pondents whose tangled
baggage was strewn from Stone House, over across the Pass, and as far as
Happy Camp.

"Yes," he said with consequence. "I've a thousand dozen eggs at
Linderman, and my boat's just about got the last seam caulked. Consider
myself in luck to get it. Boats are at a premium, you know, and none to
be had."

Whereupon and almost with bodily violence the correspondents clamoured to
go with him, fluttered greenbacks before his eyes, and spilled yellow
twenties from hand to hand. He could not hear of it, but they
over-persuaded him, and he reluctantly consented to take them at three
hundred apiece. Also they pressed upon him the passage money in advance.
And while they wrote to their respective journals concerning the Good
Samaritan with the thousand dozen eggs, the Good Samaritan was hurrying
back to the Swede at Linderman.

"Here, you! Gimme that boat!" was his salutation, his hand jingling the
correspondents' gold pieces and his eyes hungrily bent upon the finished
craft.

The Swede regarded him stolidly and shook his head.

"How much is the other fellow paying? Three hundred? Well, here's four.
Take it."

He tried to press it upon him, but the man backed away.

"Ay tank not. Ay say him get der skiff boat. You yust wait--"

"Here's six hundred. Last call. Take it or leave it. Tell 'm it's a
mistake."

The Swede wavered. "Ay tank yes," he finally said, and the last
Rasmunsen saw of him his vocabulary was going to wreck in a vain effort
to explain the mistake to the other fellows.

The German slipped and broke his ankle on the steep hogback above Deep
Lake, sold out his stock for a dollar a dozen, and with the proceeds
hired Indian packers to carry him back to Dyea. But on the morning
Rasmunsen shoved off with his correspondents, his two rivals followed
suit.

"How many you got?" one of them, a lean little New Englander, called out.

"One thousand dozen," Rasmunsen answered proudly.

"Huh! I'll go you even stakes I beat you in with my eight hundred."

The correspondents offered to lend him the money; but Rasmunsen declined,
and the Yankee closed with the remaining rival, a brawny son of the sea
and sailor of ships and things, who promised to show them all a wrinkle
or two when it came to cracking on. And crack on he did, with a large
tarpaulin square-sail which pressed the bow half under at every jump. He
was the first to run out of Linderman, but, disdaining the portag