酷兔英语
    当前位置:
  1. 首页
  2. 文章
  3. 娱乐英语
  4. 原版小说
  5. 正文

Jerry of the Islands-Part26_JACK LONDON(1876-1916)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

0 收藏 0 分享 0 赞

章节正文
文章总共2页
He had no conception of how long he lay. Five minutes passed before



his legs made their first spasmodic movements, and, as he stumbled

to his feet and rocked giddily, he had no thought of the passage of



time. He had no thought about time at all. As a matter of course,

his own idea, on which he proceeded to act without being aware of



it, was that, a part of a second before, he had been struck a

terrific blow magnified incalculable times beyond the blow of a



stick at a nigger's hands.

His throat and lungs filled with the pungent stifling smoke of



powder, his nostrils with earth and dust, he frantically wheezed and

sneezed, leaping about, falling drunkenly, leaping into the air



again, staggering on his hind-legs, dabbing with his forepaws at his

nose head-downward between his forelegs, and even rubbing his nose



into the ground. He had no thought for anything save to remove the

biting pain from his nose and mouth, the suffocation from his lungs.



By a miracle he had escaped being struck by the flying splinters of

iron, and, thanks to his strong heart, had escaped being killed by



the shock of the explosion. Not until the end of five minutes of

mad struggling, in which he behaved for all the world like a



beheaded chicken, did he find life tolerable again. The maximum of

stifling and of agony passed, and, although he was still weak and



giddy, he tottered in the direction of the house and of Nalasu. And

there was no house and no Nalasu--only a debris intermingled of



both.

While the shells continued to shriek and explode, now near, now far,



Jerry investigated the happening. As surely as the house was gone,

just as surely was Nalasu gone. Upon both had descended the



ultimate nothingness. All the immediate world seemed doomed to

nothingness. Life promised only somewhere else, in the high hills



and remote bush whither the tribe had already fled. Loyal he was to

his salt, to the master whom he had obeyed so long, nigger that he



was, who so long had fed him, and for whom he had entertained a true

affection. But this master no longer was.



Retreat Jerry did, but he was not hasty in retreat. For a time he

snarled at every shell-scream in the air and every shell-burst in



the bush. But after a time, while the awareness of them continued

uncomfortably with him, the hair on his neck remained laid down and



he neither uttered a snarl nor bared his teeth.

And when he parted from what had been and which had ceased to be,



not like the bush dogs did he whimper and run. Instead, he trotted

along the path at a regular and dignified pace. When he emerged



upon the main path, he found it deserted. The last refugee had

passed. The path, always travelled from daylight to dark, and which



he had so recently seen glutted with humans, now in its emptiness

affected him profoundly with the impression of the endingness of all



things in a perishing world. So it was that he did not sit down

under the banyan tree, but trotted along at the far rear of the



tribe.

With his nose he read the narrative of the flight. Only once did he



encounter what advertised its terror. It was an entire group

annihilated by a shell. There were: an old man of fifty, with a



crutch because of the leg which had been slashed off by a shark when

he was a young boy; a dead Mary with a dead babe at her breast and a



dead child of three clutching her hand; and two dead pigs, huge and

fat, which the woman had been herding to safety.



And Jerry's nose told him of how the stream of the fugitives had

split and flooded past on each side and flowed together again



beyond. Incidents of the flight he did encounter: a part-chewed

joint of sugar-cane some child had dropped; a clay pipe, the stem



short from successive breakages; a single feather from some young

man's hair, and a calabash, full of cooked yams and sweet potatoes,



deposited carefully beside the trail by some Mary for whom its

weight had proved too great.



The shell-fire ceased as Jerry trotted along; next he heard the

rifle-fire from the landing-party, as it shot down the domestic pigs



on Somo's streets. He did not hear, however, the chopping down of

the coconut trees, any more than did he ever return to behold what



damage the axes had wrought.

For right here occurred with Jerry a wonderful thing that thinkers



of the world have not explained. He manifested in his dog's brain

the free agency of life, by which all the generations of



metaphysicians have postulated God, and by which all the

deterministic philosophers have been led by the nose despite their



clear denouncement of it as sheer illusion. What Jerry did he did.




文章总共2页
文章标签:名著  

章节正文
Copyright © 2023 Qeto All rights reserved.
商务合作 | 联系我们 | 关于我们 | 版权声明 | 隐私条款 | 如果智培

京ICP备05059198号-1 京公网安备 11011202003401号