that if they ride on the sled they will freeze. It is very easy for a hungry man to freeze. When the woman fall down the man help her up. Sometimes the woman help the man up. Buy and buy both fall down and cannot get up and I must help them up all the time. This is very hard work for I am greatly weary and as well I must drive the dogs and the man and woman are very heavy with no strength in their bodies. So buy and buy I too fall down in the snow and there is no one to help me up. I must get up by myself and always do I get up by myself and help them up and make the dogs go on. That night I got one ptarmigan and we are very hungry and that night the man says to me what time start tomorrow Charlie it is like the voice of a ghost I say all the time you make start at five o'clock tomorrow he says we will start at three o'clock I laugh in great bitterness and I say you are a dead man and he says tomorrow we will start at three o'clock and we start at three o'clock for I am their man which they say is to be done I do it is clear and cold and there is no wind when the daylight comes we can see a long way off and it is very quiet we can hear no sound but the beat of our hearts and in the silence that is a very loud sound we are like sleepwalkers and we walk in dreams until we fall down and then we know we must get up and we see the trail once more and bear the beating of our hearts sometimes when I am walking in dreams this way I have strange thoughts why does Sitka Charlie live I ask myself why does Sitka Charlie work hard and go hungry and have all this pain for $750 a month I make the answer and I know it is a foolish answer also is it a true answer and after that never again do I care for money when a large wisdom came to me there was a great light and I saw clear and I knew that it was not for money that a man must live but for a happiness that no man can give or buy or sell and that is beyond all value of all money in the world in the morning we come upon the last night camp of the man who is before us it is a poor camp the kind a man makes out strength on the snow there are pieces of blanket and of canvas and I know what has happened his dogs have eaten their harness and he has made new harness out of his blankets the man and woman stare hard at what is to be seen and as I look at them my back feels the chill as of a cold wind against the skin their eyes are toil mad and hunger mad and burn like fire deep in their heads their faces are like the faces of people who have died of hunger and their cheeks are black with a dead flesh of many freezings let us go on says the man but the woman coughs and falls in the snow it is the dry cough where the frost has bitten the lungs for a long time she coughs then like a woman crawling out of her grave she crawls to her feet the tears are ice upon her cheeks and her breath makes a noise she comes and goes and she says, let us go on we go on and we walk in dreams through the silence and every time we walk is a dream and we are without pain and every time we fall down is an awakening and we see the snow and the mountains and the fresh trail of the man who is before us and we know all our pain again we come to where we can see a long way over the snow a mile away there are black spots upon the snow the black spots move my eyes are dim and I must stiffen my soul to see and I see one man with dogs and a sled the baby wolves see too they can no longer talk but they whisper on on let us hurry and they fall down but they go on the man who is before us and he must stop and mend it our harness is good for I have hung it in trees each night at eleven o'clock the man is half a mile away at one o'clock he is a quarter of a mile away he is very weak we see him fall down many times in the snow one of his dogs can no longer travel and he cuts it out of the harness but it does not kill it I kill it with the axe as I go by as I kill one of my dogs as it's legs and can travel no more now we are three hundred yards away we go very slow maybe in two three hours we go one mile we do not walk all the time we fall down we stand up and stagger two steps maybe three steps then we fall down again and all the time I must help up the man and woman sometimes they rise to their knees and fall forward maybe four or five times they can get to their feet again and stagger two or three steps and fall but always do they fall forward standing or kneeling always do they fall forward gaining on the trail each time by the length of their bodies sometimes they crawl on hands and knees like animals that live in the forest we go like snails like snails that are dying we go so slow faster than the man who is before us for he too falls all the time and there is no Sitka Charlie to lift him up now he is two hundred yards away after a long time he is one hundred yards away it is a funny sight I want to laugh out loud hahaha just like that it is so funny it is a race of dead men and dead dogs it is like in a dream when you have a nightmare and run away very fast for your life and go very slow the man who is with me is mad the woman is mad I am mad all the world is mad and I want to laugh it is so very funny the stranger man who is before us leaves his dogs behind and goes on alone across the snow after a long time we come to the dogs they lie helpless in the snow their harness of blanket and canvas on them the sled behind them and as we pass them they wind to us and cry like babies that are hungry then we too leave our dogs and go on alone across the snow the man and woman are nearly gone and they moan and groan and sob but they go on I too go on I have but one thought it is to come up to the stranger man then it is that I shall rest and not until then shall I rest and