BURNING DAYLIGHT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 14629, 15 March 1911, Page 11

BURNING DAYLIGHT.

TUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT.

BY JACK LONDON,

Author of " The Call of the Wild," " White Fang," " Martin Eden," etc. [COPYRIGHT.]" CHAPTER Vlll.—(Continued). Elijah proved a bigger task than he had anticipated. A few inches at a time, resting in between, ho dragged him over the ground and up a broken rubble of ice to the side of the boat. But into the boat he could not get him. Elijah's limp body was far more difficult to lift and handle, than an equal weiarht of like dimensions but rigid. Daylight failed to hoist him, for the body collapsed at the middle like a part-empty sack of corn. Getting into the boat, Daylight tried vainly to drag his comrade in after him. The best he could do was to get Elijah's head and , shoulders on top the gunwale. When he released his hold, to heave from farther down the body, Elijah promptly gave at the middle and came down on the ice. > In despair, Daylight changed his tactics. He struck the other in the face. "Ain't you-all a man?" he cried. " There ! you all ! there !" He struck him on tho cheeks, the nose, ' the mouth, striving, by the shock of the hurt, to bring back the sinking soul and far-wandering will of the man. The eyes fluttered open. "Now listen!" he shouted hoarsely. . "When I. get your head to the gunwale, hang on ! Hear me? Hang on !'Bito into it with your teeth, but hang on!" The eyes fluttered down, but Daylight knew the message had been * received. Again he got the helpless man's head and shoulders on the gunwale. * "Hang on; can't you! Bite in!" he shouted, as he shifted his grip lower down. One weak hand slipped off the gunwale, the fingers of the- other hand relaxed, but Elijah obeyed, and his teeth held on. When the lift came, his face ground forward, and tho splintery wood tore and crushed the skin from nose, lips, and chin and, face downwards, he slipped on and down to the bottom of the boat till his limp middle collapsed across the gunwale and his legs hung down outside. But they were only his legs, and Daylight shoved them in after him. Breathing heavily, he turned Elijah over on his back, and covered him with his robes.

The final task remained— launching of tho boat. This, of necessity, was the severest of all, for he had been compelled to load his comrade in aft of the balance. It meant .a supreme effort at lifting. Daylight steeled himself and began. Something must have snapped, for, though he was unaware of it, the next he knew he was lying doubled on his stomach across the sharp stern of the boat. Evidently, and for the first time in his life, he hud fainted. Furthermore, it seemed to him that he was finished, that he had not one more movement left in him, and that, strangest of all, he did not care. Visions came to him, clear-cut and real, and concepts sharp as steel cutting-edges. He, who all his days had looked on naked Life, had never seen so much of Life's nakedness before. For the first time ho experienced a doubt of his own glorious personality. For the moment life faltered and forgot to lie. After all, he was a little earth-maggot, just like all the other earthmaggots, like the squirrel he had eaten, like the other men he had seen fail and die, like Joe Hines and Henry Finn, who had already failed and wero surely dead, like Elijah lying there uncaring, with his skinned face, in the bottom of the boat. Daylight's position was such that from where he lay he could look up river to tho bend, around which, sooner or later, the next ice-run would come. And as ho looked he seemed to see back through the past to a time when neither white man nor Indian was in the land, and ever he saw the same Stewart River, winter upon winter, breasted with ice, and spring upon spring bursting that ice asunder and running free. And he saw also into an illimitable future, when the last generations of men were gone from off the face, of Alaska, when he, too, would