e, piled
his loaded boat on the rocks in the boiling rapids. Rasmunsen and the
Yankee, who likewise had two passengers, portaged across on their backs
and then lined their empty boats down through the bad water to Bennett.

Bennett was a twenty-five-mile lake, narrow and deep, a funnel between
the mountains through which storms ever romped. Rasmunsen camped on the
sand-pit at its head, where were many men and boats bound north in the
teeth of the Arctic winter. He awoke in the morning to find a piping
gale from the south, which caught the chill from the whited peaks and
glacial valleys and blew as cold as north wind ever blew. But it was
fair, and he also found the Yankee staggering past the first bold
headland with all sail set. Boat after boat was getting under way, and
the correspondents fell to with enthusiasm.

"We'll catch him before Cariboo Crossing," they assured Rasmunsen, as
they ran up the sail and the Alma took the first icy spray over her bow.

Now Rasmunsen all his life had been prone to cowardice on water, but he
clung to the kicking steering-oar with set face and determined jaw. His
thousand dozen were there in the boat before his eyes, safely secured
beneath the correspondents' baggage, and somehow, before his eyes were
the little cottage and the mortgage for a thousand dollars.

It was bitter cold. Now and again he hauled in the steering-sweep and
put out a fresh one while his passengers chopped the ice from the blade.
Wherever the spray struck, it turned instantly to frost, and the dipping
boom of the spritsail was quickly fringed with icicles. The _Alma_
strained and hammered through the big seas till the seams and butts began
to spread, but in lieu of bailing the correspondents chopped ice and
flung it overboard. There was no let-up. The mad race with winter was
on, and the boats tore along in a desperate string.

"W-w-we can't stop to save our souls!" one of the correspondents
chattered, from cold, not fright.

"That's right! Keep her down the middle, old man!" the other encouraged.

Rasmunsen replied with an idiotic grin. The iron-bound shores were in a
lather of foam, and even down the middle the only hope was to keep
running away from the big seas. To lower sail was to be overtaken and
swamped. Time and again they passed boats pounding among the rocks, and
once they saw one on the edge of the breakers about to strike. A little
craft behind them, with two men, jibed over and