n, who not
only gave them food and drink and helped them down to the wharf, but
actually set them up with a traveling-kit of new clothing.

Then, again, consider the really astounding fact that a steamer should
have been waiting to cast off at the moment these two men arrived, and
that her skipper held his ship up for half an hour to suit the
convenience of the precious pair, and finally carried them on in his
best two cabins!

"But what about the sled and the team?" whined Harry, as he and Beeching
hobbled up the gangway of the waiting steamer, bound for luxury and
civilization. It may be Harry had thought of these as one of his
hard-earned perquisites.

"Oh, to blazes with the sled and dogs!" cried _Chechaquo_ Beeching. "The
town's welcome to 'em, for all I care."

Generous man! And at that precise moment, his tough life starved and
hammered out of his hardy body, the exhausted Fish was breathing his
last--still in the traces; and Jan, in whom the fires of life, though
better laid than those of ninety-nine dogs in a hundred, were burning
very low just now--barely flickering, indeed--was concentrating such
energies as remained in him upon gnawing feebly at his traces, for the
double purpose of extracting some nutriment from them, if that might be,
and freeing himself from their control.

The first of these aims was a tolerably hopeless one, since Jan could
not just now swallow any hard thing. But in the second he achieved
success, just as the steamer's gangway was hauled up and the population
of the town was engaged in waving farewell to the craft that connected
with the big outside world, where sentimentality and dollars rule, just
as in the northland muscle, grit, endurance--and dollars rule. Yes, even
there money does play one of the chief ruling parts. But, as a general
thing, sentimentality does not.

The remaining wrecks of the team, two dead, one dying, and three too far
gone in the same direction to be capable of any effort, lay where they
had fallen at the moment when willing hands had come to help their
masters to the steamer.

It may be that Jan had bigger physical reserves to draw upon than his
mates had. It is more likely, however, that the powers which kept him
striving still to live, after the others had given up effort, were
factors on the mental side of his composition. His memories were
stronger and more vivid, his imagination a thing far more complex, than
that of any husky. Also his faith i