PRACTICE, PROGRESS, AND PROFICIENCY IN ELA USING THE CALIFORNIA STATE COMMON CORE STANDARDS
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Cite the text: Use sentences from the text to explain your reasoning.
Implied and Inferred Meaning: Use evidence from the text to gain unstated meaning.
Comprehend the Tone: Explain the situation/setting to understand the frame of mind the author wants to convey.
The Fifty-First Dragon
By Heywood Broun
Of all the pupils at the knight school Gawaine le Cœur-Hardy was among the least promising. He was tall and sturdy, but his instructors soon discovered that he lacked spirit. He would hide in the woods when the jousting class was called, although his companions and members of the faculty sought to appeal to his better nature by shouting to him to come out and break his neck like a man. Even when they told him that the lances were padded, the horses no more than ponies and the field unusually soft for late autumn, Gawaine refused to grow enthusiastic. The Headmaster and the Assistant Professor of Pleasaunce were discussing the case one spring afternoon and the Assistant Professor could see no remedy but expulsion. 1
“No,” said the Headmaster, as he looked out at the purple hills which ringed the school, “I think I’ll train him to slay dragons.” 2
“He might be killed,” objected the Assistant Professor. 3
“So he might,” replied the Headmaster brightly, but he added, more soberly, “we must consider the greater good. We are responsible for the formation of this lad’s character.” 4
“Are the dragons particularly bad this year?” interrupted the Assistant Professor. This was characteristic. He always seemed restive when the head of the school began to talk ethics and the ideals of the institution. 5
“I’ve never known them worse,” replied the Headmaster. “Up in the hills to the south last week they killed a number of peasants, two cows and a prize pig. And if this dry spell holds there’s no telling when they may start a forest fire simply by breathing around indiscriminately.” 6
“Would any refund on the tuition fee be necessary in case of an accident to young Cœur Hardy?” 7
“No,” the principal answered, judicially, “that’s all covered in the contract. But as a matter of fact he won’t be killed. Before I send him up in the hills I’m going to give him a magic word.” 8
“That’s a good idea,” said the Professor. “Sometimes they work wonders.” 9
From that day on Gawaine specialized in dragons. His course included both theory and practice. In the morning there were long lectures on the history, anatomy, manners and customs of dragons. Gawaine did not distinguish himself in these studies. He had a marvelously versatile gift for forgetting things. In the afternoon he showed to better advantage, for then he would go down to the South Meadow and practise with a battle-ax. In this exercise he was truly impressive, for he had enormous strength as well as speed and grace. He even developed a deceptive display of ferocity. Old alumni say that it was a thrilling sight to see Gawaine charging across the field toward the dummy paper dragon which had been set up for his practice. As he ran he would brandish his ax and shout “A murrain on thee!” or some other vivid bit of campus slang. It never took him more than one stroke to behead the dummy dragon. 10
Gradually his task was made more difficult. Paper gave way to papier-mâché and finally to wood, but even the toughest of these dummy dragons had no terrors for Gawaine. One sweep of the ax always did the business. There were those who said that when the practice was protracted until dusk and the dragons threw long, fantastic shadows across the meadow Gawaine did not charge so impetuously nor shout so loudly. It is possible there was malice in this charge. At any rate, the Headmaster decided by the end of June that it was time for the test. Only the night before a dragon had come close to the school grounds and had eaten some of the lettuce from the garden. The faculty decided that Gawaine was ready. They gave him a diploma and a new battle-ax and the Headmaster summoned him to a private conference. 11
“Sit down,” said the Headmaster. “Have a cigarette.” 12
Gawaine hesitated. 13
“Oh, I know it’s against the rules,” said the Headmaster. “But after all, you have received your preliminary degree. You are no longer a boy. You are a man. To-morrow you will go out into the world, the great world of achievement.” 14
Gawaine took a cigarette. The Headmaster offered him a match, but he produced one of his own and began to puff away with a dexterity which quite amazed the principal. 15
“Here you have learned the theories of life,” continued the Headmaster, resuming the thread of his discourse, “but after all, life is not a matter of theories. Life is a matter of facts. It calls on the young and the old alike to face these facts, even though they are hard and sometimes unpleasant. Your problem, for example, is to slay dragons.” 16
“They say that those dragons down in the south wood are five hundred feet long,” ventured Gawaine, timorously. 17
“Stuff and nonsense!” said the Headmaster. “The curate saw one last week from the top of Arthur’s Hill. The dragon was sunning himself down in the valley. The curate didn’t have an opportunity to look at him very long because he felt it was his duty to hurry back to make a report to me. He said the monster, or shall I say, the big lizard?—wasn’t an inch over two hundred feet. But the size has nothing at all to do with it. You’ll find the big ones even easier than the little ones. They’re far slower on their feet and less aggressive, I’m told. Besides, before you go I’m going to equip you in such fashion that you need have no fear of all the dragons in the world.” 18
“I’d like an enchanted cap,” said Gawaine. 19
“What’s that?” answered the Headmaster, testily. 20
“A cap to make me disappear,” explained Gawaine. 21
The Headmaster laughed indulgently. “You mustn’t believe all those old wives’ stories,” he said. “There isn’t any such thing. A cap to make you disappear, indeed! What would you do with it? You haven’t even appeared yet. Why, my boy, you could walk from here to London, and nobody would so much as look at you. You’re nobody. You couldn’t be more invisible than that.” 22
Gawaine seemed dangerously close to a relapse into his old habit of whimpering. The Headmaster reassured him: “Don’t worry; I’ll give you something much better than an enchanted cap. I’m going to give you a magic word. All you have to do is to repeat this magic charm once and no dragon can possibly harm a hair of your head. You can cut off his head at your leisure.” 23
He took a heavy book from the shelf behind his desk and began to run through it. “Sometimes,” he said, “the charm is a whole phrase or even a sentence. I might, for instance, give you ‘To make the’—No, that might not do. I think a single word would be best for dragons.” 24
“A short word,” suggested Gawaine. 25
“It can’t be too short or it wouldn’t be potent. There isn’t so much hurry as all that. Here’s a splendid magic word: ‘Rumplesnitz.’ Do you think you can learn that?” 26
Gawaine tried and in an hour or so he seemed to have the word well in hand. Again and again he interrupted the lesson to inquire, “And if I say ‘Rumplesnitz’ the dragon can’t possibly hurt me?” And always the Headmaster replied, “If you only say ‘Rumplesnitz,’ you are perfectly safe.” 27
Toward morning Gawaine seemed resigned to his career. At daybreak the Headmaster saw him to the edge of the forest and pointed him to the direction in which he should proceed. About a mile away to the southwest a cloud of steam hovered over an open meadow in the woods and the Headmaster assured Gawaine that under the steam he would find a dragon. Gawaine went forward slowly. He wondered whether it would be best to approach the dragon on the run as he did in his practice in the South Meadow or to walk slowly toward him, shouting “Rumplesnitz” all the way. 28
The problem was decided for him. No sooner had he come to the fringe of the meadow than the dragon spied him and began to charge. It was a large dragon and yet it seemed decidedly aggressive in spite of the Headmaster’s statement to the contrary. As the dragon charged it released huge clouds of hissing steam through its nostrils. It was almost as if a gigantic teapot had gone mad. The dragon came forward so fast and Gawaine was so frightened that he had time to say “Rumplesnitz” only once. As he said it, he swung his battle-ax and off popped the head of the dragon. Gawaine had to admit that it was even easier to kill a real dragon than a wooden one if only you said “Rumplesnitz.” 29
Gawaine brought the ears home and a small section of the tail. His school mates and the faculty made much of him, but the Headmaster wisely kept him from being spoiled by insisting that he go on with his work. Every clear day Gawaine rose at dawn and went out to kill dragons. The Headmaster kept him at home when it rained, because he said the woods were damp and unhealthy at such times and that he didn’t want the boy to run needless risks. Few good days passed in which Gawaine failed to get a dragon. On one particularly fortunate day he killed three, a husband and wife and a visiting relative. Gradually he developed a technique. Pupils who sometimes watched him from the hill-tops a long way off said that he often allowed the dragon to come within a few feet before he said “Rumplesnitz.” He came to say it with a mocking sneer. Occasionally he did stunts. Once when an excursion party from London was watching him he went into action with his right hand tied behind his back. The dragon’s head came off just as easily. 30
As Gawaine’s record of killings mounted higher the Headmaster found it impossible to keep him completely in hand. He fell into the habit of stealing out at night and engaging in long drinking bouts at the village tavern. It was after such a debauch that he rose a little before dawn one fine August morning and started out after his fiftieth dragon. His head was heavy and his mind sluggish. He was heavy in other respects as well, for he had adopted the somewhat vulgar practice of wearing his medals, ribbons and all, when he went out dragon hunting. The decorations began on his chest and ran all the way down to his abdomen. They must have weighed at least eight pounds. 31
Gawaine found a dragon in the same meadow where he had killed the first one. It was a fair-sized dragon, but evidently an old one. Its face was wrinkled and Gawaine thought he had never seen so hideous a countenance. Much to the lad’s disgust, the monster refused to charge and Gawaine was obliged to walk toward him. He whistled as he went. The dragon regarded him hopelessly, but craftily. Of course it had heard of Gawaine. Even when the lad raised his battle-ax the dragon made no move. It knew that there was no salvation in the quickest thrust of the head, for it had been informed that this hunter was protected by an enchantment. It merely waited, hoping something would turn up. Gawaine raised the battle-ax and suddenly lowered it again. He had grown very pale and he trembled violently. The dragon suspected a trick. “What’s the matter?” it asked, with false solicitude. 32
“I’ve forgotten the magic word,” stammered Gawaine. 33
“What a pity,” said the dragon. “So that was the secret. It doesn’t seem quite sporting to me, all this magic stuff, you know. Not cricket, as we used to say when I was a little dragon; but after all, that’s a matter of opinion.” 34
Gawaine was so helpless with terror that the dragon’s confidence rose immeasurably and it could not resist the temptation to show off a bit. 35
“Could I possibly be of any assistance?” it asked. “What’s the first letter of the magic word?” 36
“It begins with an ‘r,”’ said Gawaine weakly. 37
“Let’s see,” mused the dragon, “that doesn’t tell us much, does it? What sort of a word is this? Is it an epithet, do you think?” 38
Gawaine could do no more than nod. 39
“Why, of course,” exclaimed the dragon, “reactionary Republican.” 40
Gawaine shook his head. 41
“Well, then,” said the dragon, “we’d better get down to business. Will you surrender?” 42
With the suggestion of a compromise Gawaine mustered up enough courage to speak. 43
“What will you do if I surrender?” he asked. 44
“Why, I’ll eat you,” said the dragon. 45
“And if I don’t surrender?” 46
“I’ll eat you just the same.” 47
“Then it doesn’t mean any difference, does it?” moaned Gawaine. 48
“It does to me,” said the dragon with a smile. “I’d rather you didn’t surrender. You’d taste much better if you didn’t.” 49
The dragon waited for a long time for Gawaine to ask “Why?” but the boy was too frightened to speak. At last the dragon had to give the explanation without his cue line. “You see,” he said, “if you don’t surrender you’ll taste better because you’ll die game.” 50
This was an old and ancient trick of the dragon’s. By means of some such quip he was accustomed to paralyze his victims with laughter and then to destroy them. Gawaine was sufficiently paralyzed as it was, but laughter had no part in his helplessness. With the last word of the joke the dragon drew back his head and struck. In that second there flashed into the mind of Gawaine the magic word “Rumplesnitz,” but there was no time to say it. There was time only to strike and, without a word, Gawaine met the onrush of the dragon with a full swing. He put all his back and shoulders into it. The impact was terrific and the head of the dragon flew away almost a hundred yards and landed in a thicket. 51
Gawaine did not remain frightened very long after the death of the dragon. His mood was one of wonder. He was enormously puzzled. He cut off the ears of the monster almost in a trance. Again and again he thought to himself, “I didn’t say ‘Rumplesnitz’!” He was sure of that and yet there was no question that he had killed the dragon. In fact, he had never killed one so utterly. Never before had he driven a head for anything like the same distance. Twenty-five yards was perhaps his best previous record. All the way back to the knight school he kept rumbling about in his mind seeking an explanation for what had occurred. He went to the Headmaster immediately and after closing the door told him what had happened. “I didn’t say ‘Rumplesnitz,’” he explained with great earnestness. 52
The Headmaster laughed. “I’m glad you’ve found out,” he said. “It makes you ever so much more of a hero. Don’t you see that? Now you know that it was you who killed all these dragons and not that foolish little word ‘Rumplesnitz.’” 53
Gawaine frowned. “Then it wasn’t a magic word after all?” he asked. 54
“Of course not,” said the Headmaster, “you ought to be too old for such foolishness. There isn’t any such thing as a magic word.” 55
“But you told me it was magic,” protested Gawaine. “You said it was magic and now you say it isn’t.” 56
“It wasn’t magic in a literal sense,” answered the Headmaster, “but it was much more wonderful than that. The word gave you confidence. It took away your fears. If I hadn’t told you that you might have been killed the very first time. It was your battle-ax did the trick.” 57
Gawaine surprised the Headmaster by his attitude, He was obviously distressed by the explanation. He interrupted a long philosophic and ethical discourse by the Headmaster with, “If I hadn’t of hit ’em all mighty hard and fast any one of ’em might have crushed me like a, like a—” He fumbled for a word. 58
“Egg shell,” suggested the Headmaster. 59
“Like a egg shell,” assented Gawaine, and he said it many times. All through the evening meal people who sat near him heard him muttering, “Like a egg shell, like a egg shell.” 60
The next day was clear, but Gawaine did not get up at dawn. Indeed, it was almost noon when the Headmaster found him cowering in bed, with the clothes pulled over his head. The principal called the Assistant Professor of Pleasaunce, and together they dragged the boy toward the forest. 61
“He’ll be all right as soon as he gets a couple more dragons under his belt,” explained the Headmaster. 62
“The Assistant Professor of Pleasaunce agreed. “It would be a shame to stop such a fine run,” he said. “Why, counting that one yesterday, he’s killed fifty dragons.” 63
They pushed the boy into a thicket above which hung a meager cloud of steam. It was obviously quite a small dragon. But Gawaine did not come back that night or the next. In fact, he never came back. Some weeks afterward brave spirits from the school explored the thicket, but they could find nothing to remind them of Gawaine except the metal parts of his medals. Even the ribbons had been devoured. 64
The Headmaster and the Assistant Professor of Pleasaunce agreed that it would be just as well not to tell the school how Gawaine had achieved his record and still less how he came to die. They held that it might have a bad effect on school spirit. Accordingly, Gawaine has lived in the memory of the school as its greatest hero. No visitor succeeds in leaving the building to-day without seeing a great shield which hangs on the wall of the dining hall. Fifty pairs of dragons’ ears are mounted upon the shield and underneath in gilt letters is “Gawaine le Cœur-Hardy,” followed by the simple inscription, “He killed fifty dragons.” The record has never been equaled. 65
By Heywood Broun
Of all the pupils at the knight school Gawaine le Cœur-Hardy was among the least promising. He was tall and sturdy, but his instructors soon discovered that he lacked spirit. He would hide in the woods when the jousting class was called, although his companions and members of the faculty sought to appeal to his better nature by shouting to him to come out and break his neck like a man. Even when they told him that the lances were padded, the horses no more than ponies and the field unusually soft for late autumn, Gawaine refused to grow enthusiastic. The Headmaster and the Assistant Professor of Pleasaunce were discussing the case one spring afternoon and the Assistant Professor could see no remedy but expulsion. 1
“No,” said the Headmaster, as he looked out at the purple hills which ringed the school, “I think I’ll train him to slay dragons.” 2
“He might be killed,” objected the Assistant Professor. 3
“So he might,” replied the Headmaster brightly, but he added, more soberly, “we must consider the greater good. We are responsible for the formation of this lad’s character.” 4
“Are the dragons particularly bad this year?” interrupted the Assistant Professor. This was characteristic. He always seemed restive when the head of the school began to talk ethics and the ideals of the institution. 5
“I’ve never known them worse,” replied the Headmaster. “Up in the hills to the south last week they killed a number of peasants, two cows and a prize pig. And if this dry spell holds there’s no telling when they may start a forest fire simply by breathing around indiscriminately.” 6
“Would any refund on the tuition fee be necessary in case of an accident to young Cœur Hardy?” 7
“No,” the principal answered, judicially, “that’s all covered in the contract. But as a matter of fact he won’t be killed. Before I send him up in the hills I’m going to give him a magic word.” 8
“That’s a good idea,” said the Professor. “Sometimes they work wonders.” 9
From that day on Gawaine specialized in dragons. His course included both theory and practice. In the morning there were long lectures on the history, anatomy, manners and customs of dragons. Gawaine did not distinguish himself in these studies. He had a marvelously versatile gift for forgetting things. In the afternoon he showed to better advantage, for then he would go down to the South Meadow and practise with a battle-ax. In this exercise he was truly impressive, for he had enormous strength as well as speed and grace. He even developed a deceptive display of ferocity. Old alumni say that it was a thrilling sight to see Gawaine charging across the field toward the dummy paper dragon which had been set up for his practice. As he ran he would brandish his ax and shout “A murrain on thee!” or some other vivid bit of campus slang. It never took him more than one stroke to behead the dummy dragon. 10
Gradually his task was made more difficult. Paper gave way to papier-mâché and finally to wood, but even the toughest of these dummy dragons had no terrors for Gawaine. One sweep of the ax always did the business. There were those who said that when the practice was protracted until dusk and the dragons threw long, fantastic shadows across the meadow Gawaine did not charge so impetuously nor shout so loudly. It is possible there was malice in this charge. At any rate, the Headmaster decided by the end of June that it was time for the test. Only the night before a dragon had come close to the school grounds and had eaten some of the lettuce from the garden. The faculty decided that Gawaine was ready. They gave him a diploma and a new battle-ax and the Headmaster summoned him to a private conference. 11
“Sit down,” said the Headmaster. “Have a cigarette.” 12
Gawaine hesitated. 13
“Oh, I know it’s against the rules,” said the Headmaster. “But after all, you have received your preliminary degree. You are no longer a boy. You are a man. To-morrow you will go out into the world, the great world of achievement.” 14
Gawaine took a cigarette. The Headmaster offered him a match, but he produced one of his own and began to puff away with a dexterity which quite amazed the principal. 15
“Here you have learned the theories of life,” continued the Headmaster, resuming the thread of his discourse, “but after all, life is not a matter of theories. Life is a matter of facts. It calls on the young and the old alike to face these facts, even though they are hard and sometimes unpleasant. Your problem, for example, is to slay dragons.” 16
“They say that those dragons down in the south wood are five hundred feet long,” ventured Gawaine, timorously. 17
