The faint sound of Thornton's voice came to them, and though they could not make out the words of it, they knew that he was in his extremity (絕境).
His master's voice acted on Buck like an electric shock, He sprang to his feet and ran up the bank ahead of the men to the point of his previous departure.
Again the rope was attached and he was launched (下水), and again he struck out, but this time straight into the stream.
He had miscalculated once, but he would not be guilty of it a second time.
Hans paid out the rope, permitting no slack (松弛的), while Pete kept it clear of coils. Buck held on till he was on a line straight above Thornton;
then he turned, and with the speed of an express train headed down upon him.{1}
Thornton saw him coming, and, as Buck struck him like a battering ram (攻城錘), with the whole force of the current behind him, he reached up and closed with both arms around the shaggy (蓬松的) neck.
Hans snubbed the rope around the tree, and Buck and Thornton were jerked (急拉) under the water.
Strangling (窒息), suffocating (憋氣), sometimes one uppermost and sometimes the other, dragging over the jagged (不平的) bottom, smashing against rocks and snags (障礙), they veered (轉向) in to the bank.
Thornton came to, belly downward and being violently propelled (推動) back and forth across a drift log by Hans and Pete.
His first glance was for Buck, over whose limp and apparently lifeless body Nig was setting up a howl (狂吠), while Skeet was licking the wet face and closed eyes.
Thornton was himself bruised and battered, and he went carefully over Buck’s body, when he had been brought around, finding three broken ribs (肋骨).
"That settles it," he announced. "We camp right here." And camp they did, till Buck's ribs knitted (結合) and he was able to travel.
That winter, at Dawson, Buck performed another exploit (英勇的行為), not so heroic, perhaps, but one that put his name many notches (等級) higher on the totem-pole (圖騰柱) of Alaskan fame.
This exploit was particularly gratifying (滿意) to the three men; for they stood in need of the outfit (全套裝備) which it furnished,
and were enabled to make a long-desired trip into the virgin (未開發的) East, where miners had not yet appeared.{2}
It was brought about by a conversation in the Eldorado Saloon (酒館), in which men waxed boastful of their favorite dogs.
Buck, because of his record (記錄), was the target for these men, and Thornton was driven stoutly (堅決地) to defend him.
At the end of half an hour one man stated that his dog could start a sled with five hundred pounds and walk off with it;
a second bragged (吹噓) six hundred for his dog; and a third, seven hundred.
"Pooh! pooh!" said John Thornton; "Buck can start a thousand pounds."
"And break it out (可以理解為“原地啟動”)? and walk off with it for a hundred yards?" demanded Matthewson, a Bonanza King (伯南札淘金大王), he of the seven hundred vaunt (吹噓).
"And break it out, and walk off with it for a hundred yards," John Thornton said coolly.
"Well," Matthewson said, slowly and deliberately, so that all could hear, "I've got a thousand dollars that says he can't. And there it is."
So saying, he slammed a sack of gold dust of the size of a bologna sausage (博洛尼亞香腸) down upon the bar.{3}
Nobody spoke. Thornton's bluff (虛張聲勢), if bluff it was, had been called.
He could feel a flush of warm blood creeping up his face. His tongue had tricked him. He did not know whether Buck could start a thousand pounds.
Half a ton! The enormousness of it appalled (使震驚) him. He had great faith in Buck's strength and had often thought him capable of starting such a load;
but never, as now, had he faced the possibility of it, the eyes of a dozen men fixed upon him, silent and waiting. Further, he had no thousand dollars; nor had Hans or Pete.
"I've got a sled standing outside now, with twenty fifty-pound sacks of flour (小麥粉) on it," Matthewson went on with brutal directness; "so don't let that hinder you."
Thornton did not reply. He did not know what to say. He glanced from face to face in the absent way of a man who has lost the power of thought and is seeking somewhere to find the thing that will start it going again.
The face of Jim O'Brien, a Mastodon King (馬斯托頓淘金大王) and old-time comrade, caught his eyes. It was as a cue to him, seeming to rouse him to do what he would never have dreamed of doing.
"Can you lend me a thousand?" he asked, almost in a whisper.
"Sure," answered O'Brien, thumping down a plethoric sack by the side of Matthewson's. "Though it's little faith I'm having, John, that the beast can do the trick."
The Eldorado emptied its occupants into the street to see the test. The tables were deserted, and the dealers and gamekeepers came forth to see the outcome of the wager (打賭) and to lay odds.{4}
Several hundred men, furred and mittened, banked (堆積) around the sled within easy distance.
Matthewson's sled, loaded with a thousand pounds of flour, had been standing for a couple of hours,
and in the intense cold (it was sixty below zero) the runners (滑板) had frozen fast (牢牢地) to the hard-packed snow.
Men offered odds of two to one that Buck could not budge the sled. A quibble (雙關語) arose concerning the phrase "break out."
O'Brien contended it was Thornton's privilege to knock (敲打) the runners loose, leaving Buck to "break it out" from a dead standstill (靜止).
Matthewson insisted that the phrase included breaking the runners from the frozen grip of the snow.{5}
A majority of the men who had witnessed the making of the bet decided in his favor, whereat (隨即) the odds went up to three to one against Buck.
There were no takers. Not a man believed him capable of the feat.
Thornton had been hurried into the wager, heavy with doubt; and now that he looked at the sled itself, the concrete (確實的) fact, with the regular team of ten dogs curled up in the snow before it, the more impossible the task appeared.
Matthewson waxed jubilant (興高采烈).
"Three to one!" he proclaimed. "I'll lay you another thousand at that figure, Thornton. What d'ye say?"
Thornton's doubt was strong in his face, but his fighting spirit was aroused--the fighting spirit that soars (猛增) above odds, fails to recognize the impossible, and is deaf to all save the clamor (歡呼) for battle.
He called Hans and Pete to him. Their sacks were slim, and with his own the three partners could rake together only two hundred dollars.
In the ebb of their fortunes, this sum was their total capital; yet they laid it unhesitatingly against Matthewson's six hundred.
