| Kit looked at him, and waited.
"We've got the immortal cinch on them two babes," Shorty expounded.
"They can give orders an' shed mazuma, but as you say, they're plum
babes. If we're goin' to Dawson, we got to take charge of this here
outfit."
They looked at each other.
"It's a go," said Kit, as his hand went out in ratification.
In the morning, long before daylight, Shorty issued his call. "Come
on!" he roared. "Tumble out, you sleepers! Here's your coffee! Kick
into it! We're goin' to make a start!"
Grumbling and complaining, Stine and Sprague were forced to get
under way two hours earlier than ever before. If anything, the gale
was stiffer, and in a short time every man's face was iced up, while
the oars were heavy with ice. Three hours they struggled, and four,
one man steering, one chopping ice, two toiling at the oars, and
each taking his various turns. The northwest shore loomed nearer
and nearer. The gale blew ever harder, and at last Sprague pulled
in his oar in token of surrender. Shorty sprang to it, though his
relief had only begun.
"Chop ice," he said, handing Sprague the hatchet.
"But what's the use?" the other whined. "We can't make it. We're
going to turn back."
"We're going on," said Shorty. "Chop ice. An' when you feel better
you can spell me."
It was heart-breaking toil, but they gained the shore, only to find
it composed of surge-beaten rocks and cliffs, with no place to land.
"I told you so," Sprague whimpered.
"You never peeped," Shorty answered.
"We're going back."
Nobody spoke, and Kit held the boat into the seas as they skirted
the forbidding shore. Sometimes they gained no more than a foot to
the stroke, and there were times when two or three strokes no more
than enabled them to hold their own. He did his best to hearten the
two weaklings. He pointed out that the boats which had won to this
shore had never come back. Perforce, he argued, they had found a
shelter somewhere ahead. Another hour they labored, and a second.
"If you fellows'd put into your oars some of that coffee you swig in
your blankets, we'd make it," was Shorty's encouragement. "You're
just goin' through the motions an' not pullin' a pound."
A few minutes later, Sprague drew in his oar.
"I'm finished," he said, and there were tears in his voice.
"So are the rest of us," Kit answered, himself ready to cry or to
commit murder, so great was his exhaustion. "But we're going on
just the same."
"We're going back. Turn the boat around."
"Shorty, if he won't pull, take that oar yourself," Kit commanded.
"Sure," was the answer. "He can chop ice."
But Sprague refused to give over the oar; Stine had ceased rowing,
and the boat was drifting backward.
"Turn around, Smoke," Sprague ordered.
And Kit, who never in his life had cursed any man, astonished
himself.
"I'll see you in hell, first," he replied. "Take hold of that oar
and pull."
It is in moments of exhaustion that men lose all their reserves of
civilization, and such a moment had come. Each man had reached the
breaking-point. Sprague jerked off a mitten, drew his revolver, and
turned it on his steersman. This was a new experience to Kit. He
had never had a gun presented at him in his life. And now, to his
surprise, it seemed to mean nothing at all. It was the most natural
thing in the world.
"If you don't put that gun up," he said, "I'll take it away and rap
you over the knuckles with it."
"If you don't turn the boat around, I'll shoot you," Sprague
threatened.
Then Shorty took a hand. He ceased chopping ice and stood up behind
Sprague.
"Go on an' shoot," said Shorty, wiggling the hatchet. "I'm just
aching for a chance to brain you. Go on an' start the festivities."
"This is mutiny," Stine broke in. "You were engaged to obey
orders."
Shorty turned on him. "Oh, you'll get yours as soon as I finish with
your pardner, you little hog-wallopin' snooper, you."
"Sprague," Kit said, "I'll give you just thirty seconds to put away
that gun and get that oar out."
Sprague hesitated, gave a short hysterical laugh, put the revolver
away, and bent his back to the work.
For two hours more, inch by inch, they fought their way along the
edge of the foaming rocks, until Kit feared he had made a mistake.
And then, when on the verge of himself turning back, they came
abreast of a narrow opening, not twenty feet wide, which led into a
land-locked enclosure where the fiercest gusts scarcely flawed the
surface. It was the haven gained by the boats of previous days.
They landed on a shelving beach, and the two employers lay in
collapse in the boat, while Kit and Shorty pitched the tent, built a
fire, and started the cooking.
"What's a hog-walloping snooper, Shorty?" Kit asked.
"Blamed if I know," was the answer; "but he's one just the same."
The gale, which had been dying quickly, ceased at nightfall, and it
came on clear and cold. A cup of coffee, set aside to cool and
forgotten, a few minutes later was found coated with half an inch of
ice. At eight o'clock, when Sprague and Stine, already rolled in
their blankets, were sleeping the sleep of exhaustion, Kit came back
from a look at the boat.
"It's the freeze-up, Shorty," he announced. "There's a skin of ice
over the whole pond already."
"What are you going to do?"
"There's only one thing. The lake of course freezes first. The rapid
current of the river may keep it open for days. This time to-morrow
any boat caught in Lake Labarge remains there until next year."
"You mean we got to get out to-night? Now?"
Kit nodded.
"Tumble out, you sleepers!" was Shorty's answer, couched in a roar,
as he began casting off the guy-ropes of the tent.
The other two awoke, groaning with the pain of stiffened muscles and
the pain of rousing from the sleep of exhaustion.
"What time is it?" Stine asked.
"Half-past eight."
"It's dark yet," was the objection.