“Stuff and nonsense!” said the Headmaster. “The curate saw one last week from the top of Arthur’s Hill. The dragon was sunning himself down in the valley. The curate didn’t have an opportunity to look at him very long because he felt it was his duty to hurry back to make a report to me. He said the monster, or shall I say, the big lizard?—wasn’t an inch over two hundred feet. But the size has nothing at all to do with it. You’ll find the big ones even easier than the little ones. They’re far slower on their feet and less aggressive, I’m told. Besides, before you go I’m going to equip you in such fashion that you need have no fear of all the dragons in the world.” 18
“I’d like an enchanted cap,” said Gawaine. 19
“What’s that?” answered the Headmaster, testily. 20
“A cap to make me disappear,” explained Gawaine. 21
The Headmaster laughed indulgently. “You mustn’t believe all those old wives’ stories,” he said. “There isn’t any such thing. A cap to make you disappear, indeed! What would you do with it? You haven’t even appeared yet. Why, my boy, you could walk from here to London, and nobody would so much as look at you. You’re nobody. You couldn’t be more invisible than that.” 22
Gawaine seemed dangerously close to a relapse into his old habit of whimpering. The Headmaster reassured him: “Don’t worry; I’ll give you something much better than an enchanted cap. I’m going to give you a magic word. All you have to do is to repeat this magic charm once and no dragon can possibly harm a hair of your head. You can cut off his head at your leisure.” 23
He took a heavy book from the shelf behind his desk and began to run through it. “Sometimes,” he said, “the charm is a whole phrase or even a sentence. I might, for instance, give you ‘To make the’—No, that might not do. I think a single word would be best for dragons.” 24
“A short word,” suggested Gawaine. 25
“It can’t be too short or it wouldn’t be potent. There isn’t so much hurry as all that. Here’s a splendid magic word: ‘Rumplesnitz.’ Do you think you can learn that?” 26
Gawaine tried and in an hour or so he seemed to have the word well in hand. Again and again he interrupted the lesson to inquire, “And if I say ‘Rumplesnitz’ the dragon can’t possibly hurt me?” And always the Headmaster replied, “If you only say ‘Rumplesnitz,’ you are perfectly safe.” 27
Toward morning Gawaine seemed resigned to his career. At daybreak the Headmaster saw him to the edge of the forest and pointed him to the direction in which he should proceed. About a mile away to the southwest a cloud of steam hovered over an open meadow in the woods and the Headmaster assured Gawaine that under the steam he would find a dragon. Gawaine went forward slowly. He wondered whether it would be best to approach the dragon on the run as he did in his practice in the South Meadow or to walk slowly toward him, shouting “Rumplesnitz” all the way. 28
The problem was decided for him. No sooner had he come to the fringe of the meadow than the dragon spied him and began to charge. It was a large dragon and yet it seemed decidedly aggressive in spite of the Headmaster’s statement to the contrary. As the dragon charged it released huge clouds of hissing steam through its nostrils. It was almost as if a gigantic teapot had gone mad. The dragon came forward so fast and Gawaine was so frightened that he had time to say “Rumplesnitz” only once. As he said it, he swung his battle-ax and off popped the head of the dragon. Gawaine had to admit that it was even easier to kill a real dragon than a wooden one if only you said “Rumplesnitz.” 29
Gawaine brought the ears home and a small section of the tail. His school mates and the faculty made much of him, but the Headmaster wisely kept him from being spoiled by insisting that he go on with his work. Every clear day Gawaine rose at dawn and went out to kill dragons. The Headmaster kept him at home when it rained, because he said the woods were damp and unhealthy at such times and that he didn’t want the boy to run needless risks. Few good days passed in which Gawaine failed to get a dragon. On one particularly fortunate day he killed three, a husband and wife and a visiting relative. Gradually he developed a technique. Pupils who sometimes watched him from the hill-tops a long way off said that he often allowed the dragon to come within a few feet before he said “Rumplesnitz.” He came to say it with a mocking sneer. Occasionally he did stunts. Once when an excursion party from London was watching him he went into action with his right hand tied behind his back. The dragon’s head came off just as easily. 30
As Gawaine’s record of killings mounted higher the Headmaster found it impossible to keep him completely in hand. He fell into the habit of stealing out at night and engaging in long drinking bouts at the village tavern. It was after such a debauch that he rose a little before dawn one fine August morning and started out after his fiftieth dragon. His head was heavy and his mind sluggish. He was heavy in other respects as well, for he had adopted the somewhat vulgar practice of wearing his medals, ribbons and all, when he went out dragon hunting. The decorations began on his chest and ran all the way down to his abdomen. They must have weighed at least eight pounds. 31
Gawaine found a dragon in the same meadow where he had killed the first one. It was a fair-sized dragon, but evidently an old one. Its face was wrinkled and Gawaine thought he had never seen so hideous a countenance. Much to the lad’s disgust, the monster refused to charge and Gawaine was obliged to walk toward him. He whistled as he went. The dragon regarded him hopelessly, but craftily. Of course it had heard of Gawaine. Even when the lad raised his battle-ax the dragon made no move. It knew that there was no salvation in the quickest thrust of the head, for it had been informed that this hunter was protected by an enchantment. It merely waited, hoping something would turn up. Gawaine raised the battle-ax and suddenly lowered it again. He had grown very pale and he trembled violently. The dragon suspected a trick. “What’s the matter?” it asked, with false solicitude. 32
“I’ve forgotten the magic word,” stammered Gawaine. 33
“What a pity,” said the dragon. “So that was the secret. It doesn’t seem quite sporting to me, all this magic stuff, you know. Not cricket, as we used to say when I was a little dragon; but after all, that’s a matter of opinion.” 34
Gawaine was so helpless with terror that the dragon’s confidence rose immeasurably and it could not resist the temptation to show off a bit. 35
“Could I possibly be of any assistance?” it asked. “What’s the first letter of the magic word?” 36
“It begins with an ‘r,”’ said Gawaine weakly. 37
“Let’s see,” mused the dragon, “that doesn’t tell us much, does it? What sort of a word is this? Is it an epithet, do you think?” 38
Gawaine could do no more than nod. 39
“Why, of course,” exclaimed the dragon, “reactionary Republican.” 40
Gawaine shook his head. 41
“Well, then,” said the dragon, “we’d better get down to business. Will you surrender?” 42
With the suggestion of a compromise Gawaine mustered up enough courage to speak. 43
“What will you do if I surrender?” he asked. 44
“Why, I’ll eat you,” said the dragon. 45
“And if I don’t surrender?” 46
“I’ll eat you just the same.” 47
“Then it doesn’t mean any difference, does it?” moaned Gawaine. 48
“It does to me,” said the dragon with a smile. “I’d rather you didn’t surrender. You’d taste much better if you didn’t.” 49
The dragon waited for a long time for Gawaine to ask “Why?” but the boy was too frightened to speak. At last the dragon had to give the explanation without his cue line. “You see,” he said, “if you don’t surrender you’ll taste better because you’ll die game.” 50
This was an old and ancient trick of the dragon’s. By means of some such quip he was accustomed to paralyze his victims with laughter and then to destroy them. Gawaine was sufficiently paralyzed as it was, but laughter had no part in his helplessness. With the last word of the joke the dragon drew back his head and struck. In that second there flashed into the mind of Gawaine the magic word “Rumplesnitz,” but there was no time to say it. There was time only to strike and, without a word, Gawaine met the onrush of the dragon with a full swing. He put all his back and shoulders into it. The impact was terrific and the head of the dragon flew away almost a hundred yards and landed in a thicket. 51
Gawaine did not remain frightened very long after the death of the dragon. His mood was one of wonder. He was enormously puzzled. He cut off the ears of the monster almost in a trance. Again and again he thought to himself, “I didn’t say ‘Rumplesnitz’!” He was sure of that and yet there was no question that he had killed the dragon. In fact, he had never killed one so utterly. Never before had he driven a head for anything like the same distance. Twenty-five yards was perhaps his best previous record. All the way back to the knight school he kept rumbling about in his mind seeking an explanation for what had occurred. He went to the Headmaster immediately and after closing the door told him what had happened. “I didn’t say ‘Rumplesnitz,’” he explained with great earnestness. 52
The Headmaster laughed. “I’m glad you’ve found out,” he said. “It makes you ever so much more of a hero. Don’t you see that? Now you know that it was you who killed all these dragons and not that foolish little word ‘Rumplesnitz.’” 53
Gawaine frowned. “Then it wasn’t a magic word after all?” he asked. 54
“Of course not,” said the Headmaster, “you ought to be too old for such foolishness. There isn’t any such thing as a magic word.” 55
“But you told me it was magic,” protested Gawaine. “You said it was magic and now you say it isn’t.” 56
“It wasn’t magic in a literal sense,” answered the Headmaster, “but it was much more wonderful than that. The word gave you confidence. It took away your fears. If I hadn’t told you that you might have been killed the very first time. It was your battle-ax did the trick.” 57
Gawaine surprised the Headmaster by his attitude, He was obviously distressed by the explanation. He interrupted a long philosophic and ethical discourse by the Headmaster with, “If I hadn’t of hit ’em all mighty hard and fast any one of ’em might have crushed me like a, like a—” He fumbled for a word. 58
“Egg shell,” suggested the Headmaster. 59
“Like a egg shell,” assented Gawaine, and he said it many times. All through the evening meal people who sat near him heard him muttering, “Like a egg shell, like a egg shell.” 60
The next day was clear, but Gawaine did not get up at dawn. Indeed, it was almost noon when the Headmaster found him cowering in bed, with the clothes pulled over his head. The principal called the Assistant Professor of Pleasaunce, and together they dragged the boy toward the forest. 61
“He’ll be all right as soon as he gets a couple more dragons under his belt,” explained the Headmaster. 62
“The Assistant Professor of Pleasaunce agreed. “It would be a shame to stop such a fine run,” he said. “Why, counting that one yesterday, he’s killed fifty dragons.” 63
They pushed the boy into a thicket above which hung a meager cloud of steam. It was obviously quite a small dragon. But Gawaine did not come back that night or the next. In fact, he never came back. Some weeks afterward brave spirits from the school explored the thicket, but they could find nothing to remind them of Gawaine except the metal parts of his medals. Even the ribbons had been devoured. 64
The Headmaster and the Assistant Professor of Pleasaunce agreed that it would be just as well not to tell the school how Gawaine had achieved his record and still less how he came to die. They held that it might have a bad effect on school spirit. Accordingly, Gawaine has lived in the memory of the school as its greatest hero. No visitor succeeds in leaving the building to-day without seeing a great shield which hangs on the wall of the dining hall. Fifty pairs of dragons’ ears are mounted upon the shield and underneath in gilt letters is “Gawaine le Cœur-Hardy,” followed by the simple inscription, “He killed fifty dragons.” The record has never been equaled. 65
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Through the Tunnel
Doris Lessing
Learning Data: Depth of Knowledge 1
Click here for the Quizlet for this story
1 Going to the shore on the first morning of the vacation, the young English boy stopped at a turning of the path and looked down at a wild and rocky bay, and then over to the crowded beach he knew so well from other years. His mother walked on in front of him, carrying a bright striped bag in one hand. Her other arm, swinging loose, was very white in the sun. The boy watched that white naked arm, and turned his eyes, which had a frown behind them, towards the bay and back again to his mother. When she felt he was not with her, she swung around. "Oh, there you are, Jerry!" she said. She looked impatient, then smiled. "Why, darling, would you rather not come with me? Would you rather–" She frowned, conscientiously worrying over what amusements he might secretly be longing for, which she had been too busy or too careless to imagine. He was very familiar with that anxious, apologetic smile. Contrition sent him running after her. And yet, as he ran, he looked back over his shoulder at the wild bay; and all morning, as he played on the safe beach, he was thinking of it.
RL6.1 How do we know the boy is not from America?
RL6.2 The author foreshadows the theme through the boy by having him look back, and spend all day thinking about the wild bay. Try to guess the theme using the wild bay as a symbol.
RL6.3 What does the author mean by "wild bay"? Prompt: This is figurative language that explains...
2 Next morning, when it was time for the routine of swimming and sunbathing, his mother said, "Are you tired of the usual beach, Jerry? Would you like to go somewhere else?"
"Oh, no!" he said quickly, smiling at her out of that unfailing impulse of contrition-a sort of chivalry. Yet, walking down the path with her, he blurted out, "I'd like to go and have a look at those rocks down there."
She gave the idea her attention. It was a wild-looking place, and there was no one there; but she said, "Of course, Jerry. When you've had enough, come to the big beach. Or just go straight back to the villa, if you like."
She walked away, that bare arm, now slightly reddened from yesterday's sun, swinging. And he almost ran after her again, feeling it unbearable that she should go by herself, but he did not.
She was thinking, Of course he's old enough to be safe without me. Have I been keeping him too close? He mustn't feel he ought to be with me. I must be careful.
He was an only child, eleven years old. She was a widow. She was determined to be neither possessive nor lacking in devotion. She went worrying off to her beach.
As for Jerry, once he saw that his mother had gained her beach, he began the steep descent to the bay.
3 From where he was, high up among red-brown rocks, it was a scoop of moving blueish green fringed with white. As he went lower, he saw that it spread among small promontories and inlets of rough, sharp rock, and the crisping, lapping surface showed stains of purple and darker blue. Finally, as he ran sliding and scraping down the last few yards, he saw an edge of white surf and the shallow, luminous movement of water over white sand, and, beyond that, a solid, heavy blue.
4 He ran straight into the water and began swimming.
He was a good swimmer. He went out fast over the gleaming sand, over a middle region where rocks lay like discolored monsters under the surface, and then he was in the real sea-a warm sea where irregular cold currents from the deep water shocked his limbs.
When he was so far out that he could look back not only on the little bay but past the promontory that was between it and the big beach, he floated on the buoyant surface and looked for his mother. There she was, a speck of yellow under an umbrella that looked like a slice of orange peel. He swam back to shore, relieved at being sure she was there, but all at once very lonely.
On the edge of a small cape that marked the side of the bay away from the promontory was a loose scatter of rocks. Above them, some boys were stripping off their clothes. They sprinted down to the rocks.
5 The English boy swam towards them, but kept his distance at a stone's throw. They were of that coast; all of them were burned smooth dark brown and speaking a language he did not understand. To be part of that activity was a craving that filled his whole body. He swam a little closer; they turned and watched him with narrowed, alert dark eyes. Then one smiled and waved. It was enough. In a minute, he had swum in and was on the rocks beside them, smiling with a desperate, nervous supplication. They shouted cheerful greetings at him; and then, as he preserved his nervous, uncomprehending smile, they understood that he was a foreigner strayed from his own beach, and they proceeded to forget him. But he was happy. He was among them.
6 They began diving again and again from a high point into a well of blue sea between rough, pointed rocks. After they had dived and come up, they swam around, hauled themselves up, and waited their turn to dive again.
7 They were big boys-men, to Jerry. He dived, and they watched him; and when he swam around to take his place, they made way for him. He felt he was accepted and he dived again, carefully, proud of himself.
Soon the biggest of the boys poised himself, shot down into the water, and did not come up. The others stood about, watching Jerry, after waiting for the sleek brown head to appear, let out a yell of warning; they looked at him idly and turned their eyes back towards the water.
8 After a long time, the boy came up on the other side of a big dark rock, letting the air out of his lungs in a sputtering gasp and a shout of triumph. Immediately the rest of them dived in. One moment, the morning seemed full of chattering boys; the next, the air and the surface of the water were empty. But through the heavy blue,
dark shapes could be seen moving and swimming.
Jerry dived, shot past the school of underwater swimmers, saw a black wall of rock looming at him, touched it, and bobbed up at once to the surface, where the wall was a low barrier he could see across. There was no one visible; under him, in the water, the dim shapes of the swimmers had disappeared. Then one, and then another of the boys came up on the far side of the barrier of rock, and he understood that they had swum through some gap or hole in it. He plunged down again. He could see nothing through the stinging salt water but the black rock. When he came up the boys were all on the diving rock, preparing to attempt the feat again. And now, in a panic of failure, he yelled up, in English, "Look at me! Look!" and he began splashing and kicking in the water like a foolish dog.
9 They looked down gravely, frowning. He knew the frown. At moments of failure, when he clowned to claim his mother's attention, it was with just this grave, embarrassed inspection that she rewarded him. Through his hot shame, feeling the pleading grin on his face like a scar that he could never remove, he looked up at the group of big brown boys on the rock and shouted "Bonjour! Merci! Au revoir! Monsieur, monsieur!'" while he hooked his fingers round his ears and waggled them.
10 Water surged into his mouth; he choked, sank, came up. The rock, lately weighted with boys, seemed to rear up out of the water as their weight was removed. They were flying down past him now, into the water; the air was full of falling bodies. Then the rock was empty in the hot sunlight. He counted one, two, three…
11 At fifty, he was terrified. They must all be drowning beneath him, in the watery caves of the rock! At a hundred, he stared around him at the empty hillside, wondering if he should yell for help. He counted faster, faster, to hurry them up, to bring them to the surface quickly, to drown them quickly-anything rather than the terror of counting on and on into the blue emptiness of the morning. And then, at a hundred and sixty, the water beyond the rock was full of boys surfacing like brown whales. They swam back to the shore without a look at him.
12 He climbed back to the diving rock and sat down, feeling the hot roughness of it under his thighs. The boys were gathering up their bits of clothing and running off along the shore to another promontory. They were leaving to get away from him. He cried openly, fists in his eyes. There was no one to see him, and he cried himself out.
RL6.3 What does the author mean by "cried himself out"? Prompt: This is figurative language that explains...
What is the problem/conflict of the story? (Basic story conflicts are: man versus man; man versus self; man versus nature) This goes to IR's point about the cave being a character in the story.
13 It seemed to him that a long time had passed, and he swam out to where he could see his mother. Yes, she was still there, a yellow spot under an orange umbrella. (This is inference! He wanted to see his mom, however, he could recognize her as a yellow spot. This symbolizes the journey he's taking, moving away from her and his childhood.)
He swam back to the big rock, climbed up, and dived into the blue pool among the fanged and angry boulders. Down he went, until he touched the wall of rock again. But the salt was so painful in his eyes that he could not see.
RL6.3 What does the author mean by "fanged and angry boulders"? Prompt: This is figurative language that explains...
14 He came to the surface, swam to shore and went back to the villa to wait for his mother. Soon she walked slowly up the path, swinging her striped bag, the flushed, naked arm dangling beside her. "I want some swimming goggles," he panted, defiant and beseeching.
15 She gave him a patient, inquisitive look as she said casually, "Well, of course, darling."
But now, now, now! He must have them this minute, and no other time. He nagged and pestered until she went with him to a shop. As soon as she had bought the goggles, he grabbed them from her hand as if she were going to claim them for herself, and was off, running down the steep path to the bay.
