February 27, 2025 • 30 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Jack London’s most famous works include The Call of the Wild and White Fang, both set in the Klondike Gold Rush, and so is this story. Here to narrate the gripping finale of Jack London’s masterpiece, To Build a Fire, is Roger McGrath.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is our American stories, and we tell stories about
all kinds of things here on this show, and we
love spending time on music, arts, and literature. Jack London's
most famous works include The Call of the Wild and
White Fang, both set in the Klondike Gold Rush, as
well as his short story to Build a Fire. Here's
(00:33):
Greg Hengler with Moore on Jack London.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Jack London carved out his own hard scrabble life as
a teen. In his free time, he hunkered down at library,
soaking up novels and travel books. His life as a
writer essentially began in eighteen ninety three. That year, he
had weathered a treacherous voyage, one in which a typhoon
had nearly taken out London and his crew. This his
(01:00):
seventeen year old adventurer, had made it home and regaled
his mother with his tales of what happened to him.
When she saw an announcement in one of the local
newspapers for a writing contest, she pushed her son to
write down and submit his story. Armed with just an
eighth grade education, London captured the twenty five dollars first prize,
(01:22):
beating out college students from Berkeley and Stanford. For London,
the contest was an eye opening experience, and he decided
to dedicate his life to writing short stories, but he
had trouble finding willing publishers. In fact, Jack London kept
all of his rejection letters from the first five years
(01:42):
of his writing career and impaled each one of them
on a spindle. The impaled letters, six hundred of them,
eventually reached a height of four feet. When White Fang
was first published in nineteen oh six, Jack London was
well on his way to be becoming one of the
most famous, popular, and highly paid writers in the world.
(02:05):
In fact, London was the first author in the world
to become a millionaire from his writing. He died at
his California ranch a November twenty second, nineteen sixteen. He
was forty years old. To Build a Fire takes place
in the snowy world of the Yukon, where it's so
(02:25):
cold you spit freezes before it even hits the ground.
After spending a very influential part of his young life
mining for gold in the Arctic North, London returned to
the States a changed man. He was certain that civilization
and its modern conveniences had turned everyone and men, in
particular into a bunch of whimps, and he felt that
(02:47):
people needed to reconnect with their natural instincts and common
sense if they wished to remain strong against the pampering
forces of the modern world. Here to narrate the gripping
analely of Jack London's masterpiece. To build a fire is
Roger McGrath.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
When it is seventy five below zero, a man must
not fail in his first attempt to build a fire,
that is, if his feet are wet. If his feet
are dry, and he fails, he can run along the
trail for half a mile and.
Speaker 4 (03:45):
Restore his circulation.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
But the circulation of wet and freezing feet cannot be
restored by running when it is seventy five below No
matter how fast he runs, the wet feet will freeze
the harder. All this, the man knew the old timer
on Sulfur Creek and told him about it the previous fall,
(04:09):
And now he was appreciating the advice. Already all sensation.
Speaker 4 (04:16):
Had gone out of his feet to build.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
The fire, he had been forced to remove his mittens,
and the fingers had quickly gone dumb. His pace of
four miles an hour had kept his heart, pumping blood
to the surface of his body and.
Speaker 4 (04:31):
To all the extremities.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
But the instant he stopped, the action of the pump
eased down. The cold of space smoked the unprotected tip
of the planet, and he, being on that unprotected tip,
received the full force of the blow. The blood of
his body recoiled before it. The blood was alive, like
(04:56):
the dog, and like the dog, it wanted to hide
away and cover itself from.
Speaker 4 (05:02):
The fearful cold.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
So long as he walked four miles an hour, he
pumped that blood willy nilly to the surface. But now
it ebbed away and sank into the recesses of his body.
The extremities were the first to feel its absence. His
wet feet froze the faster, and his exposed fingers numb
(05:25):
the faster, though they had not yet begun to freeze.
Nose and cheeks were already freezing, while the skin of
all his body chilled as it lost its blood. But
he was safe toes and nose and cheeks would only
be touched by the frost, for the fire was beginning
(05:45):
to burn with strength. He was feeding it with twigs
the size of his finger. In another minute, he would
be able to feed it with branches the size of
his wrist, and then he could remove his wet foot gear,
and while it dried he keep his naked feet warm
by the fire, rubbing them.
Speaker 4 (06:03):
At first, of course, was snow. The fire was a success.
He was safe.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
He remembered the advice of the old timer on Silver
Creek and smiled. The old timer had been very serious.
Speaker 4 (06:18):
In leaning down the law that no man.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Must travel alone in the Klondike after fifty below. Well,
here he was. He had had the accident.
Speaker 4 (06:29):
He was alone, and he had saved himself.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
Those old timers were rather womanish, some of them. He thought,
all a man had to do is 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 cheeks and nose were freezing. And he
(06:53):
had not thought his fingers could go lifeless in so
short a time. Lifeless they were, for he could scarcely
make them move together to grip a twig, and they
seemed remote from his body and from him. When he
touched a twig, he had to look and see whether
or not he had hold of it. The wires were
(07:15):
pretty well down between him and his finger ends, all
of which counted for little. There was the fire, snapping
and crackling and promising life. With every dancing flame. He
started to untie his moccasins. They were coated with ice.