be gone, and saw, ever remaining, that river, freezing and fresheting, and running on and. on. Life was a liar and a cheat. It fooled all creatures. It had fooled him. Burning Daylight, one of its chiefest and most joyous exponents. He was .nothing—-a mere bunch of flesh and nerves and sensitiveness that crawled in the muck for gold, that dreamed and "aspired and gambled, and that passed and was gone. Only the dead things remained, the things that were not flesh and nerves and sensitiveness, the. sand and muck and gravel, the stretching flats, the mountains, the river itself, freezing and breaking, year by year, down all the years. When all was said and done, it. was a scurvy game. The dice were loaded. Those that died did not win, and all died. Who won? Not even Life, the stoolpigeon, the arch-capper for the game— Life, the ever flourishing graveyard, the everlasting funeral procession. He drifted back to the immediate present for a moment, and noted that the river still ran wide open, and that a moose-bird, on the bow of the boat, was surveying him impudently. Then ho drifted dreamily back to his meditations. There was no escaping the end of tho game. He was doomed surely to be out of it all. And what of it? He pondered that question again and again. Conventional religion had passed, Daylight by. He had lived a sort of religion in his square dealing and right playing with other men, and he had not indulged in vain metaphysics about future life. Death ended all. He had always believed that, and been unafraid. And at this moment, the boat fifteen feet above the water and immovable, himself fainting with weakness and without a particle of strength left in him, he still believed that death ended all, and he was still unafraid. His views were too simply and solidly based to be overthrown by the first squirm, or the last, of death fearing life. He had seen men and animals die, and into the field of his vision, by scores, came such deaths. He saw them over again, just as he had seen them at the time, and they did not shake him. What of it? They were dead, and dead long since. They weren't bothering about it. They weren't lying on their bellies across a boat and waiting to die. Death was easy easier than he had -ever imagined ; and, now that it was near, the thought of it made him glad. A new vision came to him. He saw the feverish city of his dream— gold metropolis of the North, perched above the Yukon on a high earth-bank and farspreading across the flat. He saw the river steamers tied to the bank and lined against it three deep; he saw the sawmills working and the long dog-teams, with double sleds behind, freighting supplies to the diggings, And he saw, further, the gambling-houses, banks, stock exchanges, and all the gear and chips and markers, the chances and opportunities, of a vastly bigger gambling game than any he had ever seen. It was sure hell, he thought, with the hunch aworking and that big strike coming, to be out of it all. Life thrilled and stirred at the thought, • and once more began uttering his ancient, lies. Daylight rolled over and off the boat, leaning against it as he sat on the ice. He wanted to be in on that strike. And why shouldn't he? Somewhere in all those wasted muscles of his was enough strength, if he could gather it all at. once, to upend'the boat and launch it. Qdite irrelevantly the idea suggested itself of buying a share in the Klondike- town site from Harper and Joe Ladue. They would surely sell a third interest cheap. Then, if the strike came on the Stewart, he would be well in on it with the Elam Harnish town site; if on the Klondike, he would not be quite out, of it. in the meantime, he would gather strength.. He stretched out on the ice full length, face downward, and for half an hour he lay and rested. Then he arose, shook the flashing blindness from his eyes, and took hold of the boat. He knew his condition accurately. If tho first effort failed, tho following efforts were doomed to fajL He must gut all his rallied

