The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Call of the Wild, by Jack London

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Title: The Call of the Wild

Author: Jack London

Release Date: July 1, 2008 [EBook #215]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CALL OF THE WILD ***

Produced by Ryan, Kirstin, Linda and Rick Trapp in Loving
Memory of Ivan Louis Reese

THE CALL OF THE WILD

by Jack London

Contents

I Into the Primitive
II The Law of Club and Fang
III The Dominant Primordial Beast
IV Who Has Won to Mastership
V The Toil of Trace and Tail
VI For the Love of a Man
VII The Sounding of the Call

Chapter I. Into the Primitive

"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. These men wanted
dogs, and the dogs they wanted were heavy dogs, with strong muscles by
which to toil, and furry coats to protect them from the frost.

Buck lived at a big house in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley. Judge
Miller's place, it was called. It stood back from the road, half hidden
among the trees, through which glimpses could be caught of the wide
cool veranda that ran around its four sides. The house was approached by
gravelled driveways which wound about through wide-spreading lawns and
under the interlacing boughs of tall poplars. At the rear things were on
even a more spacious scale than at the front. There were great stables,
where a dozen grooms and boys held forth, rows of vine-clad servants'
cottages, an endless and orderly array of outhouses, long grape arbors,
green pastures, orchards, and berry patches. Then there was the pumping
plant for the artesian wel