The thick German socks were like sheaths of iron gaff
(07:38):
way up to his knee, and the moccasin strings were
like rods of steel, all twisted and nodded as by
some conflagration. For a moment he tugged his numb fingers. Then,
realizing the folly of it, he drew his sheath knife.
But before he could cut the strings.
Speaker 4 (07:58):
It happened.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
It was his own fault, or rather his mistake. He
should not have built the fire under the spruce tree.
He should have built it in the open. But it
had been easier to pull the twigs from the brush
and drop them directly on the fire. Now, the tree
under which he had done this carried a weight of
snow on its boughs, no wind blown for weeks, and
(08:24):
each bough was fully freighted. Each time he pulled a twig,
it communicated a slight agitation to the tree, an imperceptible
agitation so far as he was concerned, but an agitation
sufficient to bring about the disaster. High up in the tree,
one bough capsized.
Speaker 4 (08:44):
Its load of snow.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
This fell on the boughs beneath, captizing them. This process continued,
spreading out and involving the whole tree. It grew like
an avalanche, and it descended without warning upon the man
and the fire. And the fire was blotted out. Where
it had burned was a mantle afresh and disordered and snow.
(09:12):
The man was shocked. It was as though he had
just heard his own sentence of death. For a moment,
he sat and steered at the spot where the fire.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
Had been, and he grew very calm.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
Perhaps the old timer on Sulfur Creek was right. If
he had only had a trail mate, it would have.
Speaker 4 (09:30):
Been in no danger.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Now the trail mate could have built the fire.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
And we're listening to Roger McGrath, are in house historian
on all Things Frontier, reading Jack London's remarkable To Build
a Fire. And when we come back, we're going to
hear more of this story here on our American Story.
(10:09):
And we continue here with our American stories and Roger
McGrath's reading of To Build a fire. Let's pick up
when we last left off.
Speaker 4 (10:21):
Well, it was up.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
To him to build the fire over again, and this
second time there must be no failure. Even if he succeeded,
he would most likely lose some toes. His feet must
be badly frozen by now, and there would be some
time before the second fire was ready.
Speaker 4 (10:40):
Such were his.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
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, where no treacherous tree could blot it out.
Neptsya gathered dry grasses and tiny twigs from the high
water flotsam. He could not bring his fingers together to
(11:02):
pull them out, but he was able to gather them
by the handful. In this way he got many rotten
twigs and bits of green moss that were undesirable, but
it was the best he could do. He worked methodically,
even collecting an armful of the larger branches to be
used later when the fire gathered strength. And all the
(11:26):
while the dog sat and watched him, a certain yearning
wistfulness in its eyes, for it looked upon him as
the fire provider and the fire was slow in coming.
Speaker 4 (11:42):
When all was ready, the.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
Man reached in his pocket for a second piece of
pirch bark. He knew the bark was there, and though
he could not feel it with his fingers, he could
hear its crisp rustling as he fumbled for it. Try
as he would, he.
Speaker 4 (11:57):
Could not clutch hold of it.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
And all the time in his consciousness was the knowledge
that each instant.
Speaker 4 (12:04):
His feet were freezing.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
This thought tended to put him in a panic, but
he fought against it and kept calm. He pulled on
his mittens with his teeth and thrust his arms back
and forth, beating his hands with all his might against
his sides. He did this sitting down, and he stood
up to do it. And all the while the dog
sat in the snow, its wolf brush of the tail
(12:30):
curled warmly over its forefeet. Its sharp wolf eres pricked
forward intently as it watched the man. And the man,
as he beat and threshed his arms and hands, felt
a great surge of envy as he regarded the creature
that was warm and secure in its natural covering. After
(12:52):
a time, he was aware of the first far away
signals of sensation in his beaten fingers, The faint tingling
grew stronger till it evolved into a stinging inch that
was excruciating.
Speaker 4 (13:04):
On which the man hailed with satisfaction.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
He stripped the mitten from his right hand and fetched
forth the birch bark. The exposed fingers were quickly going
dumb again. Next he brought out his bunch of sulfur matches,
but the tremendous cold had already driven the life out
of his fingers. In his effort to separate one match
from the others, the whole bunch fell in the snow.
(13:30):
He tried to pick it out of the snow, but failed.
The dead fingers could neither touch nor clutch.
Speaker 4 (13:36):
He was very careful.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
He drove the thought of his freezing feet and noose
and cheeks out of his mind, devoting his whole soul
to the matches. He watched, using the sense of vision
in place of that of touch. And when he saw
his fingers on each side of the bunch, he closed them.
That is, he willed to close them, for the wires
(14:00):
were down and the fingers did not obey.
Speaker 4 (14:05):
He pulled the.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
Mitton on his right hand and beat it fiercely against
his knee. Then with both mittened hands, he stooped the
bunch of matches, along with much snow, into his lap.
Yet he was no better off. After some manipulation, he
managed to get the bunch between the heels of his
(14:26):
mittened hands. In this fashion, he carried it to his mouth.
The eyes crackled and snapped one. By a violent effort,
he opened his mouth, he drew the lower jaw in,
curled the upper lip out of the way, and scraped
the bunch with his upper teeth in order to separate
a match. He succeeded in getting one, which he dropped
(14:49):
on his lap. He was no better off. He could
not pick it up. Then he devised away. He picked
it up in his teeth and scra sed it on
his leg. Twenty times he scratched before he succeeded in
lighting it.
