CHAPTER I WINTER CAMP ON THE YUKON

CHAPTER I

WINTER CAMP ON THE YUKON

"To labour and to be content with that a man hath is a sweet life; but he that findeth a treasure is above them both."--_Ecclesiasticus_.

Of course they were bound for the Klondyke. Every creature in the North-west was bound for the Klondyke. Men from the South too, and men from the East, had left their ploughs and their pens, their factories, pulpits, and easy-chairs, each man like a magnetic needle suddenly set free and turning sharply to the North; all set pointing the self-same way since that July day in '97, when the _Excelsior_ sailed into San Francisco harbour, bringing from the uttermost regions at the top of the map close upon a million dollars in nuggets and in gold-dust.

Some distance this side of the Arctic Circle, on the right bank of the Yukon, a little detachment of that great army pressing northward, had been wrecked early in the month of September.

They had realised, on leaving the ocean-going ship that landed them at St. Michael's Island (near the mouth of the great river), that they could not hope to reach Dawson that year. But instead of "getting cold feet," as the phrase for discouragement ran, and turning back as thousands did, or putting in the winter on the coast, they determined, with an eye to the spring rush, to cover as many as possible of the seventeen hundred miles of waterway before navigation closed.

They knew, in a vague way, that winter would come early, but they had not counted on the big September storm that dashed their heavy-laden boats against the floe-ice, ultimately drove them ashore, and nearly cost the little party their lives. On that last day of the long struggle up the stream, a stiff north-easter was cutting the middle reach of the mighty river, two miles wide here, into a choppy and dangerous sea.

Day by day, five men in the two little boats, had kept serious eyes on the shore. Then came the morning when, out of the monotonous cold and snow-flurries, something new appeared, a narrow white rim forming on the river margin--the first ice!

"Winter beginning to show his teeth," said one man, with an effort at jocosity.

Day by day, nearer came the menace; narrower and swifter still ran the deep black water strip between the encroaching ice-lines. But the thought that each day's sailing or rowing meant many days nearer the Klondyke, seemed to inspire a superhuman energy. Day by day each man had felt, and no man yet had said, "We must camp to-night for eight months." They had looked landward, shivered, and held on their way.

But on this particular morning, when they took in sail, they realised it was to be that abomination of desolation on the shore or death. And one or other speedily.

Nearer the white teeth gleamed, fiercer the gale, swifter the current, sweeping back the boats. The _Mary C._ was left behind, fighting for life, while it seemed as if no human power could keep the _Tulare_ from being hurled against the western shore. Twice, in spite of all they could do, she was driven within a few feet of what looked like certain death. With a huge effort, that last time, her little crew had just got her well in mid-stream, when a heavy roller breaking on the starboard side drenched the men and half filled the cockpit. Each rower, still pulling for dear life with one hand, bailed the boat with the other; but for all their promptness a certain amount of the water froze solid before they could get it out.

"Great luck, if we're going to take in water like this," said the cheerful Kentuckian, shipping his oar and knocking off the ice--"great luck that all the stores are so well protected."

"Protected!" snapped out an anxious, cast-iron-looking man at the rudder.

"Yes, protected. How's water to get through the ice-coat that's over everything?"

The cast-iron steersman set his jaw grimly. They seemed to be comparatively safe now, with half a mile of open water between them and the western shore.

But they sat as before, stiff, alert, each man in his ice jacket that cracked and crunched as he bent to his oar. Now right, now left, again they eyed the shore.

Would it be--could it be there they would have to land? And if they did...?

Lord, how it blew!

"Hard a-port!" called out the steersman. There, just ahead, was a great white-capped "roller" coming--coming, the biggest wave they had encountered since leaving open sea.

But MacCann, the steersman, swung the boat straight into the crested roller, and the _Tulare_ took it gamely, "bow on." All was going well when, just in the boiling middle of what they had thought was foaming "white-cap," the boat struck something solid, shivered, and went shooting down, half under water; recovered, up again, and seemed to pause in a second's doubt on the very top of the great wave. In that second that seemed an eternity one man's courage snapped.

Potts threw down his oar and swore by----and by----he wouldn't pull another----stroke on the----Yukon.

While he was pouring out the words, the steersman sprang from the tiller, and seized Potts' oar just in time to save the boat from capsizing. Then he and the big Kentuckian both turned on the distracted Potts.

"You infernal quitter!" shouted the steersman, and choked with fury. But even under the insult of that "meanest word in the language," Potts sat glaring defiantly, with his half-frozen hands in his pockets.

"It ain't a river, anyhow, this ain't," he said. "It's plain, simple Hell and water."

The others had no time to realise that Potts was clean out of his senses for the moment, and the Kentuckian, still pulling like mad, faced the "quitter" with a determination born of terror.

"If you can't row, take the rudder! Damnation! Take that rudder! Quick, _or we'll kill you_!" And he half rose up, never dropping his oar.

Blindly, Potts obeyed.

