Read the excerpt from an adaptation of "To Build a Fire.”After a time a stinging sensation returned, and the man stripped the mitten from his right hand, fetched forth the birch-bark, and brought out his bunch of sulphur matches. But his hand had already gone numb again, and in his effort to separate one match from the others, the whole bunch fell in the snow.
Read the excerpt from an adaptation of "To Build a Fire.”At the man's heels trotted a dog, a big native husky, the proper wolf-dog, grey-coated and in appearance and temperament almost identical to its brother, the wild wolf. The animal was depressed by the tremendous cold. It knew that it was no time for travelling. Its instinct told it a truer tale than was told to the man by the man's judgment. In reality, it was not merely colder than fifty below zero: it was seventy-five below zero. The dog did not know anything about thermometers, but the brute had its instinct.
Read the excerpt from an adaptation of "To Build a Fire.”[The dog] experienced a vague but menacing fear that subdued it and made it slink along at the man's heels, hoping that he would go into camp or seek shelter somewhere and build a fire. The dog had learned fire, and it wanted fire, or else to burrow under the snow and cuddle its warmth away from the air.
Read the excerpt from an adaptation of "To Build a Fire.”As he turned to go on, he spat speculatively. There was a sharp, explosive crackle that startled him. He spat again, and again, in the air, before it could fall to the snow, the spittle crackled. He knew that at fifty below spittle crackled on the snow, but this spittle had crackled in the air. Undoubtedly it was colder than fifty below—how much colder he did not know. But the temperature did not matter. He was bound for the old claim on the left fork of Henderson Creek, where the boys were already.
Read the excerpt from an adaptation of "To Build a Fire.”Fifty degrees below zero stood for a bite of frost that hurt and that must be guarded against with mittens, ear-flaps, warm moccasins, and thick socks. That there should be anything more to it than that was a thought that never entered his head.
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