He watched the man-animals coming and going and moving about the camp. In
fashion distantly resembling the way men look upon the gods they create,
so looked White Fang upon the man-animals before him. They were superior
creatures, of a verity, gods. To his dim comprehension they were as much
wonder-workers as gods are to men. They were creatures of mastery,
possessing all manner of unknown and impossible potencies, overlords of
the alive and the not alive--making obey that which moved, imparting
movement to that which did not move, and making life, sun-coloured and
biting life, to grow out of dead moss and wood. They were fire-makers!
They were gods.
CHAPTER II--THE BONDAGE
The days were thronged with experience for White Fang. During the time
that Kiche was tied by the stick, he ran about over all the camp,
inquiring, investigating, learning. He quickly came to know much of the
ways of the man-animals, but familiarity did not breed contempt. The
more he came to know them, the more they vindicated their superiority,
the more they displayed their mysterious powers, the greater loomed their
god-likeness.
To man has been given the grief, often, of seeing his gods overthrown and
his altars crumbling; but to the wolf and the wild dog that have come in
to crouch at man's feet, this grief has never come.
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