The _Tulare_ was free now from the clinging mass at the bow, but they knew they had struck their first floe.

Farther on they could see other white-caps bringing other ice masses down. But there was no time for terrors ahead. The gale was steadily driving them in shore again. Boat and oars alike were growing unwieldy with their coating of ever-increasing ice, and human strength was no match for the storm that was sweeping down from the Pole.

Lord, how it blew!

"There's a cove!" called out the Kentuckian. "Throw her in!" he shouted to Potts. Sullenly the new steersman obeyed.

Rolling in on a great surge, the boat suddenly turned in a boiling eddy, and the first thing anybody knew was that the _Tulare_ was on her side and her crew in the water. Potts was hanging on to the gunwale and damning the others for not helping him to save the boat.

She wasn't much of a boat when finally they got her into quiet water; but the main thing was they had escaped with their lives and rescued a good proportion of their winter provisions. All the while they were doing this last, the Kentuckian kept turning to look anxiously for any sign of the others, in his heart bitterly blaming himself for having agreed to Potts' coming into the _Tulare_ that day in place of the Kentuckian's own "pardner." When they had piled the rescued provisions up on the bank, and just as they were covering the heap of bacon, flour, and bean-bags, boxes, tools, and utensils with a tarpaulin, up went a shout, and the two missing men appeared tramping along the ice-encrusted shore.

Where was the _Mary C._? Well, she was at the bottom of the Yukon, and her crew would like some supper.

They set up a tent, and went to bed that first night extremely well pleased at being alive on any terms.

But people get over being glad about almost anything, unless misfortune again puts an edge on the circumstance. The next day, not being in any immediate danger, the boon of mere life seemed less satisfying.

In detachments they went up the river several miles, and down about as far. They looked in vain for any sign of the _Mary C._. They prospected the hills. From the heights behind the camp they got a pretty fair idea of the surrounding country. It was not reassuring.

"As to products, there seems to be plenty of undersized timber, plenty of snow and plenty of river, and, as far as I can see, just nothing else."

"Well, there's oodles o' blueberries," said the Boy, his inky-looking mouth bearing witness to veracity; "and there are black and red currants in the snow, and rose-apples--"

"Oh, yes," returned the other, "it's a sort of garden of Eden!"

A little below here it was four miles from bank to bank of the main channel, but at this point the river was only about two miles wide, and white already with floating masses of floe-ice going on a swift current down towards the sea, four hundred miles away.

The right bank presented to the mighty river a low chain of hills, fringed at the base with a scattered growth of scrubby spruce, birch, willow, and cotton-wood. Timber line was only two hundred feet above the river brink; beyond that height, rocks and moss covered with new-fallen snow.

But if their side seemed cheerless, what of the land on the left bank? A swamp stretching endlessly on either hand, and back from the icy flood as far as eye could see, broken only by sloughs and an occasional ice-rimmed tarn.

"We've been travelling just eight weeks to arrive at this," said the Kentuckian, looking at the desolate scene with a homesick eye.

"We're not only pretty far from home," grumbled another, "we're still thirteen hundred miles away from the Klondyke."

These unenlivening calculations were catching.

"We're just about twenty-five hundred miles from the nearest railroad or telegraph, and, now that winter's down on us, exactly eight months from anywhere in the civilised world."

They had seen no sign of even savage life, no white trader, nothing to show that any human foot had ever passed that way before.

In that stillness that was like the stillness of death, they went up the hillside, with footsteps muffled in the clinging snow; and sixty feet above the great river, in a part of the wood where the timber was least unpromising, they marked out a site for their winter quarters.

Then this queer little company--a Denver bank-clerk, an ex-schoolmaster from Nova Scotia, an Irish-American lawyer from San Francisco, a Kentucky "Colonel" who had never smelt powder, and "the Boy" (who was no boy at all, but a man of twenty-two)--these five set to work felling trees, clearing away the snow, and digging foundations for a couple of log-cabins--one for the Trio, as they called themselves, the other for the Colonel and the Boy.

These two had chummed from the hour they met on the steamer that carried them through the Golden Gate of the Pacific till--well, till the end of my story.

The Colonel was a big tanned fellow, nearly forty--eldest of the party--whom the others used to guy discreetly, because you couldn't mention a place anywhere on the known globe, except the far north, which he had not personally inspected. But for this foible, as the untravelled considered it, he was well liked and a little feared--except by the Boy, who liked him "first-rate," and feared him not at all. They had promptly adopted each other before they discovered that it was necessary to have one or more "pardners." It seemed, from all accounts, to be true, that up there at the top of the world a man alone is a man lost, and ultimately the party was added to as aforesaid.

Only two of them knew anything about roughing it. Jimmie O'Flynn of 'Frisco, the Irish-American lawyer, had seen something of frontier life, and fled it, and MacCann, the Nova Scotian schoolmaster, had spent a month in one of the Caribou camps, and on the strength of that, proudly accepted the nickname of "the Miner."