RL6.2 Lots of energy in this paragraph. What does this tell us about Jerry? Does he sound childish or does he sound like a determined young man? This is the most difficult question because it requires you to make a judgement.
16 Jerry swam out to the big barrier rock, adjusted the goggles, and dived. The impact of the water broke the rubber-enclosed vacuum, and the goggles came loose. He understood that he must swim down to the base of the rock from the surface of the water. He fixed the goggles tight and firm, filled his lungs, and floated, face down, on the water. Now he could see. It was as if he had eyes of a different kind-fish eyes that showed everything clear and delicate and wavering in the bright water.
17 Under him, six or seven feet down, was a floor of perfectly clean, shining white sand, rippled firm and hard by the tides. Two greyish shapes steered there, like long, rounded pieces of wood or slate. They were fish. He saw them nose towards each other, pose motionless, make a dart forward, swerve off, and come around again. It was like a water dance. A few inches above them the water sparkled as if sequins were dropping through it. Fish again-myriads of minute fish, the length of his fingernail, were drifting through the water, and in a moment he could feel the innumerable tiny touches of them against his limbs. It was like swimming in flaked silver. (Is this figurative language? What kind?) The great rock the big boys had swum through rose sheer out of the white sand-black, tufted lightly with greenish weed. He could see no gap in it. He swam down to its base.
18 Again and again he rose, took a big chestful of air, and went down. Again and again he groped over the surface of the rock, feeling it, almost hugging it in the desperate need to find the entrance. And then, once, while he was clinging to the black wall, his knees came up and he shot his feet out forward and they met no obstacle. He had found the tunnel entrance. Why does the author repeat "again and again" again and again?
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19 He gained the surface, clambered about the stones that littered the barrier rock until he found a big one, and, with this in his arms, let himself down over the side of the rock. He dropped, with the weight, straight to the sandy floor. Clinging tight to the anchor of stone, he lay on his side and looked in under the dark shelf at the place where his feet had gone. He could see the hole. It was an irregular, dark gap; but he could not see deep into it. He let go of his anchor, clung with his hands to the edges of the hole, and tried to push himself in.
20 He got his head in, found his shoulders jammed, moved them in sidewise, and was inside as far as his waist. He could see nothing ahead. Something soft and clammy touched his mouth; he saw a dark frond moving against
the greyish rock, and panic filled him. He thought of octopuses, of clinging weed. He pushed himself out back- ward and caught a glimpse, as he retreated, of a harmless tentacle of seaweed drifting in the mouth of the tunnel.
But it was enough. He reached the sunlight, swam to shore, and lay on the diving rock. He looked down into the blue well of water. He knew he must find his way through that cave, or hole, or tunnel, and out the other side.
RL6.9 Compare and contrast texts in different forms or genres. (Teacher's note: While this story and "To Build A Fire" are both works of fiction, both main characters __________________ , and both have __________ . However, their motivations are __________ .)
21 First, he thought, he must learn to control his breathing. He let himself down into the water with another big stone in his arms, so that he could lie effortlessly on the bottom of the sea. He counted. One, two, three. He counted steadily. He could hear the movement of blood in his chest. Fifty-one, fifty two. . . His chest was hurting. He let go of the rock and went up into the air. He saw that the sun was low. He rushed to the villa and found his mother at her supper. She said only, "Did you enjoy yourself?" and he said, "Yes."
22 All night the boy dreamed of the water-filled cave in the rock, and as soon as breakfast was over he went to the bay.
That night, his nose bled badly. (Teacher's note: Now Jerry must decide ___________) For hours he had been underwater, learning to hold his breath, and now he felt weak and dizzy. His mother said, "I shouldn't overdo things, darling, if I were you."
23 That day and the next, Jerry exercised his lungs as if everything, the whole of his life, all that he would become, depended upon it. (Teacher's note: To understand theme, we must put ourselves in the character's place. Could you ever imagine yourself trying that hard to succeed?)
24 Again his nose bled at night, and his mother insisted on his coming with her the next day. It was a torment to him to waste a day of his careful self-training, but he stayed with her on that other beach, which now seemed a place for small children, a place where his mother might lie safe in the sun. It was not his beach. (Teacher's note: why do you think Jerry felt that way?)
25 He did not ask for permission, on the following day, to go to his beach. He went, before his mother could consider the complicated rights and wrongs of the matter. A day's rest, he discovered, had improved his count by ten. Recovery is part of the four step process.
26 The big boys had made the passage while he counted a hundred and sixty. He had been counting fast, in his fright. Probably now, if he tried, he could get through that long tunnel, but he was not going to try yet. A curious, most un-childlike persistence, a controlled impatience, made him wait. In the meantime, he lay underwater on the white sand, littered now by stones he had brought down from the upper air, and studied the entrance to the tunnel. He knew every jut and Corner of it, as far as it was possible to see. it was as if he already felt its sharpness about his shoulders.
27 He sat by the clock in the villa, when his mother was not near, and checked his time. He was incredulous and then proud to find he could hold his breath without strain for two minutes. The words "two minutes," authorized by the clock, brought close the adventure that was so necessary to him.
28 In another four days, his mother said casually one morning, they must go home. On the day before they left, he
would do it. He would do it if it killed him, he said defiantly to himself. But two days before they were to leave-a day of triumph when he increased his count by fifteen-his nose bled so badly that he turned dizzy and had to lie limply over the big rock like a bit of seaweed, watching the thick red blood flow on to the rock and trickle slowly down to the sea. He was frightened. Supposing he turned dizzy in the tunnel? Supposing he died there, trapped? Supposing-his head went around, in the hot sun, and he almost gave up. He thought he would return to the house and lie down, and next summer, perhaps, when he had another year's growth in him-then he would go through the hole.
29 But even after he had made the decision, or thought he had, he found himself sitting up on the rock and looking down into the water; and he knew that now, this moment, when his nose had only just stopped bleeding, when his head was still sore and throbbing-this was the moment when he would try. If he did not do it now, he never would. He was trembling with fear that he would not go; and he was trembling with horror at the long, long tunnel under the rock, under the sea. Even in the open sunlight, the barrier rock seemed very wide and very heavy; tons of rock pressed down on where he would go.
If he died there, he would lie until one day-perhaps not before next year-those big boys would swim into it and find it blocked.
30 He put on his goggles, fitted them tight, tested the vacuum. His hands were shaking. Then he chose the
biggest stone he could carry and slipped over the edge of the rock until half of him was in the cool enclosing water and half in the hot sun. He looked up once at the empty sky, filled his lungs once, twice, and then sank fast to the bottom with the stone. He let it go and began to count.
He took the edges of the hole in his hands and drew himself into it, wriggling his shoulders in sidewise as he remembered he must, kicking himself along with his feet.
31 Soon he was clear inside. He was in a small rock-bound hole filled with yellowish-grey water. The water was pushing him up against the roof. The roof was sharp and pained his back. He pulled himself along with his hands- fast, fast-and used his legs as levers. His head knocked against something; a sharp pain dizzied him. Fifty, fifty- one, fifty-two… He was without light, and the water seemed to press upon him with the weight of rock. Seven-ty-one, seventy-two… There was no strain on his lungs.
He felt like an inflated balloon, his lungs were so light and easy, but his head was pulsing.
32 He was being continually pressed against the sharp roof, which felt slimy as well as sharp. Again he thought of octopuses, and wondered if the tunnel might be filled with weed that could tangle him. He gave himself a panicky, convulsive kick forward, ducked his head, and swam. His feet and hands moved freely, as if in open water. The hole must have widened out. He thought he must be swimming fast, and he was frightened of banging his head if the tunnel narrowed.
33 A hundred, a hundred and one… The water paled.
Victory filled him. His lungs were beginning to hurt. A few more strokes and he would be out. He was counting wildly; he said a hundred and fifteen, and then, a long time later, a hundred and fifteen again. The water was a clear jewel-green all around him. Then he saw, above his head, a crack running up through the rock. Sunlight was falling through it, showing the clean, dark rock of the tunnel, a single mussel shell, and darkness ahead.
34 He was at the end of what he could do. He looked up at the crack as if it were filled with air and not water, as if he could put his mouth to it to draw in air. A hundred and fifteen, he heard himself say inside his head-but he had said that long ago. He must go on into the blackness ahead, or he would drown. His head was swelling, his lungs cracking. A hundred and fifteen, a hundred and fifteen pounded through his head, and he feebly clutched at rocks in the dark, pulling himself forward, leaving the brief space of sunlit water behind. He felt he was dying. He was no longer quite conscious. He struggled on in the darkness between lapses into unconsciousness. An immense, swelling pain filled his head, and then the darkness cracked with an explosion of green light. His hands, groping forward, met nothing; and his feet, kicking back, propelled him out into the open sea.
35 He drifted to the surface, his face turned up to the air.
He was gasping like a fish. He felt he would sink now and drown; he could not swim the few feet back to the rock. Then he was clutching it and pulling himself up onto it. He lay face down, gasping. He could see nothing but a
red-veined, clotted dark. His eyes must have burst, he thought; they were full of blood. He tore off his goggles and a gout of blood went into the sea. His nose was bleeding, and the blood had filled the goggles.
36 He scooped up handfuls of water from the cool, salty sea, to splash on his face, and did not know whether it was blood or salt water he tasted. After a time, his heart quieted, his eyes cleared, and he sat up. He could see the local boys diving and playing half a mile away. He did not want to join them. He wanted nothing but to return home and lie down.
37 In a short while, Jerry swam to shore and climbed slowly up the path to the villa. He flung himself on his bed and slept, waking at the sound of feet on the path outside. His mother was coming back. He rushed to the bathroom, thinking she must not see his face with bloodstains, or tearstains, on it. He came out of the bathroom and met her as she walked into the villa, smiling, her eyes lighting up.
"Have a nice morning?" she asked, laying her hand on his warm brown shoulder a moment.
"Oh, yes, thank you," he said.
"You look a bit pale." And then, sharp and anxious,
"How did you bang your head?"
"Oh, just banged it," he told her.
She looked at him closely. He was strained; his eyes were glazed-looking. She was worried. And then she said to herself, Oh, don't fuss! Nothing can happen. He can swim like a fish.
They sat down to lunch together.
"Mummy," he said, "I can stay underwater for two minutes - three minutes, at least." It came bursting out of him.
"Can you, darling?" she said. "Well, I shouldn't overdo it. I don't think you ought to swim any more today."
She was ready for a battle of wills, but he gave in at once. It was no longer of the least importance to go to the bay.
Doris Lessing
Learning Data: Depth of Knowledge 1
Click here for the Quizlet for this story
1 Going to the shore on the first morning of the vacation, the young English boy stopped at a turning of the path and looked down at a wild and rocky bay, and then over to the crowded beach he knew so well from other years. His mother walked on in front of him, carrying a bright striped bag in one hand. Her other arm, swinging loose, was very white in the sun. The boy watched that white naked arm, and turned his eyes, which had a frown behind them, towards the bay and back again to his mother. When she felt he was not with her, she swung around. "Oh, there you are, Jerry!" she said. She looked impatient, then smiled. "Why, darling, would you rather not come with me? Would you rather–" She frowned, conscientiously worrying over what amusements he might secretly be longing for, which she had been too busy or too careless to imagine. He was very familiar with that anxious, apologetic smile. Contrition sent him running after her. And yet, as he ran, he looked back over his shoulder at the wild bay; and all morning, as he played on the safe beach, he was thinking of it.
RL6.1 How do we know the boy is not from America?
RL6.2 The author foreshadows the theme through the boy by having him look back, and spend all day thinking about the wild bay. Try to guess the theme using the wild bay as a symbol.
RL6.3 What does the author mean by "wild bay"? Prompt: This is figurative language that explains...
2 Next morning, when it was time for the routine of swimming and sunbathing, his mother said, "Are you tired of the usual beach, Jerry? Would you like to go somewhere else?"
"Oh, no!" he said quickly, smiling at her out of that unfailing impulse of contrition-a sort of chivalry. Yet, walking down the path with her, he blurted out, "I'd like to go and have a look at those rocks down there."
She gave the idea her attention. It was a wild-looking place, and there was no one there; but she said, "Of course, Jerry. When you've had enough, come to the big beach. Or just go straight back to the villa, if you like."
She walked away, that bare arm, now slightly reddened from yesterday's sun, swinging. And he almost ran after her again, feeling it unbearable that she should go by herself, but he did not.
She was thinking, Of course he's old enough to be safe without me. Have I been keeping him too close? He mustn't feel he ought to be with me. I must be careful.
He was an only child, eleven years old. She was a widow. She was determined to be neither possessive nor lacking in devotion. She went worrying off to her beach.
As for Jerry, once he saw that his mother had gained her beach, he began the steep descent to the bay.
3 From where he was, high up among red-brown rocks, it was a scoop of moving blueish green fringed with white. As he went lower, he saw that it spread among small promontories and inlets of rough, sharp rock, and the crisping, lapping surface showed stains of purple and darker blue. Finally, as he ran sliding and scraping down the last few yards, he saw an edge of white surf and the shallow, luminous movement of water over white sand, and, beyond that, a solid, heavy blue.
4 He ran straight into the water and began swimming.
He was a good swimmer. He went out fast over the gleaming sand, over a middle region where rocks lay like discolored monsters under the surface, and then he was in the real sea-a warm sea where irregular cold currents from the deep water shocked his limbs.
When he was so far out that he could look back not only on the little bay but past the promontory that was between it and the big beach, he floated on the buoyant surface and looked for his mother. There she was, a speck of yellow under an umbrella that looked like a slice of orange peel. He swam back to shore, relieved at being sure she was there, but all at once very lonely.
On the edge of a small cape that marked the side of the bay away from the promontory was a loose scatter of rocks. Above them, some boys were stripping off their clothes. They sprinted down to the rocks.
5 The English boy swam towards them, but kept his distance at a stone's throw. They were of that coast; all of them were burned smooth dark brown and speaking a language he did not understand. To be part of that activity was a craving that filled his whole body. He swam a little closer; they turned and watched him with narrowed, alert dark eyes. Then one smiled and waved. It was enough. In a minute, he had swum in and was on the rocks beside them, smiling with a desperate, nervous supplication. They shouted cheerful greetings at him; and then, as he preserved his nervous, uncomprehending smile, they understood that he was a foreigner strayed from his own beach, and they proceeded to forget him. But he was happy. He was among them.
6 They began diving again and again from a high point into a well of blue sea between rough, pointed rocks. After they had dived and come up, they swam around, hauled themselves up, and waited their turn to dive again.
7 They were big boys-men, to Jerry. He dived, and they watched him; and when he swam around to take his place, they made way for him. He felt he was accepted and he dived again, carefully, proud of himself.
Soon the biggest of the boys poised himself, shot down into the water, and did not come up. The others stood about, watching Jerry, after waiting for the sleek brown head to appear, let out a yell of warning; they looked at him idly and turned their eyes back towards the water.
8 After a long time, the boy came up on the other side of a big dark rock, letting the air out of his lungs in a sputtering gasp and a shout of triumph. Immediately the rest of them dived in. One moment, the morning seemed full of chattering boys; the next, the air and the surface of the water were empty. But through the heavy blue,
dark shapes could be seen moving and swimming.
Jerry dived, shot past the school of underwater swimmers, saw a black wall of rock looming at him, touched it, and bobbed up at once to the surface, where the wall was a low barrier he could see across. There was no one visible; under him, in the water, the dim shapes of the swimmers had disappeared. Then one, and then another of the boys came up on the far side of the barrier of rock, and he understood that they had swum through some gap or hole in it. He plunged down again. He could see nothing through the stinging salt water but the black rock. When he came up the boys were all on the diving rock, preparing to attempt the feat again. And now, in a panic of failure, he yelled up, in English, "Look at me! Look!" and he began splashing and kicking in the water like a foolish dog.
9 They looked down gravely, frowning. He knew the frown. At moments of failure, when he clowned to claim his mother's attention, it was with just this grave, embarrassed inspection that she rewarded him. Through his hot shame, feeling the pleading grin on his face like a scar that he could never remove, he looked up at the group of big brown boys on the rock and shouted "Bonjour! Merci! Au revoir! Monsieur, monsieur!'" while he hooked his fingers round his ears and waggled them.
10 Water surged into his mouth; he choked, sank, came up. The rock, lately weighted with boys, seemed to rear up out of the water as their weight was removed. They were flying down past him now, into the water; the air was full of falling bodies. Then the rock was empty in the hot sunlight. He counted one, two, three…
11 At fifty, he was terrified. They must all be drowning beneath him, in the watery caves of the rock! At a hundred, he stared around him at the empty hillside, wondering if he should yell for help. He counted faster, faster, to hurry them up, to bring them to the surface quickly, to drown them quickly-anything rather than the terror of counting on and on into the blue emptiness of the morning. And then, at a hundred and sixty, the water beyond the rock was full of boys surfacing like brown whales. They swam back to the shore without a look at him.
12 He climbed back to the diving rock and sat down, feeling the hot roughness of it under his thighs. The boys were gathering up their bits of clothing and running off along the shore to another promontory. They were leaving to get away from him. He cried openly, fists in his eyes. There was no one to see him, and he cried himself out.
RL6.3 What does the author mean by "cried himself out"? Prompt: This is figurative language that explains...
What is the problem/conflict of the story? (Basic story conflicts are: man versus man; man versus self; man versus nature) This goes to IR's point about the cave being a character in the story.
13 It seemed to him that a long time had passed, and he swam out to where he could see his mother. Yes, she was still there, a yellow spot under an orange umbrella. (This is inference! He wanted to see his mom, however, he could recognize her as a yellow spot. This symbolizes the journey he's taking, moving away from her and his childhood.)
He swam back to the big rock, climbed up, and dived into the blue pool among the fanged and angry boulders. Down he went, until he touched the wall of rock again. But the salt was so painful in his eyes that he could not see.
RL6.3 What does the author mean by "fanged and angry boulders"? Prompt: This is figurative language that explains...
14 He came to the surface, swam to shore and went back to the villa to wait for his mother. Soon she walked slowly up the path, swinging her striped bag, the flushed, naked arm dangling beside her. "I want some swimming goggles," he panted, defiant and beseeching.
15 She gave him a patient, inquisitive look as she said casually, "Well, of course, darling."
But now, now, now! He must have them this minute, and no other time. He nagged and pestered until she went with him to a shop. As soon as she had bought the goggles, he grabbed them from her hand as if she were going to claim them for herself, and was off, running down the steep path to the bay.
RL6.2 Lots of energy in this paragraph. What does this tell us about Jerry? Does he sound childish or does he sound like a determined young man? This is the most difficult question because it requires you to make a judgement.