Speaker 4 (15:07):
As it flamed.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
He held it with his teeth to the birch bark,
but the burning brimstone went up his nostrils into his lungs,
causing him to cough spasmodically. The match fell into the
snow and went out. The old timer on so her
creek was right. He fought in the moment of control
(15:31):
of the spear that ensued after fifty below A man
should travel with a partner. He beat his hands but
failed in exciting any sensation. Suddenly he bared both hands,
removing the mittens with his teeth. He caught the whole
bunch between the heels of his hands. His arm muscles,
not being frozen, enabled him to press the hand heels
(15:55):
tightly against the matches.
Speaker 4 (15:57):
Then he scratched the bunch along his leg.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
It flared into flame seventy sulfur matches at once. There
was no wind to blow them out. He kept his
head to one side to escape the strangling fumes, and
held the blazing bunch to the birch bark. As he
so held it, he became aware of sensation in his hand.
Speaker 4 (16:22):
His flesh was burning.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
He could smell it. Deep down below the surface, he
could feel it. A sensation developed in a pain that
grew acute, and still he endured it, holding the flame
of matches clumsily to the bark that would not light
readily because his own burning hands were in the way,
(16:46):
absorbing most of the flame. At last, when he could
endure no more, he drinked his hands apart the blazing
matches fell sizzling into the snow.
Speaker 4 (16:58):
But the birch bark was light.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
He began laying dry grasses and the tiniest twigs on
the flame. He could not pick and shoes, for he
had to lift the fuel between the heels of his hands.
Small pieces of rotten wood and green moss clung to
the twigs, and he bit them off as well as
he could with his teeth. He cheerished the flame carefully
(17:22):
and awkwardly. It met life, and it must not perish.
Withdrawal of blood from the surface of his body now
made him begin to shiver, and he grew more awkward.
A large piece of green moss fell squarely on.
Speaker 4 (17:38):
The little fire.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
He tried to poke it out with his fingers, but
his shivering frame made him poke too far, and he
disrupted the little nucleus of the little fire. The burning
grasses and tiny twigs separated and scattering.
Speaker 4 (17:56):
He tried to poke them together.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
Again, but in spite of the blessness of his effort,
his shivering got away with him, and the twigs were
hopelessly scattered. Each twig gushed a puff of smoke and
went out. The fire provider had failed, as he looked
apathetically about him. His eyes chanced on the dog sitting
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across the ruins on the fire from him, in the snow,
making restless hunching movements, slightly lifting one fore foot and
then the other, shifting its weight back and forth on
them with wistful eagerness. The sight of the dog put
a wild idea into his head. He remembered the tail
(18:42):
of a man caught in a blizzard who killed the
steer and crawled inside the carcass, and so was saved.
Speaker 4 (18:50):
He would kill the.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
Dog and bury his hands in the warm body until
the numbness went out of them.
Speaker 4 (18:55):
Then he could build.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Another fire, listening to Doctor Roger McGrath and telling the
story of to Bill the Fire, Jack London's classic. And
we like to do this periodically because these stories, well,
they must live on, and they've been sort of almost
eviscerated from the curriculum of most schools. When we come back,
(19:17):
we continue with Jack London's To Build a Fire, the
final installment here on our American Stories. And we continue
(19:39):
with our American Stories and the final installment of Jack
London's To Bill a Fire. Let's return to Doctor Roger McGrath.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
He spoke to the dog, calling it to him, But
in his voice was a strange note of fear that
frightened the animal, who had never known the man to
speak in such way before. Or something was the matter,
and its suspicious nature sensed danger. It knew not what danger,
(20:08):
but somewhere somehow in its brain arose in apprehension of
the man. It flattened its ears down at the sound
of the man's voice, and its restless hunching movements, and
the liftings and shiftings of its forefeet became more pronounced,
but it would not come to the man. He got
(20:29):
on his hands and knees and crawled toward the dog.
This unusual posture again excited suspicion, and the animal sidled
mincingly away. The man sat up in the snow for
a moment and struggled for calmness. Then he pulled on
his mittens by means of his teeth and got upon
(20:51):
his feet. He glanced down at first in order to
assure himself that he was really standing up, for the
absence of sensation in his feet left him unrelated to
the earth. His erect position in itself started to drive
the webs of suspicion from the dog's mind, and when
(21:11):
he spoke peremptorily, with the sound of whiplashes in his voice,
the dog rendered its customary allegiance and came to him.
As it came within reaching distance, the man lost control.
His arms flashed out to the dog, and he experienced
genuine surprise when he discovered that his hands could not clutch,
(21:32):
that there was neither ben nor.
Speaker 4 (21:34):
Feeling in his fingers.
Speaker 3 (21:36):
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 get away, he
encircled its body with his arms. He sat down in
the snow and in this fashion held the dog while
it snarled and whined and struggled. But it was all
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he could do hold its body encircled in his arms
and sit there. He realized he could not kill the dog.
There was no way to do it with his helpless hands.
