To Build a Fire Part II (Jack London)

fault, or instead, his mistake. He should not have built the fire under the
pine tree. He should have built it in an open space. But it had been eas

ier to pull the sticks from the bushes and drop them directly on the fire.
Now the tree under which he had done this carried a weight of
snow on its branches. No wind had been blowing for weeks and each
branch was heavy with snow. Each time he pulled a stick he shook the
tree slightly. There had been just enough movement to cause the awful
thing to happen. High up in the tree one branch dropped its load of
snow. This fell on the branches beneath. This process continued, spread

ing through the whole tree. The snow fell without warning upon the
man and the fire, and the fire was dead. Where it had burned was a pile
of fresh snow.
The man was shocked. It was like hearing his own judgment of
death. For a moment he sat and stared at the spot where the fire had
been. Then he grew very calm. Perhaps the old man on Sulphur Creek
was right. If he had a companion on the trail he would be in no danger
now. The companion could have built the fire. Now, he must build the
fire again, and this second time he must not fail. Even if he succeeded,
he would be likely to lose some toes. His feet must be badly frozen by
now, and there would be some time before the second fire was ready.
Such were his 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 space, where no tree
would be above it. Next, he gathered dry grasses and tiny sticks. He
could not bring his fingers together to pull them out of the ground, but
he was able to gather them by the handful. In this way he also got
many pieces that were undesirable, but it was the best he could do. He
worked carefully, even collecting an armful of the larger branches to be
used later when the fire gathered strength. And all the while the dog
sat and watched him. There was an anxious look in its eyes, because it
depended upon him as the fire provider, and the fire was slow in coming.
When all was ready, the man reached in his pocket for the sec

ond piece of tree bark. He knew the bark was there, although he could
not feel it with his fingers. He tried again and again, but he could not grasp it. And all the time, in his mind, he knew that each instant his
feet were freezing. This thought alarmed him, but he fought against it
and kept calm.
He pulled on his mittens with his teeth, and began swinging his
arms. Then he beat his hands with all his strength against his sides. He
did this while he was sitting down. Then he stood up to do it. All the
while the dog sat in the snow, its tail curled warmly over its feet and
its sharp wolf ears bent forward as it looked at the man. And the man,
as he waved his arms and hands, looked with longing at the creature
that was warm and secure in the covering provided by nature.
After a time, he began to notice some feeling in his beaten fin

gers. The feeling grew stronger until it became very painful, but the
man welcomed the pain. He pulled the mitten from his right hand and
grasped the tree bark from his pocket. The bare fingers were quickly
numb again. Next, he brought out his pack of matches. But the awful
cold had already driven the life out of his fingers. In his effort to sepa

rate one match from the others, the whole pack fell in the snow. He
tried to pick it out of the snow, but failed. The dead fingers could nei

ther touch nor hold.
Now he was very careful. He drove the thought of his freezing
feet, and nose, and face, from his mind. He devoted his whole soul to
picking up the matches. He followed the movement of his fingers with
his eyes, using his sense of sight instead of that of touch. When he saw
his fingers on each side of the pack, he closed them. That is, he willed
to close them, because the fingers did not obey. He put the mitten on
the right hand again, and beat it fiercely against his knee. Then, with
both mittened hands, he lifted up the pack of matches, along with
much snow, to the front of his jacket. But he had gained nothing.
After some struggling he managed to get the pack between his mit

tened hands. In this manner he carried it to his mouth. The ice broke as
he opened his mouth with a fierce effort. He used his upper teeth to rub
across the pack in order to separate a single match. He succeeded
in getting one, which he dropped on his jacket. His condition was no
better. He could not pick up the match. Then he thought how he might do it. He picked up the match in his teeth and drew it across his leg.
Twenty times he did this before he succeeded in lighting it. As it flamed
he held it with his teeth to the tree bark. But the burning smell went
up his nose, causing him to cough. The match fell into the snow and
the flame died.
The old man on Sulphur Creek was right, he thought in the
mo
ment of controlled despair that followed. After 50 below zero, a man
should travel with a companion. He beat his hands, but failed to pro