it seems that I must lie down and sleep for a thousand years I am so tired the stranger man is fifty yards away all alone in the white snow he falls and crawls staggers and falls and crawls again he is like an animal that is sore wounded and trying to run from the hunter by and by he crawls on hands and knees he no longer stands up and the man and woman no longer stand up they too crawl after him on hands and knees but I stand up sometimes I fall but always do I stand up again it is a strange thing to see all about is the snow and the silence and through it crawl the man and the woman and the stranger man who goes before on either side the sun are sun dogs so that there are three suns in the sky the frost dust is like the dust of diamonds and all the air is filled with it now the woman coughs and lies still in the snow until the fit is passed when she crawls on again now the man looks ahead and he is bleary eyed as with old age and must rub his eyes so that he can see the stranger man and now the stranger man looks back over his shoulder and sit gcharly standing upright maybe falls down and stands up right again after a long time the stranger man crawls no more he stands slowly upon his feet and rocks back and forth also does he take off one mitten and wait with the revolver in his hand rocking back and forth as he waits his face his skin and bones and frozen black it is a hungry face the eyes are deep sunk in his head they are snarling the man and woman too get upon their feet and they go toward him very slowly and all about is the snow and the silence and in the sky are three suns and all the air is flashing with the dust of diamonds and thus it was that I sit gcharly saw the baby wolves make their kill no word is spoken only does the stranger man sit with his hungry face also does he rock to and fro his shoulders drooping his knees bent and his legs wide apart so that he does not fall down the man and woman stop maybe fifty feet away their legs too are wide apart so they do not fall down and their bodies rock to and fro the stranger man is very weak his arms shake so that when he shoots at the man the man cannot take off his mitten the stranger man shoots at him again and this time the bullet goes by in the air then the man takes the mitten in his teeth and pulls it off but his hand is frozen and he cannot hold the revolver and it falls in the snow I look at the woman her mitten is off and the big colts revolver is in her hand three times she shoot quick just like that the stranger man is still snarling as he falls forward into the snow they do not look at the dead man let us go on they say and we go on but now that they have found that for which they look they are like dead the last strength has gone out of them they can stand no more upon their feet they will not crawl but desire only to close their eyes and sleep I see not far away a place for camp I kick them I have my dog whip and I give them the lash of it they cry aloud but they must crawl and they do crawl to the place for camp I build fire so that they will not freeze then I go back for sled also I kill the dogs of the stranger man so that we have food and not die I put the man and woman in blankets and they sleep sometimes I wake them and give them a little bit of food they are not awake but they take the food the woman sleep one day and a half then she wake up and go to sleep again the man sleep two days and wake up and go to sleep again after that we go down to the coast at St. Michael's and when the ice goes out of Bering Sea the man and woman go away on a steamship but first they pay me my $750 a month also they make me a present of $1000 and that was the year that Sitka Charlie gave much money to the mission at Holy Cross but why did they kill the man I asked Sitka Charlie delayed reply until he had lighted his pipe he glanced at the police Gazette illustration and nodded his head at it familiarly then he said speaking slowly and pondering I have thought much I do not know it is something that happened it is a picture I remember it is like looking in at the window and seeing the man writing a letter they came into my life and they went out of my life and the picture is as I have said without beginning and without understanding you have painted many pictures in the telling I said I nodded his head but they were without beginning and without end the last picture of all had an end I said he answered but what end it was a piece of life I said I he answered it was a piece of life the end of the Sun Dog Trail by Jack London from Love of Life and Other Stories read by John Taylor Southeast Missouri December 2006 this is a LibriBox Recording by William Kuhn under the knife by H.G. Wells what if I die under it the thought recurred again and again as I walked home from Hattons it was a purely personal question I was spared the deep anxieties of a married man and I knew there were few of my intimate friends and I knew there were few of my intimate friends and I knew there were few of my intimate friends but would find my death troublesome chiefly on account of their duty of regret I was surprised indeed and perhaps a little humiliated as I turned the matter over to think how few could possibly exceed the conventional requirement things came before me stripped of glamour in a clear dry light during that walk from Hattons House over Primrose Hill there were the friends of my youth I perceived now that our affection was a tradition which we foregathered rather laboriously to maintain there were the rivals and helpers of my later career I suppose I had been cold-blooded or undemonstrative one perhaps implies the other it may be that even the capacity for friendship is a question of physique there had been