strength into the one effort, and so thoroughly must he nut all of it in that there would be none left for other attempts. • , He lifted, and he lifted with the soul of him as well as with the body, consuming himself, body and spirit, in the effort. The boat rose. He thought he was going to faint, but ho continued to lift. He felt the boat give, as it started on its downward slide. With the last shred of his strength he precipitated himself into it, landing in a sick heap on Elijah's legs. He was beyond attempting to rise, and a*--« e lay he heard and felt the boat take the water. By watching the tree-tops he knew it was whirling. A smashing shock and flying fragments of ice told him that it had struck the bank. A dozen times< it whirled and struck, and then it floated easily and free. , • Daylight -came to, and decided he had been asleep. The sun denoted that several hours had passed. It was early afternoon. He dragged himself into the stern and sat up. The boat was in the middle ot trie stream. The wooded banks, with their base-lines of flashing ice, were slipping by. Near him floated a huge uprooted pine. A freak of the current brought the boat against it. Crawling forward, he fastened the painter to a root. The tree, deeper in the water, was travelling faster, and the painter tautened as- the boat took the tow. Then, with giddy look around, wherein he s;w the banks tiltin and swaying and the sun swinging in pendulum-sweep across the sky, Daylight wrapped himself in his rabbit-skin robe, lay down in the bottom, and fell asleep. When he awoke, it was dark night. A subdued murmur of swollen waters could be heard. A sharp jerk informed him that the boat, swerving slack into the painter, had been straightened' out by the swiftermoving pine tree. A piece of stray driftice thumped against the boat and grated along its aide. Well, the following jam hadn't caught him' yet, was his thought, as ho closed his eyes and slept again. ; . , . It was bright day when, he opened his eyes. 'Hie sun showed it to be midday. A glance around at the far-away banks, and he knew that he was on the mighty Yukon. Sixty Mile could not be far away. He was abominably weak. His movements were slow, fumbling, and inaccurate, accompanied by panting and headswimming, as he dragged himself into, a sitting-up position in the stern, Ins rifle beside him. He looked a long time at Elijah, but could , not see whether he breathed or not, and he was too immeasurably far away to make an investigation. He fell to dreaming and meditating again, dreams and thoughts being often broken by stretches of biankness, wherein he neither slept, nor was unconscious, nor was aware of anything. It seemed to him more like cogs slipping in his brain. He was still alive, and most likely would be saved, but how came it that he 'was not lying dead across the boat on top .the icerim ? Then he recollected the great final effort he had made. But why had ho made it? he asked himself. It had not been fear of death. He had not been afraid, that was sure. Then he remembered the hunch and the big strike he believed was coming, and ho knew that the spur had been his desire to sit in for a hand at that big game. And again why? What if he made "his million? He would die, just the same as those that never won more than grub-stakes. Then again why? But the blank stretches in bis thinking process began to come more frequently, and he surrendered to the delightful lassitude that was creeping over him. He roused with a start. Something had whispered in him that he must awake. Abruptly he saw Sixty Mile, not a hundred feet away. The current had brought him to the very door. But the same current was now sweeping him past and on into the down-river wilderness. No one was in sight. The place might have been deserted, save for the. smoke he saw rising from the kitchen chimney. He tried to call, but found he had no voice left. An unearthly guttural hiss alternately rattled and wheezed in his throat, He fumbled for the rifle, got it to his shoulder, and pulled the trigger. The recoil of the discharge tore through his frame, racking it with a thousand agonies. The rifle had fallen across his knees, and an attempt to lift it to his shoulder failed. He knew he must be quick, and felt that he was fainting, so he pulled the trigger of the gun where it lay. This time it kicked off and overboard. But just before darkness rushed over him, he saw the kitchen door open, and a woman look out of the big log house that was dancing a monstrous jig among the trees. ' CHAPTER IX. Ten days later Harper and Joe Ladue arrived at" Sixty Mile, and Daylight, still a, trifle weak, but strong enough to obey the hunch that had come to him, traded a third interest in his Stewart town site for a third interest in theirs on the Klondike. They had faith in the Upper Country, and Harper left down-stream, with a raft-load of supplies, to start a small post at tho mouth of the Klondike. Why don't you tackle Indian River, Daylight?" Harper advised, at parting. " There's whole slathers of creeks and draws draining in up there, and somewhere gold just crying to be found. That's my hunch. There's a big strike coming, and Indian River ain't going to be a million miles away." "And the place is swarming with moose," Joe Ladue added. " Bob Henderson's up there somewhere, been there three years now, swearing something big is going to happen, living off'n straight moose and prospecting around like a crazy man." Daylight decided to go Indian River a flutter, as he expressed it; but Elijah could not be persuaded into accompanying him. Elijah's soul had been seared by famine, and he was obsessed by fear of repeating the experience. "I jest, cant bear to separate from grub," he explained. " I know it's downright foolishness, but I jest can't help it. It a all I can do to tear myself away from the table when I know I'm full to bustin' and ain't got storage for. another bite. I'm going to circle to camp by a cache until I get cured." Daylight lingered a few days longer, gathering strength and arranging his meagre outfit. He planned to go in light, carrying a pack of sveventy-five pounds and making his five dogs pack as well, Indian fashion, loading them with thirty pounds each. Depending on the report of Ladue, he intended to follow Bob Henderson's example and live practically on straight meat. When Jack Kearns's scow, laden with the sawmill from Lake Linderman, tied up nt Sixty Mile, Daylight bundled his outfit and dogs on board, turned his town-site application over to Elijah to be filed, and the same day wad landed at the mouth of Indian River. ] Forty miles up the creek, at what had been described to him as Quartz Creek; he came upon signs of Bob Henderson's work, and also at Australia Creek, thirty miles farther on. The weeks came and went, but Daylight never encountered the other man. However, he found moose plentiful, and he and his dogs prospered on the meat diet. Ho found pay" that was no more than " wages" on a dozen surface bars, and from the generous spread of flour gold in the muck and gravel of a score of creeks, he was moro confident than ever that coarse gold in quantity was' waiting to be unearthed. Often he turned his eyes to the northward ridge of hills, and pondered if the gold came from them. In the end, he ascended Dominion Creek to its head, crossed the divide, and came down on the tributary to the Klondike that was later to be called Hunter Creek. While on the divide, had he kept the big dome on his right, he would have come down on the Gold Bottom, so named by Bob Henderson, whom he would have found at work on it, taking out the first pay-gold ever panned on the Klondike. Instead, Daylight continued down Hunter to the Klondike, and on to the summer fishing camp of the Indians on tho Yukon. (To he continued daily.)