White Fang

C
HAPTER 
4.
 
T
HE 
W
ALL 
O
F 
T
HE 
W
ORLD
 
By the time his mother began leaving the cave on hunting expeditions, the 
cub had learned well the law that forbade his approaching the 
entrance. Not only had this law been forcibly and many times impressed on 
him by his mother’s nose and paw, but in him the instinct of fear was 
developing. Never, in his brief cave-life, had he encountered anything of 
which to be afraid. Yet fear was in him. It had come down to him from a 
remote ancestry through a thousand thousand lives. It was a heritage he 
had received directly from One Eye and the she-wolf; but to them, in turn, it 
had been passed down through all the generations of wolves that had gone 
before. Fear!—that legacy of the Wild which no animal may escape nor 
exchange for pottage. 
So the grey cub knew fear, though he knew not the stuff of which fear was 
made. Possibly he accepted it as one of the restrictions of life. For he had 
already learned that there were such restrictions. Hunger he had known; 
and when he could not appease his hunger he had felt restriction. The hard 
obstruction of the cave-wall, the sharp nudge of his mother’s nose, the 
smashing stroke of her paw, the hunger unappeased of several famines, had 
borne in upon him that all was not freedom in the world, that to life there 
was limitations and restraints. These limitations and restraints were 
laws. To be obedient to them was to escape hurt and make for happiness. 
He did not reason the question out in this man fashion. He merely classified 
the things that hurt and the things that did not hurt. And after such 
classification he avoided the things that hurt, the restrictions and restraints, 
in order to enjoy the satisfactions and the remunerations of life. 
Thus it was that in obedience to the law laid down by his mother, and in 
obedience to the law of that unknown and nameless thing, fear, he kept 
away from the mouth of the cave. It remained to him a white wall of 
light. When his mother was absent, he slept most of the time, while during 
the intervals that he was awake he kept very quiet, suppressing the 
whimpering cries that tickled in his throat and strove for noise. 
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Once, lying awake, he heard a strange sound in the white wall. He did not 
know that it was a wolverine, standing outside, all a-trembling with its own 
daring, and cautiously scenting out the contents of the cave. The cub knew 
only that the sniff was strange, a something unclassified, therefore 
unknown and terrible—for the unknown was one of the chief elements that 
went into the making of fear. 
The hair bristled upon the grey cub’s back, but it bristled silently. How was 
he to know that this thing that sniffed was a thing at which to bristle? It was 
not born of any knowledge of his, yet it was the visible expression of the 
fear that was in him, and for which, in his own life, there was no 
accounting. But fear was accompanied by another instinct—that of 
concealment. The cub was in a frenzy of terror, yet he lay without 
movement or sound, frozen, petrified into immobility, to all appearances 
dead. His mother, coming home, growled as she smelt the wolverine’s 
track, and bounded into the cave and licked and nozzled him with undue 
vehemence of affection. And the cub felt that somehow he had escaped a 
great hurt. 
But there were other forces at work in the cub, the greatest of which was 
growth. Instinct and law demanded of him obedience. But growth 
demanded disobedience. His mother and fear impelled him to keep away 
from the white wall. Growth is life, and life is for ever destined to make for 
light. So there was no damming up the tide of life that was rising within 
him—rising with every mouthful of meat he swallowed, with every breath 
he drew. In the end, one day, fear and obedience were swept away by the 
rush of life, and the cub straddled and sprawled toward the entrance. 
Unlike any other wall with which he had had experience, this wall seemed to 
recede from him as he approached. No hard surface collided with the 
tender little nose he thrust out tentatively before him. The substance of the 
wall seemed as permeable and yielding as light. And as condition, in his 
eyes, had the seeming of form, so he entered into what had been wall to 
him and bathed in the substance that composed it. 
It was bewildering. He was sprawling through solidity. And ever the light 
grew brighter. Fear urged him to go back, but growth drove him 
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on. Suddenly he found himself at the mouth of the cave. The wall, inside 
which he had thought himself, as suddenly leaped back before him to an 
immeasurable distance. The light had become painfully bright. He was 
dazzled by it. Likewise he was made dizzy by this abrupt and tremendous 
extension of space. Automatically, his eyes were adjusting themselves to 
the brightness, focusing themselves to meet the increased distance of 
objects. At first, the wall had leaped beyond his vision. He now saw it again; 
but it had taken upon itself a remarkable remoteness. Also, its appearance 
had changed. It was now a variegated wall, composed of the trees that 
fringed the stream, the opposing mountain that towered above the trees, 
and the sky that out-towered the mountain. 