a time in my own life but as I walked home that afternoon the emotional side of my imagination was dormant I could not pity myself nor feel sorry for my friends nor conceive of them as grieving for me I was interested in this deadness of my emotional nature no doubt a concomitant of my stagnating physiology and my thoughts wandered off along the line it suggested once before in my hot youth I suffered a sudden loss of blood and had been within an ace of death I remembered now that my affections as well as my passions had drained out of me leaving scarce anything but a tranquil resignation a drag of self-pity it had been weeks before the old ambitions and tenderness and all the complex moral interplay of a man had reasserted themselves it occurred to me that the real meaning of this numbness might be a gradual slipping away from the pleasure pain guidance of the animal man it has been proven I take it as thoroughly as anything can be proven in this world that the higher emotions the moral feelings even the subtle unselfishness of love are evolved from the elemental desires and fears of the simple animal they are the harness in which man's mental freedom goes and it may be that as death overshadows us as our possibility of acting diminishes this complex growth of balanced impulse propensity and aversion whose interplay inspires our acts goes with it leaving what? I was suddenly brought back to reality by an imminent collision with the butcher boy's tray I found that I was crossing the bridge over the Regent's Park Canal which runs parallel with that in the zoological gardens looking over his shoulder at a black barge advancing slowly towed by a gaunt white horse in the gardens a nurse was leading three happy little children over the bridge the trees were bright green the spring hopefulness was still unstained by the dusts of summer the sky and the water was bright and clear but broken by long waves by quivering bands of black as the barge drove through it was stirring but it did not stir me as the spring breeze used to do was this dullness of feeling in itself in anticipation it was curious that I could reason and follow out a network of suggestion as clearly as ever so at least it seemed to me it was calmness rather than dullness that was coming upon me was there any ground for the relief in the presentiment of death did a man near to death begin instinctively saw himself from the meshes of matter and sense even before the cold hand was laid upon his I felt strangely isolated isolated without regret from the life and existence about me the children playing in the sun and gathering strength and experience from the business of life the parkkeeper gossiping with a nurse made the nursing mother the young couple intent upon each other as they passed me the trees by the wayside spreading new pleading leaves to the sunlight the stir and their branches I had been part of it all but I had nearly done with it now some way down the broad walk I perceived that I was tired and that my feet were heavy it was hot that afternoon and I turned aside and sat down on one of the green chairs that lined the way in a minute I had dozed into a dream and the tide of my thoughts washed up a vision of the resurrection I was still sitting in the chair but I thought myself actually dead withered, tattered dried one eye I saw pecked out by birds awake quite a voice and incontinently the dust of the path and the mold under the grass became insurgent I had never before thought of Regents Park as a cemetery but now through the trees stretching as far as I could see I beheld a flat plain of writhing graves and healing tombstones there seemed to be some trouble the rising dead appeared to stifle as they struggled upward they bled in their struggles the red flesh was torn away from the white bones awake quite a voice but I determined I would not rise to such horrors awake they would not let me alone wake up with every voice a cockney angel the man who sells the tickets was shaking me demanding my penny I paid my penny pocketed my ticket yawned stretched my legs and feeling now rather less torpid got up and walked on toward Langham Place I speedily lost myself again in a shifting maze of thoughts about death going across Marlbone Road into that crescent at the end of Langham Place I had the narrowest escape from the shaft of a cab and went on my way with a palpitating heart and a bruised shoulder it struck me that it would have been curious if my meditations on my death on the Marl had led to my death that day but I will not weary you with more of my experiences that day and the next I knew more and more certainly that I should die under the operation at times I think I was inclined to pose to myself the doctors were coming at eleven and I did not get up it seemed scarce worthwhile to trouble about washing and dressing and though I read my newspapers and the letters that came by the first post I did not find them very interesting there was a friendly note from Addison my old school friend calling my attention to two discrepancies in a printer's error in my new book with one from Langbridge venting some vexation over Minton the rest were business communications I breakfasted in bed the glow of pain at my side seemed more massive I knew it was pain and yet if you can understand I did not find it very painful I had been awakened, hot and thirsty in the night but in the morning bed felt comfortable in the night time I had lain thinking of things that were past in the morning I dozed over the question of immortality Haddon came, punctual to the minute with a neat black bag and Moe Bray soon followed their arrival stirred me up a little I began to take a more personal interest in the proceedings