16 Jerry swam out to the big barrier rock, adjusted the goggles, and dived. The impact of the water broke the rubber-enclosed vacuum, and the goggles came loose. He understood that he must swim down to the base of the rock from the surface of the water. He fixed the goggles tight and firm, filled his lungs, and floated, face down, on the water. Now he could see. It was as if he had eyes of a different kind-fish eyes that showed everything clear and delicate and wavering in the bright water.
17 Under him, six or seven feet down, was a floor of perfectly clean, shining white sand, rippled firm and hard by the tides. Two greyish shapes steered there, like long, rounded pieces of wood or slate. They were fish. He saw them nose towards each other, pose motionless, make a dart forward, swerve off, and come around again. It was like a water dance. A few inches above them the water sparkled as if sequins were dropping through it. Fish again-myriads of minute fish, the length of his fingernail, were drifting through the water, and in a moment he could feel the innumerable tiny touches of them against his limbs. It was like swimming in flaked silver. (Is this figurative language? What kind?) The great rock the big boys had swum through rose sheer out of the white sand-black, tufted lightly with greenish weed. He could see no gap in it. He swam down to its base.
18 Again and again he rose, took a big chestful of air, and went down. Again and again he groped over the surface of the rock, feeling it, almost hugging it in the desperate need to find the entrance. And then, once, while he was clinging to the black wall, his knees came up and he shot his feet out forward and they met no obstacle. He had found the tunnel entrance. Why does the author repeat "again and again" again and again?
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19 He gained the surface, clambered about the stones that littered the barrier rock until he found a big one, and, with this in his arms, let himself down over the side of the rock. He dropped, with the weight, straight to the sandy floor. Clinging tight to the anchor of stone, he lay on his side and looked in under the dark shelf at the place where his feet had gone. He could see the hole. It was an irregular, dark gap; but he could not see deep into it. He let go of his anchor, clung with his hands to the edges of the hole, and tried to push himself in.
20 He got his head in, found his shoulders jammed, moved them in sidewise, and was inside as far as his waist. He could see nothing ahead. Something soft and clammy touched his mouth; he saw a dark frond moving against
the greyish rock, and panic filled him. He thought of octopuses, of clinging weed. He pushed himself out back- ward and caught a glimpse, as he retreated, of a harmless tentacle of seaweed drifting in the mouth of the tunnel.
But it was enough. He reached the sunlight, swam to shore, and lay on the diving rock. He looked down into the blue well of water. He knew he must find his way through that cave, or hole, or tunnel, and out the other side.
RL6.9 Compare and contrast texts in different forms or genres. (Teacher's note: While this story and "To Build A Fire" are both works of fiction, both main characters __________________ , and both have __________ . However, their motivations are __________ .)
21 First, he thought, he must learn to control his breathing. He let himself down into the water with another big stone in his arms, so that he could lie effortlessly on the bottom of the sea. He counted. One, two, three. He counted steadily. He could hear the movement of blood in his chest. Fifty-one, fifty two. . . His chest was hurting. He let go of the rock and went up into the air. He saw that the sun was low. He rushed to the villa and found his mother at her supper. She said only, "Did you enjoy yourself?" and he said, "Yes."
22 All night the boy dreamed of the water-filled cave in the rock, and as soon as breakfast was over he went to the bay.
That night, his nose bled badly. (Teacher's note: Now Jerry must decide ___________) For hours he had been underwater, learning to hold his breath, and now he felt weak and dizzy. His mother said, "I shouldn't overdo things, darling, if I were you."
23 That day and the next, Jerry exercised his lungs as if everything, the whole of his life, all that he would become, depended upon it. (Teacher's note: To understand theme, we must put ourselves in the character's place. Could you ever imagine yourself trying that hard to succeed?)
24 Again his nose bled at night, and his mother insisted on his coming with her the next day. It was a torment to him to waste a day of his careful self-training, but he stayed with her on that other beach, which now seemed a place for small children, a place where his mother might lie safe in the sun. It was not his beach. (Teacher's note: why do you think Jerry felt that way?)
25 He did not ask for permission, on the following day, to go to his beach. He went, before his mother could consider the complicated rights and wrongs of the matter. A day's rest, he discovered, had improved his count by ten. Recovery is part of the four step process.
26 The big boys had made the passage while he counted a hundred and sixty. He had been counting fast, in his fright. Probably now, if he tried, he could get through that long tunnel, but he was not going to try yet. A curious, most un-childlike persistence, a controlled impatience, made him wait. In the meantime, he lay underwater on the white sand, littered now by stones he had brought down from the upper air, and studied the entrance to the tunnel. He knew every jut and Corner of it, as far as it was possible to see. it was as if he already felt its sharpness about his shoulders.
27 He sat by the clock in the villa, when his mother was not near, and checked his time. He was incredulous and then proud to find he could hold his breath without strain for two minutes. The words "two minutes," authorized by the clock, brought close the adventure that was so necessary to him.
28 In another four days, his mother said casually one morning, they must go home. On the day before they left, he
would do it. He would do it if it killed him, he said defiantly to himself. But two days before they were to leave-a day of triumph when he increased his count by fifteen-his nose bled so badly that he turned dizzy and had to lie limply over the big rock like a bit of seaweed, watching the thick red blood flow on to the rock and trickle slowly down to the sea. He was frightened. Supposing he turned dizzy in the tunnel? Supposing he died there, trapped? Supposing-his head went around, in the hot sun, and he almost gave up. He thought he would return to the house and lie down, and next summer, perhaps, when he had another year's growth in him-then he would go through the hole.
29 But even after he had made the decision, or thought he had, he found himself sitting up on the rock and looking down into the water; and he knew that now, this moment, when his nose had only just stopped bleeding, when his head was still sore and throbbing-this was the moment when he would try. If he did not do it now, he never would. He was trembling with fear that he would not go; and he was trembling with horror at the long, long tunnel under the rock, under the sea. Even in the open sunlight, the barrier rock seemed very wide and very heavy; tons of rock pressed down on where he would go.
If he died there, he would lie until one day-perhaps not before next year-those big boys would swim into it and find it blocked.
30 He put on his goggles, fitted them tight, tested the vacuum. His hands were shaking. Then he chose the
biggest stone he could carry and slipped over the edge of the rock until half of him was in the cool enclosing water and half in the hot sun. He looked up once at the empty sky, filled his lungs once, twice, and then sank fast to the bottom with the stone. He let it go and began to count.
He took the edges of the hole in his hands and drew himself into it, wriggling his shoulders in sidewise as he remembered he must, kicking himself along with his feet.
31 Soon he was clear inside. He was in a small rock-bound hole filled with yellowish-grey water. The water was pushing him up against the roof. The roof was sharp and pained his back. He pulled himself along with his hands- fast, fast-and used his legs as levers. His head knocked against something; a sharp pain dizzied him. Fifty, fifty- one, fifty-two… He was without light, and the water seemed to press upon him with the weight of rock. Seven-ty-one, seventy-two… There was no strain on his lungs.
He felt like an inflated balloon, his lungs were so light and easy, but his head was pulsing.
32 He was being continually pressed against the sharp roof, which felt slimy as well as sharp. Again he thought of octopuses, and wondered if the tunnel might be filled with weed that could tangle him. He gave himself a panicky, convulsive kick forward, ducked his head, and swam. His feet and hands moved freely, as if in open water. The hole must have widened out. He thought he must be swimming fast, and he was frightened of banging his head if the tunnel narrowed.
33 A hundred, a hundred and one… The water paled.
Victory filled him. His lungs were beginning to hurt. A few more strokes and he would be out. He was counting wildly; he said a hundred and fifteen, and then, a long time later, a hundred and fifteen again. The water was a clear jewel-green all around him. Then he saw, above his head, a crack running up through the rock. Sunlight was falling through it, showing the clean, dark rock of the tunnel, a single mussel shell, and darkness ahead.
34 He was at the end of what he could do. He looked up at the crack as if it were filled with air and not water, as if he could put his mouth to it to draw in air. A hundred and fifteen, he heard himself say inside his head-but he had said that long ago. He must go on into the blackness ahead, or he would drown. His head was swelling, his lungs cracking. A hundred and fifteen, a hundred and fifteen pounded through his head, and he feebly clutched at rocks in the dark, pulling himself forward, leaving the brief space of sunlit water behind. He felt he was dying. He was no longer quite conscious. He struggled on in the darkness between lapses into unconsciousness. An immense, swelling pain filled his head, and then the darkness cracked with an explosion of green light. His hands, groping forward, met nothing; and his feet, kicking back, propelled him out into the open sea.
35 He drifted to the surface, his face turned up to the air.
He was gasping like a fish. He felt he would sink now and drown; he could not swim the few feet back to the rock. Then he was clutching it and pulling himself up onto it. He lay face down, gasping. He could see nothing but a
red-veined, clotted dark. His eyes must have burst, he thought; they were full of blood. He tore off his goggles and a gout of blood went into the sea. His nose was bleeding, and the blood had filled the goggles.
36 He scooped up handfuls of water from the cool, salty sea, to splash on his face, and did not know whether it was blood or salt water he tasted. After a time, his heart quieted, his eyes cleared, and he sat up. He could see the local boys diving and playing half a mile away. He did not want to join them. He wanted nothing but to return home and lie down.
37 In a short while, Jerry swam to shore and climbed slowly up the path to the villa. He flung himself on his bed and slept, waking at the sound of feet on the path outside. His mother was coming back. He rushed to the bathroom, thinking she must not see his face with bloodstains, or tearstains, on it. He came out of the bathroom and met her as she walked into the villa, smiling, her eyes lighting up.
"Have a nice morning?" she asked, laying her hand on his warm brown shoulder a moment.
"Oh, yes, thank you," he said.
"You look a bit pale." And then, sharp and anxious,
"How did you bang your head?"
"Oh, just banged it," he told her.
She looked at him closely. He was strained; his eyes were glazed-looking. She was worried. And then she said to herself, Oh, don't fuss! Nothing can happen. He can swim like a fish.
They sat down to lunch together.
"Mummy," he said, "I can stay underwater for two minutes - three minutes, at least." It came bursting out of him.
"Can you, darling?" she said. "Well, I shouldn't overdo it. I don't think you ought to swim any more today."
She was ready for a battle of wills, but he gave in at once. It was no longer of the least importance to go to the bay.
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Jack London
TO BUILD A FIRE
Day had dawned cold and gray when the man turned aside from the main Yukon trail.
He climbed the high earth-bank where a little-traveled trail led east through the pine forest.
It was a high bank, and he paused to breathe at the top. He excused the act to himself
by looking at his watch. It was nine o’clock in the morning.
There was no sun or promise of sun, although there was not
a cloud in the sky. It was a clear day. However, there seemed to be an
indescribable darkness over the face of things. That was because the sun
was absent from the sky. This fact did not worry the man. He was not
alarmed by the lack of sun. It had been days since he had seen the sun.
The man looked along the way he had come. The Yukon lay a
mile wide and hidden under three feet of ice. On top of this ice were
as many feet of snow. It was all pure white. North and south, as far as
his eye could see, it was unbroken white. The one thing that relieved
the whiteness was a thin dark line that curved from the pine-covered
island to the south. It curved into the north, where it disappeared
be hind another pine-covered island. This dark line was the trail—the
main trail. It led south 500 miles to the Chilcoot Pass, and salt water.
It led north 75 miles to Dawson, and still farther on to the north a
thousand miles to Nulato, and finally to St. Michael, on Bering Sea,
a thousand miles and half a thousand more.
But all this—the distant trail, no sun in the sky, the great cold,
and the strangeness of it all—had no effect on the man. It was not
be cause he was long familiar with it. He was a newcomer in the land, and
this was his first winter.
The trouble with him was that he was not able to imagine. He
was quick and ready in the things of life, but only in the things, and not
in their meanings. Fifty degrees below zero meant 80 degrees of frost.
Such facts told him that it was cold and uncomfortable, and that was
all. It did not lead him to consider his weaknesses as a creature affected
by temperature. Nor did he think about man’s general weakness, able
to live only within narrow limits of heat and cold. From there, it did
not lead him to thoughts of heaven and the meaning of a man’s life.
50 degrees below zero meant a bite of frost that hurt and that must be
guarded against by the use of mittens, ear coverings, warm moccasins,
and thick socks. 50 degrees below zero was to him nothing more than
50 degrees below zero. That it should be more important than that was
a thought that never entered his head.
As he turned to go, he forced some water from his mouth as an
experiment. There was a sudden noise that surprised him. He tried it
again. And again, in the air, before they could fall to the snow, the
drops of water became ice that broke with a noise. He knew that at 50
below zero water from the mouth made a noise when it hit the snow.
But this had done that in the air. Undoubtedly it was colder than 50
below. But exactly how much colder he did not know. But the temperature
did not matter.
He was headed for the old camp on Henderson Creek, where the
boys were already. They had come across the mountain from the Indian
Creek country. He had taken the long trail to look at the possibility of
floating logs from the islands in the Yukon down the river when the
ice melted. He would be in camp by six o’clock that evening. It would
be a little after dark, but the boys would be there, a fire would be burning,
and a hot supper would be ready. As he thought of lunch, he pressed
his hand against the package under his jacket. It was also under his
shirt, wrapped in a handkerchief, and lying for warmth against the
naked skin. Otherwise, the bread would freeze. He smiled contentedly
to himself as he thought of those pieces of bread, each of which
enclosed a generous portion of cooked meat.
He plunged among the big pine trees. The trail was not well
marked here. Several inches of snow had fallen since the last sled had
passed. He was glad he was without a sled. Actually, he carried nothing
but the lunch wrapped in the handkerchief. He was surprised, however,
at the cold. It certainly was cold, he decided, as he rubbed his
nose and face with his mittened hand. He had a good growth of hair
on his face, but that did not protect his nose or the upper part of his
face from the frosty air.
Following at the man’s heels was a big native dog. It was a wolf
dog, gray-coated and not noticeably different from its brother, the wild
wolf. The animal was worried by the great cold. It knew that this was
no time for traveling. Its own feeling was closer to the truth than the
man’s judgment. In reality, it was not merely colder than 50 below
zero; it was colder than 60 below, than 70 below. It was 75 below zero.
Because the freezing point is 32 above zero, it meant that there were
107 degrees of frost.
The dog did not know anything about temperatures. Possibly in
its brain there was no understanding of a condition of very cold, such
as was in the man’s brain. But the animal sensed the danger. Its fear
made it question eagerly every movement of the man as if expecting
him to go into camp or to seek shelter somewhere and build a fire. The
dog had learned about fire, and it wanted fire. Otherwise, it would dig
itself into the snow and find shelter from the cold air.
The frozen moistness of its breathing had settled on its fur in a
fine powder of frost. The hair on the man’s face was similarly frosted,
but more solidly. It took the form of ice and increased with every warm,
moist breath from his mouth. Also, the man had tobacco in his mouth.
The ice held his lips so tightly together that he could not empty the
juice from his mouth. The result was a long piece of yellow ice hanging
from his lips. If he fell down it would break, like glass, into many
pieces. He expected the ice formed by the tobacco juice, having been
out twice before when it was very cold. But it had not been as cold as
this, he knew.
He continued through the level forest for several miles. Then he
went down a bank to the frozen path of a small stream. This was Henderson
Creek and he knew he was ten miles from where the stream
divided. He looked at his watch. It was ten o’clock. He was traveling
at the rate of four miles an hour. Thus, he figured that he would arrive
where the stream divided at half-past twelve. He decided he would eat
his lunch when he arrived there.
The dog followed again at his heels, with its tail hanging low, as
the man started to walk along the frozen stream. The old sled trail could
be seen, but a dozen inches of snow covered the marks of the last sleds.
In a month no man had traveled up or down that silent creek. The man
went steadily ahead. He was not much of a thinker. At that moment he
had nothing to think about except that he would eat lunch at the
stream’s divide and that at six o’clock he would be in camp with the
boys. There was nobody to talk to; and, had there been, speech would
not have been possible because of the ice around his mouth.
Once in a while the thought repeated itself that it was very cold
and that he had never experienced such cold. As he walked along he
rubbed his face and nose with the back of his mittened hand. He did
this without thinking, frequently changing hands. But, with all his
rubbing, the instant he stopped, his face and nose became numb. His
face would surely be frozen. He knew that and he was sorry that he had
not worn the sort of nose guard Bud wore when it was cold. Such a
guard passed across the nose and covered the entire face. But it did not
matter much, he decided. What was a little frost? A bit painful, that
was all. It was never serious.
Empty as the man’s mind was of thoughts, he was most observant.
He noticed the changes in the creek, the curves and the bends. And
always he noted where he placed his feet. Once, coming around a
bend, he moved suddenly to the side, like a frightened horse. He curved
away from the place where he had been walking and retraced his steps
several feet along the trail. He knew the creek was frozen to the bottom.
No creek could contain water in that winter. But he knew also
that there were streams of water that came out from the hillsides and
ran along under the snow and on top of the ice of the creek. He knew
that even in the coldest weather these streams were never frozen, and
he also knew their danger. They hid pools of water under the snow
that might be three inches deep, or three feet. Sometimes a skin of ice
half an inch thick covered them, and in turn was covered by the snow.
Sometimes there was both water and thin ice, and when a man broke
through he could get very wet.
That was why he had jumped away so suddenly. He had felt the
ice move under his feet. He had also heard the noise of the snow-covered
ice skin breaking. And to get his feet wet in such a temperature
meant trouble and danger. At the very least it meant delay, because he
would be forced to stop and build a fire. Only under its protection
could he bare his feet while he dried his socks and moccasins.
He stood and studied the creek bottom and its banks. He decided
that the flowing stream of water came from the right side. He thought
a while, rubbing his nose and face. Then he walked to the left. He
stepped carefully and tested the ice at each step. Once away from the
danger, he continued at his four-mile pace.
During the next two hours he came to several similar dangers.
Usually the snow above the pools had a sunken appearance.
However, once again he came near to falling through the ice.
Once, sensing danger, he made the dog go ahead. The dog did not want to go.
It hesitated until the man pushed it forward. Then it went quickly across the white,
unbroken surface. Suddenly it fell through the ice, but climbed out on
the other side, which was firm. It had wet its feet and legs. Almost
immediately the water on them turned to ice. The dog made quick
efforts to get the ice off its legs. Then it lay down in the snow and began
to bite out the ice that had formed between the toes. The animal knew
enough to do this.
To permit the ice to remain would mean sore feet. It
did not know this. It merely obeyed the commands that arose from the
deepest part of its being.
But the man knew these things, having learned them from experience.
(The word "but" provides contrast, comparing the dog to the man.) is instinct versus education.
