on a
steamboat bound up the Yukon to Dawson. White Fang had now achieved a reputation
in the land. As The Fighting Wolf he was known far and wide, and the cage in
which he was kept on the steamboat's deck was usually surrounded by curious men.
He raged and snarled at them, or lay quietly and studied them with cold hatred.
Why should he not hate them? He never asked himself the question. He knew only
hate and lost himself in the passion of it. Life had become a hell to him. He
had not been made for the close confinement wild beasts endure at the hands of
men. And yet it was in precisely this way that he was treated. Men stared at
him, poked sticks between the bars to make him snarl, and then laughed at him.
    They were his environment, these men, and they were moulding the clay of him
into a more ferocious thing than had been intended by Nature. Nevertheless,
Nature had given him plasticity. Where many another animal would have died or
had its spirit broken, he adjusted himself and lived, and at no expense of the
spirit. Possibly Beauty Smith, archfiend and tormentor, was capable of breaking
White Fang's spirit, but as yet there were no signs of his succeeding.
    If Beauty Smith had in him a devil, White Fang had another; and the two of
them raged against each other unceasingly. In the days before, White Fang had
had the wisdom to cower down and submit to a man with a club in his hand; but
this wisdom now left him. The mere sight of Beauty Smith was sufficient to send
him into transports of fury. And when they came to close quarters, and he had
been beaten back by the club, he went on growling and snarling and showing his
fangs. The last growl could never be extracted from him. No matter how terribly
he was beaten, he had always another growl; and when Beauty Smith gave up and
withdrew, the defiant growl followed after him, or White Fang sprang at the bars
of the cage bellowing his hatred.
    When the steamboat arrived at Dawson, White Fang went ashore. But he still
lived a public life, in a cage, surrounded by curious men. He was exhibited as
The Fighting Wolf, and men paid fifty cents in gold dust to see him. He was
given no rest. Did he lie down to sleep, he was stirred up by a sharp stick - so
that the audience might get its money's worth. In order to make the exhibition
interesting, he was kept