Always, they broke camp in the dark, and the first gray of dawn
found them hitting the trail with fresh miles reeled off behind
them. And always they pitched camp after dark, eating their bit
of fish, and crawling to sleep into the snow. Buck was ravenous.
The pound and a half of sun-dried salmon, which was his ration for
each day, seemed to go nowhere. He never had enough, and suffered
from perpetual hunger pangs. Yet the other dogs, because they
weighed less and were born to the life, received a pound only of
the fish and managed to keep in good condition.

He swiftly lost the fastidiousness which had characterized his old
life. A dainty eater, he found that his mates, finishing first,
robbed him of his unfinished ration. There was no defending it.
While he was fighting off two or three, it was disappearing down
the throats of the others. To remedy this, he ate as fast as
they; and, so greatly did hunger compel him, he was not above
taking what did not belong to him. He watched and learned. When
he saw Pike, one of the new dogs, a clever malingerer and thief,
slyly steal a slice of bacon when Perrault's back was turned, he
duplicated the performance the following day, getting away with
the whole chunk. A great uproar was raised, but he was
unsuspected; while Dub, an awkward blunderer who was always
getting caught, was punished for Buck's misdeed.

This first theft marked Buck as fit to survive in the hostile
Northland environment. It marked his adaptability, his capacity
to adjust himself to changing conditions, the lack of which would
have meant swift and terrible death. It marked, further, the
decay or going to pieces of his moral nature, a vain thing and a
handicap in the ruthless struggle for existence. It was all well