He removed the mitten from his right hand and helped the dog
tear out the pieces of ice. He did not bare his fingers more than a minute,
and was surprised to find that they were numb. It certainly was cold.
He pulled on the mitten quickly and beat the hand across his breast.
At twelve o’clock the day was at its brightest. Yet the sun did not
appear in the sky. At half-past twelve, on the minute, he arrived at the
divide of the creek. He was pleased at his rate of speed. If he continued,
he would certainly be with the boys by six o’clock that evening.
He unbuttoned his jacket and shirt and pulled forth his lunch.
The action took no more than a quarter of a minute, yet in that brief
moment the numbness touched his bare fingers. He did not put the
mitten on, but instead, struck the fingers against his leg. Then he sat
down on a snow-covered log to eat. The pain that followed the striking
of his fingers against his leg ceased so quickly that he was frightened.
He had not had time to take a bite of his lunch. He struck the
fingers repeatedly and returned them to the mitten. Then he bared the
other hand for the purpose of eating. He tried to take a mouthful, but
the ice around his mouth prevented him.
Then he knew what was wrong. He had forgotten to build a fire
and warm himself. He laughed at his own foolishness. As he laughed,
he noted the numbness in his bare fingers. Also, he noted that the
feeling which had first come to his toes when he sat down was already
passing away. He wondered whether the toes were warm or whether
they were numb. He moved them inside the moccasins and decided
that they were numb.
He pulled the mitten on hurriedly and stood up.
He was somewhat frightened.
He stamped forcefully until the feeling returned to his
feet. It certainly was cold, was his thought. That man from Sulphur
Creek had spoken the truth when telling how cold it sometimes got in
this country. And he had laughed at him at the time! That showed one
must not be too sure of things. There was no mistake about it, it was
cold. (Repetition for emphasis.) He walked a few steps, stamping his feet and waving his arms,
until reassured by the returning warmth. Then he took some matches
and proceeded to make a fire. In the bushes, the high water had left a
supply of sticks.
From here he got wood for his fire. Working carefully
from a small beginning, he soon had a roaring fire.
Bending over the fire, he first melted the ice from his face. With
the protection of the fire’s warmth he ate his lunch. For the moment,
the cold had been forced away. The dog took comfort in the fire, lying
at full length close enough for warmth and far enough away to escape
being burned. When the man had finished eating, he filled his pipe
with tobacco and had a comfortable time with a smoke. Then he pulled
on his mittens, settled his cap firmly about his ears, and started along
the creek trail toward the left.
The dog was sorry to leave and looked toward the fire. This man
did not know cold. Possibly none of his ancestors had known cold, real
cold. But the dog knew and all of its family knew. And it knew that it
was not good to walk outside in such fearful cold. It was the time to lie
in a hole in the snow and to wait for this awful cold to stop. There was
no real bond between the dog and the man. The one was the slave of
the other. The dog made no effort to indicate its fears to the man. It
was not concerned with the well-being of the man. It was for its own
sake that it looked toward the fire. But the man whistled, and spoke to
it with the sound of the whip in his voice. So the dog started walking
close to the man’s heels and followed him along the trail.
(So the man was still not aware of __________ )
The man put more tobacco in his mouth and started a new growth
of yellow ice on his face. Again his moist breath quickly powdered the
hair on his face with white. He looked around him. There did not
seem to be so many pools of water under the snow on the left side of
Henderson Creek, and for half an hour the man saw no signs of any.
And then it happened. At a place where there were no signs, the man
broke through. It was not deep. He was wet to the knees before he got
out of the water to the firm snow.
He was angry and cursed his luck aloud. (Was it his luck, or was it all due to his decisions?)
He had hoped to get into camp with the boys at six o’clock, and this would delay him an hour.
Now he would have to build a fire and dry his moccasins and socks.
This was most important at that low temperature. He knew that much.
So he turned aside to the bank, which he climbed. On top, under
several small pine trees, he found some firewood which had been carried
there by the high water of last year. There were some sticks, but also
larger branches, and some dry grasses. He threw several large branches
on top of the snow. This served for a foundation and prevented the
young flame from dying in the wet snow. He made a flame by touching
a match to a small piece of tree bark that he took from his pocket.
This burned even better than paper. Placing it on the foundation, he
fed the young flame with pieces of dry grass and with the smallest dry
sticks.
He worked slowly and carefully, realizing his danger. Gradually,
as the flame grew stronger, he increased the size of the sticks with which
he fed it. He sat in the snow, pulling the sticks from the bushes under
the trees and feeding them directly to the flame. He knew he must not
fail. When it is 75 below zero, a man must not fail in his first attempt
to build a fire. This is especially true if his feet are wet. If his feet are
dry, and he fails, he can run along the trail for half a mile to keep his
blood moving. But the blood in wet and freezing feet cannot be kept
moving by running when it is 75 degrees below. No matter how fast he
runs, the wet feet will freeze even harder. (RL 6.2 Theme. Central message about life.)
All this the man knew. The old man on Sulphur Creek had told
him about it, and now he was grateful for the advice. Already all feeling
had gone from his feet. (Already the ______ had gone from the ______.)
To build the fire he had been forced to
remove his mittens, and the fingers had quickly become numb. His
pace of four miles an hour had kept his heart pushing the blood to all
parts of his body. But the instant he stopped, the action of the heart
slowed down.
He now received the full force of the cold.
The blood of his body drew back from it. The blood was alive, like the dog. Like the
dog, it wanted to hide and seek cover, away from the fearful cold. As
long as he walked four miles an hour, the blood rose to the surface. But
now it sank down into the lowest depths of his body. His feet and
hands were the first to feel its absence. His wet feet froze first. His bare
fingers were numb, although they had not yet begun to freeze. Nose
and face were already freezing, while the skin of all his body became
cold as it lost its blood.
But he was safe. Toes and nose and face would be only touched by
the frost, because the fire was beginning to burn with strength. He was
feeding it with sticks the size of his finger. In another minute he would
be able to feed it with larger branches. Then he could remove his wet
moccasins and socks. While they dried, he could keep his naked feet
warm by the fire, rubbing them first with snow. The fire was a success.
He was safe.
He remembered the advice of the old man on Sulphur Creek, and
smiled. The man had been very serious when he said that no man should
travel alone in that country after 50 below zero. Well, here he was; he
had had the accident; he was alone; and he had saved himself. Those
old men were rather womanish, he thought. All a man must do was to
keep his head, and he was all right. Any man who was a man could
travel alone. But it was surprising, the rapidity with which his face and
nose were freezing. And he had not thought his fingers could lose their
feeling in so short a time. Without feeling they were, because he found
it very difficult to make them move together to grasp a stick. They
seemed far from his body and from him. When he touched a stick, he
had to look to see whether or not he was holding it.
All of which mattered little. There was the fire, promising life
with every dancing flame. He started to untie his moccasins. They were
coated with ice. The thick socks were like iron almost to the knees. The
moccasin’s strings were like ropes of steel. For a moment he pulled
them with his unfeeling fingers. Then, realizing the foolishness of it, he
grasped his knife.
But before he could cut the strings, it happened. It was his own
fault, or instead, his mistake. He should not have built the fire under the
pine tree. He should have built it in an open space. But it had been easier
to pull the sticks from the bushes and drop them directly on the fire.
Now the tree under which he had done this carried a weight of
snow on its branches. No wind had been blowing for weeks and each
branch was heavy with snow. Each time he pulled a stick he shook the
tree slightly. There had been just enough movement to cause the awful
thing to happen. High up in the tree one branch dropped its load of
snow. This fell on the branches beneath. This process continued, spreading
through the whole tree. The snow fell without warning upon the
man and the fire, and the fire was dead. Where it had burned was a pile
of fresh snow.
The man was shocked. It was like hearing his own judgment of
death. For a moment he sat and stared at the spot where the fire had
been. Then he grew very calm. Perhaps the old man on Sulphur Creek
was right. If he had a companion on the trail he would be in no danger
now. The companion could have built the fire. Now, he must build the
fire again, and this second time he must not fail. Even if he succeeded,
he would be likely to lose some toes. His feet must be badly frozen by
now, and there would be some time before the second fire was ready.
Such were his thoughts, but he did not sit and think them. He
was busy all the time they were passing through his mind. He made a
new foundation for a fire, this time in the open space, where no tree
would be above it.
Next, he gathered dry grasses and tiny sticks. He
could not bring his fingers together to pull them out of the ground, but
he was able to gather them by the handful. In this way he also got
many pieces that were undesirable, but it was the best he could do. He
worked carefully, even collecting an armful of the larger branches to be
used later when the fire gathered strength. And all the while the dog
sat and watched him. There was an anxious look in its eyes, because it
depended upon him as the fire provider, and the fire was slow in coming.
When all was ready, the man reached in his pocket for the second
piece of tree bark. He knew the bark was there, although he could
not feel it with his fingers. He tried again and again, but he could not
grasp it. And all the time, in his mind, he knew that each instant his
feet were freezing. This thought alarmed him, but he fought against it
and kept calm.
He pulled on his mittens with his teeth, and began swinging his
arms. Then he beat his hands with all his strength against his sides. He
did this while he was sitting down. Then he stood up to do it. All the
while the dog sat in the snow, its tail curled warmly over its feet and
its sharp wolf ears bent forward as it looked at the man. And the man,
as he waved his arms and hands, looked with longing at the creature
that was warm and secure in the covering provided by nature.
After a time, he began to notice some feeling in his beaten fingers.
The feeling grew stronger until it became very painful, but the
man welcomed the pain. He pulled the mitten from his right hand and
grasped the tree bark from his pocket. The bare fingers were quickly
numb again. Next, he brought out his pack of matches. But the awful
cold had already driven the life out of his fingers. In his effort to separate
one match from the others, the whole pack fell in the snow. He
tried to pick it out of the snow, but failed. The dead fingers could neither
touch nor hold.
Now he was very careful. He drove the thought of his freezing
feet, and nose, and face, from his mind. He devoted his whole soul to
picking up the matches. He followed the movement of his fingers with
his eyes, using his sense of sight instead of that of touch. When he saw
his fingers on each side of the pack, he closed them. That is, he willed
to close them, because the fingers did not obey. He put the mitten on
the right hand again, and beat it fiercely against his knee. Then, with
both mittened hands, he lifted up the pack of matches, along with
much snow, to the front of his jacket. But he had gained nothing.
After some struggling he managed to get the pack between his mittened
hands. In this manner he carried it to his mouth. The ice broke as
he opened his mouth with a fierce effort. He used his upper teeth to rub
across the pack in order to separate a single match. He succeeded
in getting one, which he dropped on his jacket. His condition was no
better. He could not pick up the match.
Then he thought how he might do it. He picked up the match in his teeth and drew it across his leg.
Twenty times he did this before he succeeded in lighting it. As it flamed
he held it with his teeth to the tree bark. But the burning smell went
up his nose, causing him to cough. The match fell into the snow and
the flame died.
The old man on Sulphur Creek was right, he thought in the
moment of controlled despair that followed.
After 50 below zero, a man should travel with a companion. He beat his hands, but failed to produce
any feeling in them. Suddenly he bared both hands, removing the
mittens with his teeth. He caught the whole pack of matches between
his hands. His arm muscles were not frozen and he was able to press the
hands tightly against the matches. Then he drew the whole pack along
his leg. It burst into flame, 70 matches at once!
There was no wind to blow them out. He kept his head to one side
to escape the burning smell, and held the flaming pack to the tree bark.
As he so held it, he noticed some feeling in his hand. His flesh was
burning. He could smell it. The feeling developed into pain. He continued
to endure it. He held the flame of the matches to the bark that
would not light readily because his own burning hands were taking
most of the flame.
Finally, when he could endure no more, he pulled his hands apart.
The flaming matches fell into the snow, but the tree bark was burning.
He began laying dry grasses and the tiniest sticks on the flame. He
could not choose carefully because they must be pieces that could be
lifted between his hands. Small pieces of green grass stayed on the sticks,
and he bit them off as well as he could with his teeth. He treated the
flame carefully. It meant life, and it must not cease.
The blood had left the surface of his body and he now began to
shake from the cold. A large piece of a wet plant fell on the little fire.
He tried to push it out with his fingers. His shaking body made him push
it too far and he scattered the little fire over a wide space. He tried to
push the burning grasses and sticks together again. Even with the strong
effort that he made, his trembling fingers would not obey and the sticks
were hopelessly scattered.
Each stick smoked a little and died.
The fire provider had failed. As he looked about him, his eyes noticed the dog
sitting across the ruins of the fire from him. It was making uneasy movements,
slightly lifting one foot and then the other.
The sight of the dog put a wild idea into his head. He remembered
the story of the man, caught in a storm, who killed an animal and sheltered
himself inside the dead body and thus was saved. He would kill
the dog and bury his hands in the warm body until feeling returned to
them. Then he could build another fire.
He spoke to the dog, calling it to him. But in his voice was a
strange note of fear that frightened the animal. It had never known the
man to speak in such a tone before. Something was wrong and it sensed
danger. It knew not what danger, but somewhere in its brain arose a
fear of the man. It flattened its ears at the sound of the man’s voice; its
uneasy movements and the liftings of its feet became more noticeable.
But it would not come to the man. He got down on his hands and knees
and went toward the dog. But this unusual position again excited fear
and the animal moved away.
The man sat in the snow for a moment and struggled for calmness.
Then he pulled on his mittens, using his teeth, and then stood on his
feet. He glanced down to assure himself that he was really standing,
because lack of feeling in his feet gave him no relation to the earth.
His position, however, removed the fear from the dog’s mind.
When he commanded the dog with his usual voice, the dog obeyed
and came to him. As it came within his reach, the man lost control.
His arms stretched out to hold the dog and he experienced real surprise
when he discovered that his hands could not grasp. There was neither
bend nor feeling in the fingers. He had forgotten for the moment that
they were frozen and that they were freezing more and more. All this
happened quickly and before the animal could escape, he encircled its
body with his arms. He sat down in the snow, and in this fashion held
the dog, while it barked and struggled.
But it was all he could do: hold its body encircled in his arms and
sit there. He realized that he could not kill the dog. There was no way
to do it. With his frozen hands he could neither draw nor hold his
J a c k L o n d o n
76
knife. Nor could he grasp the dog around the throat. He freed it and it
dashed wildly away, still barking. It stopped 40 feet away and observed
him curiously, with ears sharply bent forward.
The man looked down at his hands to locate them and found
them hanging on the ends of his arms. He thought it curious that it was
necessary to use his eyes to discover where his hands were. He began
waving his arms, beating the mittened hands against his sides. He did
this for five minutes. His heart produced enough blood to stop his shaking.
But no feeling was created in his hands.
A certain fear of death came upon him. He realized that it was
no longer a mere problem of freezing his fingers and toes, or of losing
his hands and feet. Now it was a problem of life and death with the circumstances
against him. The fear made him lose control of himself and
he turned and ran along the creek bed on the old trail. The dog joined
him and followed closely behind. The man ran blindly in fear such as
he had never known in his life. Slowly, as he struggled through the
snow, he began to see things again—the banks of the creek, the bare
trees, and the sky.
The running made him feel better. He did not shake any more.
Maybe, if he continued to run, his feet would stop freezing. Maybe if he
ran far enough, he would find the camp and the boys. Without doubt,
he would lose some fingers and toes and some of his face. But the boys
would take care of him and save the rest of him when he got there.
And at the same time, there was another thought in his mind that said
he would never get to the camp and the boys. It told him that it was
too many miles away, that the freezing had too great a start and that
he would soon be dead. He pushed this thought to the back of his mind
and refused to consider it. Sometimes it came forward and demanded
to be heard. But he pushed it away and tried to think of other things.
It seemed strange to him that he could run on feet so frozen that
he could not feel them when they struck the earth and took the weight
of his body. He seemed to be flying along above the surface and to have
no connection with the earth.
His idea of running until he arrived at the camp and the boys pre-
T o B u i l d a F i r e
77
sented one problem: he lacked the endurance. Several times he caught
himself as he was falling. Finally, he dropped to the ground, unable to
stop his fall. When he tried to rise, he failed. He must sit and rest, he
decided. Next time he would merely walk and keep going.
As he sat and regained his breath, he noted that he was feeling
warm and comfortable. He was not shaking, and it even seemed that a
warm glow had come to his body. And yet, when he touched his nose
or face, there was no feeling. Running would not bring life to them. Nor
would it help his hands and feet. Then the thought came to him that
the frozen portions of his body must be increasing. He tried to keep this
thought out of his mind and to forget it. He knew that such thoughts
caused a feeling of fright in him and he was afraid of such feelings. But
the thought returned and continued, until he could picture his body
totally frozen. This was too much, and again he ran wildly along the
trail. Once he slowed to a walk, but the thought that the freezing of
his body was increasing made him run again.
And all the time the dog ran with him, at his heels. When he fell
a second time, the dog curled its tail over its feet and sat in front of
him, facing him, curiously eager. The warmth and security of the animal
angered him. He cursed it until it flattened its ears. This time the
shaking because of the cold began more quickly. He was losing his battle
with the frost. It was moving into his body from all sides. This
thought drove him forward. But he ran no more than 100 feet, when
he fell head first.
It was his last moment of fear. When he had recovered his breath
and his control, he sat and thought about meeting death with dignity.
However, the idea did not come to him in exactly this manner. His idea
was that he had been acting like a fool. He had been running around
like a chicken with its head cut off. He was certain to freeze in his present
circumstances, and he should accept it calmly. With this newfound
peace of mind came the first sleepiness. A good idea, he thought, to
sleep his way to death. Freezing was not as bad as people thought. There
were many worse ways to die.
He pictured the boys finding his body the next day. Suddenly he
78
saw himself with them, coming along the trail and looking for himself.
And, still with them, he came around a turn in the trail and found himself
lying in the snow. He did not belong with himself any more. Even
then he was outside of himself, standing with the boys and looking at
himself in the snow. It certainly was cold, was his thought. When he
returned to the United States he could tell the folks what real cold was.
His mind went from this to the thought of the old man of Sulphur
Creek. He could see him quite clearly, warm and comfortable, and smoking
a pipe.
“You were right, old fellow. You were right,” he murmured to the
old man of Sulphur Creek.
Then the man dropped into what seemed to him the most comfortable
and satisfying sleep he had ever known. The dog sat facing him
and waiting. The brief day ended in a long evening. There were no signs
of a fire to be made. Never in the dog’s experience had it known a man
to sit like that in the snow and make no fire. As the evening grew
darker, its eager longing for the fire mastered it. With much lifting of
its feet, it cried softly. Then it flattened its ears, expecting the man’s
curse. But the man remained silent. Later, the dog howled loudly. And
still later it moved close to the man and caught the smell of death.