Haddon moved the little octagonal table close to the bedside and with his broad back to me began taking things out of his bag I heard the light click of steel upon steel my imagination I found was not altogether stagnant Will you hurt me much I said in an offhand tone Not a bit Haddon answered over his shoulder We shall chloroform you your hearts as sound as a bell and as he spoke I had a whiff of the pungent sweetness of the anesthetic they stretched me out with a convenient exposure of my side and almost before I realized what was happening the chloroform was being administered it stings the nostrils a suffocating sensation at first I knew I should die that this was the end of consciousness for me and suddenly I felt that I was not prepared for death I had a vague sense of a duty overlooked I knew not what what was it I had not done I could think of nothing more to do nothing desirable left in life and yet I had the strangest disinclination to death and the physical sensation was painfully oppressive of course the doctors did not know they were going to kill me possibly I struggled then I fell motionless in a great silence a monstrous silence and an impenetrable blackness came upon me there must have been an interval of absolute unconsciousness seconds or minutes then with a chilly unemotional clearness I perceived that I was not yet dead still in my body but all the multitudinous sensations that come sweeping from it to make up the background of consciousness had gone leaving me free of it all no not free of it all for as yet something still held me to the poor stark flesh upon the bed held me yet not so closely that I did not feel myself external to it independent of it straining away from it I do not think I saw what I heard but I perceived all that was going on and it was as if I both heard and saw Haddon was bending over me Mulbray beside me the scalpel it was a large scalpel was cutting my flesh at the side under the flying ribs it was interesting to see myself cut like cheese without a pang without even a qualm the interest was much a quality that one might feel in a game of chess between strangers Haddon's face was firm and his hand steady but I was surprised to perceive how I know not that he was feeling the gravest doubt as to his own wisdom in the conduct of the operation Mulbray's thoughts too I could see he was thinking that Haddon's manner showed too much of the specialist new suggestions came up like bubbles through a stream of frothing meditation and burst one other in the little bright spot of his consciousness he could not help noticing an admiring Haddon's swift dexterity in spite of his envious quality and his disposition to detract I saw my liver exposed I was puzzled at my own condition I did not feel that I was dead but I was different in some way from my living self the grey depression that had weighed on me for a year or more and colored all my thoughts was gone I perceived and thought without any emotional tint at all I wondered if everyone perceived things in this way under chloroform and forgot it again when he came out of it it would be inconvenient to look into some heads and not forget although I did not think that I was dead I still perceived quite clearly that I was soon to die this brought me back to the consideration of Haddon's proceedings I looked into his mind and saw that he was afraid of cutting a branch of the portal vein my attention was distracted from details by the curious changes going on in his mind his consciousness was like the quivering little spot of light which is thrown by the mirror of a galvanometer his thoughts ran under it like a stream some through the focus bright and distinct some shadowy in the half light of the edge just now the little glow was steady but the least movement on Mobre's part the slightest sound from outside even a faint difference in the slow movement of the living flesh he was cutting set the light spot shivering and spinning a new sense impression came rushing up through the flow of thoughts and low the light spot jerked away towards it swifter than a frightened fish it was wonderful to think that upon that unstable, fitful thing depended all the complex motions of the man that for the next five minutes therefore my life hung upon its movements and he was growing more and more nervous in his work it was as if a little picture of a cut vein grew brighter and struggled to oust from his brain another picture of a cut falling short of the mark he was afraid his dread of cutting too little was battling with his dread of cutting too far then, suddenly like an escape of water from under a block gate, a great up rush of horrible realizations set all his thoughts swirling and simultaneously I perceived that the vein was cut he started back with a horse exclamation and I saw the brown purple blood gather in a swift bead and run trickling he was horrified he pitched the red stained scalpel onto the octagonal table and instantly both doctors flung themselves upon me making hasty and ill-conceived efforts to remedy the disaster police! said Mobri Gasping but I knew that I was killed though my body still clung to me I will not describe their belated endeavors to save me though I perceived every detail my perceptions were sharper and swifter than they had ever been in my life my thoughts rushed through my mind with incredible swiftness but with perfect definition I can only compare their crowded clarity to the effects of a reasonable dose of opium in a moment it would all be over and I should be free I knew I was immortal but what would happen I did not know should I drift off presently like a puff of smoke from a gun in some kind of half-material body an attenuated version of my material self