Colonel George Warren and Morris Burnet, the Boy, had the best outfits; but this fact was held to be more than counter-balanced by the value of the schoolmaster's experience at Caribou, and by the extraordinary handiness of Potts, the Denver clerk, who had helped to build the shelter on deck for the disabled sick on the voyage up. This young man with the big mouth and lazy air had been in the office of a bank ever since he left school, and yet, under pressure, he discovered a natural neat-handedness and a manual dexterity justly envied by some of his fellow-pioneers. His outfit was not more conspicuously meagre than O'Flynn's, yet the Irishman was held to be the moneyed man of his party. Just why was never fully developed, but it was always said, "O'Flynn represents capital"; and O'Flynn, whether on that account, or for a subtler and more efficient reason, always got the best of everything that was going without money and without price.

On board ship O'Flynn, with his ready tongue and his golden background--"representing capital"--was a leading spirit. Potts the handy-man was a talker, too, and a good second. But, once in camp, Mac the Miner was cock of the walk, in those first days, quoted "Caribou," and ordered everybody about to everybody's satisfaction.

In a situation like this, the strongest lean on the man who has ever seen "anything like it" before. It was a comfort that anybody even _thought_ he knew what to do under such new conditions. So the others looked on with admiration and a pleasant confidence, while Mac boldly cut a hole in the brand-new tent, and instructed Potts how to make a flange out of a tin plate, with which to protect the canvas from the heat of the stove-pipe. No more cooking now in the bitter open. Everyone admired Mac's foresight when he said:

"We must build rock fireplaces in our cabins, or we'll find our one little Yukon stove burnt out before the winter is over--before we have a chance to use it out prospecting." And when Mac said they must pool their stores, the Colonel and the Boy agreed as readily as O'Flynn, whose stores consisted of a little bacon, some navy beans, and a demijohn of whisky. O'Flynn, however, urged that probably every man had a little "mite o' somethin'" that he had brought specially for himself--somethin' his friends had given him, for instance. There was Potts, now. They all knew how the future Mrs. Potts had brought a plum-cake down to the steamer, when she came to say good-bye, and made Potts promise he wouldn't unseal the packet till Christmas. It wouldn't do to pool Potts' cake--never! There was the Colonel, the only man that had a sack of coffee. He wouldn't listen when they had told him tea was the stuff up here, and--well, perhaps other fellows didn't miss coffee as much as a Kentuckian, though he _had_ heard--Never mind; they wouldn't pool the coffee. The Boy had some preserved fruit that he seemed inclined to be a hog about--

"Oh, look here. I haven't touched it!" "Just what I'm sayin'. You're hoardin' that fruit."

It was known that Mac had a very dacint little medicine-chest. Of course, if any fellow was ill, Mac wasn't the man to refuse him a little cold pizen; but he must be allowed to keep his own medicine chest--and that little pot o' Dundee marmalade. As for O'Flynn, he would look after the "dimmi-john."

But Mac was dead against the whisky clause. Alcohol had been the curse of Caribou, and in _this_ camp spirits were to be for medicinal purposes only. Whereon a cloud descended on Mr. O'Flynn, and his health began to suffer; but the precious demi-john was put away "in stock" along with the single bottles belonging to the others. Mac had taken an inventory, and no one in those early days dared touch anything without his permission.

They had cut into the mountain-side for a level foundation, and were hard at it now hauling logs.

"I wonder," said the Boy, stopping a moment in his work, and looking at the bleak prospect round him--"I wonder if we're going to see anybody all winter."

"Oh, sure to," Mac thought; "Indians, anyhow."

"Well, I begin to wish they'd mosy along," said Potts; and the sociable O'Flynn backed him up.

It was towards noon on the sixth day after landing (they had come to speak of this now as a voluntary affair), when they were electrified by hearing strange voices; looked up from their work, and saw two white men seated on a big cake of ice going down the river with the current. When they recovered sufficiently from their astonishment at the spectacle, they ran down the hillside, and proposed to help the "castaways" to land. Not a bit of it.

"_Land_ in that place! What you take us for? Not much! We're going to St. Michael's."

They had a small boat drawn up by them on the ice, and one man was dressed in magnificent furs, a long sable overcoat and cap, and wearing quite the air of a North Pole Nabob.

"Got any grub?" Mac called out.

"Yes; want some?"

"Oh no; I thought you--"

"You're not going to try to live through the winter _there?_"

"Yes."

"Lord! you _are_ in a fix!"

"That's we thought about you."

But the travellers on the ice-raft went by laughing and joking at the men safe on shore with their tents and provisions. It made some of them visibly uneasy. _Would_ they win through? Were they crazy to try it? They had looked forward eagerly to the first encounter with their kind, but this vision floating by on the treacherous ice, of men who rather dared the current and the crash of contending floes than land where _they_ were, seemed of evil augury. The little incident left a curiously sinister impression on the camp.