He could neither draw nor hold his sheath knife, nor
throttle the animal. He released it, and it plunged wildly away,
with tail between its legs and still snarling. It halted
(22:21):
forty feet away and surveyed him curiously with ears sharply
pricked forward. The man looked down at his hands in
order to locate them, and found them hanging on the
ends of his arms. It struck him as curious that
no one should have to use his eyes in order
to find out where his hands were. He began threshing
(22:41):
his arms back and forth, beating the mittened hands against
his sides. He did this for five minutes violently, and
his heart pumped enough blood to the surface to put
a stop to his shivering, But no sensation.
Speaker 4 (22:57):
Was aroused in his hands. He had an impression that
they were hung.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
Like weights on the ends of his arms, but when
he tried to run the impression down, he could not
find it. A certain fear of death, still and oppressive,
came to him. The fear quickly became poignant as he
realized that it was no longer a mere manner of
freezing his fingers and toes, or of losing his hands
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and feet, but that it was a matter of life
and death, with the chances against him. This threw him
into a panic, and he turned and ran up the
creek bed along the old dim trail. The dog joined
in behind and kept up with him. He ran blindly,
without intention, in fear such as he had never known
(23:44):
in his life. Slowly, as he plowed and floundered through
the snow, he began to see things again, the banks
of the creek, the old timber jambs, the leafless aspens,
and the sky.
Speaker 4 (23:58):
The running made him feel better. He did not.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
Shiver it maybe if he ran on his feet would
fall out, And anyway, if he ran far enough, he
would reach 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.
Speaker 4 (24:20):
And at the same time, there.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
Was another thought in his mind that said he would
never get to the camp and the boys, that it
was too many miles away, that the freezing had too
great a start on him, and that he would soon
be stiff and dead. This thought he kept in the
background and refused to consider.
Speaker 4 (24:40):
Sometimes it pushed.
Speaker 3 (24:41):
Itself forward and demanded to be heard, but he thrust
it back and strove to think of other things. It
struck him as curious that he could run at all
on feet so frozen that he could not feel them
when they struck the earth and took the weight of
his body. It seemed to himself to skim him above
(25:01):
the surface and to have no connection with the earth.
Somewhere he had once seen a winged mercury, and he
wondered if mercury felt as he fell when skimming over
the earth. His theory of running until he reached camp
and the boys, and when flaw in it he lacked endurance.
Several times he stumbled, and finally he tottered, crumpled up,
(25:23):
and fell. When he tried to rise, he failed. He
must sit and rest, he decided, and next time he
would merely walk and keep on going. As he sat
and regained his breath, he noted that he was feeling
quite warm and comfortable. He was not shivering, and it
even seemed that a warm glow had come to his
(25:45):
chest and trunk. And yet when he touched his nose
or cheeks, there was no sensation. Running would not fall
him out, nor would it thaw out his hands and feet.
Then the thought came to him that those portions of
his body must be extending. He tried to keep the
thought down, to forget it, to think of something else.
(26:08):
He was aware of the panicky feeling that it caused,
and he was afraid of the panic, but the thought
asserted itself and persisted until it produced a vision of
his body totally frozen.
Speaker 4 (26:22):
This was too much, and he.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
Made another wild run along the trail. Once he slowed
down to walk, but the thought of the freezing extending
itself made him run again, and all the time the
dog ran with him at his heels. When he fell
down a second time, it curled its tail over its
forefeet and sat in front of him, facing him curiously,
(26:45):
eager and intent. The warmth and security of the animal
angered him, and he cursed it till it flattened down
its ears appeasingly. This time, the shivering came more quickly
upon the man. He was losing his back with the frost.
It was creeping into his body from all sides. The
thought of it drove him on, but he ran no
(27:07):
more than a hundred feet. When he staggered and pitched headlong.
It was his last panic. When he had recovered his
breath and control, he sat up and entertained in his
mind the conception of meeting death with dignity. However, the
conception did not come to him in such terms His
(27:27):
idea of it was that he had been making a
fool of himself, running around like a chicken with its
head cut off. Such was the simile that occurred to him. Well,
he was bound to freeze anyway, and he might as
well take it decently. With this newfound peace of mind
came first glimmerings of drowsiness. A good idea, he thought,
(27:49):
to sleep.
Speaker 4 (27:50):
Off to death.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
It was like taking an anesthetic. Freezing was not so
bad as people thought.
Speaker 4 (27:57):
There were lots.
Speaker 3 (27:58):
Worse ways to die. He pictured the boys finding his
body next day. Suddenly he found himself with them, coming
along the trail and looking for himself, And still with them,
he came around to turn in the trail and found
himself lying in the snow. He did not belong with
himself anymore, for even then he was out of himself,
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standing with the boys and looking at himself in the snow.
It certainly was cold, was his thought. When he got
back to the States, he could tell the folks what
real cold was. He drifted on from this to a
vision of the old Dimer on Sulfur Creek. He could
see him quite clearly, warm and comfortable and smoking a pipe.
(28:47):
You were right, old oss, you were right, a man
mumbled to the old diimer of Sulfur Creek. Then the
man troused off 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 due to
(29:07):
a close in a long, slow twilight. There were no
signs of a fire to be made. And besides, never
in the dog's experience had it known a man to
sit like that in the snow and make no fire. Later,
the dog whined loudly, and still later it crept close
to the man and caught the scent of death. This
(29:31):
made the animal bristle and 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 trotted up the trail in the direction of the camp.
It knew where were the other food providers and fire providers?
