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The Faith of Men-Part18_JACK LONDON(1876-1916)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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Now Halie, in whom three stocks had been bastardized, who cherished

no prejudice against further admixture, mated with a Russian fur



trader called Shpack, also known in his time as the Big Fat.

Shpack is herein classed Russian for lack of a more adequate term;



for Shpack's father, a Slavonic convict from the Lower Provinces,

had escaped from the quicksilver mines into Northern Siberia, where



he knew Zimba, who was a woman of the Deer People and who became

the mother of Shpack, who became the grandfather of Jees Uck.



Now had not Shpack been captured in his boyhood by the Sea People,

who fringe the rim of the Arctic Sea with their misery, he would



not have become the grandfather of Jees Uck and there would be no

story at all. But he WAS captured by the Sea People, from whom he



escaped to Kamchatka, and thence, on a Norwegian whale-ship, to the

Baltic. Not long after that he turned up in St. Petersburg, and



the years were not many till he went drifting east over the same

weary road his father had measured with blood and groans a half-



century before. But Shpack was a free man, in the employ of the

great Russian Fur Company. And in that employ he fared farther and



farther east, until he crossed Bering Sea into Russian America; and

at Pastolik, which is hard by the Great Delta of the Yukon, became



the husband of Halie, who was the grandmother of Jees Uck. Out of

this union came the woman-child, Tukesan.



Shpack, under the orders of the Company, made a canoe voyage of a

few hundred miles up the Yukon to the post of Nulato. With him he



took Halie and the babe Tukesan. This was in 1850, and in 1850 it

was that the river Indians fell upon Nulato and wiped it from the



face of the earth. And that was the end of Shpack and Halie. On

that terrible night Tukesan disappeared. To this day the Toyaats



aver they had no hand in the trouble; but, be that as it may, the

fact remains that the babe Tukesan grew up among them.



Tukesan was married successively to two Toyaat brothers, to both of

whom she was barren. Because of this, other women shook their



heads, and no third Toyaat man could be found to dare matrimony

with the childless widow. But at this time, many hundred miles



above, at Fort Yukon, was a man, Spike O'Brien. Fort Yukon was a

Hudson Bay Company post, and Spike O'Brien one of the Company's



servants. He was a good servant, but he achieved an opinion that

the service was bad, and in the course of time vindicated that



opinion by deserting. It was a year's journey, by the chain of

posts, back to York Factory on Hudson's Bay. Further, being



Company posts, he knew he could not evade the Company's clutches.

Nothing retained but to go down the Yukon. It was true no white



man had ever gone down the Yukon, and no white man knew whether the

Yukon emptied into the Arctic Ocean or Bering Sea; but Spike



O'Brien was a Celt, and the promise of danger was a lure he had

ever followed.



A few weeks later, somewhat battered, rather famished, and about

dead with river-fever, he drove the nose of his canoe into the



earth bank by the village of the Toyaats and promptly fainted away.

While getting his strength back, in the weeks that followed, he



looked upon Tukesan and found her good. Like the father of Shpack,

who lived to a ripe old age among the Siberian Deer People, Spike



O'Brien might have left his aged bones with the Toyaats. But

romance gripped his heart-strings and would not let him stay. As



he had journeyed from York Factory to Fort Yukon, so, first among

men, might he journey from Fort Yukon to the sea and win the honour



of being the first man to make the North-West Passage by land. So

he departed down the river, won the honour, and was unannaled and



unsung. In after years he ran a sailors' boarding-house in San

Francisco, where he became esteemed a most remarkable liar by



virtue of the gospel truths he told. But a child was born to

Tukesan, who had been childless. And this child was Jees Uck. Her



lineage has been traced at length to show that she was neither

Indian, nor Eskimo, nor Innuit, nor much of anything else; also to



show what waifs of the generations we are, all of us, and the

strange meanderings of the seed from which we spring.



What with the vagrant blood in her and the heritage compounded of

many races, Jees Uck developed a wonderful young beauty. Bizarre,



perhaps, it was, and Oriental enough to puzzle any passing

ethnologist. A lithe and slender grace characterized her. Beyond



a quickened lilt to the imagination, the contribution of the Celt




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