Even Mac was found agreeing with the others of his Trio that, since they had a grand, tough time in front of them, it was advisable to get through the black months ahead with as little wear and tear as possible. In spite of the Trio's superior talents, they built a small ramshackle cabin with a tumble-down fireplace, which served them so ill that they ultimately spent all their waking hours in the more comfortable quarters of the Colonel and the Boy. It had been agreed that these two, with the help, or, at all events, the advice, of the others, should build the bigger, better cabin, where the stores should be kept and the whole party should mess--a cabin with a solid outside chimney of stone and an open fireplace, generous of proportion and ancient of design, "just like down South."

The weather was growing steadily colder; the ice was solid now many feet out from each bank of the river. In the middle of the flood the clotted current still ran with floe-ice, but it was plain the river was settling down for its long sleep.

Not silently, not without stress and thunder. The handful of dwellers on the shore would be waked in the night by the shock and crash of colliding floes, the sound of the great winds rushing by, and--"Hush! What's that?" Tired men would start up out of sleep and sit straight to listen. Down below, among the ice-packs, the noise as of an old-time battle going on--tumult and crashing and a boom! boom! like cannonading.

Then one morning they woke to find all still, the conflict over, the Yukon frozen from bank to bank. No sound from that day on; no more running water for a good seven months.

Winter had come.

While the work went forward they often spoke of the only two people they had thus far seen. Both Potts and O'Flynn had been heard to envy them.

Mac had happened to say that he believed the fellow in furs was an Englishman--a Canadian, at the very least. The Americans chaffed him, and said, "That accounts for it," in a tone not intended to flatter. Mac hadn't thought of it before, but he was prepared to swear now that if an Englishman--they were the hardiest pioneers on earth--or a Canadian was in favour of lighting out, "it must be for some good reason."

"Oh yes; we all know that reason."

The Americans laughed, and Mac, growing hot, was goaded into vaunting the Britisher and running down the Yankee.

"Yankee!" echoed the Kentuckian. "And up in Nova Scotia they let this man teach school! Doesn't know the difference yet between the little corner they call New England and all the rest of America."

"All the rest of America!" shouted Mac. "The cheeky way you people of the States have of gobbling the Continent (in _talk_), just as though the British part of it wasn't the bigger half!"

"Yes; but when you think _which_ half, you ought to be obliged to any fellow for forgetting it." And then they referred to effete monarchical institutions, and by the time they reached the question of the kind of king the Prince of Wales would make, Mac was hardly a safe man to argue with.

There was one bond between him and the Kentucky Colonel: they were both religious men; and although Mac was blue Presbyterian and an inveterate theologian, somehow, out here in the wilderness, it was more possible to forgive a man for illusions about the Apostolic Succession and mistaken views upon Church government. The Colonel, at all events, was not so lax but what he was ready to back up the Calvinist in an endeavour to keep the Sabbath (with a careful compromise between church and chapel) and help him to conduct a Saturday-night Bible-class.

But if the Boy attended the Bible-class with fervour and aired his heresies with uncommon gusto, if he took with equal geniality Colonel Warren's staid remonstrance and Mac's fiery objurgation, Sunday morning invariably found him more "agnostic" than ever, stoutly declining to recognise the necessity for "service." For this was an occasion when you couldn't argue or floor anybody, or hope to make Mac "hoppin' mad," or have the smallest kind of a shindy. The Colonel read the lessons, Mac prayed, and they all sang, particularly O'Flynn. Now, the Boy couldn't sing a note, so there was no fair division of entertainment, wherefore he would go off into the woods with his gun for company, and the Catholic O'Flynn, and even Potts, were in better odour than he "down in camp" on Sundays. So far you may travel, and yet not escape the tyranny of the "outworn creeds."

The Boy came back a full hour before service on the second Sunday with a couple of grouse and a beaming countenance. Mac, who was cook that week, was the only man left in the tent. He looked agreeably surprised at the apparition.

"Hello!" says he more pleasantly than his Sunday gloom usually permitted. "Back in time for service?"

"I've found a native," says the Boy, speaking as proudly as any Columbus. "He's hurt his foot, and he's only got one eye, but he's splendid. Told me no end of things. He's coming here as fast as his foot will let him--he and three other Indians--Esquimaux, I mean. They haven't had anything to eat but berries and roots for seven days."

The Boy was feverishly overhauling the provisions behind the stove.

"Look here," says Mac, "hold on there. I don't know that we've come all this way to feed a lot o' dirty savages."

"But they're starving." Then, seeing that that fact did not produce the desired impression: "My savage is an awfully good fellow. He--he's a converted savage, seems to be quite a Christian." Then, hastily following up his advantage: "He's been taught English by the Jesuits at the mission forty miles above us, on the river. He can give us a whole heap o' tips."

Mac was slowly bringing out a small panful of cold boiled beans.

"There are four of them," said the Boy--"big fellows, almost as big as our Colonel, and _awful_ hungry."

Mac looked at the handful of beans and then at the small sheet-iron stove.

"There are more cooking," says he not over-cordially.

