1906 white fang jack london - pinkmonke - Pink Monkey

CHAPTER THREE.
The Reign of Hate
114
UNDER THE TUTELAGE OF the mad god, White Fang became a
fiend. He was kept chained in a pen at the rear of the fort, and here
Beauty Smith teased and irritated and drove him wild with petty
torments. The man early discovered White Fang’s susceptibility to
laughter, and made it a point, after painfully tricking him, to laugh
at him. This laughter was uproarious and scornful, and at the same
time the god pointed his finger derisively at White Fang. At such
times reason fled from White Fang, and in his transports of rage he
was even more mad than Beauty Smith.
Formerly, White Fang had been merely the enemy of his kind,
withal a ferocious enemy. He now became the enemy of all things,
and more ferocious than ever. To such an extent was he tormented,
that he hated blindly and without the faintest spark of reason. He
hated the chain that bound him, the men who peered in at him
through the slats of the pen, the dogs that accompanied the men
and that snarled malignantly at him in his helplessness. He hated
the very wood of the pen that confined him. And first, last, and
most of all, he hated Beauty Smith.
But Beauty Smith had a purpose in all that he did to White Fang.
One day a number of men gathered about the pen. Beauty Smith
entered, club in hand, and took the chain from off White Fang’s
neck. When his master had gone out, White Fang turned loose and
tore around the pen, trying to get at the men outside. He was
magnificently terrible. Fully five feet in length, and standing two
and onehalf feet at the shoulder, he far outweighed a wolf of
corresponding size. From his mother he had inherited the heavier
proportions of the dog, so that he weighed, without any fat and
without an ounce of superfluous flesh, over ninety pounds. It was
all muscle, bone, and sinew-fighting flesh in the finest condition.
The door of the pen was being opened again. White Fang paused.
Something unusual was happening. He waited. The door was
opened wider. Then a huge dog was thrust inside, and the door
was slammed shut behind him. White Fang had never seen such a
dog (it was a mastiff); but the size and fierce aspect of the intruder
did not deter him. Here was something, not wood nor iron, upon
which to wreak his hate. He leaped in with a flash of fangs that
ripped down the side of the mastiff’s neck. The mastiff shook his
head, growled hoarsely, and plunged at White Fang. But White
Fang was here, there, and everywhere, always evading and