This made the animal back away. A little longer it delayed, howling
under the stars that leaped and danced and shone brightly in the cold
sky. Then it turned and ran along the trail toward the camp it knew,
where there were the other food providers and fire providers.
TO BUILD A FIRE
Day had dawned cold and gray when the man turned aside from the main Yukon trail.
He climbed the high earth-bank where a little-traveled trail led east through the pine forest.
It was a high bank, and he paused to breathe at the top. He excused the act to himself
by looking at his watch. It was nine o’clock in the morning.
There was no sun or promise of sun, although there was not
a cloud in the sky. It was a clear day. However, there seemed to be an
indescribable darkness over the face of things. That was because the sun
was absent from the sky. This fact did not worry the man. He was not
alarmed by the lack of sun. It had been days since he had seen the sun.
The man looked along the way he had come. The Yukon lay a
mile wide and hidden under three feet of ice. On top of this ice were
as many feet of snow. It was all pure white. North and south, as far as
his eye could see, it was unbroken white. The one thing that relieved
the whiteness was a thin dark line that curved from the pine-covered
island to the south. It curved into the north, where it disappeared
be hind another pine-covered island. This dark line was the trail—the
main trail. It led south 500 miles to the Chilcoot Pass, and salt water.
It led north 75 miles to Dawson, and still farther on to the north a
thousand miles to Nulato, and finally to St. Michael, on Bering Sea,
a thousand miles and half a thousand more.
But all this—the distant trail, no sun in the sky, the great cold,
and the strangeness of it all—had no effect on the man. It was not
be cause he was long familiar with it. He was a newcomer in the land, and
this was his first winter.
The trouble with him was that he was not able to imagine. He
was quick and ready in the things of life, but only in the things, and not
in their meanings. Fifty degrees below zero meant 80 degrees of frost.
Such facts told him that it was cold and uncomfortable, and that was
all. It did not lead him to consider his weaknesses as a creature affected
by temperature. Nor did he think about man’s general weakness, able
to live only within narrow limits of heat and cold. From there, it did
not lead him to thoughts of heaven and the meaning of a man’s life.
50 degrees below zero meant a bite of frost that hurt and that must be
guarded against by the use of mittens, ear coverings, warm moccasins,
and thick socks. 50 degrees below zero was to him nothing more than
50 degrees below zero. That it should be more important than that was
a thought that never entered his head.
As he turned to go, he forced some water from his mouth as an
experiment. There was a sudden noise that surprised him. He tried it
again. And again, in the air, before they could fall to the snow, the
drops of water became ice that broke with a noise. He knew that at 50
below zero water from the mouth made a noise when it hit the snow.
But this had done that in the air. Undoubtedly it was colder than 50
below. But exactly how much colder he did not know. But the temperature
did not matter.
He was headed for the old camp on Henderson Creek, where the
boys were already. They had come across the mountain from the Indian
Creek country. He had taken the long trail to look at the possibility of
floating logs from the islands in the Yukon down the river when the
ice melted. He would be in camp by six o’clock that evening. It would
be a little after dark, but the boys would be there, a fire would be burning,
and a hot supper would be ready. As he thought of lunch, he pressed
his hand against the package under his jacket. It was also under his
shirt, wrapped in a handkerchief, and lying for warmth against the
naked skin. Otherwise, the bread would freeze. He smiled contentedly
to himself as he thought of those pieces of bread, each of which
enclosed a generous portion of cooked meat.
He plunged among the big pine trees. The trail was not well
marked here. Several inches of snow had fallen since the last sled had
passed. He was glad he was without a sled. Actually, he carried nothing
but the lunch wrapped in the handkerchief. He was surprised, however,
at the cold. It certainly was cold, he decided, as he rubbed his
nose and face with his mittened hand. He had a good growth of hair
on his face, but that did not protect his nose or the upper part of his
face from the frosty air.
Following at the man’s heels was a big native dog. It was a wolf
dog, gray-coated and not noticeably different from its brother, the wild
wolf. The animal was worried by the great cold. It knew that this was
no time for traveling. Its own feeling was closer to the truth than the
man’s judgment. In reality, it was not merely colder than 50 below
zero; it was colder than 60 below, than 70 below. It was 75 below zero.
Because the freezing point is 32 above zero, it meant that there were
107 degrees of frost.
The dog did not know anything about temperatures. Possibly in
its brain there was no understanding of a condition of very cold, such
as was in the man’s brain. But the animal sensed the danger. Its fear
made it question eagerly every movement of the man as if expecting
him to go into camp or to seek shelter somewhere and build a fire. The
dog had learned about fire, and it wanted fire. Otherwise, it would dig
itself into the snow and find shelter from the cold air.
The frozen moistness of its breathing had settled on its fur in a
fine powder of frost. The hair on the man’s face was similarly frosted,
but more solidly. It took the form of ice and increased with every warm,
moist breath from his mouth. Also, the man had tobacco in his mouth.
The ice held his lips so tightly together that he could not empty the
juice from his mouth. The result was a long piece of yellow ice hanging
from his lips. If he fell down it would break, like glass, into many
pieces. He expected the ice formed by the tobacco juice, having been
out twice before when it was very cold. But it had not been as cold as
this, he knew.
He continued through the level forest for several miles. Then he
went down a bank to the frozen path of a small stream. This was Henderson
Creek and he knew he was ten miles from where the stream
divided. He looked at his watch. It was ten o’clock. He was traveling
at the rate of four miles an hour. Thus, he figured that he would arrive
where the stream divided at half-past twelve. He decided he would eat
his lunch when he arrived there.
The dog followed again at his heels, with its tail hanging low, as
the man started to walk along the frozen stream. The old sled trail could
be seen, but a dozen inches of snow covered the marks of the last sleds.
In a month no man had traveled up or down that silent creek. The man
went steadily ahead. He was not much of a thinker. At that moment he
had nothing to think about except that he would eat lunch at the
stream’s divide and that at six o’clock he would be in camp with the
boys. There was nobody to talk to; and, had there been, speech would
not have been possible because of the ice around his mouth.
Once in a while the thought repeated itself that it was very cold
and that he had never experienced such cold. As he walked along he
rubbed his face and nose with the back of his mittened hand. He did
this without thinking, frequently changing hands. But, with all his
rubbing, the instant he stopped, his face and nose became numb. His
face would surely be frozen. He knew that and he was sorry that he had
not worn the sort of nose guard Bud wore when it was cold. Such a
guard passed across the nose and covered the entire face. But it did not
matter much, he decided. What was a little frost? A bit painful, that
was all. It was never serious.
Empty as the man’s mind was of thoughts, he was most observant.
He noticed the changes in the creek, the curves and the bends. And
always he noted where he placed his feet. Once, coming around a
bend, he moved suddenly to the side, like a frightened horse. He curved
away from the place where he had been walking and retraced his steps
several feet along the trail. He knew the creek was frozen to the bottom.
No creek could contain water in that winter. But he knew also
that there were streams of water that came out from the hillsides and
ran along under the snow and on top of the ice of the creek. He knew
that even in the coldest weather these streams were never frozen, and
he also knew their danger. They hid pools of water under the snow
that might be three inches deep, or three feet. Sometimes a skin of ice
half an inch thick covered them, and in turn was covered by the snow.
Sometimes there was both water and thin ice, and when a man broke
through he could get very wet.
That was why he had jumped away so suddenly. He had felt the
ice move under his feet. He had also heard the noise of the snow-covered
ice skin breaking. And to get his feet wet in such a temperature
meant trouble and danger. At the very least it meant delay, because he
would be forced to stop and build a fire. Only under its protection
could he bare his feet while he dried his socks and moccasins.
He stood and studied the creek bottom and its banks. He decided
that the flowing stream of water came from the right side. He thought
a while, rubbing his nose and face. Then he walked to the left. He
stepped carefully and tested the ice at each step. Once away from the
danger, he continued at his four-mile pace.
During the next two hours he came to several similar dangers.
Usually the snow above the pools had a sunken appearance.
However, once again he came near to falling through the ice.
Once, sensing danger, he made the dog go ahead. The dog did not want to go.
It hesitated until the man pushed it forward. Then it went quickly across the white,
unbroken surface. Suddenly it fell through the ice, but climbed out on
the other side, which was firm. It had wet its feet and legs. Almost
immediately the water on them turned to ice. The dog made quick
efforts to get the ice off its legs. Then it lay down in the snow and began
to bite out the ice that had formed between the toes. The animal knew
enough to do this.
To permit the ice to remain would mean sore feet. It
did not know this. It merely obeyed the commands that arose from the
deepest part of its being.
But the man knew these things, having learned them from experience.
(The word "but" provides contrast, comparing the dog to the man.) is instinct versus education.
He removed the mitten from his right hand and helped the dog
tear out the pieces of ice. He did not bare his fingers more than a minute,
and was surprised to find that they were numb. It certainly was cold.
He pulled on the mitten quickly and beat the hand across his breast.
At twelve o’clock the day was at its brightest. Yet the sun did not
appear in the sky. At half-past twelve, on the minute, he arrived at the
divide of the creek. He was pleased at his rate of speed. If he continued,
he would certainly be with the boys by six o’clock that evening.
He unbuttoned his jacket and shirt and pulled forth his lunch.
The action took no more than a quarter of a minute, yet in that brief
moment the numbness touched his bare fingers. He did not put the
mitten on, but instead, struck the fingers against his leg. Then he sat
down on a snow-covered log to eat. The pain that followed the striking
of his fingers against his leg ceased so quickly that he was frightened.
He had not had time to take a bite of his lunch. He struck the
fingers repeatedly and returned them to the mitten. Then he bared the
other hand for the purpose of eating. He tried to take a mouthful, but
the ice around his mouth prevented him.
Then he knew what was wrong. He had forgotten to build a fire
and warm himself. He laughed at his own foolishness. As he laughed,
he noted the numbness in his bare fingers. Also, he noted that the
feeling which had first come to his toes when he sat down was already
passing away. He wondered whether the toes were warm or whether
they were numb. He moved them inside the moccasins and decided
that they were numb.
He pulled the mitten on hurriedly and stood up.
He was somewhat frightened.
He stamped forcefully until the feeling returned to his
feet. It certainly was cold, was his thought. That man from Sulphur
Creek had spoken the truth when telling how cold it sometimes got in
this country. And he had laughed at him at the time! That showed one
must not be too sure of things. There was no mistake about it, it was
cold. (Repetition for emphasis.) He walked a few steps, stamping his feet and waving his arms,
until reassured by the returning warmth. Then he took some matches
and proceeded to make a fire. In the bushes, the high water had left a
supply of sticks.
From here he got wood for his fire. Working carefully
from a small beginning, he soon had a roaring fire.
Bending over the fire, he first melted the ice from his face. With
the protection of the fire’s warmth he ate his lunch. For the moment,
the cold had been forced away. The dog took comfort in the fire, lying
at full length close enough for warmth and far enough away to escape
being burned. When the man had finished eating, he filled his pipe
with tobacco and had a comfortable time with a smoke. Then he pulled
on his mittens, settled his cap firmly about his ears, and started along
the creek trail toward the left.
The dog was sorry to leave and looked toward the fire. This man
did not know cold. Possibly none of his ancestors had known cold, real
cold. But the dog knew and all of its family knew. And it knew that it
was not good to walk outside in such fearful cold. It was the time to lie
in a hole in the snow and to wait for this awful cold to stop. There was
no real bond between the dog and the man. The one was the slave of
the other. The dog made no effort to indicate its fears to the man. It
was not concerned with the well-being of the man. It was for its own
sake that it looked toward the fire. But the man whistled, and spoke to
it with the sound of the whip in his voice. So the dog started walking
close to the man’s heels and followed him along the trail.
(So the man was still not aware of __________ )
The man put more tobacco in his mouth and started a new growth
of yellow ice on his face. Again his moist breath quickly powdered the
hair on his face with white. He looked around him. There did not
seem to be so many pools of water under the snow on the left side of
Henderson Creek, and for half an hour the man saw no signs of any.
And then it happened. At a place where there were no signs, the man
broke through. It was not deep. He was wet to the knees before he got
out of the water to the firm snow.
He was angry and cursed his luck aloud. (Was it his luck, or was it all due to his decisions?)
He had hoped to get into camp with the boys at six o’clock, and this would delay him an hour.
Now he would have to build a fire and dry his moccasins and socks.
This was most important at that low temperature. He knew that much.
So he turned aside to the bank, which he climbed. On top, under
several small pine trees, he found some firewood which had been carried
there by the high water of last year. There were some sticks, but also
larger branches, and some dry grasses. He threw several large branches
on top of the snow. This served for a foundation and prevented the
young flame from dying in the wet snow. He made a flame by touching
a match to a small piece of tree bark that he took from his pocket.
This burned even better than paper. Placing it on the foundation, he
fed the young flame with pieces of dry grass and with the smallest dry
sticks.
He worked slowly and carefully, realizing his danger. Gradually,
as the flame grew stronger, he increased the size of the sticks with which
he fed it. He sat in the snow, pulling the sticks from the bushes under
the trees and feeding them directly to the flame. He knew he must not
fail. When it is 75 below zero, a man must not fail in his first attempt
to build a fire. This is especially true if his feet are wet. If his feet are
dry, and he fails, he can run along the trail for half a mile to keep his
blood moving. But the blood in wet and freezing feet cannot be kept
moving by running when it is 75 degrees below. No matter how fast he
runs, the wet feet will freeze even harder. (RL 6.2 Theme. Central message about life.)
All this the man knew. The old man on Sulphur Creek had told
him about it, and now he was grateful for the advice. Already all feeling
had gone from his feet. (Already the ______ had gone from the ______.)
To build the fire he had been forced to
remove his mittens, and the fingers had quickly become numb. His
pace of four miles an hour had kept his heart pushing the blood to all
parts of his body. But the instant he stopped, the action of the heart
slowed down.
He now received the full force of the cold.
The blood of his body drew back from it. The blood was alive, like the dog. Like the
dog, it wanted to hide and seek cover, away from the fearful cold. As
long as he walked four miles an hour, the blood rose to the surface. But
now it sank down into the lowest depths of his body. His feet and
hands were the first to feel its absence. His wet feet froze first. His bare
fingers were numb, although they had not yet begun to freeze. Nose
and face were already freezing, while the skin of all his body became
cold as it lost its blood.
But he was safe. Toes and nose and face would be only touched by
the frost, because the fire was beginning to burn with strength. He was
feeding it with sticks the size of his finger. In another minute he would
be able to feed it with larger branches. Then he could remove his wet
moccasins and socks. While they dried, he could keep his naked feet
warm by the fire, rubbing them first with snow. The fire was a success.
He was safe.
He remembered the advice of the old man on Sulphur Creek, and
smiled. The man had been very serious when he said that no man should
travel alone in that country after 50 below zero. Well, here he was; he
had had the accident; he was alone; and he had saved himself. Those
old men were rather womanish, he thought. All a man must do was to
keep his head, and he was all right. Any man who was a man could
travel alone. But it was surprising, the rapidity with which his face and
nose were freezing. And he had not thought his fingers could lose their
feeling in so short a time. Without feeling they were, because he found
it very difficult to make them move together to grasp a stick. They
seemed far from his body and from him. When he touched a stick, he
had to look to see whether or not he was holding it.
All of which mattered little. There was the fire, promising life
with every dancing flame. He started to untie his moccasins. They were
coated with ice. The thick socks were like iron almost to the knees. The
moccasin’s strings were like ropes of steel. For a moment he pulled
them with his unfeeling fingers. Then, realizing the foolishness of it, he
grasped his knife.
But before he could cut the strings, it happened. It was his own
fault, or instead, his mistake. He should not have built the fire under the
pine tree. He should have built it in an open space. But it had been easier
to pull the sticks from the bushes and drop them directly on the fire.
Now the tree under which he had done this carried a weight of
snow on its branches. No wind had been blowing for weeks and each
branch was heavy with snow. Each time he pulled a stick he shook the
tree slightly. There had been just enough movement to cause the awful
thing to happen. High up in the tree one branch dropped its load of
snow. This fell on the branches beneath. This process continued, spreading
through the whole tree. The snow fell without warning upon the
man and the fire, and the fire was dead. Where it had burned was a pile
of fresh snow.
The man was shocked. It was like hearing his own judgment of
death. For a moment he sat and stared at the spot where the fire had
been. Then he grew very calm. Perhaps the old man on Sulphur Creek
was right. If he had a companion on the trail he would be in no danger
now. The companion could have built the fire. Now, he must build the
fire again, and this second time he must not fail. Even if he succeeded,
he would be likely to lose some toes. His feet must be badly frozen by
now, and there would be some time before the second fire was ready.
Such were his thoughts, but he did not sit and think them. He
was busy all the time they were passing through his mind. He made a
new foundation for a fire, this time in the open space, where no tree
would be above it.
Next, he gathered dry grasses and tiny sticks. He
could not bring his fingers together to pull them out of the ground, but
he was able to gather them by the handful. In this way he also got
many pieces that were undesirable, but it was the best he could do. He
worked carefully, even collecting an armful of the larger branches to be
used later when the fire gathered strength. And all the while the dog
sat and watched him. There was an anxious look in its eyes, because it
depended upon him as the fire provider, and the fire was slow in coming.
When all was ready, the man reached in his pocket for the second
piece of tree bark. He knew the bark was there, although he could
not feel it with his fingers. He tried again and again, but he could not
grasp it. And all the time, in his mind, he knew that each instant his
feet were freezing. This thought alarmed him, but he fought against it
and kept calm.
He pulled on his mittens with his teeth, and began swinging his
arms. Then he beat his hands with all his strength against his sides. He
did this while he was sitting down. Then he stood up to do it. All the
while the dog sat in the snow, its tail curled warmly over its feet and
its sharp wolf ears bent forward as it looked at the man. And the man,
as he waved his arms and hands, looked with longing at the creature
that was warm and secure in the covering provided by nature.
After a time, he began to notice some feeling in his beaten fingers.
The feeling grew stronger until it became very painful, but the
man welcomed the pain. He pulled the mitten from his right hand and
grasped the tree bark from his pocket. The bare fingers were quickly
numb again. Next, he brought out his pack of matches. But the awful
cold had already driven the life out of his fingers. In his effort to separate
one match from the others, the whole pack fell in the snow. He
tried to pick it out of the snow, but failed. The dead fingers could neither
touch nor hold.
Now he was very careful. He drove the thought of his freezing
feet, and nose, and face, from his mind. He devoted his whole soul to
picking up the matches. He followed the movement of his fingers with
his eyes, using his sense of sight instead of that of touch. When he saw
his fingers on each side of the pack, he closed them. That is, he willed
to close them, because the fingers did not obey. He put the mitten on
the right hand again, and beat it fiercely against his knee. Then, with
both mittened hands, he lifted up the pack of matches, along with
much snow, to the front of his jacket. But he had gained nothing.
