ter hurtled across the bottom
boards to her shoe-tops: but she took it coolly enough, settling
herself in the stern-sheets and tucking her feet under her.

"Hold on!" the officer cried. "This will never do, Miss Welse. Come
on back, and I'll get one of our boats over as soon as I can."

"I'll see you in--in heaven first," retorted the boatman, shoving off.
"Let go!" he threatened.

Mr. Thurston gripped tight hold of the gunwale, and as reward for his
chivalry had his knuckles rapped sharply by the oar-blade. Then he
forgot himself, and Miss Welse also, and swore, and swore fervently.

"I dare say our farewell might have been more dignified," she called
back to him, her laughter rippling across the water.

"Jove!" he muttered, doffing his cap gallantly. "There is a _woman_!"
And a sudden hunger seized him, and a yearning to see himself mirrored
always in the gray eyes of Frona Welse. He was not analytical; he did
not know why; but he knew that with her he could travel to the end of
the earth. He felt a distaste for his profession, and a temptation to
throw it all over and strike out for the Klondike whither she was
going; then he glanced up the beetling side of the ship, saw the red
face of Thad Ferguson, and forgot the dream he had for an instant
dreamed.

Splash! A handful of water from his strenuous oar struck her full in
the face. "Hope you don't mind it, miss," he apologized. "I'm doin'
the best I know how, which ain't much."

"So it seems," she answered, good-naturedly.

"Not that I love the sea," bitterly; "but I've got to turn a few honest
dollars somehow, and this seemed the likeliest way. I oughter 'a ben
in Klondike by now, if I'd had any luck at all. Tell you how it was.
I lost my outfit on Windy Arm, half-way in, after packin' it clean
across the Pass--"

Zip! Splash! She shook the water from her eyes, squirming the while
as some of it ran down her warm back.

"You'll do," he encouraged her. "You're the right stuff for this
country. Goin' all the way in?"

She nodded cheerfully.

"Then you'll do. But as I was sayin', after I lost my outfit I hit
back for the coast, bein' broke, to hustle up another one. That's why
I'm chargin' high-pressure rates. And I hope you don't feel sore at
what I made you pay. I'm no worse than the rest, miss, sure. I had to
dig up a hundred for this old tub, which ain't worth ten down in the
States. Same kind of prices everywhere. Over on the S