him."

Matt paused halfway down the gang-plank.

"He'll never stand the climate!" he shouted back. "Unless you clip 'm in
warm weather!"

The gang-plank was hauled in, and the _Aurora_ swung out from the bank.
Weedon Scott waved a last good-bye. Then he turned and bent over White
Fang, standing by his side.

"Now growl, damn you, growl," he said, as he patted the responsive head
and rubbed the flattening ears.

CHAPTER II--THE SOUTHLAND

White Fang landed from the steamer in San Francisco. He was appalled.
Deep in him, below any reasoning process or act of consciousness, he had
associated power with godhead. And never had the white men seemed such
marvellous gods as now, when he trod the slimy pavement of San Francisco.
The log cabins he had known were replaced by towering buildings. The
streets were crowded with perils--waggons, carts, automobiles; great,
straining horses pulling huge trucks; and monstrous cable and electric
cars hooting and clanging through the midst, screeching their insistent
menace after the manner of the lynxes he had known in the northern woods.

All this was the manifestation of power. Through it all, behind it all,
was man, governing and controlling, expressing himself, as of old, by his
mastery over matter. It was colossal, stunning. White Fang was awed.
Fear sat upon him. As in his cubhood he had been made to feel his
smallness and puniness on the day he first came in from the Wild to the
village of Grey Beaver, so now, in his full-grown stature and pride of
strength, he was made to feel small and puny. And there were so many
gods! He was made dizzy by the swarming of them. The thunder of the
streets smote upon his ears. He was bewildered by the tremendous and
endless rush and movement of things. As never before, he felt his
dependence on the love-master, close at whose heels he followed, no
matter what happened never losing sight of him.

But White Fang was to have no more than a nightmare vision of the city--an
experience that was like a bad dream, unreal and terrible, that haunted
him for long after in his dreams. He was put into a baggage-car by the
master, chained in a corner in the midst of heaped trunks and valises.
Here a squat and brawny god held sway, with much noise, hurling trunks
and boxes about, dragging them in through the door and tossing them into
the piles, or flinging them out of the door, smashing and crashing, to
other gods who awaited them.