Select the correct text in the passage.
in this excerpt from jack london’s "to build a fire," which line provides a clue that the main character is not prepared to consider the dangers of extreme cold?
he was a newcomer in the land, a chechaquo, and this was his first winter. the trouble with him was that he was without imagination. he was quick and alert in the things of life, but only in the things, and not in the significances. fifty degrees below zero meant eighty-odd degrees of frost. such fact impressed him as being cold and uncomfortable, and that was all. it did not lead him to meditate upon his frailty as a creature of temperature, and upon man's frailty in general, able only to live within certain narrow limits of heat and cold; and from there on it did not lead him to the conjectural field of immortality and man's place in the universe. fifty degrees below zero stood for a bite of frost that hurt and that must be guarded against by the use of mittens, ear-flaps, warm moccasins, and thick socks. fifty degrees below zero was to him just precisely fifty degrees below zero. that there should be anything more to it than that was a thought that never entered his head.

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.