Speaker 1 (29:57):
What storytelling and what writing? And we think doctor Roger
mc grath for reading to Build a Fire by Jack London.
Here on our American Stories
This is our American stories, and we tell stories about
all kinds of things here on this show, and we
love spending time on music, arts, and literature. Jack London's
most famous works include The Call of the Wild and
White Fang, both set in the Klondike Gold Rush, as
well as his short story to Build a Fire. Here's
(00:33):
Greg Hengler with Moore on Jack London.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Jack London carved out his own hard scrabble life as
a teen. In his free time, he hunkered down at library,
soaking up novels and travel books. His life as a
writer essentially began in eighteen ninety three. That year, he
had weathered a treacherous voyage, one in which a typhoon
had nearly taken out London and his crew. This his
(01:00):
seventeen year old adventurer, had made it home and regaled
his mother with his tales of what happened to him.
When she saw an announcement in one of the local
newspapers for a writing contest, she pushed her son to
write down and submit his story. Armed with just an
eighth grade education, London captured the twenty five dollars first prize,
(01:22):
beating out college students from Berkeley and Stanford. For London,
the contest was an eye opening experience, and he decided
to dedicate his life to writing short stories, but he
had trouble finding willing publishers. In fact, Jack London kept
all of his rejection letters from the first five years
(01:42):
of his writing career and impaled each one of them
on a spindle. The impaled letters, six hundred of them,
eventually reached a height of four feet. When White Fang
was first published in nineteen oh six, Jack London was
well on his way to be becoming one of the
most famous, popular, and highly paid writers in the world.
(02:05):
In fact, London was the first author in the world
to become a millionaire from his writing. He died at
his California ranch a November twenty second, nineteen sixteen. He
was forty years old. To Build a Fire takes place
in the snowy world of the Yukon, where it's so
(02:25):
cold you spit freezes before it even hits the ground.
After spending a very influential part of his young life
mining for gold in the Arctic North, London returned to
the States a changed man. He was certain that civilization
and its modern conveniences had turned everyone and men, in
particular into a bunch of whimps, and he felt that
(02:47):
people needed to reconnect with their natural instincts and common
sense if they wished to remain strong against the pampering
forces of the modern world. Here to narrate the gripping
analely of Jack London's masterpiece. To build a fire is
Roger McGrath.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
When it is seventy five below zero, a man must
not fail in his first attempt to build a fire,
that is, if his feet are wet. If his feet
are dry, and he fails, he can run along the
trail for half a mile and.
Speaker 4 (03:45):
Restore his circulation.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
But the circulation of wet and freezing feet cannot be
restored by running when it is seventy five below No
matter how fast he runs, the wet feet will freeze
the harder. All this, the man knew the old timer
on Sulfur Creek and told him about it the previous fall,
(04:09):
And now he was appreciating the advice. Already all sensation.
Speaker 4 (04:16):
Had gone out of his feet to build.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
The fire, he had been forced to remove his mittens,
and the fingers had quickly gone dumb. His pace of
four miles an hour had kept his heart, pumping blood
to the surface of his body and.
Speaker 4 (04:31):
To all the extremities.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
But the instant he stopped, the action of the pump
eased down. The cold of space smoked the unprotected tip
of the planet, and he, being on that unprotected tip,
received the full force of the blow. The blood of
his body recoiled before it. The blood was alive, like
(04:56):
the dog, and like the dog, it wanted to hide
away and cover itself from.
Speaker 4 (05:02):
The fearful cold.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
So long as he walked four miles an hour, he
pumped that blood willy nilly to the surface. But now
it ebbed away and sank into the recesses of his body.
The extremities were the first to feel its absence. His
wet feet froze the faster, and his exposed fingers numb
(05:25):
the faster, though they had not yet begun to freeze.
Nose and cheeks were already freezing, while the skin of
all his body chilled as it lost its blood. But
he was safe toes and nose and cheeks would only
be touched by the frost, for the fire was beginning
(05:45):
to burn with strength. He was feeding it with twigs
the size of his finger. In another minute, he would
be able to feed it with branches the size of
his wrist, and then he could remove his wet foot gear,
and while it dried he keep his naked feet warm
by the fire, rubbing them.
Speaker 4 (06:03):
At first, of course, was snow. The fire was a success.
He was safe.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
He remembered the advice of the old timer on Silver
Creek and smiled. The old timer had been very serious.
Speaker 4 (06:18):
In leaning down the law that no man.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Must travel alone in the Klondike after fifty below. Well,
here he was. He had had the accident.
Speaker 4 (06:29):
He was alone, and he had saved himself.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
Those old timers were rather womanish, some of them. He thought,
all a man had to do is 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 cheeks and nose were freezing. And he
(06:53):
had not thought his fingers could go lifeless in so
short a time. Lifeless they were, for he could scarcely
make them move together to grip a twig, and they
seemed remote from his body and from him. When he
touched a twig, he had to look and see whether
or not he had hold of it. The wires were
(07:15):
pretty well down between him and his finger ends, all
of which counted for little. There was the fire, snapping
and crackling and promising life. With every dancing flame. He
started to untie his moccasins. They were coated with ice.
The thick German socks were like sheaths of iron gaff
(07:38):
way up to his knee, and the moccasin strings were
like rods of steel, all twisted and nodded as by
some conflagration. For a moment he tugged his numb fingers. Then,
realizing the folly of it, he drew his sheath knife.
