The Call of the Wild Quotes

“When a halt was made, they dropped down in the traces like dead dogs, and the spark dimmed and paled and seemed to go out.”

“The Yukon was straining to break loose the ice that bound it down.”

“But especially he loved to run in the dim twilight of the summer midnights, listening to the subdued and sleepy murmurs of the forest, reading signs and sounds as a man may read a book, and seeking for the mysterious something that called—called, waking or sleeping, at all times, for him to come.”

“There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive. This ecstasy, this forgetfulness of living, comes to the artist, caught up and out of himself in a sheet of flame; it comes to the soldier, war-mad in a stricken field and refusing quarter; and it came to Buck, leading the pack, sounding the old wolf-cry, straining after the food that was alive and that fled swiftly before him through the moonlight.”

“Thornton knelt down by Buck’s side. He took his head in his two hands and rested cheek on cheek. He did not playfully shake him, as was his wont, or murmur soft love curses; but he whispered in his ear. ‘As you love me, Buck.‘”

“Here was neither peace, nor rest, nor a moment’s safety. All was confusion and action, and every moment life and limb were in peril.”

“There is a patience of the wild—dogged, tireless, persistent as life itself—that holds motionless for endless hours the spider in its web, the snake in its coils, the panther in its ambuscade; this patience belongs peculiarly to life when it hunts its living food.”

“Buck’s first day . . . was like a nightmare. Every hour was filled with shock and suprirse. He had been suddenly jerked from the heart of civilization and flung into the heart of things primordial.”

“He was a killer, a thing that preyed, living on the things that lived, unaided, alone, by virtue of his own strength and prowess, surviving triumphantly in a hostile environment where only the strong survived.”

“The ghostly winter silence had given way to the great spring murmur of awakening life. This murmur arose from all the land, fraught with the joy of living.”

“Love, genuine passionate love, was his for the first time.”

“In their very great misery they had become insensible to the bite of the lash or the bruise of the club.”

“In short, the things he did were done because it was easier to do them than not to do them.”

“A man with a club was a lawgiver, a master to be obeyed, though not necessarily conciliated.”

“That was the way. No fair play. Once down, that was the end of you.”

“He must master or be mastered; while to show mercy was a weakness. Mercy did not exist in the primordial life. It was misunderstood for fear, and such misunderstandings made for death. Kill or be killed, eat or be eaten, was the law; and this mandate, down out of the depths of Time, he obeyed.”

“It was heartbreaking, only Buck’s heart was unbreakable.”

“They were not half living, or quarter living. They were simply so many bags of bones in which sparks of life flutter faintly.”

“He became possessed of a great pride in himself, which communicated itself like a contagion to his physical being. It advertised itself in all his movements, was apparent in the play of every muscle, spoke plainly as speech in the way he carried himself.”

“It marked his adaptability, his capacity to adjust himself to changing conditions, the lack of which would have meant swift and terrible death. It marked, further, the decay or going to pieces of his moral nature, a vain thing and a handicap in the ruthless struggle for existence.”

“He did not steal for the joy of it, but because of the clamor of his stomach.”

“Deep in the forest a call was sounding, and as often as he heard this call, mysteriously thrilling and luring, he felt compelled to turn his back upon the fire and the beaten earth around it, and to plunge into the forest, and on and on, he knew not where or why; nor did he wonder where or why, the call sounding imperiously, deep in the forest. But as often as he gained the soft unbroken earth and the green shade, the love for John Thornton drew him back to the fire again.”

“Buck multiplied himself, attacking from all sides . . . wearing out the patience of creatures preyed upon, which is a lesser patience than that of creatures preying.”

“Not only did he learn by experience, but instincts long dead became alive again.”

“Old longings nomadic leap, Chafing at custom’s chain; Again from its brumal sleep Wakens the ferine strain.”

“Buck did not read the newspapers, or he would have known that trouble was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tide-water dog, strong of muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego.”

“Because men, groping in the Arctic darkness, had found a yellow metal, and because steamship and transportation companies were booming the find, thousands of men were rushing into the Northland.”

“And over this great demesne Buck ruled. Here he was born, and here he had lived the four years of his life. It was true, there were other dogs, There could not but be other dogs on so vast a place, but they did not count.”

“But Buck was neither house-dog nor kennel-dog. The whole realm was his. He plunged into the swimming tank or went hunting with the Judge’s sons; he escorted Mollie and Alice, the Judge’s daughters, on long twilight or early morning rambles; on wintry nights he lay at the Judge’s feet before the roaring library fire; he carried the Judge’s grandsons on his back, or rolled them in the grass, and guarded their footsteps through wild adventures down to the fountain in the stable yard, and even beyond, where the paddocks were, and the berry patches.”

“Among the terriers he stalked imperiously, and Toots and Ysabel he utterly ignored, for he was king, — king over all creeping, crawling, flying things of Judge Miller’s place, humans included.”

“During the four years since his puppyhood he had lived the life of a sated aristocrat; he had a fine pride in himself, was even a trifle egotistical, as country gentlemen sometimes become because of their insular situation.”

“Buck had accepted the rope with quiet dignity. To be sure, it was an unwonted performance: but he had learned to trust in men he knew, and to give them credit for a wisdom that outreached his own.”

“There he lay for the remainder of the weary night, nursing his wrath and wounded pride. He could not understand what it all meant. What did they want with him, these strange men? Why were they keeping him pent up in this narrow crate?”

“And each time the joyful bark that trembled in Buck’s throat was twisted into a savage growl.”

“Dat Buck for sure learn queek as anyt’ing.”

