He inquired of the
cook, the cabin-boy, the captain, concerning the food stores. They
reassured him countless times; but he could not believe them, and pried
cunningly about the lazarette to see with his own eyes.

It was noticed that the man was getting fat. He grew stouter with each
day. The scientific men shook their heads and theorized. They limited
the man at his meals, but still his girth increased and he swelled
prodigiously under his shirt.

The sailors grinned. They knew. And when the scientific men set a watch
on the man, they knew too. They saw him slouch for'ard after breakfast,
and, like a mendicant, with outstretched palm, accost a sailor. The
sailor grinned and passed him a fragment of sea biscuit. He clutched it
avariciously, looked at it as a miser looks at gold, and thrust it into
his shirt bosom. Similar were the donations from other grinning sailors.

The scientific men were discreet. They let him alone. But they privily
examined his bunk. It was lined with hardtack; the mattress was stuffed
with hardtack; every nook and cranny was filled with hardtack. Yet he
was sane. He was taking precautions against another possible famine--that
was all. He would recover from it, the scientific men said; and he did,
ere the _Bedford's_ anchor rumbled down in San Francisco Bay.

A DAY'S LODGING

It was the gosh-dangdest stampede I ever seen. A thousand dog-teams
hittin' the ice. You couldn't see 'm fer smoke. Two white men an' a
Swede froze to death that night, an' there was a dozen busted their
lungs. But didn't I see with my own eyes the bottom of the
water-hole? It was yellow with gold like a mustard-plaster. That's
why I staked the Yukon for a minin' claim. That's what made the
stampede. An' then there was nothin' to it. That's what I
said--NOTHIN' to it. An' I ain't got over guessin' yet.--NARRATIVE OF
SHORTY.

John Messner clung with mittened hand to the bucking gee-pole and held
the sled in the trail. With the other mittened hand he rubbed his cheeks
and nose. He rubbed his cheeks and nose every little while. In point of
fact, he rarely ceased from rubbing them, and sometimes, as their
numbness increased, he rubbed fiercely. His forehead was covered by the
visor of his fur cap, the flaps of which went over his ears. The rest of
his face was protected by a thick beard, golden-brown under its coating
of frost.

Behind him churned a heav