But before he could cut the strings.
Speaker 4 (07:58):
It happened.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
It was his own fault, or rather his mistake. He
should not have built the fire under the spruce tree.
He should have built it in the open. But it
had been easier to pull the twigs from the brush
and drop them directly on the fire. Now, the tree
under which he had done this carried a weight of
snow on its boughs, no wind blown for weeks, and
(08:24):
each bough was fully freighted. Each time he pulled a twig,
it communicated a slight agitation to the tree, an imperceptible
agitation so far as he was concerned, but an agitation
sufficient to bring about the disaster. High up in the tree,
one bough capsized.
Speaker 4 (08:44):
Its load of snow.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
This fell on the boughs beneath, captizing them. This process continued,
spreading out and involving the whole tree. It grew like
an avalanche, and it descended without warning upon the man
and the fire. And the fire was blotted out. Where
it had burned was a mantle afresh and disordered and snow.
(09:12):
The man was shocked. It was as though he had
just heard his own sentence of death. For a moment,
he sat and steered at the spot where the fire.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
Had been, and he grew very calm.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
Perhaps the old timer on Sulfur Creek was right. If
he had only had a trail mate, it would have.
Speaker 4 (09:30):
Been in no danger.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Now the trail mate could have built the fire.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
And we're listening to Roger McGrath, are in house historian
on all Things Frontier, reading Jack London's remarkable To Build
a Fire. And when we come back, we're going to
hear more of this story here on our American Story.
(10:09):
And we continue here with our American stories and Roger
McGrath's reading of To Build a fire. Let's pick up
when we last left off.
Speaker 4 (10:21):
Well, it was up.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
To him to build the fire over again, and this
second time there must be no failure. Even if he succeeded,
he would most likely lose some toes. His feet must
be badly frozen by now, and there would be some
time before the second fire was ready.
Speaker 4 (10:40):
Such were his.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
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, where no treacherous tree could blot it out.
Neptsya gathered dry grasses and tiny twigs from the high
water flotsam. He could not bring his fingers together to
(11:02):
pull them out, but he was able to gather them
by the handful. In this way he got many rotten
twigs and bits of green moss that were undesirable, but
it was the best he could do. He worked methodically,
even collecting an armful of the larger branches to be
used later when the fire gathered strength. And all the
(11:26):
while the dog sat and watched him, a certain yearning
wistfulness in its eyes, for it looked upon him as
the fire provider and the fire was slow in coming.
Speaker 4 (11:42):
When all was ready, the.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
Man reached in his pocket for a second piece of
pirch bark. He knew the bark was there, and though
he could not feel it with his fingers, he could
hear its crisp rustling as he fumbled for it. Try
as he would, he.
Speaker 4 (11:57):
Could not clutch hold of it.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
And all the time in his consciousness was the knowledge
that each instant.
Speaker 4 (12:04):
His feet were freezing.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
This thought tended to put him in a panic, but
he fought against it and kept calm. He pulled on
his mittens with his teeth and thrust his arms back
and forth, beating his hands with all his might against
his sides. He did this sitting down, and he stood
up to do it. And all the while the dog
sat in the snow, its wolf brush of the tail
(12:30):
curled warmly over its forefeet. Its sharp wolf eres pricked
forward intently as it watched the man. And the man,
as he beat and threshed his arms and hands, felt
a great surge of envy as he regarded the creature
that was warm and secure in its natural covering. After
(12:52):
a time, he was aware of the first far away
signals of sensation in his beaten fingers, The faint tingling
grew stronger till it evolved into a stinging inch that
was excruciating.
Speaker 4 (13:04):
On which the man hailed with satisfaction.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
He stripped the mitten from his right hand and fetched
forth the birch bark. The exposed fingers were quickly going
dumb again. Next he brought out his bunch of sulfur matches,
but the tremendous cold had already driven the life out
of his fingers. In his effort to separate one match
from the others, the whole bunch fell in the snow.
(13:30):
He tried to pick it out of the snow, but failed.
The dead fingers could neither touch nor clutch.
Speaker 4 (13:36):
He was very careful.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
He drove the thought of his freezing feet and noose
and cheeks out of his mind, devoting his whole soul
to the matches. He watched, using the sense of vision
in place of that of touch. And when he saw
his fingers on each side of the bunch, he closed them.
That is, he willed to close them, for the wires
(14:00):
were down and the fingers did not obey.
Speaker 4 (14:05):
He pulled the.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
Mitton on his right hand and beat it fiercely against
his knee. Then with both mittened hands, he stooped the
bunch of matches, along with much snow, into his lap.
Yet he was no better off. After some manipulation, he
managed to get the bunch between the heels of his
(14:26):
mittened hands. In this fashion, he carried it to his mouth.
The eyes crackled and snapped one. By a violent effort,
he opened his mouth, he drew the lower jaw in,
curled the upper lip out of the way, and scraped
the bunch with his upper teeth in order to separate
a match. He succeeded in getting one, which he dropped
(14:49):
on his lap. He was no better off. He could
not pick it up. Then he devised away. He picked
it up in his teeth and scra sed it on
his leg. Twenty times he scratched before he succeeded in
lighting it.