Shorty jerked out a couple of guy-ropes, and the tent began to sag.
"It's not morning," he said. "It's evening. Come on. The lake's
freezin'. We got to get acrost."
Stine sat up, his face bitter and wrathful. "Let it freeze. We're
not going to stir."
"All right," said Shorty. "We're goin' on with the boat."
"You were engaged--"
"To take your outfit to Dawson," Shorty caught him up. "Well, we're
takin' it, ain't we?" He punctuated his query by bringing half the
tent down on top of them.
They broke their way through the thin ice in the little harbor, and
came out on the lake, where the water, heavy and glassy, froze on
their oars with every stroke. The water soon became like mush,
clogging the stroke of the oars and freezing in the air even as it
dripped. Later the surface began to form a skin, and the boat
proceeded slower and slower.
Often afterwards, when Kit tried to remember that night and failed
to bring up aught but nightmare recollections, he wondered what must
have been the sufferings of Stine and Sprague. His one impression
of himself was that he struggled through biting frost and
intolerable exertion for a thousand years, more or less.
Morning found them stationary. Stine complained of frosted fingers,
and Sprague of his nose, while the pain in Kit's cheeks and nose
told him that he, too, had been touched. With each accretion of
daylight they could see farther, and as far as they could see was icy
surface. The water of the lake was gone. A hundred yards away was
the shore of the north end. Shorty insisted that it was the opening
of the river and that he could see water. He and Kit alone were
able to work, and with their oars they broke the ice and forced the
boat along. And at the last gasp of their strength they made the
suck of the rapid river. One look back showed them several boats
which had fought through the night and were hopelessly frozen in;
then they whirled around a bend in a current running six miles an
hour.
Day by day they floated down the swift river, and day by day the
shore-ice extended farther out. When they made camp at nightfall,
they chopped a space in the ice in which to lay the boat and
carried the camp outfit hundreds of feet to shore. In the morning,
they chopped the boat out through the new ice and caught the
current. Shorty set up the sheet-iron stove in the boat, and over
this Stine and Sprague hung through the long, drifting hours. They
had surrendered, no longer gave orders, and their one desire was to
gain Dawson. Shorty, pessimistic, indefatigable, and joyous, at
frequent intervals roared out the three lines of the first four-line
stanza of a song he had forgotten. The colder it got the oftener he
sang:
"Like Argus of the ancient times,
We leave this Modern Greece;
Tum-tum, tum-tum, tum-tum, tum-tum,
To shear the Golden Fleece."
As they passed the mouths of the Hootalinqua and the Big and Little
Salmon, they found these streams throwing mush-ice into the main
Yukon. This gathered about the boat and attached itself, and at
night they found themselves compelled to chop the boat out of the
current. In the morning they chopped the boat back into the
current.Previous chapter:Next chapter SMOKE BELLEW, by Jack london. But he didn't. Somewhere in him was the strain of the hard, and he Over the ice-scoured rocks and above the timber-line, the trail ran Kit grinned to himself and went on. This was what he must expect to Next day the gale still blew. Lake Linderman was no more than a Several miles below they ran in to the bank, and all four walked Kit looked at him, and waited. The last night ashore was spent between the mouths of the White When Smoke entered the little cabin on the hillside back of Dawson, Often they thought they had reached the lead, but always they A trail did run up the creek, but so slight was it that they Shorty returned along the creek bed and climbed the bank to them. "I "Are you playing a system?" Smoke asked, at the end of ten minutes, "It's real," Smoke hammered his point home. "Surely." And all the time this fine, wise, Spartan Northland had been here, "Search the other bank first," Smoke urged. "Who was the man you hiked out of camp two weeks ago?" Smoke asked. "I can buy the dogs. But--er--aren't you afraid this is gambling?" Leaping down the bank beyond the glutted passage, he gained the He dropped behind very slowly, though when the last relay station was The valley Smoke was descending gradually widened after the fashion of "Well, here's the gold that will take you to Paris," Smoke assured Holding the few pounds of strain necessary for Smoke with his left Smoke kept himself warm by kicking a channel through the rim with the "They'll sure eat us if we don't. They look hungry enough for it. Cultus George, a big strapping Circle City Indian, leaned distantly "Wait," Smoke commanded. "Tie his hands. We don't want him Quite dark it was when Smoke's snow-shoe tripped him over a body. He Smoke followed him in. "But how was I to know?" "Just trying to remember something, Shorty." "Sure. I know that, too. Slavovitch's restaurant has most of them. "Go on," Smoke requested. "That's fair," Smoke added. "Money back for the bad ones, Wild Water. "It's all right," Smoke said cheerfully. "Keep your shirt on an' let "Did you see his face?" Shorty raved. "He was almost bustin' to keep "Five thousand." "Who are your friends?" Smoke asked. "Where's the stampede?" "An' this is it?" "But there's nothing doing, I tell you," Smoke said sharply. "But suppose I did want to vote twelve hundred shares," Wild Water was Before midday, traveling down a broad stream, past snow-buried willows Smoke could only mumble phrases that were awkwardly reminiscent of his Smoke shook his head. "I am a harsh, cruel man," Snass went on. "Yet the law is the law, Glancing back at McCan, in the rear, Labiskwee spoke in an undertone "There be three suns," McCan muttered hoarsely, reeling as he clung to "It is summer in the lower valleys," said Labiskwee. "Soon it will be Book list. |
(Friday, 19 April, 2024.)