"The one that talks good English is the son of the chief. You can see he's different from the others. Knows a frightful lot. He's taught me some of his language already. The men with him said 'Kaiomi' to everything I asked, and that means 'No savvy.' Says he'll teach me--he'll teach all of us--how to snow-shoe."

"We know how to snow-shoe."

"Oh, I mean on those long narrow snow-shoes that make you go so fast you always trip up! He'll show us how to steer with a pole, and how to make fish-traps and--and everything."

Mac began measuring out some tea.

"He's got a team of Esquimaux dogs--calls 'em Mahlemeuts, and he's got a birch-bark canoe, and a skin kyak from the coast." Then with an inspiration: "His people are the sort of Royal Family down there," added the Boy, thinking to appeal to the Britisher's monarchical instincts.

Mac had meditatively laid his hand on a side of bacon, the Boy's eyes following.

"He's asked us--_all_ of us, and we're five--up to visit him at Pymeut, the first village above us here." Mac took up a knife to cut the bacon. "And--good gracious! why, I forgot the grouse; they can have the grouse!"

"No, they can't," said Mac firmly; "they're lucky to get bacon."

The Boy's face darkened ominously. When he looked like that the elder men found it was "healthiest to give him his head." But the young face cleared as quickly as it had clouded. After all, the point wasn't worth fighting for, since grouse would take time to cook, and--here were the natives coming painfully along the shore.

The Boy ran out and shouted and waved his cap. The other men of the camp, who had gone in the opposite direction, across the river ice to look at an air-hole, came hurrying back and reached camp about the same time as the visitors.

"Thought you said they were big fellows!" commented Mac, who had come to the door for a glimpse of the Indians as they toiled up the slope.

"Well, so they are!"

"Why, the Colonel would make two of any one of them."

"The Colonel! Oh well, you can't expect anybody else to be quite as big as that. I was in a hurry, but I suppose what I meant was, they could eat as much as the Colonel."

"How do you know?"

"Well, just look how broad they are. It doesn't matter to your stomach whether you're big up and down, or big to and fro."

"It's their furs make 'em look like that. They're the most awful little runts I ever saw!"

"Well, I reckon _you'd_ think they were big, too--big as Nova Scotia--if _you'd_ found 'em--come on 'em suddenly like that in the woods--"

"Which is the...?"

"Oh, the son of the chief is in the middle, the one who is taking off his civilised fur-coat. He says his father's got a heap of pelts (you could get things for your collection, Mac), and he's got two reindeer-skin shirts with hoods--'parkis,' you know, like the others are wearing--"

They were quite near now.

"How do," said the foremost native affably.

"How do." The Boy came forward and shook hands as though he hadn't seen him for a month. "This," says he, turning first to Mac and then to the other white men, "this is Prince Nicholas of Pymeut. Walk right in, all of you, and have something to eat."

The visitors sat on the ground round the stove, as close as they could get without scorching, and the atmosphere was quickly heavy with their presence. When they slipped back their hoods it was seen that two of the men wore the "tartar tonsure," after the fashion of the coast.

"Where do you come from?" inquired the Colonel of the man nearest him, who simply blinked and was dumb.

"This is the one that talks English," said the Boy, indicating Nicholas, "and he lives at Pymeut, and he's been converted."

"How far is Pymeut?"

"We sleep Pymeut to-night," says Nicholas.

"Which way?"

The native jerked his head up the river.

"Many people there?"

He nodded.

"White men, too?"

He shook his head.

"How far to the nearest white men?"

Nicholas's mind wandered from the white man's catechism and fixed itself on his race's immemorial problem: how far it was to the nearest thing to eat.

"I thought you said he could speak English."

"So he can, first rate. He and I had a great pow-wow, didn't we, Nicholas?"

Nicholas smiled absently, and fixed his one eye on the bacon that Mac was cutting on the deal box into such delicate slices.

"He'll talk all right," said the Boy, "when he's had some breakfast."

Mac had finished the cutting, and now put the frying-pan on an open hole in the little stove.

"Cook him?" inquired Nicholas.

"Yes. Don't you cook him?"

"Take heap time, cook him."

"You couldn't eat it raw!"

Nicholas nodded emphatically.

Mac said "No," but the Boy was curious to see if they would really eat it uncooked.

"Let them have _some_ of it raw while the rest is frying"; and he beckoned the visitors to the deal box. They made a dart forward, gathered up the fat bacon several slices at a time, and pushed it into their mouths.

"Ugh!" said the Colonel under his breath.

Mac quickly swept what was left into the frying-pan, and began to cut a fresh lot.

The Boy divided the cold beans, got out biscuits, and poured the tea, while silence and a strong smell of ancient fish and rancid seal pervaded the little tent.

O'Flynn put a question or two, but Nicholas had gone stone-deaf. There was no doubt about it, they had been starving.