Speaker 4 (15:07):
As it flamed.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
He held it with his teeth to the birch bark,
but the burning brimstone went up his nostrils into his lungs,
causing him to cough spasmodically. The match fell into the
snow and went out. The old timer on so her
creek was right. He fought in the moment of control
(15:31):
of the spear that ensued after fifty below A man
should travel with a partner. He beat his hands but
failed in exciting any sensation. Suddenly he bared both hands,
removing the mittens with his teeth. He caught the whole
bunch between the heels of his hands. His arm muscles,
not being frozen, enabled him to press the hand heels
(15:55):
tightly against the matches.
Speaker 4 (15:57):
Then he scratched the bunch along his leg.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
It flared into flame seventy sulfur matches at once. There
was no wind to blow them out. He kept his
head to one side to escape the strangling fumes, and
held the blazing bunch to the birch bark. As he
so held it, he became aware of sensation in his hand.
Speaker 4 (16:22):
His flesh was burning.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
He could smell it. Deep down below the surface, he
could feel it. A sensation developed in a pain that
grew acute, and still he endured it, holding the flame
of matches clumsily to the bark that would not light
readily because his own burning hands were in the way,
(16:46):
absorbing most of the flame. At last, when he could
endure no more, he drinked his hands apart the blazing
matches fell sizzling into the snow.
Speaker 4 (16:58):
But the birch bark was light.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
He began laying dry grasses and the tiniest twigs on
the flame. He could not pick and shoes, for he
had to lift the fuel between the heels of his hands.
Small pieces of rotten wood and green moss clung to
the twigs, and he bit them off as well as
he could with his teeth. He cheerished the flame carefully
(17:22):
and awkwardly. It met life, and it must not perish.
Withdrawal of blood from the surface of his body now
made him begin to shiver, and he grew more awkward.
A large piece of green moss fell squarely on.
Speaker 4 (17:38):
The little fire.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
He tried to poke it out with his fingers, but
his shivering frame made him poke too far, and he
disrupted the little nucleus of the little fire. The burning
grasses and tiny twigs separated and scattering.
Speaker 4 (17:56):
He tried to poke them together.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
Again, but in spite of the blessness of his effort,
his shivering got away with him, and the twigs were
hopelessly scattered. Each twig gushed a puff of smoke and
went out. The fire provider had failed, as he looked
apathetically about him. His eyes chanced on the dog sitting
(18:20):
across the ruins on the fire from him, in the snow,
making restless hunching movements, slightly lifting one fore foot and
then the other, shifting its weight back and forth on
them with wistful eagerness. The sight of the dog put
a wild idea into his head. He remembered the tail
(18:42):
of a man caught in a blizzard who killed the
steer and crawled inside the carcass, and so was saved.
Speaker 4 (18:50):
He would kill the.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
Dog and bury his hands in the warm body until
the numbness went out of them.
Speaker 4 (18:55):
Then he could build.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Another fire, listening to Doctor Roger McGrath and telling the
story of to Bill the Fire, Jack London's classic. And
we like to do this periodically because these stories, well,
they must live on, and they've been sort of almost
eviscerated from the curriculum of most schools. When we come back,
(19:17):
we continue with Jack London's To Build a Fire, the
final installment here on our American Stories. And we continue
(19:39):
with our American Stories and the final installment of Jack
London's To Bill a Fire. Let's return to Doctor Roger McGrath.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
He spoke to the dog, calling it to him, But
in his voice was a strange note of fear that
frightened the animal, who had never known the man to
speak in such way before. Or something was the matter,
and its suspicious nature sensed danger. It knew not what danger,
(20:08):
but somewhere somehow in its brain arose in apprehension of
the man. It flattened its ears down at the sound
of the man's voice, and its restless hunching movements, and
the liftings and shiftings of its forefeet became more pronounced,
but it would not come to the man. He got
(20:29):
on his hands and knees and crawled toward the dog.
This unusual posture again excited suspicion, and the animal sidled
mincingly away. The man sat up in the snow for
a moment and struggled for calmness. Then he pulled on
his mittens by means of his teeth and got upon
(20:51):
his feet. He glanced down at first in order to
assure himself that he was really standing up, for the
absence of sensation in his feet left him unrelated to
the earth. His erect position in itself started to drive
the webs of suspicion from the dog's mind, and when
(21:11):
he spoke peremptorily, with the sound of whiplashes in his voice,
the dog rendered its customary allegiance and came to him.
As it came within reaching distance, the man lost control.
His arms flashed out to the dog, and he experienced
genuine surprise when he discovered that his hands could not clutch,
(21:32):
that there was neither ben nor.
Speaker 4 (21:34):
Feeling in his fingers.
Speaker 3 (21:36):
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 get away, he
encircled its body with his arms. He sat down in
the snow and in this fashion held the dog while
it snarled and whined and struggled. But it was all
(21:59):
he could do hold its body encircled in his arms
and sit there. He realized he could not kill the dog.
There was no way to do it with his helpless hands.
He could neither draw nor hold his sheath knife, nor
throttle the animal. He released it, and it plunged wildly away,
with tail between its legs and still snarling. It halted
(22:21):
forty feet away and surveyed him curiously with ears sharply
pricked forward. The man looked down at his hands in
order to locate them, and found them hanging on the
ends of his arms. It struck him as curious that
no one should have to use his eyes in order
to find out where his hands were. He began threshing
(22:41):
his arms back and forth, beating the mittened hands against
his sides. He did this for five minutes violently, and
his heart pumped enough blood to the surface to put
a stop to his shivering, But no sensation.