A great fear came upon him. This was more of the terrible unknown. He 
crouched down on the lip of the cave and gazed out on the world. He was 
very much afraid. Because it was unknown, it was hostile to him. Therefore 
the hair stood up on end along his back and his lips wrinkled weakly in an 
attempt at a ferocious and intimidating snarl. Out of his puniness and fright 
he challenged and menaced the whole wide world. 
Nothing happened. He continued to gaze, and in his interest he forgot to 
snarl. Also, he forgot to be afraid. For the time, fear had been routed by 
growth, while growth had assumed the guise of curiosity. He began to 
notice near objects—an open portion of the stream that flashed in the sun, 
the blasted pine-tree that stood at the base of the slope, and the slope 
itself, that ran right up to him and ceased two feet beneath the lip of the 
cave on which he crouched. 
Now the grey cub had lived all his days on a level floor. He had never 
experienced the hurt of a fall. He did not know what a fall was. So he 
stepped boldly out upon the air. His hind-legs still rested on the cave-lip, so 
he fell forward head downward. The earth struck him a harsh blow on the 
nose that made him yelp. Then he began rolling down the slope, over and 
over. He was in a panic of terror. The unknown had caught him at last. It 
had gripped savagely hold of him and was about to wreak upon him some 
terrific hurt. Growth was now routed by fear, and he ki-yi’d like any 
frightened puppy. 
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The unknown bore him on he knew not to what frightful hurt, and he yelped 
and ki-yi’d unceasingly. This was a different proposition from crouching in 
frozen fear while the unknown lurked just alongside. Now the unknown had 
caught tight hold of him. Silence would do no good. Besides, it was not 
fear, but terror, that convulsed him. 
But the slope grew more gradual, and its base was grass-covered. Here the 
cub lost momentum. When at last he came to a stop, he gave one last 
agonised yell and then a long, whimpering wail. Also, and quite as a matter 
of course, as though in his life he had already made a thousand toilets, he 
proceeded to lick away the dry clay that soiled him. 
After that he sat up and gazed about him, as might the first man of the earth 
who landed upon Mars. The cub had broken through the wall of the world, 
the unknown had let go its hold of him, and here he was without hurt. But 
the first man on Mars would have experienced less unfamiliarity than did 
he. Without any antecedent knowledge, without any warning whatever 
that such existed, he found himself an explorer in a totally new world. 
Now that the terrible unknown had let go of him, he forgot that the 
unknown had any terrors. He was aware only of curiosity in all the things 
about him. He inspected the grass beneath him, the moss-berry plant just 
beyond, and the dead trunk of the blasted pine that stood on the edge of an 
open space among the trees. A squirrel, running around the base of the 
trunk, came full upon him, and gave him a great fright. He cowered down 
and snarled. But the squirrel was as badly scared. It ran up the tree, and 
from a point of safety chattered back savagely. 
This helped the cub’s courage, and though the woodpecker he next 
encountered gave him a start, he proceeded confidently on his way. Such 
was his confidence, that when a moose-bird impudently hopped up to him, 
he reached out at it with a playful paw. The result was a sharp peck on the 
end of his nose that made him cower down and ki-yi. The noise he made 
was too much for the moose-bird, who sought safety in flight. 
But the cub was learning. His misty little mind had already made an 
unconscious classification. There were live things and things not alive. Also, 
he must watch out for the live things. The things not alive remained always 
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in one place, but the live things moved about, and there was no telling what 
they might do. The thing to expect of them was the unexpected, and for 
this he must be prepared. 
He travelled very clumsily. He ran into sticks and things. A twig that he 
thought a long way off, would the next instant hit him on the nose or rake 
along his ribs. There were inequalities of surface. Sometimes he 
overstepped and stubbed his nose. Quite as often he understepped and 
stubbed his feet. Then there were the pebbles and stones that turned 
under him when he trod upon them; and from them he came to know that 
the things not alive were not all in the same state of stable equilibrium as 
was his cave—also, that small things not alive were more liable than large 
things to fall down or turn over. But with every mishap he was 
learning. The longer he walked, the better he walked. He was adjusting 
himself. He was learning to calculate his own muscular movements, to 
know his physical limitations, to measure distances between objects, and 
between objects and himself. 
His was the luck of the beginner. Born to be a hunter of meat (though he 
did not know it), he blundered upon meat just outside his own cave-door on 
his first foray into the world. It was by sheer blundering that he chanced 
upon the shrewdly hidden ptarmigan nest. He fell into it. He had essayed to 
walk along the trunk of a fallen pine. The rotten bark gave way under his 
feet, and with a despairing yelp he pitched down the rounded crescent, 
smashed through the leafage and stalks of a small bush, and in the heart of 
the bush, on the ground, fetched up in the midst of seven ptarmigan chicks. 