After a good feed they sat stolidly by the fire, with no sign of consciousness, save the blinking of beady eyes, till the Colonel suggested a smoke. Then they all grinned broadly, and nodded with great vigour. Even those who had no other English understood "tobacco."

When he had puffed awhile, Nicholas took his pipe out of his mouth, and, looking at the Boy, said:

"You no savvy catch fish in winter?"

"Through the ice? No. How you do it?"

"Make hole--put down trap--heap fish all winter."

"You get enough to live on?" asked the Colonel.

"They must have dried fish, too, left over from the summer," said Mac.

Nicholas agreed. "And berries and flour. When snow begin get soft, Pymeuts all go off--" He motioned with his big head towards the hills.

"What do you get there?" Mac was becoming interested.

"Caribou, moose--"

"Any furs?"

"Yes; trap ermun, marten--"

"Lynx, too, I suppose, and fox?"

Nicholas nodded. "All kinds. Wolf--muskrat, otter--wolverine--all kinds."

"You got some skins now?" asked the Nova Scotian.

"Y--yes. More when snow get soft. You come Pymeut--me show."

"Where have ye been just now?" asked O'Flynn.

"St. Michael."

"How long since ye left there?"

"Twelve sleeps."

"He means thirteen days."

Nicholas nodded.

"They couldn't possibly walk that far in--"

"Oh yes," says the Boy; "they don't follow the windings of the river, they cut across the portage, you know."

"Snow come--no trail--big mountains--all get lost."

"What did you go to St. Michael's for?"

"Oh, me pilot. Me go all over. Me leave N. A. T. and T. boat St. Michael's last trip."

"Then you're in the employ of the great North American Trading and Transportation Company?"

Nicholas gave that funny little duck of the head that meant yes.

"That's how you learnt English," says the Colonel.

"No; me learn English at Holy Cross. Me been baptize."

"At that Jesuit mission up yonder?"

"Forty mile."

"Well," says Potts, "I guess you've had enough walking for one winter."

Nicholas seemed not to follow this observation. The Boy interpreted:

"You heap tired, eh? You no go any more long walk till ice go out, eh?"

Nicholas grinned.

"Me go Ikogimeut--all Pymeut go."

"What for?"

"Big feast."

"Oh, the Russian mission there gives a feast?"

"No. Big Innuit feast."

"When?"

"Pretty quick. Every year big feast down to Ikogimeut when Yukon ice get hard, so man go safe with dog-team."

"Do many people go?"

"All Innuit go, plenty Ingalik go."

"How far do they come?"

"All over; come from Koserefsky, come from Anvik--sometime Nulato."

"Why, Nulato's an awful distance from Ikogimeut."

"Three hundred and twenty miles," said the pilot, proud of his general information, and quite ready, since he had got a pipe between his teeth, to be friendly and communicative.

"What do you do at Ikogimeut when you have these--" "Big fire--big feed--tell heap stories--big dance. Oh, heap big time!"

"Once every year, eh, down at Ikogimeut?"

"Three times ev' year. Ev' village, and"--he lowered his voice, not with any hit of reverence or awe, but with an air of making a sly and cheerful confidence--"and when man die."

"You make a feast and have a dance when a friend dies?"

"If no priests. Priests no like. Priests say, 'Man no dead; man gone up.'" Nicholas pondered the strange saying, and slowly shook his head.

"In that the priests are right," said Mac grudgingly.

It was anything but politic, but for the life of him the Boy couldn't help chipping in:

"You think when man dead he stay dead, eh, and you might as well make a feast?"

Nicholas gave his quick nod. "We got heap muskeetah, we cold, we hungry. We here heap long time. Dead man, he done. Why no big feast? Oh yes, heap big feast."

The Boy was enraptured. He would gladly have encouraged these pagan deliverances on the part of the converted Prince, but the Colonel was scandalised, and Mac, although in his heart of hearts not ill-satisfied at the evidence of the skin-deep Christianity of a man delivered over to the corrupt teaching of the Jesuits, found in this last fact all the stronger reason for the instant organisation of a good Protestant prayer-meeting. Nicholas of Pymeut must not be allowed to think it was only Jesuits who remembered the Sabbath day to keep it holy.

And the three "pore benighted heathen" along with him, if they didn't understand English words, they should have an object-lesson, and Mac would himself pray the prayers they couldn't utter for themselves. He jumped up, motioned the Boy to put on more wood, cleared away the granite-ware dishes, filled the bean-pot and set it back to simmer, while the Colonel got out Mac's Bible and his own Prayer-Book.

The Boy did his stoking gloomily, reading aright these portents. Almost eclipsed was joy in this "find" of his (for he regarded the precious Nicholas as his own special property). It was all going to end in his--the Boy's--being hooked in for service. As long as the Esquimaux were there _he_ couldn't, of course, tear himself away. And here was the chance they'd all been waiting for. Here was a native chock-full of knowledge of the natural law and the immemorial gospel of the North, who would be gone soon--oh, very soon, if Mac and the Colonel went on like this--and they were going to choke off Nicholas's communicativeness with--a service!