Speaker 4 (22:57):
Was aroused in his hands. He had an impression that
they were hung.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
Like weights on the ends of his arms, but when
he tried to run the impression down, he could not
find it. A certain fear of death, still and oppressive,
came to him. The fear quickly became poignant as he
realized that it was no longer a mere manner of
freezing his fingers and toes, or of losing his hands
(23:22):
and feet, but that it was a matter of life
and death, with the chances against him. This threw him
into a panic, and he turned and ran up the
creek bed along the old dim trail. The dog joined
in behind and kept up with him. He ran blindly,
without intention, in fear such as he had never known
(23:44):
in his life. Slowly, as he plowed and floundered through
the snow, he began to see things again, the banks
of the creek, the old timber jambs, the leafless aspens,
and the sky.
Speaker 4 (23:58):
The running made him feel better. He did not.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
Shiver it maybe if he ran on his feet would
fall out, And anyway, if he ran far enough, he
would reach 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.
Speaker 4 (24:20):
And at the same time, there.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
Was another thought in his mind that said he would
never get to the camp and the boys, that it
was too many miles away, that the freezing had too
great a start on him, and that he would soon
be stiff and dead. This thought he kept in the
background and refused to consider.
Speaker 4 (24:40):
Sometimes it pushed.
Speaker 3 (24:41):
Itself forward and demanded to be heard, but he thrust
it back and strove to think of other things. It
struck him as curious that he could run at all
on feet so frozen that he could not feel them
when they struck the earth and took the weight of
his body. It seemed to himself to skim him above
(25:01):
the surface and to have no connection with the earth.
Somewhere he had once seen a winged mercury, and he
wondered if mercury felt as he fell when skimming over
the earth. His theory of running until he reached camp
and the boys, and when flaw in it he lacked endurance.
Several times he stumbled, and finally he tottered, crumpled up,
(25:23):
and fell. When he tried to rise, he failed. He
must sit and rest, he decided, and next time he
would merely walk and keep on going. As he sat
and regained his breath, he noted that he was feeling
quite warm and comfortable. He was not shivering, and it
even seemed that a warm glow had come to his
(25:45):
chest and trunk. And yet when he touched his nose
or cheeks, there was no sensation. Running would not fall
him out, nor would it thaw out his hands and feet.
Then the thought came to him that those portions of
his body must be extending. He tried to keep the
thought down, to forget it, to think of something else.
(26:08):
He was aware of the panicky feeling that it caused,
and he was afraid of the panic, but the thought
asserted itself and persisted until it produced a vision of
his body totally frozen.
Speaker 4 (26:22):
This was too much, and he.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
Made another wild run along the trail. Once he slowed
down to walk, but the thought of the freezing extending
itself made him run again, and all the time the
dog ran with him at his heels. When he fell
down a second time, it curled its tail over its
forefeet and sat in front of him, facing him curiously,
(26:45):
eager and intent. The warmth and security of the animal
angered him, and he cursed it till it flattened down
its ears appeasingly. This time, the shivering came more quickly
upon the man. He was losing his back with the frost.
It was creeping into his body from all sides. The
thought of it drove him on, but he ran no
(27:07):
more than a hundred feet. When he staggered and pitched headlong.
It was his last panic. When he had recovered his
breath and control, he sat up and entertained in his
mind the conception of meeting death with dignity. However, the
conception did not come to him in such terms His
(27:27):
idea of it was that he had been making a
fool of himself, running around like a chicken with its
head cut off. Such was the simile that occurred to him. Well,
he was bound to freeze anyway, and he might as
well take it decently. With this newfound peace of mind
came first glimmerings of drowsiness. A good idea, he thought,
(27:49):
to sleep.
Speaker 4 (27:50):
Off to death.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
It was like taking an anesthetic. Freezing was not so
bad as people thought.
Speaker 4 (27:57):
There were lots.
Speaker 3 (27:58):
Worse ways to die. He pictured the boys finding his
body next day. Suddenly he found himself with them, coming
along the trail and looking for himself, And still with them,
he came around to turn in the trail and found
himself lying in the snow. He did not belong with
himself anymore, for even then he was out of himself,
(28:22):
standing with the boys and looking at himself in the snow.
It certainly was cold, was his thought. When he got
back to the States, he could tell the folks what
real cold was. He drifted on from this to a
vision of the old Dimer on Sulfur Creek. He could
see him quite clearly, warm and comfortable and smoking a pipe.
(28:47):
You were right, old oss, you were right, a man
mumbled to the old diimer of Sulfur Creek. Then the
man troused off 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 due to
(29:07):
a close in a long, slow twilight. There were no
signs of a fire to be made. And besides, never
in the dog's experience had it known a man to
sit like that in the snow and make no fire. Later,
the dog whined loudly, and still later it crept close
to the man and caught the scent of death. This
(29:31):
made the animal bristle and 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 trotted up the trail in the direction of the camp.
It knew where were the other food providers and fire providers?
Speaker 1 (29:57):
What storytelling and what writing? And we think doctor Roger
mc grath for reading to Build a Fire by Jack London.
Here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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