duce any feeling in them. Suddenly he bared both hands, removing the
mittens with his teeth. He caught the whole pack of matches between
his hands. His arm muscles were not frozen and he was able to press the
hands tightly against the matches. Then he drew the whole pack along
his leg. It burst into flame, 70 matches at once!
There was no wind to blow them out. He kept his head to one side
to escape the burning smell, and held the flaming pack to the tree bark.
As he so held it, he noticed some feeling in his hand. His flesh was
burning. He could smell it. The feeling developed into pain. He con

tinued to endure it. He held the flame of the matches to the bark that
would not light readily because his own burning hands were taking
most of the flame.
Finally, when he could endure no more, he pulled his hands apart.
The flaming matches fell into the snow, but the tree bark was burning.
He began laying dry grasses and the tiniest sticks on the flame. He
could not choose carefully because they must be pieces that could be
lifted between his hands. Small pieces of green grass stayed on the sticks,
and he bit them off as well as he could with his teeth. He treated the
flame carefully. It meant life, and it must not cease.
The blood had left the surface of his body and he now began to
shake from the cold. A large piece of a wet plant fell on the little fire.
He tried to push it out with his fingers. His shaking body made him push
it too far and he scattered the little fire over a wide space. He tried to
push the burning grasses and sticks together again. Even with the strong
effort that he made, his trembling fingers would not obey and the sticks
were hopelessly scattered. Each stick smoked a little and died. The fire provider had failed. As he looked about him, his eyes noticed the dog
sitting across the ruins of the fire from him. It was making uneasy move

ments, slightly lifting one foot and then the other.
The sight of the dog put a wild idea into his head. He remembered
the story of the man, caught in a storm, who killed an animal and shel

tered himself inside the dead body and thus was saved. He would kill
the dog and bury his hands in the warm body until feeling returned to
them. Then he could build another fire.
He spoke to the dog, calling it to him. But in his voice was a
strange note of fear that frightened the animal. It had never known the
man to speak in such a tone before. Something was wrong and it sensed
danger. It knew not what danger, but somewhere in its brain arose a
fear of the man. It flattened its ears at the sound of the man’s voice; its
uneasy movements and the liftings of its feet became more noticeable.
But it would not come to the man. He got down on his hands and knees
and went toward the dog. But this unusual position again excited fear
and the animal moved away.
The man sat in the snow for a moment and struggled for calmness.
Then he pulled on his mittens, using his teeth, and then stood on his
feet. He glanced down to assure himself that he was really standing,
because lack of feeling in his feet gave him no relation to the earth.
His position, however, removed the fear from the dog’s mind.
When he commanded the dog with his usual voice, the dog obeyed
and came to him. As it came within his reach, the man lost control.
His arms stretched out to hold the dog and he experienced real surprise
when he discovered that his hands could not grasp. There was neither
bend nor feeling in the fingers. 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 escape, he encircled its
body with his arms. He sat down in the snow, and in this fashion held
the dog, while it barked and struggled.
But it was all he could do: hold its body encircled in his arms and
sit there. He realized that he could not kill the dog. There was no way
to do it. With his frozen hands he could neither draw nor hold his knife. Nor could he grasp the dog around the throat. He freed it and it
dashed wildly away, still barking. It stopped 40 feet away and observed
him curiously, with ears sharply bent forward.
The man looked down at his hands to locate them and found
them hanging on the ends of his arms. He thought it curious that it was
necessary to use his eyes to discover where his hands were. He began
waving his arms, beating the mittened hands against his sides. He did
this for five minutes. His heart produced enough blood to stop his shak

ing. But no feeling was created in his hands.
A certain fear of death came upon him. He realized that it was
no longer a mere problem of freezing his fingers and toes, or of losing
his hands and feet. Now it was a problem of life and death with the cir