should I find myself suddenly among the innumerable hosts of the dead and know the world about me for the phantasmagoria it had always seemed should I drift into some spiritualistic seance and there make foolish and comprehensible attempts to affect a purblind medium it was a state of unemotional curiosity of colorless expectation and then I realized a growing stress upon me a feeling as though some huge human magnet was drawing me upward out of my body the stress grew and grew I seemed an atom from which monstrous forces were fighting for one brief terrible moment sensation came back to me that feeling of falling headlong which comes in nightmares that feeling a thousand times intensified that and a black horror swept across my thoughts in a torrent then the two doctors the naked body with its cut side the little room swept away from under me and vanished a speck of foam vanishes down and eddy I was in mid-air far below was the west end of London receding rapidly for I seemed to be flying swiftly upward and as it receded passing westward like a panorama I could see through the faint haze of smoke the innumerable roofs chimney set the narrow roadways stippled with people and conveyances the little specks of squares and the church steeples like thorns sticking out of the fabric but it spun away as the earth rotated on its axis and in a few seconds, as it seemed I was over the scattered clumps of town about Ealing the little Thames a thread of blue to the south and the Chiltern Hills and the North Downs coming up like the rim of a basin far away in faint with haze up I rushed and at first I had not the faintest conception what this headlong rush upward could mean every moment the circle of scenery beneath me grew wider and whiter and the details of town and field of hill and valley got more and more hazy and pale and indistinct a luminous grey was mingled more and more with the blue of the hills and the green of the open meadows and a little patch of cloud low and far to the west shown ever more dazzlingly white above as the veil of atmosphere between myself and outer space grew thinner the sky which had been a fair spring time blue at first grew deeper and richer in color passing steadily through the intervening shades until presently it was as dark as the blue sky of midnight and presently as black as the blackness of a frosty starlight and at last as black as no blackness I had ever beheld and first one star and then many and at last an innumerable host broke out upon the sky more stars than anyone has ever seen from the face of the earth for the blueness of the sky and the light of the sun and stars sifted and spread abroad blindingly there is the fused light even in the darkest skies of winter and we did not see the stars by day only because of the dazzling irradiation of the sun but now I saw things I know not how assuredly with no mortal eyes and that defective bedazzlement blinded me no longer the sun was incredibly strange and wonderful the body of it was a disc of blinding white light not yellowish as it seems to those who live upon the earth but livid white all streaked with scarlet streaks and rimmed about with a fringe of writhing tongues of red fire and shooting halfway across the heavens from either side of it and brighter than the milky way were two pinions of silver white making it more like those winged globes I have seen in Egyptian sculpture than anything else I can remember upon earth these I knew for the solar corona though I had never seen anything of it but a picture during the days of my earthly life when my attention came back to the earth again I saw that it had fallen very far from me field and town were long since indistinguishable and all the varied hues of the country were merging into a uniform bright gray broken only by the brilliant white of the clouds that lay scattered in flocculent masses over Ireland and the west of England for now I could see the outlines of the north of France and Ireland and all this island of Britain say where Scotland passed over the horizon to the north or where the coast was blurred or obliterated by cloud the sea was a dull gray and darker than the land and the whole panorama was rotating slowly towards the east all this happened so swiftly that until I was some thousand miles or so from the earth I had no thought for myself but now I perceived I had neither hands nor feet neither parts nor organs and that I felt neither alarm nor pain all about me I perceived that the vacancy for I had already left the air behind was cold beyond the imagination of man but it troubled me not the sun's rays shot through the void powerless to light or heat until they should strike on matter for their course I saw things with a serene self-forgetfulness even as if I were God and down below there rushing away from me countless miles in a second where a little dark spot on the gray marked the position of London two doctors were struggling to restore life to the poor, hacked and outworn shell I had abandoned I felt then such release such serenity as I can compare to no mortal the light I have ever known it was only after I had perceived all these things that the meaning of that headlong rush of the earth grew into comprehension yet it was so simple so obvious that I was amazed at my never anticipating the thing that was happening to me I had suddenly been cut adrift from matter all that was material of me was there upon earth whirling away through space held to the earth by gravitation partaking of earth inertia moving in its wreath of epicycles round the sun and with the sun and the planets on their vast march through space but the immaterial has no inertia feels nothing of the pull of matter for matter where it parts from