and
struck, and then it floated easily and free.

Daylight came to, and decided he had been asleep. The sun denoted that
several hours had passed. It was early afternoon. He dragged himself
into the stern and sat up. The boat was in the middle of the stream.
The wooded banks, with their base-lines of flashing ice, were slipping
by. Near him floated a huge, uprooted pine. A freak of the current
brought the boat against it. Crawling forward, he fastened the painter
to a root.

The tree, deeper in the water, was travelling faster, and the painter
tautened as the boat took the tow. Then, with a last giddy look
around, wherein he saw the banks tilting and swaying and the sun
swinging in pendulum-sweep across the sky, Daylight wrapped himself in
his rabbit-skin robe, lay down in the bottom, and fell asleep.

When he awoke, it was dark night. He was lying on his back, and he
could see the stars shining. A subdued murmur of swollen waters could
be heard. A sharp jerk informed him that the boat, swerving slack into
the painter, had been straightened out by the swifter-moving pine tree.
A piece of stray drift-ice thumped against the boat and grated along
its side. Well, the following jam hadn't caught him yet, was his
thought, as he closed his eyes and slept again.

It was bright day when next he opened his eyes. The sun showed it to
be midday. A glance around at the far-away banks, and he knew that he
was on the mighty Yukon. Sixty Mile could not be far away. He was
abominably weak. His movements were slow, fumbling, and inaccurate,
accompanied by panting and head-swimming, as he dragged himself into a
sitting-up position in the stern, his rifle beside him. He looked a
long time at Elijah, but could not see whether he breathed or not, and
he was too immeasurably far away to make an investigation.

He fell to dreaming and meditating again, dreams and thoughts being
often broken by sketches of blankness, wherein he neither slept, nor
was unconscious, nor was aware of anything. It seemed to him more like
cogs slipping in his brain. And in this intermittent way he reviewed
the situation. He was still alive, and most likely would be saved, but
how came it that he was not lying dead across the boat on top the
ice-rim? Then he recollected the great final effort he had made. But
why had he made it? he asked himself. It had not been fear of death.
He had not been afraid, that was sure. Then he remembered th