They made noises, and at first he was frightened at them. Then he 
perceived that they were very little, and he became bolder. They 
moved. He placed his paw on one, and its movements were 
accelerated. This was a source of enjoyment to him. He smelled it. He 
picked it up in his mouth. It struggled and tickled his tongue. At the same 
time he was made aware of a sensation of hunger. His jaws closed 
together. There was a crunching of fragile bones, and warm blood ran in his 
mouth. The taste of it was good. This was meat, the same as his mother 
gave him, only it was alive between his teeth and therefore better. So he 
ate the ptarmigan. Nor did he stop till he had devoured the whole 
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brood. Then he licked his chops in quite the same way his mother did, and 
began to crawl out of the bush. 
He encountered a feathered whirlwind. He was confused and blinded by the 
rush of it and the beat of angry wings. He hid his head between his paws 
and yelped. The blows increased. The mother ptarmigan was in a 
fury. Then he became angry. He rose up, snarling, striking out with his 
paws. He sank his tiny teeth into one of the wings and pulled and tugged 
sturdily. The ptarmigan struggled against him, showering blows upon him 
with her free wing. It was his first battle. He was elated. He forgot all 
about the unknown. He no longer was afraid of anything. He was fighting, 
tearing at a live thing that was striking at him. Also, this live thing was 
meat. The lust to kill was on him. He had just destroyed little live things. He 
would now destroy a big live thing. He was too busy and happy to know 
that he was happy. He was thrilling and exulting in ways new to him and 
greater to him than any he had known before. 
He held on to the wing and growled between his tight-clenched teeth. The 
ptarmigan dragged him out of the bush. When she turned and tried to drag 
him back into the bush’s shelter, he pulled her away from it and on into the 
open. And all the time she was making outcry and striking with her free 
wing, while feathers were flying like a snow-fall. The pitch to which he was 
aroused was tremendous. All the fighting blood of his breed was up in him 
and surging through him. This was living, though he did not know it. He was 
realising his own meaning in the world; he was doing that for which he was 
made—killing meat and battling to kill it. He was justifying his existence, 
than which life can do no greater; for life achieves its summit when it does 
to the uttermost that which it was equipped to do. 
After a time, the ptarmigan ceased her struggling. He still held her by the 
wing, and they lay on the ground and looked at each other. He tried to 
growl threateningly, ferociously. She pecked on his nose, which by now, 
what of previous adventures was sore. He winced but held on. She pecked 
him again and again. From wincing he went to whimpering. He tried to 
back away from her, oblivious to the fact that by his hold on her he dragged 
her after him. A rain of pecks fell on his ill-used nose. The flood of fight 
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ebbed down in him, and, releasing his prey, he turned tail and scampered on 
across the open in inglorious retreat. 
He lay down to rest on the other side of the open, near the edge of the 
bushes, his tongue lolling out, his chest heaving and panting, his nose still 
hurting him and causing him to continue his whimper. But as he lay there, 
suddenly there came to him a feeling as of something terrible 
impending. The unknown with all its terrors rushed upon him, and he 
shrank back instinctively into the shelter of the bush. As he did so, a draught 
of air fanned him, and a large, winged body swept ominously and silently 
past. A hawk, driving down out of the blue, had barely missed him. 
While he lay in the bush, recovering from his fright and peering fearfully out, 
the mother-ptarmigan on the other side of the open space fluttered out of 
the ravaged nest. It was because of her loss that she paid no attention to 
the winged bolt of the sky. But the cub saw, and it was a warning and a 
lesson to him—the swift downward swoop of the hawk, the short skim of 
its body just above the ground, the strike of its talons in the body of the 
ptarmigan, the ptarmigan’s squawk of agony and fright, and the hawk’s rush 
upward into the blue, carrying the ptarmigan away with it. 
It was a long time before the cub left its shelter. He had learned much. Live 
things were meat. They were good to eat. Also, live things when they were 
large enough, could give hurt. It was better to eat small live things like 
ptarmigan chicks, and to let alone large live things like ptarmigan 
hens. Nevertheless he felt a little prick of ambition, a sneaking desire to 
have another battle with that ptarmigan hen—only the hawk had carried 
her away. May be there were other ptarmigan hens. He would go and see. 
He came down a shelving bank to the stream. He had never seen water 
before. The footing looked good. There were no inequalities of surface. He 
stepped boldly out on it; and went down, crying with fear, into the embrace 
of the unknown. It was cold, and he gasped, breathing quickly. The water 
rushed into his lungs instead of the air that had always accompanied his act 
of breathing. The suffocation he experienced was like the pang of 
death. To him it signified death. He had no conscious knowledge of death, 
but like every animal of the Wild, he possessed the instinct of death. To him 
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it stood as the greatest of hurts. It was the very essence of the unknown; it 
was the sum of the terrors of the unknown, the one culminating and 
unthinkable catastrophe that could happen to him, about which he knew 
nothing and about which he feared everything. 