its garb into flesh there it remains so far as space concerns it any longer immovable in space I was not leaving the earth the earth was leaving me and not only the earth but the whole solar system was streaming past and about me in space invisible to me scattered in the wake of the earth upon its journey there must be an innumerable multitude of souls stripped like myself of the material stripped like myself of the passions of the individual and the generous emotions of the gregarious brute naked intelligences things of newborn wonder and thought marveling at the strange release that had suddenly come on them as I receded faster and faster from the strange white sun in the black heavens and from the broad and shining earth upon which my being had begun I seemed to grow in some incredible manner vast vast as regards the world I had left vast as regards the moments and periods of a human life very soon I saw the full circle of the earth slightly gibbous like the moon when she nears her full but very large and the silvery shape of America was now in the noonday blaze wherein as it seemed little England had been basking but a few minutes ago at first the earth was large and shown in the heavens filling a great part of them but every moment she grew smaller and more distant as she shrank the broad moon in its third quarter crept into view over the rim of her disk I looked for the constellations only that part of Aries directly behind the sun and the lion which the earth covered were hidden I recognized the tortuous tattered band of the Milky Way with vega very bright between sun and earth and Sirius and Orion shown splendid against the unfathomable blackness in the opposite quarter of the heavens the pole star was overhead and the great bear hung over the circle of the earth and the way beneath and beyond the shining corona of the sun were strange groupings of stars I had never seen in my life notably a dagger shaped group that I knew for the Southern Cross all these were no larger than when they had shown on earth but the little stars that one scarce sees shown now against the setting of black vacancy as brightly as the first magnitudes had done while the larger worlds were points of indescribable glory and color Aldebaran was a spot of blood red fire and Sirius condensed to one point the light of innumerable sapphires and they shown steadily they did not scintillate they were calmly glorious my impressions had an adamantine hardness and brightness there was no blurring softness no atmosphere nothing but infinite darkness set with the myriads of these acute and brilliant points and specks of light presently when I looked again the little earth seemed no bigger than the sun and it dwindled and turned as I looked until in a second space it was halved and so it went on swiftly dwindling far away in the opposite direction a little pinkish pins head of light shining steadily was the planet Mars I swam motionless in vacancy and without a trace of terror or astonishment watched the speck of cosmic dust we call the world fall away from me presently adorned upon me that my sense of duration had changed that my mind was moving not faster but infinitely slower that between each separate impression there was a period of many days the moon spun once around the earth as I noted this and I perceived clearly the motion of Mars in his orbit moreover it appeared as if the time between thought and thought grew steadily greater until it last a thousand years was but a moment in my perception at first the constellations had shown motionless against the black background of infinite space but presently it seemed as though the group of stars about Hercules and the Scorpion was contracting Hualarion and Naldebaran and their neighbors were scattering apart flashing suddenly out of the darkness there came a flying multitude of particles of rock glittering like dust specks in a sunbeam and encompassed in a faintly luminous cloud they swirled all about me and vanished again in a twinkling far behind and then I saw that a bright spot of light that shone a little to one side of my path was growing very rapidly larger and perceived that it was the planet Saturn rushing towards me larger and larger it grew swallowing up the heavens behind it and hiding every moment a fresh multitude of stars I perceived its flattened whirling body its disc-like belt and seven of its little satellites it grew and grew till it towered enormous and then I plunged a streaming multitude of clashing stones and dancing dust particles and gas eddies and saw for a moment the mighty triple belt like three concentric arches of moonlight above me its shadow black on the boiling tumult below these things happened in one tenth of the time it takes to tell them the planet went by like a flash of lightning for a few seconds it blotted out the sun and there and then became a mere black dwindling winged patch against the light the earth the mother motes of my being I could no longer see so with a stately swiftness in the profoundest silence the solar system fell from me as it had been a garment until the sun was a mere star amid the multitude of stars with its eddy of planet specks lost in the confused glittering of the remotor light I was no longer a denizen of the solar system I had come to the outer universe I seemed to grasp and comprehend the whole world of matter ever more swiftly the stars closed in about the spot where Antares and Vega had vanished in a phosphorescent haze until that part of the sky had the semblance of a whorling mass of nebula and ever before beyond vaster gaps of vacant blackness and the stars shown fewer and fewer it seemed as if I moved towards a point between Orion's belt and sword and the void