ose rocks were washed quite
smooth. Now and then might be heard the bark of a wood-chopper's dog
stationed outside his master's cabin, and the steady thud of the steamer
never stopped. At two o'clock it was growing light again, and still the
young man pleaded with the girl on the deck. She was stubborn and
silent.

Swiftly now the boat neared the "Five Fingers." Only a few miles
remained before the huge boulders forming the narrow and tortuous
channels called the "Five Fingers" would be reached, and the face of the
pilot was stern. It was a most dangerous piece of water and many boats
had already been wrecked at this point.

Suddenly above the noise of the waters and the steamer's regular
breathing there arose on the quiet air a shrill shriek at the stern of
the boat.

The lady on the upper deck had retired. The captain was sleeping off his
too frequent potations, and only the pilot on the lookout knew that the
scream came from a woman; but it was not repeated.

The pilot's assistant was off watch, and his own duty lay at the wheel;
so it happened that a guilty man who had been standing by the deck rail
crept silently, unnoticed, and now thoroughly sobered, to his stateroom.

His companion was nowhere to be seen.

A small steamer following next day in the wake of the first boat, came
to Five Finger Rapids.

"See the pretty red seaweed on the rocks, mamma," cried a little boy,
pointing to the low ledge on the bank of the east channel.

Those who looked in the direction indicated by the boy saw, as the
steamer crept carefully up to the whirlpool, a woman's white face in the
water, above which streamed a mass of long auburn hair, caught firmly on
the rocks.

Standing by the side of his pilot, the captain's keen eye caught sight
of the head and hair.

"It's only Dolly Duncan," he said, with a shrug of his shoulders. "No
one else has such hair; but it's no great loss anyway; there are many
more of such as she, you know."

[Illustration: UPPER YUKON STEAMER.]

CHAPTER III.

DAWSON.

By this time we had passed the Hootalingua, Big Salmon, Little Salmon
and Lewes rivers, and were nearing the mouth of Pelley River, all
flowing into one stream from the east and uniting to form the Upper
Yukon. Many smaller rivers and creeks from the west as well as the east
empty into this river which gathers momentum and volume constantly until
it reaches a swiftness of five miles an hour between Five Finger Rapids
an