After some struggling he managed to get the pack between his mittened
hands. In this manner he carried it to his mouth. The ice broke as
he opened his mouth with a fierce effort. He used his upper teeth to rub
across the pack in order to separate a single match. He succeeded
in getting one, which he dropped on his jacket. His condition was no
better. He could not pick up the match.
Then he thought how he might do it. He picked up the match in his teeth and drew it across his leg.
Twenty times he did this before he succeeded in lighting it. As it flamed
he held it with his teeth to the tree bark. But the burning smell went
up his nose, causing him to cough. The match fell into the snow and
the flame died.
The old man on Sulphur Creek was right, he thought in the
moment of controlled despair that followed.
After 50 below zero, a man should travel with a companion. He beat his hands, but failed to produce
any feeling in them. Suddenly he bared both hands, removing the
mittens with his teeth. He caught the whole pack of matches between
his hands. His arm muscles were not frozen and he was able to press the
hands tightly against the matches. Then he drew the whole pack along
his leg. It burst into flame, 70 matches at once!
There was no wind to blow them out. He kept his head to one side
to escape the burning smell, and held the flaming pack to the tree bark.
As he so held it, he noticed some feeling in his hand. His flesh was
burning. He could smell it. The feeling developed into pain. He continued
to endure it. He held the flame of the matches to the bark that
would not light readily because his own burning hands were taking
most of the flame.
Finally, when he could endure no more, he pulled his hands apart.
The flaming matches fell into the snow, but the tree bark was burning.
He began laying dry grasses and the tiniest sticks on the flame. He
could not choose carefully because they must be pieces that could be
lifted between his hands. Small pieces of green grass stayed on the sticks,
and he bit them off as well as he could with his teeth. He treated the
flame carefully. It meant life, and it must not cease.
The blood had left the surface of his body and he now began to
shake from the cold. A large piece of a wet plant fell on the little fire.
He tried to push it out with his fingers. His shaking body made him push
it too far and he scattered the little fire over a wide space. He tried to
push the burning grasses and sticks together again. Even with the strong
effort that he made, his trembling fingers would not obey and the sticks
were hopelessly scattered.
Each stick smoked a little and died.
The fire provider had failed. As he looked about him, his eyes noticed the dog
sitting across the ruins of the fire from him. It was making uneasy movements,
slightly lifting one foot and then the other.
The sight of the dog put a wild idea into his head. He remembered
the story of the man, caught in a storm, who killed an animal and sheltered
himself inside the dead body and thus was saved. He would kill
the dog and bury his hands in the warm body until feeling returned to
them. Then he could build another fire.
He spoke to the dog, calling it to him. But in his voice was a
strange note of fear that frightened the animal. It had never known the
man to speak in such a tone before. Something was wrong and it sensed
danger. It knew not what danger, but somewhere in its brain arose a
fear of the man. It flattened its ears at the sound of the man’s voice; its
uneasy movements and the liftings of its feet became more noticeable.
But it would not come to the man. He got down on his hands and knees
and went toward the dog. But this unusual position again excited fear
and the animal moved away.
The man sat in the snow for a moment and struggled for calmness.
Then he pulled on his mittens, using his teeth, and then stood on his
feet. He glanced down to assure himself that he was really standing,
because lack of feeling in his feet gave him no relation to the earth.
His position, however, removed the fear from the dog’s mind.
When he commanded the dog with his usual voice, the dog obeyed
and came to him. As it came within his reach, the man lost control.
His arms stretched out to hold the dog and he experienced real surprise
when he discovered that his hands could not grasp. There was neither
bend nor feeling in the fingers. He had forgotten for the moment that
they were frozen and that they were freezing more and more. All this
happened quickly and before the animal could escape, he encircled its
body with his arms. He sat down in the snow, and in this fashion held
the dog, while it barked and struggled.
But it was all he could do: hold its body encircled in his arms and
sit there. He realized that he could not kill the dog. There was no way
to do it. With his frozen hands he could neither draw nor hold his
J a c k L o n d o n
76
knife. Nor could he grasp the dog around the throat. He freed it and it
dashed wildly away, still barking. It stopped 40 feet away and observed
him curiously, with ears sharply bent forward.
The man looked down at his hands to locate them and found
them hanging on the ends of his arms. He thought it curious that it was
necessary to use his eyes to discover where his hands were. He began
waving his arms, beating the mittened hands against his sides. He did
this for five minutes. His heart produced enough blood to stop his shaking.
But no feeling was created in his hands.
A certain fear of death came upon him. He realized that it was
no longer a mere problem of freezing his fingers and toes, or of losing
his hands and feet. Now it was a problem of life and death with the circumstances
against him. The fear made him lose control of himself and
he turned and ran along the creek bed on the old trail. The dog joined
him and followed closely behind. The man ran blindly in fear such as
he had never known in his life. Slowly, as he struggled through the
snow, he began to see things again—the banks of the creek, the bare
trees, and the sky.
The running made him feel better. He did not shake any more.
Maybe, if he continued to run, his feet would stop freezing. Maybe if he
ran far enough, he would find the camp and the boys. Without doubt,
he would lose some fingers and toes and some of his face. But the boys
would take care of him and save the rest of him when he got there.
And at the same time, there was another thought in his mind that said
he would never get to the camp and the boys. It told him that it was
too many miles away, that the freezing had too great a start and that
he would soon be dead. He pushed this thought to the back of his mind
and refused to consider it. Sometimes it came forward and demanded
to be heard. But he pushed it away and tried to think of other things.
It seemed strange to him that he could run on feet so frozen that
he could not feel them when they struck the earth and took the weight
of his body. He seemed to be flying along above the surface and to have
no connection with the earth.
His idea of running until he arrived at the camp and the boys pre-
T o B u i l d a F i r e
77
sented one problem: he lacked the endurance. Several times he caught
himself as he was falling. Finally, he dropped to the ground, unable to
stop his fall. When he tried to rise, he failed. He must sit and rest, he
decided. Next time he would merely walk and keep going.
As he sat and regained his breath, he noted that he was feeling
warm and comfortable. He was not shaking, and it even seemed that a
warm glow had come to his body. And yet, when he touched his nose
or face, there was no feeling. Running would not bring life to them. Nor
would it help his hands and feet. Then the thought came to him that
the frozen portions of his body must be increasing. He tried to keep this
thought out of his mind and to forget it. He knew that such thoughts
caused a feeling of fright in him and he was afraid of such feelings. But
the thought returned and continued, until he could picture his body
totally frozen. This was too much, and again he ran wildly along the
trail. Once he slowed to a walk, but the thought that the freezing of
his body was increasing made him run again.
And all the time the dog ran with him, at his heels. When he fell
a second time, the dog curled its tail over its feet and sat in front of
him, facing him, curiously eager. The warmth and security of the animal
angered him. He cursed it until it flattened its ears. This time the
shaking because of the cold began more quickly. He was losing his battle
with the frost. It was moving into his body from all sides. This
thought drove him forward. But he ran no more than 100 feet, when
he fell head first.
It was his last moment of fear. When he had recovered his breath
and his control, he sat and thought about meeting death with dignity.
However, the idea did not come to him in exactly this manner. His idea
was that he had been acting like a fool. He had been running around
like a chicken with its head cut off. He was certain to freeze in his present
circumstances, and he should accept it calmly. With this newfound
peace of mind came the first sleepiness. A good idea, he thought, to
sleep his way to death. Freezing was not as bad as people thought. There
were many worse ways to die.
He pictured the boys finding his body the next day. Suddenly he
78
saw himself with them, coming along the trail and looking for himself.
And, still with them, he came around a turn in the trail and found himself
lying in the snow. He did not belong with himself any more. Even
then he was outside of himself, standing with the boys and looking at
himself in the snow. It certainly was cold, was his thought. When he
returned to the United States he could tell the folks what real cold was.
His mind went from this to the thought of the old man of Sulphur
Creek. He could see him quite clearly, warm and comfortable, and smoking
a pipe.
“You were right, old fellow. You were right,” he murmured to the
old man of Sulphur Creek.
Then the man dropped into what seemed to him the most comfortable
and satisfying sleep he had ever known. The dog sat facing him
and waiting. The brief day ended in a long evening. There were no signs
of a fire to be made. Never in the dog’s experience had it known a man
to sit like that in the snow and make no fire. As the evening grew
darker, its eager longing for the fire mastered it. With much lifting of
its feet, it cried softly. Then it flattened its ears, expecting the man’s
curse. But the man remained silent. Later, the dog howled loudly. And
still later it moved close to the man and caught the smell of death.
This made the animal back away. A little longer it delayed, howling
under the stars that leaped and danced and shone brightly in the cold
sky. Then it turned and ran along the trail toward the camp it knew,
where there were the other food providers and fire providers.
The Gun Without a Bang
by Robert Scheckley
1958 Science Fiction
AFTER READING THIS STORY, YOU SEE THAT THE AUTHOR CONSIDERS TECHNOLOGY ADVANCEMENTS INCIDENTAL TO HUMAN DEVELOPMENT.
Did a twig snap? Dixon looked back and thought he saw a dark shape melt into the underbrush. Instantly he froze, staring back through the green canopied trees. There was a complete and expectant silence. Far overhead, a carrion bird balanced on an updraft, surveying the sun. burned landscape, waiting, hoping.
Then Dixon heard a low impatient cough from the underbrush.
Now he knew he was being followed. Before, it had only been an assumption. But those vague, half-seen shapes had been real. They had left him alone on his trek to the signal station, watching, deciding. Now they were ready to try something. He removed the Weapon from its holster, checked the safeties, reholstered it, and continued walking. He heard another cough. Something was patiently trailing him, probably waiting until he left the bush and entered the forest. Dixon grinned to himself.
Nothing could hurt him. He had the Weapon.
RL6.1 How do we know the the weapon is significant? (irony)
RL6.2 The author foreshadows the plot using the words "dark shape", "complete silence" and "carrion bird"
RL6.3 What does the author mean by "melt"? Prompt: This is figurative language that explains...
Without it, he would never have ventured so far from his spaceship. One simply didn't wander around on an alien planet. But Dixon could. On his hip was the weapon to end all weapons, absolute insurance against anything that walked or crawled or flew or swam.
It was the last word in handguns, the ultimate in personal armament. It was the Weapon.
He looked back again. There were three beasts, less than fifty yards behind him. From that distance, they resembled dogs or hyenas. They coughed at him and moved slowly forward.
He touched the Weapon, but decided against using it immediately. There would be plenty of time when they came closer.
Alfred Dixon was a short man, very broad in the chest and shoulders. His hair was streaky blond, and he had a blond mustache which curled up at the ends. This mustache gave his tanned face a frank, ferocious appearance.
His natural habitat was Terra's bars and taverns. There, dressed in stained khakis, he could order drinks in a loud, belligerent voice and pierce his fellow drinkers with narrow gunmetal blue eyes. He enjoyed explaining to the drinkers, in a somewhat contemptuous tone, the difference between a Sykes needler and a Colt three-point, between the Martian horned adleper and the Venusian scorn, and just what to do when a Rannarean horntank is charging you in thick brush, and how to beat off an attack of winged glitterflits.
Some men considered Dixon all bluff, but they were careful not to call it. Others thought he was a good man in spite of his inflated opinion of himself. He was just overconfident, they explained. Death or mutilation would correct this flaw.
Dixon was a great believer in personal armament. To his way of thinking, the winning of the American West was simply a contest between bow and arrow and Colt .44. Africa? The spear against the rifle. Mars? The Colt three- point against the spinknife. H-bombs smeared cities, but individual men with small arms took the territory. Why look for fuzzy economic, philosophical, or political reasons when everything was so simple?
He had, of course, utter confidence in the Weapon.
Glancing back, he saw that half a dozen doglike creatures had joined the original three. They were walking in the open now, tongues lolling out, slowly closing the distance. Dixon decided to hold fire just a little longer. The shock effect would be that much greater. He had held many jobs in his time-explorer, hunter, prospector, asteroider. Fortune seemed to elude him. The other man always stumbled across the lost city, shot the rare beast, found the ore-bearing stream. He accepted his fate cheerfully. Damned poor luck, but what can you do?
Now he was a radioman, checking the automatic signal stations on a dozen unoccupied worlds.
But more important, he was giving the ultimate handgun its first test in the field. The gun's inventors hoped the Weapon would become standard. Dixon hoped he would become standard with it.
He had reached the edge of the rain forest. His ship lay about two miles ahead in a little clearing. As he entered the forest's gloomy shade, he heard the excited squeaking of arboreals. They were colored orange and blue, and they watched him intently from the treetops. It was definitely an African sort of place, Dixon decided. He hoped he would encounter some big game, get a decent trophy head or two. Behind him, the wild dogs had approached to twenty yards. They were gray and brown, the size of terriers, with a hyena's jaws. Some of them had moved into the underbrush, racing ahead to cut him off.
It was time to show the Weapon.
Dixon unholstered it. The Weapon was pistol-shaped and quite heavy. It also balanced poorly. The inventors had promised to reduce the weight and improve the heft in subsequent models. But Dixon liked it just the way it was. He admired it for a moment, then clicked off the safeties and adjusted for single shot. The pack came loping toward him, coughing and snarling. Dixon took casual aim and fired.
The Weapon hummed faintly. Ahead, for a distance of a hundred yards, a section of forest simply vanished.
Dixon had fired the first disintegrator. From a muzzle aperture of less than an inch, the beam had fanned out to a maximum diameter of twelve feet.
A conic section, waist high and a hundred yards long, appeared in the forest. Within it, nothing remained. Trees, insects, plants, shrubs, wild dogs, butterflies, all were gone.
Overhanging boughs caught in the blast area looked as though they had been sheared by a giant razor.
Dixon estimated he had caught at least seven of the wild dogs in the blast. Seven beasts with a half-second burst! No problems of deflection or trajectory, as with a missile gun. No need to reload, for the Weapon had a power span of eighteen duty-hours. The perfect weapon!
He turned and walked on, reholstering the heavy gun. There was silence. The forest creatures were considering the new experience. In a few moments, they recovered from their surprise. Blue and orange arboreals swung through the trees above him. Overhead, the carrion bird soared low, and other black-winged birds came out of the distant sky to join it. And the wild dogs coughed in the underbrush.
They hadn't given up yet. Dixon could hear them in the deep foliage on either side of him, moving rapidly, staying out of sight. He drew the Weapon, wondering if they would dare try again.
They dared.
A spotted greyhound burst from a shrub just behind him. The gun hummed. The dog vanished in midleap, and the trees shivered slightly as air clapped into the sudden vacuum. Another dog charged and Dixon disintegrated it, frowning slightly. These beasts couldn't be considered stupid. Why didn't they learn the obvious lesson-that it was impossible to come against him and his Weapon? Creatures all over the Galaxy had quickly learned to be wary of an armed man. Why not these? Without warning, three dogs leaped from different directions. Dixon clicked to automatic and mowed them down like a man swinging a scythe. Dust whirled and sparkled, filling the vacuum.He listened intently. The forest seemed filled with low coughing sounds. Other packs were coming to join in the kill.
Why didn't they learn? It suddenly burst upon him.
They didn't learn, he thought, because the lesson was too subtle! The Weapon-disintegrating silently, quickly, cleanly. Most of the dogs he hit simply vanished. There were no yelps of agony, no roars or howls or screams And above all, there was no loud boom to startle them, no smell of cotdite, no click of a new shelll. . .
Dixon thought, Maybe they aren't smart enough to know this is a killing weapon. Maybe they haven't figured out what's going on. Maybe they think I'm defenseless. He walked more rapidly through the dim forest. He was in no danger, he reminded himself. Just because they couldn't realize it was a killing weapon didn't alter the fact that it was. Still, he would insist on a noisemaker in the new models. It shouldn't be difficult. And the sound would be reassuring.
The arboreals were gaining confidence now, swinging down almost to the level of his head, their fangs bared. Probably carnivorous, Dixon decided. With the Weapon on automatic, he slashed great cuts in the treetops. The arboreals fled, screaming al him. Leaves and small branches rained down. Even the dogs were momentarily cowed, edging away from the falling debris.
Dixon grinned to himself to just before he was flattened. A big bough, severed from its tree, had caught him across the left shoulder as it fell.
The Weapon was knocked from his hand. It landed ten feet away, still on automatic, disintegrating shrubs a few yards from him.
He dragged himself from under the bough and dived for the Weapon. An arboreal got to it first.
Dixon threw himself face down on the ground. The arboreal, screaming in triumph, whirled the disintegrator around his head. Giant trees, cut through, went crashing to the forest floor. The air was dark with falling twigs and leaves, and the ground was cut into branches. A sweep of the disintegrator knifed through the tree next to Dixon, and chopped the ground a few inches from his feel. He jumped away, and the next sweep narrowly missed his head.
He had given up hope. But then the arboreal became curious. Chattering gaily, illumed the Weapon around and tired to look into the muzzle. The animal's head vanished-silently.
Dixon saw his chance. He ran forward, leaping a trench,
and recovering the disintegrator before another arboreal could play with it. He turned it off automatic.
Several dogs had returned. They were watching him closely.
Dixon didn't dare tire yet. His hands were shaking so badly, there was more risk to himself than to the dogs. He turned and stumbled in the direction of the ship. The dogs followed.
Dixon quickly recovered his nerve. He looked at the glittering Weapon in his hand. He had considerably more respect for it now, and more than a little fear. Much more fear than the dogs had. Apparently they didn't associate the forest damage with the disintegrator. It must have seemed like a sudden, violent storm to them.
But the storm was over. It was hunting time again.
He was in thick brush now, tiring ahead to clear a path.
The dogs were on either side, keeping pace. He tired continually into the foliage, occasionally getting a dog.
There were several dozen of them, pressing him closely.
Damn it, Dixon thought, aren't they counting their losses?
Then he realized they probably didn't know how to count.
He struggled on, not far from the spaceship. A heavy log lay in his path. He stepped over it.
The log came angrily to life and opened enormous jaws directly under his legs.
He fired blindly, holding the trigger down for three seconds and narrowly missing his own feet. The creature vanished. Dixon gulped, swayed, and slid feet first into the pit he had just dug.
He landed heavily, wrenching his left ankle. The dogs ringed the pit, snapping and snarling at him.
Steady, Dixon told himself. He cleared the beasts from the pit's rim with two bursts, and tried to climb out.
The sides of the pit were too steep and had been fused into glass.
Frantically he tried again and again, recklessly expending his strength. Then he stopped and forced himself to think. The Weapon had got him into this hole; the Weapon could get him out.