about that region opened vaster and vaster every second an incredible gulf of nothingness into which I was falling faster and ever faster the universe rushed by a hurry of whorling motes at last speeding silently into the void stars glowing brighter and brighter with their circling planets catching the light in a ghostly fashion as I neared them shone out and vanished again into inexistence faint comets, clusters of meteorites winking specks of matter eddying light points, whizzed past some perhaps a hundred millions of miles or so from me at most few nearer traveling with unimaginable rapidity shooting constellations momentary darts of fire through that black enormous night more than anything else it was like a dusty draught, sunbeam lit broader and wider and deeper grew the starless space the vacant beyond into which I was being drawn quarter of the heavens was black and blank and the whole headlong rush of stellar universe closed in behind me like a veil of light that is gathered together it drove away from me like a monstrous jack-o'-lantern driven by the wind I had come out into the wilderness of space ever the vacant blackness grew broader until a host of the stars seemed only like a swarm of fiery specks hurrying away from me inconceivably remote and the darkness, the nothingness and emptiness was about me on every side soon the little universe of matter the cage of points in which I had begun to be was dwindling now to a whirling disc of luminous glittering and now to one minute disc of hazy light in a little while it would shrink to a point and at last would vanish altogether suddenly feeling came back to me feeling in the shape of overwhelming terror such a dread of those dark vastitudes as no words can describe a passionate resurgence of sympathy and social desire were there other souls invisible to me as I to them about me in the blackness or was I indeed even as I felt alone had I passed out of being into something that was neither being nor not being the covering of the body the covering of matter had been torn from me and the hallucinations of companionship and security everything was black and silent I had ceased to be I was nothing there was nothing save only that infinitesimal dot of light that dwindled in the gulf I strained myself to hear and see and for a while there was not but infinite silence intolerable darkness horror and despair then I saw that about the spot of light into which the whole world of matter had shrunk there was a faint glow and in a band on either side of that the darkness was not absolute I watched it for ages as it seemed to me and through the long waiting the haze grew imperceptibly more distinct and then about the band appeared in a regular cloud of the faintest palest brown I felt a passionate impatience but the things grew brighter so slowly that they scarcely seemed to change what was unfolding itself what was this strange reddish dawn in the interminable night of space the cloud's shape was grotesque it seemed to be looped along its lower side into four projecting masses and above it ended in a straight line what phantom was this I felt assured I had seen that figure before but I could not think what nor where nor when it was then the realization rushed upon me it was a clenched hand I was alone in space alone with this huge shadowy hand upon which the whole universe of matter lay like an unconsidered speck of dust it seemed as though I watched it through vast periods of time on the forefinger glittered a ring and the universe from which I had come was but a spot of light upon the ring's curvature and the thing that the hand gripped had the lightness of a black rod through a long eternity I watched this hand with the ring and the rod marveling and fearing and waiting helplessly on what might follow it seemed as though nothing could follow that I should watch forever seeing only the hand the thing it held and understanding nothing of its import was the whole universe but a refracting speck upon some greater being were our worlds but the atoms of another universe and those again of another and so on through an endless progression and what was I? was I indeed immaterial? a vague persuasion of a body gathering about me came into my suspense the abysmal darkness about the hand filled with impalpable suggestions with uncertain fluctuating shapes then suddenly came a sound like the sound of a tolling bell faint as if infinitely far muffled as though heard through thick swathings of darkness a deep vibrating resonance with vast gulfs of silence between each stroke and the hand appeared to tighten on the rod and I saw far above the hand toward the apex of the darkness a circle of dim phosphorescence a ghostly sphere once these sounds throbbing and at the last stroke the hand vanished for the hour had come and I heard a noise of many waters but the black rod remained as a great band across the sky and then a voice which seemed to run to the uttermost parts of space spoke saying there will be no more pain at that an almost intolerable gladness and radiance rushed in upon me and I saw the circle shining white and bright and the rod black and shining and many things else distinct and clear and the circle was the face of the clock and the rod the rail of my bed Haddon was standing at the foot against the rail with a small pair of scissors on his fingers and the hands of my clock on the mantle over his shoulder were clasped of twelve Mobre was washing something in a basin at the octagonal table and at my side I felt a subdued feeling that could scarce be spoken of as pain the operation had not killed me and I perceived suddenly that the dull melancholy of half a year was lifted from my mind end of Under the Knife by H.G. Wells