"It's Sunday, you know," says the Colonel to the Prince, laying open his book, "and we were just going to have church. You are accustomed to going to church at Holy Cross, aren't you?"

"When me kid me go church."

"You haven't gone since you grew up? They still have church there, don't they?"

"Oh, Father Brachet, him have church."

"Why don't you go?"

Nicholas was vaguely conscious of threatened disapproval.

"Me ... me must take up fish-traps."

"Can't you do that another day?"

It seemed not to have occurred to Nicholas before. He sat and considered the matter.

"Isn't Father Brachet," began the Colonel gravely--"he doesn't like it, does he, when you don't come to church?"

"He take care him church; him know me take care me fish-trap."

But Nicholas saw plainly out of his one eye that he was not growing in popularity. Suddenly that solitary organ gleamed with self-justification.

"Me bring fish to Father Brachet and to Mother Aloysius and the Sisters."

Mac and the Colonel exchanged dark glances.

"Do Mother Aloysius and the Sisters live where Father Brachet does?"

"Father Brachet, and Father Wills, and Brother Paul, and Brother Etienne, all here." The native put two fingers on the floor. "Big white cross in middle"--he laid down his pipe to personate the cross--"here"--indicating the other side--"here Mother Aloysius and the Sisters."

"I thought," says Mac, "we'd be hearing of a convent convenient."

"Me help Father Brachet," observed Nicholas proudly. "Me show him boys how make traps, show him girls how make mucklucks." "_What_!" gasps the horrified Mac, "Father Brachet has got a family?"

"Famly?" inquired Nicholas. "Kaiomi"; and he shook his head uncertainly.

"You say Father Brachet has got boys, and"--as though this were a yet deeper brand of iniquity--"_girls_?"

Nicholas, though greatly mystified, nodded firmly.

"I suppose he thinks away off up here nobody will ever know. Oh, these Jesuits!"

"How many children has this shameless priest?"

"Father Brachet, him got seventeen boys, and--me no savvy how much girl--twelve girl ... twenty girl ..."

The Boy, who had been splitting with inward laughter, exploded at this juncture.

"He keeps a native school, Mac."

"Yes," says Nicholas, "teach boy make table, chair, potatoes grow--all kinds. Sisters teach girl make dinner, wash--all kinds. Heap good people up at Holy Cross."

"Divil a doubt of it," says O'Flynn.

But this blind belauding of the children of Loyola only fired Mac the more to give the heathen a glimpse of the true light. In what darkness must they grope when a sly, intriguing Jesuit (it was well known they were all like that) was for them a type of the "heap good man"--a priest, forsooth, who winked at Sabbath-breaking because he and his neighbouring nuns shared in the spoil!

Well, they must try to have a truly impressive service. Mac and the Colonel telegraphed agreement on this head. Savages were said to be specially touched by music.

"I suppose when you were a kid the Jesuits taught you chants and so on," said the Colonel, kindly.

"Kaiomi," answered Nicholas after reflection.

"You can sing, can't you?" asks O'Flynn.

"Sing? No, me dance!"

The Boy roared with delight.

"Why, yes, I never thought of that. You fellows do the songs, and Nicholas and I'll do the dances."

Mac glowered angrily. "Look here: if you don't mind being blasphemous for yourself, don't demoralise the natives."

"Well, I like that! Didn't Miriam dance before the Lord? Why shouldn't Nicholas and me?"

The Colonel cleared his throat, and began to read the lessons for the day. The natives sat and watched him closely. They really behaved very well, and the Boy was enormously proud of his new friends. There was a great deal at stake. The Boy felt he must walk warily, and he already regretted those light expressions about dancing before the Lord. All the fun of the winter might depend on a friendly relation between Pymeut and the camp. It was essential that the Esquimaux should not only receive, but make, a good impression.

The singing "From Greenland's icy mountains to India's coral strand" seemed to please them; but when, after the Colonel's "Here endeth the second lesson," Mac said, in sepulchral tones, "Let us pray," the visitors seemed to think it was time to go home.

"No," said Mac sternly, "they mustn't go in the middle of the meeting"; and he proceeded to kneel down.

But Nicholas was putting on his fur coat, and the others only waited to follow him out. The Boy, greatly concerned lest, after all, the visit should end badly, dropped on his knees to add the force of his own example, and through the opening phrases of Mac's prayer the agnostic was heard saying, in a loud stage-whisper, "Do like me--down! Look here! Suppose you ask us come big feast, and in the middle of your dance we all go home--.

"Oh no," remonstrated Nicholas.

"Very well. These friends o' mine no like man go home in the middle. They heap mad at me when I no stay. You savvy?"

"Me savvy," says Nicholas slowly and rather depressed.

"Kneel down, then," says the Boy. And first Nicholas, and then the others, went on their knees.

Alternately they looked in the Boy's corner where the grub was, and then over their shoulders at the droning Mac and back, catching the Boy's eye, and returning his reassuring nods and grins.

