e water widened between steamboat and shore.

"Hey you, Captain Scott!" he yelled at the pilot-house. "Stop the boat!"

The gongs clanged, and the big stern wheel reversed, then stopped. All
hands on steamboat and on bank took advantage of this respite to
exchange final, new, and imperative farewells. More futile than ever was
Louis Bondell's effort to make himself heard. The _Seattle No. 4_ lost
way and drifted down-stream, and Captain Scott had to go ahead and
reverse a second time. His head disappeared inside the pilot-house,
coming into view a moment later behind a big megaphone.

Now Captain Scott had a remarkable voice, and the "Shut up!" he
launched at the crowd on deck and on shore could have been heard at the
top of Moosehide Mountain and as far as Klondike City. This official
remonstrance from the pilot-house spread a film of silence over the
tumult.

"Now, what do you want to say?" Captain Scott demanded.

"Tell Fred Churchill--he's on the bank there--tell him to go to
Macdonald. It's in his safe--a small gripsack of mine. Tell him to get
it and bring it out when he comes."

In the silence Captain Scott bellowed the message ashore through the
megaphone:--

"You, Fred Churchill, go to Macdonald--in his safe--small
gripsack--belongs to Louis Bondell--important! Bring it out when you
come! Got it?"

Churchill waved his hand in token that he had got it. In truth, had
Macdonald, half a mile away, opened his window, he'd have got it, too.
The tumult of farewell rose again, the gongs clanged, and the _Seattle
No. 4_ went ahead, swung out into the stream, turned on her heel, and
headed down the Yukon, Bondell and Churchill waving farewell and mutual
affection to the last.

That was in midsummer. In the fall of the year, the _W.H. Willis_
started up the Yukon with two hundred homeward-bound pilgrims on board.
Among them was Churchill. In his stateroom, in the middle of a
clothes-bag, was Louis Bondell's grip. It was a small, stout leather
affair, and its weight of forty pounds always made Churchill nervous
when he wandered too far from it. The man in the adjoining stateroom had
a treasure of gold-dust hidden similarly in a clothes-bag, and the pair
of them ultimately arranged to stand watch and watch. While one went
down to eat, the other kept an eye on the two stateroom doors. When
Churchill wanted to take a hand at whist, the other man mounted guard,
and when the other man wanted to relax his soul, Church