only to persist in his misinterpretation.

"You ain't different to hurt. If I started out again tomorrow----"

"The Lord forbid!"

"Amen. But if I had to, you're the only man in Alaska--in the
world--I'd want for my pardner."

"Boy----!" he wrestled with a slight bronchial huskiness, cleared his
throat, tried again, and gave it up, contenting himself with, "Beg your
pardon for callin' you 'Boy.' You're a seasoned old-timer, sah." And
the Boy felt as if some Sovereign had dubbed him Knight.

In a day or two now, from north or south, the first boat must appear.
The willows were unfolding their silver leaves. The alder-buds were
bursting; geese and teal and mallard swarmed about the river margin.
Especially where the equisetae showed the tips of their feathery green
tails above the mud, ducks flocked and feasted. People were too
excited, "too busy," they said, looking for the boats, to do much
shooting. The shy birds waxed daring. Keith, standing by his shack,
knocked over a mallard within forty paces of his door.

It was eight days after that first cry, "The ice is going out!" four
since the final jam gave way and let the floes run free, that at one
o'clock in the afternoon the shout went up, "A boat! a boat!"

Only a lumberman's bateau, but two men were poling her down the current
with a skill that matched the speed. They swung her in. A dozen hands
caught at the painter and made fast. A young man stepped ashore and
introduced himself as Van Alen, Benham's "Upper River pardner, on the
way to Anvik."

His companion, Donovan, was from Circle City, and brought appalling
news. The boats depended on for the early summer traffic, Bella, and
three other N.A.T. and T. steamers, as well as the A.C.'s Victoria and
the St. Michael, had been lifted up by the ice "like so many feathers,"
forced clean out of the channel, and left high and dry on a sandy
ridge, with an ice wall eighty feet wide and fifteen high between them
and open water.

"All the crews hard at work with jackscrews," said Donovan; "and if
they can get skids under, and a channel blasted through the ice, they
may get the boats down here in fifteen or twenty days."

A heavy blow. But instantly everyone began to talk of the May West and
the Muckluck as though all along they had looked for succour to come
up-stream rather than down. But as the precious hours passed, a deep
dejection fastened on the camp. There had been a year when, through one
disaster after