Белый Клык White Fang by Джек Лондон

Author:Джек Лондон [Лондон, Джек]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Иностранные языки, Зарубежная классика
Publisher: ООО «ЛитРес», www.litres.ru
Published: 1905-05-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter V. THE SLEEPING WOLF

It was about this time that the newspapers wrote of the escape of a convict from San Quentin prison. He was a ferocious man. He was born mad, and his life made him even madder. In short, he was a beast.

Punishment failed to break his spirit. Its only effect was to make him fiercer. Strait-jackets, starvation, and beatings were the wrong treatment for Jim Hall; but it was the treatment he received. It was the treatment he had received from the time he was a little boy in San Francisco—soft clay in the hands of society.

In prison Jim Hall killed a guard who had treated him cruelly. After this, he lived in the separate cell for three years. He never left this cell. He never saw the sky or the sunshine. He was buried alive[55]. He saw no human face, spoke to no one. He hated all things. For weeks and months he never made a sound, in the black silence eating his very soul.

And then he escaped. He killed more guards to do so, and he took their weapons. A price of gold was upon his head. Farmers, bloodhounds, detectives—all tried to find him. His blood might pay off a mortgage[56] or send a son to college. Sometimes people saw him, and tried to catch, but in vain.

And then Jim Hall disappeared. In the meantime the newspapers at Sierra Vista were read not so much with interest as with anxiety. The women were afraid. And Judge Scott knew that in his last days of his work as judge Jim Hall had stood before him and received sentence. And in open court-room, before all men, Jim Hall had promised that the day would come when he would revenge the Judge that sentenced him.

For once, Jim Hall was right. He was innocent of the crime for which he was sentenced. It was “rail-roading[57].” Jim Hall was being “rail-roaded” to prison for a crime he had not committed. Because of the two prior convictions[58] against him, Judge Scott imposed upon him a sentence of fifty years.

Judge Scott did not know all things, and he did not know that the evidence was faked, that Jim Hall was guiltless of the crime charged. And Jim Hall, on the other hand, did not know that

Judge Scott was ignorant. To him, Judge Scott was the main figure there.

Of all this White Fang knew nothing. But between him and Alice, the master’s wife, there existed a secret. Each night, after Sierra Vista had gone to bed, she rose and let in White Fang to sleep in the big hall. White Fang was not a house-dog, nor was he permitted to sleep in the house; so each morning, early, she came down and let him out before the family was awake.

On one such night, while all the house slept, White Fang awoke and lay very quietly. And very quietly he smelled a strange god’s presence. And to his ears came sounds of the strange god’s movements.

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