“All de tam I watch dat Buck I know for sure. Lissen: some dam fine day heem get mad lak hell an’ den heem chew dat Spitz all up an’ spit heem out on de snow. Sure. I know.”

“But Buck possessed a quality that made for greatness—imagination.”

“But Spitz, cold and calculating even in his supreme moods, left the pack and cut across a narrow neck of land where the creek made a long bend around.”

“Nevaire such a dog as dat Buck!” he cried.

“It’s not that I care a whoop what becomes of you, but for the dogs’ sakes I just want to tell you, you can help them a mighty lot by breaking out that sled. The runners are froze fast. Throw your weight against the gee-pole, right and left, and break it out.”

“If you strike that dog again, I’ll kill you,” he at last managed to say in a choking voice.

Because of his very great love, he could not steal from this man, but from any other man, in any other camp, he did not hesitate an instant; while the cunning with which he stole enabled him to escape detection.

“Faithfulness and devotion, things born of fire and roof, were his; yet he retained his wildness and wiliness. He was a thing of the wild, come in from the wild to sit by John Thornton’s fire, rather than a dog of the soft Southland stamped with the marks of generations of civilization.”

“He was older than the days he had seen and the breaths he had drawn. He linked the past with the present, and the eternity behind him throbbed through him in a mighty rhythm to which he swayed as the tides and seasons swayed.”

“Now, you red-eyed devil,” he said, when he had made an opening sufficient for the passage of Buck’s body.

“Be a bad dog, and I’ll whale the stuffin’ outa you.”

Now and again men came, strangers, who talked excitedly, wheedlingly, and in all kinds of fashions to the man in the red sweater. And at such times that money passed between them the strangers took one or more of the dogs away with them. Buck wondered where they went, for they never came back; but the fear of the future was strong upon him, and he was glad each time when he was not selected.

Perrault grinned. Considering that the price of dogs had been boomed skyward by the unwonted demand, it was not an unfair sum for so fine an animal. The Canadian Government would be no loser, nor would its despatches travel the slower. Perrault knew dogs, and when he looked at Buck he knew that he was one in a thousand—“One in ten t’ousand,” he commented mentally.

Spitz ran out his tongue and laughed again, and from that moment Buck hated him with a bitter and deathless hatred.

The scene often came back to Buck to trouble him in his sleep. So that was the way. No fair play. Once down, that was the end of you.

Here was neither peace, nor rest, nor a moment’s safety. All was confusion and action, and every moment life and limb were in peril.

No lazy, sun-kissed life was this, with nothing to do but loaf and be bored.

He had been suddenly jerked from the heart of civilization and flung into the heart of things primordial.

The snow walls pressed him on every side, and a great surge of fear swept through him—the fear of the wild thing for the trap. It was a token that he was harking back through his own life to the lives of his forebears; for he was a civilized dog, an unduly civilized dog, and of his own experience knew no trap and so could not of himself fear it.

The day had been long and arduous, and he slept soundly and comfortably, though he growled and barked and wrestled with bad dreams.

A chill wind was blowing that nipped him sharply and bit with especial venom into his wounded shoulder. He lay down on the snow and attempted to sleep, but the frost soon drove him shivering to his feet.

One of them was a big, snow-white fellow from Spitzbergen who had been brought away by a whaling captain, and who had later accompanied a Geological Survey into the Barrens.

He was friendly, in a treacherous sort of way, smiling into one’s face the while he meditated some underhand trick, as, for instance, when he stole from Buck’s food at the first meal.

There was imperative need to be constantly alert; for these dogs and men were not town dogs and men. They were savages, all of them, who knew no law but the law of club and fang.

Though his dignity was sorely hurt by thus being made a draught animal, he was too wise to rebel. He buckled down with a will and did his best, though it was all new and strange.

He swiftly lost the fastidiousness which had characterized his old life. A dainty eater, he found that his mates, finishing first, robbed him of his unfinished ration.

Always, they broke camp in the dark, and the first gray of dawn found them hitting the trail with fresh miles reeled off behind them.

All his days, no matter what the odds, he had never run from a fight. But the club of the man in the red sweater had beaten into him a more fundamental and primitive code.

Civilized, he could have died for a moral consideration, say the defence of Judge Miller’s riding-whip; but the completeness of his decivilization was now evidenced by his ability to flee from the defence of a moral consideration and so save his hide.

His muscles became hard as iron, and he grew callous to all ordinary pain.

Sight and scent became remarkably keen, while his hearing developed such acuteness that in his sleep he heard the faintest sound and knew whether it heralded peace or peril.

And when, on the still cold nights, he pointed his nose at a star and howled long and wolflike, it was his ancestors, dead and dust, pointing nose at star and howling down through the centuries and through him. And his cadences were their cadences, the cadences which voiced their woe and what to them was the meaning of the stiffness, and the cold, and dark.

The dominant primordial beast was strong in Buck, and under the fierce conditions of trail life it grew and grew.

Never had Buck seen such dogs. It seemed as though their bones would burst through their skins. They were mere skeletons, draped loosely in draggled hides, with blazing eyes and slavered fangs.

“Ah, my frien’s,” he said softly, “mebbe it mek you mad dog, dose many bites. Mebbe all mad dog, sacredam! Wot you t’ink, eh, Perrault?”

The dog-driver rubbed Buck’s feet for half an hour each night after supper, and sacrificed the tops of his own moccasins to make four moccasins for Buck.

One morning, Francois forgot the moccasins and Buck lay on his back, his four feet waving appealingly in the air, and refused to budge without them.

He had never seen a dog go mad, nor did he have any reason to fear madness; yet he knew that here was horror, and fled away from it in a panic.

“One devil, dat Spitz,” remarked Perrault. “Some dam day heem keel dat Buck.”