This time he cut a shallow ramp out of the pit, and limped painfully out. His left ankle could hardly bear weight. Even worse was the pain in his shoulder. That bough must have broken it, he decided. Using a branch as a crutch, Dixon limped on.
Several times the dogs attacked. He disintegrated them, and the gun grew increasingly heavy in his right hand.
The carrion birds came down to pick at the neatly slashed carcasses. Dixon felt darkness crawl around the edges of his vision. He fought it back. He must not faint now, while the dogs were around him.
The ship was in sight. He broke into a clumsy run, and fell immediately. Some of the dogs were on him. He fired, cutting them in two and removing half an inch from his right boot, almost down to the toe. He struggled to his feet and went on.
Quite a weapon, he thought. Dangerous to anyone, including the wielder. He wished he had the inventor in his sights.
Imagine inventing a gun without a bang!
He reached the ship. The dogs ringed him as he fumbled with the air lock. Dixon disintegrated the closest two and stumbled inside. Darkness was crawling around his vision again and he could feel nausea rising thickly in his throat. With his last strength, he swung the air lock shut and sat down. Safe at last!
Then he heard the low cough.
He had shut one of the dogs inside with him.
His arm felt too weak to lift the heavy Weapon, but slowly he swung it up. The dog, barely visible in the dimly lighted ship, leaped at him.
For a terrifying instant, Dixon thought he couldn't squeeze the trigger. The dog was at his throat. Reflex must have clenched his hand.
The dog yelped once and was silent. Dixon blacked out.
When he recovered consciousness, he lay for a long time, just savoring the glorious sensation of being alive.
He was going to rest for a few minutes Then he was getting out of here, away from alien planets, back to a Terran bar. He was going to get roaring drunk. Then he was going to find that inventor and ram the Weapon down the man's throat, crossways.
Only a homicidal maniac would invent a gun without a bang.
But that would come later. Right now it was a pleasure just to be alive, to lie in the sunlight, enjoying the. . . Sunlight? Inside a spaceship?
He sat up. At his feet lay the tail and one leg of the dog.
Beyond it there was an interesting zigzag slashed through the side of the spaceship. It was about three inches wide and four feet long. Sunlight filtered through it.
Outside, four dogs were sitting on their haunches, peering in.
He had cut through his spaceship while killing the last dog.
Then he saw the other slashes in the ship. Where had they come from?
Oh, yes, when he was fighting his way back to the ship. That last hundred yards. A few shots must have touched the spaceship.
He stood up and examined the cuts. A neat job, he thought, with the calm that sometimes accompanies hysteria. Yes sir, very neat indeed.
Here were the severed control cables. That was where the radio had been. Over there he had managed to nick the oxygen and water tanks in a single burst, which was good shooting by anybody's standards. And here-yes, he'd done it, all right. A really clever hook shot had cut the fuel lines. And the fuel had all run out in obedience to the law of gravity and formed a pool around the ship and sunk into the ground.
Not bad for a guy who wasn't even trying, Dixon thought crazily. Couldn't have done better with a blowtorch.
As a matter of fact, he couldn't have done it with a blowtorch. Spaceship hulls were too tough. But not too tough for the good old, little old, surefire, never-miss
Weapon ………
A year later, when Dixon still hadn't reported, a ship was sent out. They were to give him a decent burial, if any remains could be found, and bring back the prototype disintegrator, if that could be found.
The recovery ship touched down near Dixon's ship, and the crew examined the slashed and gutted hull with interest.
"Some guys," said the engineer, "don't know how to handle a gun."
"I'll say," said the chief pilot.
They heard a banging noise from the direction of the rain forest. They hurried over and found that Dixon was not dead. He was very much alive, and singing as he worked.
He had constructed a wooden shack and planted a vegetable garden around it. Surrounding the garden was a palisade. Dixon was hammering in a new sapling to replace a rotten one when the men came up.
Quite predictably, one of the men cried, "You're alive!"
"Damned right," Dixon said. "Touch and go for a while before I got the palisade built. Nasty brutes, those dogs. But I taught them a little respect."
Dixon grinned and touched a bow that leaned against the palisade within easy reach. It had been cut from a piece of seasoned, springy wood, and beside it was a quiver full of arrows
"They learned respect," Dixon said, "after they saw a few of their pals running around with a shaft through their flanks."
"But the Weapon-," the chief pilot asked
"Ah, the Weapon!" exclaimed Dixon, with a mad, merry
light in his eyes. '"Couldn't have survived without it."
He turned back to his work. He was hammering the
sapling into place with the heavy, flat butt of the Weapon.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
by Robert Scheckley
1958 Science Fiction
AFTER READING THIS STORY, YOU SEE THAT THE AUTHOR CONSIDERS TECHNOLOGY ADVANCEMENTS INCIDENTAL TO HUMAN DEVELOPMENT.
Did a twig snap? Dixon looked back and thought he saw a dark shape melt into the underbrush. Instantly he froze, staring back through the green canopied trees. There was a complete and expectant silence. Far overhead, a carrion bird balanced on an updraft, surveying the sun. burned landscape, waiting, hoping.
Then Dixon heard a low impatient cough from the underbrush.
Now he knew he was being followed. Before, it had only been an assumption. But those vague, half-seen shapes had been real. They had left him alone on his trek to the signal station, watching, deciding. Now they were ready to try something. He removed the Weapon from its holster, checked the safeties, reholstered it, and continued walking. He heard another cough. Something was patiently trailing him, probably waiting until he left the bush and entered the forest. Dixon grinned to himself.
Nothing could hurt him. He had the Weapon.
RL6.1 How do we know the the weapon is significant? (irony)
RL6.2 The author foreshadows the plot using the words "dark shape", "complete silence" and "carrion bird"
RL6.3 What does the author mean by "melt"? Prompt: This is figurative language that explains...
Without it, he would never have ventured so far from his spaceship. One simply didn't wander around on an alien planet. But Dixon could. On his hip was the weapon to end all weapons, absolute insurance against anything that walked or crawled or flew or swam.
It was the last word in handguns, the ultimate in personal armament. It was the Weapon.
He looked back again. There were three beasts, less than fifty yards behind him. From that distance, they resembled dogs or hyenas. They coughed at him and moved slowly forward.
He touched the Weapon, but decided against using it immediately. There would be plenty of time when they came closer.
Alfred Dixon was a short man, very broad in the chest and shoulders. His hair was streaky blond, and he had a blond mustache which curled up at the ends. This mustache gave his tanned face a frank, ferocious appearance.
His natural habitat was Terra's bars and taverns. There, dressed in stained khakis, he could order drinks in a loud, belligerent voice and pierce his fellow drinkers with narrow gunmetal blue eyes. He enjoyed explaining to the drinkers, in a somewhat contemptuous tone, the difference between a Sykes needler and a Colt three-point, between the Martian horned adleper and the Venusian scorn, and just what to do when a Rannarean horntank is charging you in thick brush, and how to beat off an attack of winged glitterflits.
Some men considered Dixon all bluff, but they were careful not to call it. Others thought he was a good man in spite of his inflated opinion of himself. He was just overconfident, they explained. Death or mutilation would correct this flaw.
Dixon was a great believer in personal armament. To his way of thinking, the winning of the American West was simply a contest between bow and arrow and Colt .44. Africa? The spear against the rifle. Mars? The Colt three- point against the spinknife. H-bombs smeared cities, but individual men with small arms took the territory. Why look for fuzzy economic, philosophical, or political reasons when everything was so simple?
He had, of course, utter confidence in the Weapon.
Glancing back, he saw that half a dozen doglike creatures had joined the original three. They were walking in the open now, tongues lolling out, slowly closing the distance. Dixon decided to hold fire just a little longer. The shock effect would be that much greater. He had held many jobs in his time-explorer, hunter, prospector, asteroider. Fortune seemed to elude him. The other man always stumbled across the lost city, shot the rare beast, found the ore-bearing stream. He accepted his fate cheerfully. Damned poor luck, but what can you do?
Now he was a radioman, checking the automatic signal stations on a dozen unoccupied worlds.
But more important, he was giving the ultimate handgun its first test in the field. The gun's inventors hoped the Weapon would become standard. Dixon hoped he would become standard with it.
He had reached the edge of the rain forest. His ship lay about two miles ahead in a little clearing. As he entered the forest's gloomy shade, he heard the excited squeaking of arboreals. They were colored orange and blue, and they watched him intently from the treetops. It was definitely an African sort of place, Dixon decided. He hoped he would encounter some big game, get a decent trophy head or two. Behind him, the wild dogs had approached to twenty yards. They were gray and brown, the size of terriers, with a hyena's jaws. Some of them had moved into the underbrush, racing ahead to cut him off.
It was time to show the Weapon.
Dixon unholstered it. The Weapon was pistol-shaped and quite heavy. It also balanced poorly. The inventors had promised to reduce the weight and improve the heft in subsequent models. But Dixon liked it just the way it was. He admired it for a moment, then clicked off the safeties and adjusted for single shot. The pack came loping toward him, coughing and snarling. Dixon took casual aim and fired.
The Weapon hummed faintly. Ahead, for a distance of a hundred yards, a section of forest simply vanished.
Dixon had fired the first disintegrator. From a muzzle aperture of less than an inch, the beam had fanned out to a maximum diameter of twelve feet.
A conic section, waist high and a hundred yards long, appeared in the forest. Within it, nothing remained. Trees, insects, plants, shrubs, wild dogs, butterflies, all were gone.
Overhanging boughs caught in the blast area looked as though they had been sheared by a giant razor.
Dixon estimated he had caught at least seven of the wild dogs in the blast. Seven beasts with a half-second burst! No problems of deflection or trajectory, as with a missile gun. No need to reload, for the Weapon had a power span of eighteen duty-hours. The perfect weapon!
He turned and walked on, reholstering the heavy gun. There was silence. The forest creatures were considering the new experience. In a few moments, they recovered from their surprise. Blue and orange arboreals swung through the trees above him. Overhead, the carrion bird soared low, and other black-winged birds came out of the distant sky to join it. And the wild dogs coughed in the underbrush.
They hadn't given up yet. Dixon could hear them in the deep foliage on either side of him, moving rapidly, staying out of sight. He drew the Weapon, wondering if they would dare try again.
They dared.
A spotted greyhound burst from a shrub just behind him. The gun hummed. The dog vanished in midleap, and the trees shivered slightly as air clapped into the sudden vacuum. Another dog charged and Dixon disintegrated it, frowning slightly. These beasts couldn't be considered stupid. Why didn't they learn the obvious lesson-that it was impossible to come against him and his Weapon? Creatures all over the Galaxy had quickly learned to be wary of an armed man. Why not these? Without warning, three dogs leaped from different directions. Dixon clicked to automatic and mowed them down like a man swinging a scythe. Dust whirled and sparkled, filling the vacuum.He listened intently. The forest seemed filled with low coughing sounds. Other packs were coming to join in the kill.
Why didn't they learn? It suddenly burst upon him.
They didn't learn, he thought, because the lesson was too subtle! The Weapon-disintegrating silently, quickly, cleanly. Most of the dogs he hit simply vanished. There were no yelps of agony, no roars or howls or screams And above all, there was no loud boom to startle them, no smell of cotdite, no click of a new shelll. . .
Dixon thought, Maybe they aren't smart enough to know this is a killing weapon. Maybe they haven't figured out what's going on. Maybe they think I'm defenseless. He walked more rapidly through the dim forest. He was in no danger, he reminded himself. Just because they couldn't realize it was a killing weapon didn't alter the fact that it was. Still, he would insist on a noisemaker in the new models. It shouldn't be difficult. And the sound would be reassuring.
The arboreals were gaining confidence now, swinging down almost to the level of his head, their fangs bared. Probably carnivorous, Dixon decided. With the Weapon on automatic, he slashed great cuts in the treetops. The arboreals fled, screaming al him. Leaves and small branches rained down. Even the dogs were momentarily cowed, edging away from the falling debris.
Dixon grinned to himself to just before he was flattened. A big bough, severed from its tree, had caught him across the left shoulder as it fell.
The Weapon was knocked from his hand. It landed ten feet away, still on automatic, disintegrating shrubs a few yards from him.
He dragged himself from under the bough and dived for the Weapon. An arboreal got to it first.
Dixon threw himself face down on the ground. The arboreal, screaming in triumph, whirled the disintegrator around his head. Giant trees, cut through, went crashing to the forest floor. The air was dark with falling twigs and leaves, and the ground was cut into branches. A sweep of the disintegrator knifed through the tree next to Dixon, and chopped the ground a few inches from his feel. He jumped away, and the next sweep narrowly missed his head.
He had given up hope. But then the arboreal became curious. Chattering gaily, illumed the Weapon around and tired to look into the muzzle. The animal's head vanished-silently.
Dixon saw his chance. He ran forward, leaping a trench,
and recovering the disintegrator before another arboreal could play with it. He turned it off automatic.
Several dogs had returned. They were watching him closely.
Dixon didn't dare tire yet. His hands were shaking so badly, there was more risk to himself than to the dogs. He turned and stumbled in the direction of the ship. The dogs followed.
Dixon quickly recovered his nerve. He looked at the glittering Weapon in his hand. He had considerably more respect for it now, and more than a little fear. Much more fear than the dogs had. Apparently they didn't associate the forest damage with the disintegrator. It must have seemed like a sudden, violent storm to them.
But the storm was over. It was hunting time again.
He was in thick brush now, tiring ahead to clear a path.
The dogs were on either side, keeping pace. He tired continually into the foliage, occasionally getting a dog.
There were several dozen of them, pressing him closely.
Damn it, Dixon thought, aren't they counting their losses?
Then he realized they probably didn't know how to count.
He struggled on, not far from the spaceship. A heavy log lay in his path. He stepped over it.
The log came angrily to life and opened enormous jaws directly under his legs.
He fired blindly, holding the trigger down for three seconds and narrowly missing his own feet. The creature vanished. Dixon gulped, swayed, and slid feet first into the pit he had just dug.
He landed heavily, wrenching his left ankle. The dogs ringed the pit, snapping and snarling at him.
Steady, Dixon told himself. He cleared the beasts from the pit's rim with two bursts, and tried to climb out.
The sides of the pit were too steep and had been fused into glass.
Frantically he tried again and again, recklessly expending his strength. Then he stopped and forced himself to think. The Weapon had got him into this hole; the Weapon could get him out.
This time he cut a shallow ramp out of the pit, and limped painfully out. His left ankle could hardly bear weight. Even worse was the pain in his shoulder. That bough must have broken it, he decided. Using a branch as a crutch, Dixon limped on.
Several times the dogs attacked. He disintegrated them, and the gun grew increasingly heavy in his right hand.
The carrion birds came down to pick at the neatly slashed carcasses. Dixon felt darkness crawl around the edges of his vision. He fought it back. He must not faint now, while the dogs were around him.
The ship was in sight. He broke into a clumsy run, and fell immediately. Some of the dogs were on him. He fired, cutting them in two and removing half an inch from his right boot, almost down to the toe. He struggled to his feet and went on.
Quite a weapon, he thought. Dangerous to anyone, including the wielder. He wished he had the inventor in his sights.
Imagine inventing a gun without a bang!
He reached the ship. The dogs ringed him as he fumbled with the air lock. Dixon disintegrated the closest two and stumbled inside. Darkness was crawling around his vision again and he could feel nausea rising thickly in his throat. With his last strength, he swung the air lock shut and sat down. Safe at last!
Then he heard the low cough.
He had shut one of the dogs inside with him.
His arm felt too weak to lift the heavy Weapon, but slowly he swung it up. The dog, barely visible in the dimly lighted ship, leaped at him.
For a terrifying instant, Dixon thought he couldn't squeeze the trigger. The dog was at his throat. Reflex must have clenched his hand.
The dog yelped once and was silent. Dixon blacked out.
When he recovered consciousness, he lay for a long time, just savoring the glorious sensation of being alive.
He was going to rest for a few minutes Then he was getting out of here, away from alien planets, back to a Terran bar. He was going to get roaring drunk. Then he was going to find that inventor and ram the Weapon down the man's throat, crossways.
Only a homicidal maniac would invent a gun without a bang.
But that would come later. Right now it was a pleasure just to be alive, to lie in the sunlight, enjoying the. . . Sunlight? Inside a spaceship?
He sat up. At his feet lay the tail and one leg of the dog.
Beyond it there was an interesting zigzag slashed through the side of the spaceship. It was about three inches wide and four feet long. Sunlight filtered through it.
Outside, four dogs were sitting on their haunches, peering in.
He had cut through his spaceship while killing the last dog.
Then he saw the other slashes in the ship. Where had they come from?
Oh, yes, when he was fighting his way back to the ship. That last hundred yards. A few shots must have touched the spaceship.
He stood up and examined the cuts. A neat job, he thought, with the calm that sometimes accompanies hysteria. Yes sir, very neat indeed.
Here were the severed control cables. That was where the radio had been. Over there he had managed to nick the oxygen and water tanks in a single burst, which was good shooting by anybody's standards. And here-yes, he'd done it, all right. A really clever hook shot had cut the fuel lines. And the fuel had all run out in obedience to the law of gravity and formed a pool around the ship and sunk into the ground.
Not bad for a guy who wasn't even trying, Dixon thought crazily. Couldn't have done better with a blowtorch.
As a matter of fact, he couldn't have done it with a blowtorch. Spaceship hulls were too tough. But not too tough for the good old, little old, surefire, never-miss
Weapon ………
A year later, when Dixon still hadn't reported, a ship was sent out. They were to give him a decent burial, if any remains could be found, and bring back the prototype disintegrator, if that could be found.
The recovery ship touched down near Dixon's ship, and the crew examined the slashed and gutted hull with interest.
"Some guys," said the engineer, "don't know how to handle a gun."
"I'll say," said the chief pilot.
They heard a banging noise from the direction of the rain forest. They hurried over and found that Dixon was not dead. He was very much alive, and singing as he worked.
He had constructed a wooden shack and planted a vegetable garden around it. Surrounding the garden was a palisade. Dixon was hammering in a new sapling to replace a rotten one when the men came up.
Quite predictably, one of the men cried, "You're alive!"
"Damned right," Dixon said. "Touch and go for a while before I got the palisade built. Nasty brutes, those dogs. But I taught them a little respect."
Dixon grinned and touched a bow that leaned against the palisade within easy reach. It had been cut from a piece of seasoned, springy wood, and beside it was a quiver full of arrows
"They learned respect," Dixon said, "after they saw a few of their pals running around with a shaft through their flanks."
"But the Weapon-," the chief pilot asked
"Ah, the Weapon!" exclaimed Dixon, with a mad, merry
light in his eyes. '"Couldn't have survived without it."
He turned back to his work. He was hammering the
sapling into place with the heavy, flat butt of the Weapon.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••