Mac, who had had no innings up to this point, was now embarked upon a most congenial occupation. Wrestling with the Lord on behalf of the heathen, he lost count of time. On and on the prayer wound its slow way; involution after involution, coil after coil, like a snake, the Boy thought, lazing in the sun. Unaccustomed knees grew sore.

"Hearken to the cry of them that walk in darkness, misled by wolves in sheep's clothing--_wolves_, Lord, wearing the sign of the Holy Cross--"

O'Flynn shuffled, and Mac pulled himself up. No light task this of conveying to the Creator, in covert terms, a due sense of the iniquity of the Jesuits, without, at the same time, stirring O'Flynn's bile, and seeing him get up and stalk out of meeting, as had happened once before.

O'Flynn was not deeply concerned about religious questions, but "there were limits." The problem was how to rouse the Lord without rousing O'Flynn--a piece of negotiation so delicate, calling for a skill in pious invective so infinitely absorbing to Mac's particular cast of mind, that he was quickly stone-blind and deaf to all things else.

"Not all the heathen are sunk in iniquity; but they are weak, tempted, and they weary, Lord!"

"Amen," said the Boy, discreetly. "How long?" groaned Mac--"Oh Lord, how long?" But it was much longer than he realised. The Boy saw the visitors shifting from one knee to another, and feared the worst. But he sympathised deeply with their predicament. To ease his own legs, he changed his position, and dragged a corner of the sailcloth down off the little pile of provisions, and doubled it under his knees.

The movement revealed the bag of dried apples within arm's length. Nicholas was surreptitiously reaching for his coat. No doubt about it, he had come to the conclusion that this was the fitting moment to depart. A look over his shoulder showed Mac absorbed, and taking fresh breath at "Sixthly, Oh Lord." The Boy put out a hand, and dragged the apple-bag slowly, softly towards him. The Prince dropped the sleeve of his coat, and fixed his one eye on his friend. The Boy undid the neck of the sack, thrust in his hand, and brought out a fistfull. Another look at Mac--still hard at it, trying to spare O'Flynn's feelings without mincing matters with the Almighty.

The Boy winked at Nicholas, made a gesture, "Catch!" and fired a bit of dried apple at him, at the same time putting a piece in his own mouth to show him it was all right.

Nicholas followed suit, and seemed pleased with the result. He showed all his strong, white teeth, and ecstatically winked his one eye back at the Boy, who threw him another bit and then a piece to each of the others.

The Colonel had "caught on," and was making horrible frowns at the Boy. Potts and O'Flynn looked up, and in dumbshow demanded a share. No? Very well, they'd tell Mac. So the Boy had to feed them, too, to keep them quiet. And still Mac prayed the Lord to catch up this slip he had made here on the Yukon with reference to the natives. In the midst of a powerful peroration, he happened to open his eyes a little, and they fell on the magnificent great sable collar of Prince Nicholas's coat.

Without any of the usual slowing down, without the accustomed warning of a gradual descent from the high themes of heaven to the things of common earth, Mac came down out of the clouds with a bump, and the sudden, business-like "Amen" startled all the apple-chewing congregation.

Mac stood up, and says he to Nicholas:

"Where did you get that coat?"

Nicholas, still on his knees, stared, and seemed in doubt if this were a part of the service.

"Where did you get that coat?" repeated Mac.

The Boy had jumped up nimbly. "I told you his father has a lot of furs."

"Like this?"

"No," says Nicholas; "this belong white man."

"Ha," says Mac excitedly, "I thought I'd seen it before. Tell us how you got it."

"Me leave St. Michael; me got ducks, reindeer meat--oh, _plenty_ kow-kow! [Footnote: Food] Two sleeps away St. Michael me meet Indian. Heap hungry. Him got bully coat." Nicholas picked it up off the floor. "Him got no kow-kow. Him say, 'Give me duck, give me back-fat. You take coat, him too heavy.' Me say, 'Yes.'"

"But how did he get the coat?"

"Him say two white men came down river on big ice."

"Yes, yes--"

"Men sick." He tapped his forehead. "Man no sick, he no go down with the ice"; and Nicholas shuddered. "Before Ikogimeut, ice jam. Indian see men jump one big ice here, more big ice here, and one... go down. Indian"--Nicholas imitated throwing out a line--"man tie mahout round--but--big ice come--" Nicholas dashed his hands together, and then paused significantly. "Indian sleep there. Next day ice hard. Indian go little way out to see. Man dead. Him heap good coat," he wound up unemotionally, and proceeded to put it on.

"And the other white man--what became of him?"

Nicholas shrugged: "Kaiomi," though it was plain he knew well enough the other lay under the Yukon ice.

"And that--_that_ was the end of the fellows who went by jeering at us!"

"We'd better not crow yet," said Mac. And they bade Prince Nicholas and his heathen retinue good-bye in a mood chastened not by prayer alone.

“One work. Many languages. One reading experience.”