He came to the surface, and the sweet air rushed into his open mouth. He 
did not go down again. Quite as though it had been a long-established 
custom of his he struck out with all his legs and began to swim. The near 
bank was a yard away; but he had come up with his back to it, and the first 
thing his eyes rested upon was the opposite bank, toward which he 
immediately began to swim. The stream was a small one, but in the pool it 
widened out to a score of feet. 
Midway in the passage, the current picked up the cub and swept him 
downstream. He was caught in the miniature rapid at the bottom of the 
pool. Here was little chance for swimming. The quiet water had become 
suddenly angry. Sometimes he was under, sometimes on top. At all times 
he was in violent motion, now being turned over or around, and again, being 
smashed against a rock. And with every rock he struck, he yelped. His 
progress was a series of yelps, from which might have been adduced the 
number of rocks he encountered. 
Below the rapid was a second pool, and here, captured by the eddy, he was 
gently borne to the bank, and as gently deposited on a bed of gravel. He 
crawled frantically clear of the water and lay down. He had learned some 
more about the world. Water was not alive. Yet it moved. Also, it looked as 
solid as the earth, but was without any solidity at all. His conclusion was 
that things were not always what they appeared to be. The cub’s fear of the 
unknown was an inherited distrust, and it had now been strengthened by 
experience. Thenceforth, in the nature of things, he would possess an 
abiding distrust of appearances. He would have to learn the reality of a 
thing before he could put his faith into it. 
One other adventure was destined for him that day. He had recollected that 
there was such a thing in the world as his mother. And then there came to 
him a feeling that he wanted her more than all the rest of the things in the 
world. Not only was his body tired with the adventures it had undergone, 
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but his little brain was equally tired. In all the days he had lived it had not 
worked so hard as on this one day. Furthermore, he was sleepy. So he 
started out to look for the cave and his mother, feeling at the same time an 
overwhelming rush of loneliness and helplessness. 
He was sprawling along between some bushes, when he heard a sharp 
intimidating cry. There was a flash of yellow before his eyes. He saw a 
weasel leaping swiftly away from him. It was a small live thing, and he had 
no fear. Then, before him, at his feet, he saw an extremely small live thing, 
only several inches long, a young weasel, that, like himself, had 
disobediently gone out adventuring. It tried to retreat before him. He 
turned it over with his paw. It made a queer, grating noise. The next 
moment the flash of yellow reappeared before his eyes. He heard again the 
intimidating cry, and at the same instant received a sharp blow on the side 
of the neck and felt the sharp teeth of the mother-weasel cut into his flesh. 
While he yelped and ki-yi’d and scrambled backward, he saw the mother-
weasel leap upon her young one and disappear with it into the neighbouring 
thicket. The cut of her teeth in his neck still hurt, but his feelings were hurt 
more grievously, and he sat down and weakly whimpered. This mother-
weasel was so small and so savage. He was yet to learn that for size and 
weight the weasel was the most ferocious, vindictive, and terrible of all the 
killers of the Wild. But a portion of this knowledge was quickly to be his. 
He was still whimpering when the mother-weasel reappeared. She did not 
rush him, now that her young one was safe. She approached more 
cautiously, and the cub had full opportunity to observe her lean, snakelike 
body, and her head, erect, eager, and snake-like itself. Her sharp, menacing 
cry sent the hair bristling along his back, and he snarled warningly at 
her. She came closer and closer. There was a leap, swifter than his 
unpractised sight, and the lean, yellow body disappeared for a moment out 
of the field of his vision. The next moment she was at his throat, her teeth 
buried in his hair and flesh. 
At first he snarled and tried to fight; but he was very young, and this was 
only his first day in the world, and his snarl became a whimper, his fight a 
struggle to escape. The weasel never relaxed her hold. She hung on, 
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striving to press down with her teeth to the great vein where his life-blood 
bubbled. The weasel was a drinker of blood, and it was ever her preference 
to drink from the throat of life itself. 
The grey cub would have died, and there would have been no story to write 
about him, had not the she-wolf come bounding through the bushes. The 
weasel let go the cub and flashed at the she-wolf’s throat, missing, but 
getting a hold on the jaw instead. The she-wolf flirted her head like the snap 
of a whip, breaking the weasel’s hold and flinging it high in the air. And, still 
in the air, the she-wolf’s jaws closed on the lean, yellow body, and the 
weasel knew death between the crunching teeth. 
The cub experienced another access of affection on the part of his 
mother. Her joy at finding him seemed even greater than his joy at being 
found. She nozzled him and caressed him and licked the cuts made in him 
by the weasel’s teeth. Then, between them, mother and cub, they ate the 
blood-drinker, and after that went back to the cave and slept. 
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