cumstances against him. The fear made him lose control of himself and
he turned and ran along the creek bed on the old trail. The dog joined
him and followed closely behind. The man ran blindly in fear such as
he had never known in his life. Slowly, as he struggled through the
snow, he began to see things again—the banks of the creek, the bare
trees, and the sky.
The running made him feel better. He did not shake any more.
Maybe, if he continued to run, his feet would stop freezing. Maybe if he
ran far enough, he would find the 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.
And at the same time, there was another thought in his mind that said
he would never get to the camp and the boys. It told him that it was
too many miles away, that the freezing had too great a start and that
he would soon be dead. He pushed this thought to the back of his mind
and refused to consider it. Sometimes it came forward and demanded
to be heard. But he pushed it away and tried to think of other things.
It seemed strange to him that he could run on feet so frozen that
he could not feel them when they struck the earth and took the weight
of his body. He seemed to be flying along above the surface and to have
no connection with the earth.
His idea of running until he arrived at the camp and the boys pre
-sented one problem: he lacked the endurance. Several times he caught
himself as he was falling. Finally, he dropped to the ground, unable to
stop his fall. When he tried to rise, he failed. He must sit and rest, he
decided. Next time he would merely walk and keep going.
As he sat and regained his breath, he noted that he was feeling
warm and comfortable. He was not shaking, and it even seemed that a
warm glow had come to his body. And yet, when he touched his nose
or face, there was no feeling. Running would not bring life to them. Nor
would it help his hands and feet. Then the thought came to him that
the frozen portions of his body must be increasing. He tried to keep this
thought out of his mind and to forget it. He knew that such thoughts
caused a feeling of fright in him and he was afraid of such feelings. But
the thought returned and continued, until he could picture his body
totally frozen. This was too much, and again he ran wildly along the
trail. Once he slowed to a walk, but the thought that the freezing of
his body was increasing made him run again.
And all the time the dog ran with him, at his heels. When he fell
a second time, the dog curled its tail over its feet and sat in front of
him, facing him, curiously eager. The warmth and security of the ani

mal angered him. He cursed it until it flattened its ears. This time the
shaking because of the cold began more quickly. He was losing his bat

tle with the frost. It was moving into his body from all sides. This
thought drove him forward. But he ran no more than 100 feet, when
he fell head first.
It was his last moment of fear. When he had recovered his breath
and his control, he sat and thought about meeting death with dignity.
However, the idea did not come to him in exactly this manner. His idea
was that he had been acting like a fool. He had been running around
like a chicken with its head cut off. He was certain to freeze in his pre

sent circumstances, and he should accept it calmly. With this newfound
peace of mind came the first sleepiness. A good idea, he thought, to
sleep his way to death. Freezing was not as bad as people thought. There
were many worse ways to die.
He pictured the boys finding his body the next day. Suddenly he saw himself with them, coming along the trail and looking for himself.
And, still with them, he came around a turn in the trail and found him

self lying in the snow. He did not belong with himself any more. Even
then he was outside of himself, standing with the boys and looking at
himself in the snow. It certainly was cold, was his thought. When he
returned to the United States he could tell the folks what real cold was.
His mind went from this to the thought of the old man of Sulphur
Creek. He could see him quite clearly, warm and comfortable, and smok

ing a pipe.
“You were right, old fellow. You were right,” he murmured to the
old man of Sulphur Creek.
Then the man dropped into what seemed to him the most com

fortable and satisfying sleep he had ever known. The dog sat facing him
and waiting. The brief day ended in a long evening. There were no signs
of a fire to be made. Never in the dog’s experience had it known a man
to sit like that in the snow and make no fire. As the evening grew
darker, its eager longing for the fire mastered it. With much lifting of
its feet, it cried softly. Then it flattened its ears, expecting the man’s
curse. But the man remained silent. Later, the dog howled loudly. And
still later it moved close to the man and caught the smell of death.
This made the animal 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 ran along the trail toward the camp it knew,
where there were the other food providers and fire providers.